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Broadcasting from the Shaker Green Room at RecFest USA, Chad & Cheese get the lowdown from Darnell Hill, VP of Talent Acquisition at AAA Mountain West Group. They talk about everything from rebranding beyond "the people who fix your flat tires" to how AI is shaking up recruitment—slowly, because humans are still scared of robots taking over. Darnell dishes on trends you didn’t see coming in 2024 and what’s next for hiring in 2025. Spoiler: It’s not about finding people with 10 years of experience using tools that came out last week. Tune in for insights, laughs, and a dose of snark! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Podcast Intro: 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, brash opinion and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel: Who are you and why are you here? Darnell Hill: My name is Darnell Hill. I am the VP of talent acquisition for AAA Mountain West Group. I am here from a talent management perspective just to pick up on what other companies are doing, how to have an impact. I had a panel on quality hire, so I did a speaking engagement on that. And then overall, again, just networking. I think it's a great opportunity to do that. Joel: Nice, nice. So if you had one piece of advice, just one nugget for anybody in our space, what would that be? Darnell Hill: Stay ahead of the technology as much as possible. Embrace it. It is going to advance, what we do on a day to day basis so fast. It already has. Right. It comes with a little bit of bias, you know, bias in, bias out. But if you stay in front of it, I think you have the opportunity to truly enhance not only your day to day space, but the talent acquisition space in its entirety. Joel: So I'm gonna be brutally honest and tell you that when I think of AAA, I think of my parents getting directions to wherever we were going on vacation, having it mapped out, having flat tire. You call AAA the hookup... Chad: Security. Safety right there. Joel: That brand must be a challenge, but also an asset in terms of employment. Talk about how you tackle that. Darnell Hill: Yeah. So with the traditional brand, you have 120 years of just backing. Right. That brings that level of longevity that draws people in. Your parents, my parents, our grandparents, so on and so forth. And I think what we've done now and how we've tried to expand it, it's not just emergency roadside service. Right? In my division alone, there's a home alarm division, commercial alarm division, called AAA Smart Home. We have club owned auto repair facilities. So when your car breaks down, we can take you to a AAA approved shop to get that repair done. They do a little bit of everything. They're incorporating some of the advancements with the Teslas and the auto battery operated vehicles. Yeah. So they're incorporating a lot of that into the day to day in the repair space. But outside of that, we have a number of divisions. We have an innovation lab where we try to look up things to stay relevant, stay ahead of the competition. And so I think that's been great. I think, you know, our vision is how do you transform AAA for the next 100 years? And that's where it's going because we know the millennials are doing what? Less car buying and more ride sharing. Darnell Hill: Right. And so where does the rubber meet the road? And so continuously trying to find ways to engage with them. We had a division that was kind of a ride share division. We're sunsetting that business. But what it allowed people to do was utilize an app based technology to get a vehicle and go wherever you needed to go, provided it was in a geographic footprint. And so that worked out really, really well. Reaching out to millennials and trying to again, advance, get more of the younger people into the fold of the day to day. Joel: Get those kids in there. So in 2024, still got a little bit left and still a lot going on. Right. What has surprised you the most about what has happened throughout this year? Darnell Hill: I think what's surprising to me is the enhancements that are happening in the space and the hesitancy for large organizations to adopt them. Right. Everybody's kind of playing it slow. It's like AI took off, ChatGPT took off, some people ran, didn't realize there was bias incorporated into it. Backed up a little bit, and then now technology continues to funnel into the day to day. And so companies are a little bit more cautious about how they go about doing things. And so that's surprising a little bit. What's great about it is if you look at a lot of the vendors that are even here, most of their platforms utilize AI in some shape, form or capacity. And so that's going to get us to where we need to be in 2025 and beyond. Joel: Yep. Also as a brand, I know you're getting pitched by a lot of vendors and we're here at an expo with a lot of startups and companies. How do you make sense of the flood of sales calls and what do you look for in new technologies? How do you filter that out? Is there a process? Is it just something that's in your gut, like talk about that process? Darnell Hill: Yeah, sometimes it's just like I gotta turn it off. Just being, you know, completely honest. But more often than not, for me, it's the relationship piece, it's this, it's the networking and it's getting an understanding of a vendor that can truly be a business partner in the everyday sense and not just a vendor that's looking for my business. Right. So somebody that's going to be an extension of AAA and everything that they're doing and trying to be the same for us in return and saying, hey, this is what you want, this is what we have product wise out in the market. How can we incorporate that into the day to day for you to make your journey that much easier? Joel: So looking forward now, 2025, it's coming up quick. It's coming up quick, what's gonna be your major priority in 2025? Darnell Hill: It's gonna center a lot around AI, right? And taking the technological advances to get into some of the things that I talked about on the panel today, measuring quality of hire, I think that's huge right now. We've all talked about the candidate experience and what that journey looks like for a team member coming aboard from day one to the life cycle of their tenure. But what we haven't done a good enough job of focusing on is the quality of hire. We all know if we hire a highly qualified individual, the output from that individual is going to be higher, they're going to stay longer. I always say if you invest in your people, they will invest back in you. And so from that perspective, you gotta figure out what motivates team members. The AI is good about doing assessments. And so we take the information from the assessments to better understand who you are as an individual. And that helps us kind of advance that day to day, the relationship building to better understand what makes people tick. Joel: So that's a great tool to bring people in and the right people in. We're hearing a lot more these days about upskilling. Take the person here, bring them up here, bring it in house. Are you guys doing anything in regards to upskilling? Learning programs, getting someone to the next level? Darnell Hill: Oh yeah, the learning programs. You know, we've adopted that philosophy of the micro learning. You take in things in small bites. You tend to retain them a lot better than sitting in training for 60 minutes at a time. You always circle back around to those individuals two weeks later and say, hey, what'd you retain from that training? Very little. Right? Like 5% of what they got. So the micro-learns have been great up. Upskilling is across the board something that we're heavily focused on. We used to recruit for experience directly related to the role. Now we're recruiting for 60% of the experience. Because when you're new on a job, you're going to learn anyway, right? And so that's where the training and the development piece really come together. So that's been great. It's opened the candidate pool a lot. So we're not solely focused on finding that one individual that's, you know, kind of that subject matter expert that's gonna come with everything. You find somebody that's got a mindset and a willingness to wanna learn and then they apply what they learn on a day to day basis. Joel: It's all about learning. Chad: There's hope for me. Joel: I wouldn't go that far. Darnell, thanks for joining us, man. So if somebody wants to connect with you or maybe they wanna check out jobs at AAA, where would you send them? Darnell Hill: Yeah, you can go into your search engine and type in Mountain West Group careers. It's going to refer you back to the Cal state site where all of our job postings are placed. You can look at LinkedIn, indeed, all your search engines out there and you will find AAA Mountain West Group. Chad: Excellent. Joel: Thanks for hanging out. Enjoy the rest of the show. Darnell Hill: Appreciate you guys. Podcast Outro: Wow, look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey, or just watch Big Booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckleheads instead. Now go take a shower and wash off all the guilt. But save some soap because you'll be back like an awful train wreck. You can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.

Buckle up, folks, because this episode is a wild ride through politics, power plays,  and... well, Germans faking the flu? 🇺🇸 Trump’s greatest hits—European edition: The boys unpack why Europe’s political elite are treating Donald Trump's presidency like their favorite comedy special and wonder if U.S. foreign policy is written by toddlers hyped up on juice boxes. ⚔️ Authoritarianism: The sequel nobody asked for.  📈 Economic chaos and Welcome to the Jungle’s existential breakdown. 🤔 “Who’d Ya Rather?” Startup Smackdown: Maki vs. Talent Mapper 🤧 German Sick leave or silent protest?  🔥 Get ready for snark, laughs, and probably an accidental international incident—don’t miss this one! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:34.516) Three guys who are still waiting for their presidential pardon. Never convicted. You are listening to the Chad and Cheese Podcast Does Europe? I'm your cohost, Joel Sick leave, Detective Cheesman. Chad (00:46.19) This is Chad, Blue Monday, Sowash. Lieven (00:49.423) And I'm Lieven busy unifying, Van Nieuwenhuyze. Joel (00:53.81) And on this episode, just grab them in the euro, sick leave detectives and who'd you rather? It's an episode that'll bring you to your shananananese, nice. Chad (01:07.192) So bad. Joel (01:10.802) When I wrote that it was about eight o'clock at night and reading it at 9 a.m. in the morning doesn't quite have the same, same hit. But yeah, that's my, that's my axle Rose everybody. Lieven (01:19.929) Here it's... Here it's afternoon and I liked it. Chad (01:20.11) Especially if he had more bourbon. it was good. It was good. I like how you tied it back to Welcome to the Jungle. was very nice. we know. we know. we know. Joel (01:25.864) Alright. Yeah, I weave it. I'm like Trump. I weave everything in together to where it all makes sense at the end. I've already brought Trump up. For God's sakes. So he's officially in. People want to know what Europeans think about the Trump inauguration and what's coming. Leaving? Lieven (01:38.225) Trump. Chad (01:42.69) Mm-hmm. Chad (01:46.536) yeah. Lieven (01:51.121) I actually watched it and I must say I was surprised. I really thought during the election phase, I thought he was playing a role and he was trying to get the votes from those angry people and unhappy people and all those other people. And he was actually trying to get their votes, but he's going to play along. He's actually going to do it. It was creepy watching the whole thing really. And normally I don't like those cheap references to Nazi Germany because it trivialize. Chad (02:05.442) He was. Joel (02:06.771) Mm-hmm. Chad (02:08.49) yeah. Chad (02:14.402) Yeah, yeah. Chad (02:19.299) Yeah. Lieven (02:20.847) what happened back then. But if you look in this case, you can't get around the similarities. mean, it's like they're actually trying to make a 21st century adaptation of the whole thing with Musk pretending to be globals and showing his right arm and excitement, or maybe even Albert Speer, the one who did the government for Hitler. Anyways, so Musk was playing his role, and then they're actually Joel (02:21.243) huh. Chad (02:22.092) Mm-hmm. Chad (02:30.072) Mm-hmm. Chad (02:36.525) Yeah. Lieven (02:45.807) releasing all the Proud Boys, the Proud Boys who are like the Sturmabteilung in Germany, the brown shirts, which later became the black shirts and the SS. But there really are many similarities. talking about, we need Lebensraum, we want to expand our territory, and we need to take the Panama channel because we gave it to Panama, now the Chinese, they took it, so we need to take it back, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The whole list goes on. Chad (02:48.622) Mm. Joel (02:50.334) Mm-hmm. Chad (02:52.067) Yeah. Yeah. Joel (03:04.532) Mm-hmm. Lieven (03:15.129) and signing those hundreds of, what's it called? Presidential dictates, executive orders, whatever. And just playing the big dictator, I was just astonished looking at it. I mean, in Europe we have presidents, but they don't have any actual power. mean, you have the parliament and the president is in charge, but his power is limited. But what this guy is doing, suddenly it actually felt like a new dictatorship. Chad (03:19.18) And yeah, Eos, yeah Joel (03:19.302) executive orders executive orders Joel (03:36.148) Mm-hmm. Chad (03:38.029) Yeah. Lieven (03:43.299) Okay, but you're the Americans and I'm not going to tell you how to... Joel (03:47.732) So are you literally thinking we're going to have boots on the ground in Greenland taking over Greenland and we're going to have soldiers in Panama take, like what, is that what you think is happening? Lieven (03:57.571) No, the Greenland. No, I can't. I just can't imagine that he would take Greenland without Denmark giving us consent. And by the way, Denmark will never give it, give its consent. Denmark are the Vikings. Remember? They're small, but are pretty tough people. I used to have a girlfriend in Denmark. know it. know it. Believe me. But yeah. And Sophia, if you hear this, I'm sorry. But I really am. Chad (04:08.846) No they shouldn't. Chad (04:13.293) Yeah? Joel (04:14.258) Let's put a pin in that one. Let's put a pin in that. Okay. Girlfriend in Denmark. Chad (04:15.756) Hahaha Chad (04:21.358) Eh. Joel (04:22.013) You Lieven (04:25.659) But back to Panama, that I actually can imagine that he would send some force because what's Panama going to do? Chad (04:33.454) Yeah, I lived right on the Panama Canal in the military. So I mean, I was there as in Fort, Fort Clayton in Panama. And so I got up every morning. I was on the third floor. First thing I saw on my way to the latrine to take a shower was the Panama Canal. The mirror floor is locked, watching big boats come through. And I couldn't believe that we gave it back to them, to be quite frank. So when it happened, it was like, holy shit, man, I can't believe that we're releasing this, although we did. Joel (04:53.107) Yeah. Chad (05:01.58) Right. So we made that decision. It did happen. So being able to go into a sovereign territory, which is what Panama is, and try to reclaim something. And then talking to Denmark about taking Greenland. mean, it just see this is the this is one of the biggest problems that Trump has is he doesn't understand strategy at all. It's all they're all specifically little tactics. Right. And OK, great. China's saying, yeah, please take Greenland. Take take. mean, Joel (05:03.444) Yeah. Chad (05:31.352) try to take the Panama Canal, right? But take Greenland because we're going to go and get Taiwan, which has the biggest chip manufacturer in the world. And guess what? That'll be ours. So I mean, Lieven (05:31.505) course. Lieven (05:38.789) and Lieven (05:42.703) And where is your moral superiority if you take Panama? Of course! Chad (05:45.496) Gone, gone. Well, it's gone now anyway. But I mean, OK, so from a European standpoint, I personally think it's good for Europe long term. And stick with me. As we saw with Russia invading Ukraine, it brought the European Union closer together. Now with economic hardships, the EU countries can't and they won't run to the US rather to each other to hopefully create a stronger, more stable European Union. So remember. The US is literally just 50 different countries. call them states, but there are 50 different countries that have been somewhat united for hundreds of years. Now, the EU is a collection of countries who've been around for thousands of years, but they've never really been united. I mean, you know, Ottoman Empire. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. Lieven (06:30.011) We've mostly, to be honest, we've been enemies. So I mean, you have different languages and it's not the same thing. Chad (06:37.754) It's not the same thing, although it can be the same thing from the standpoint of actually unification and stabilization. That's one of the reasons why you guys are not stable is because you don't look toward each other. You try to isolate in some cases. So if you take a look at the US again, one currency, one language, that's not going to not going to change in the EU, but it's a stabilizing force. And then people will say, well, what about Italy in Greece? Those guys are tanking us. Well, have you heard of Mississippi, Louisiana and fucking Alabama? For God's sakes, we have our own versions of that. Right. So I think this could be if leadership gets, know, gets their head out of the sand, could be good for Europe. And again, I'm just I'm trying to be trying to be positive, trying to be positive. Joel (07:23.676) You certainly will be forced to protect yourselves in a way that you haven't had to do since World War II and whether that creates more of a pre-World War II Europe where you guys kind of lick each other with little suspicion and what's going on over there, or if you guys unite and pull resources and military intelligence, et cetera. I like to think that it's the latter and not the former. Chad (07:28.258) Yeah? Yeah? Lieven (07:29.507) effect. Chad (07:46.433) Yeah, let's hope. Joel (07:47.86) but yeah, the good news, I guess, is you guys in some ways are going to be thrown out into the pool. And if you swim and you all swim together, it could be a very, very good thing, but unquestionably, you're going to spend more on military. you're going to have a, you probably have a lot of cheap Chinese goods that are going to flow into the country. If there's a trade war, with us in China, that's probably tough on local businesses. I know you guys have a real soft spot in your heart for the local businesses, but it'll be a, it'll be a time of change in Europe. Lieven (07:54.801) And I... a lot more. Joel (08:16.934) as it historically always does, we'll either rise to the top or it'll, you know, fall into warfare and, realignment. Lieven (08:25.233) And it's a fact we've been taking advantage of the United States military protection for 50 years, even longer. Chad (08:31.574) It's what the US wanted though too though. I mean, this was very much something we engineered. Yeah. No, of course not. Joel (08:34.854) It is. In return of controlling the oceans. Lieven (08:39.761) cars. And they don't want a strong Europe or they didn't want a strong Europe, why would they? So they were being our big brother and taking care of us and we happily took advantage of it, being naive. But now suddenly, we've got a problem. Joel (08:50.004) Sure. And what that does to entitlements and retirement age and I mean, lot of things are gonna, it's gonna be a wild time in Europe, man. It's gonna be a wild time in Europe. Chad (09:01.486) Well, I tell you, the thing is that Europe was able to, instead of spending on defense, they could spend on healthcare and they could spend on education. So now we take a look at the US, who was much less healthy and dumber than we were many years ago. If you take a look at the actual global standards, US isn't even in the top 10. We've got the best healthcare institutions, the best educational institutions, and yet... Lieven (09:01.616) No. Chad (09:30.744) We're not the most healthy. We're not the smartest, right? So it's one of those things. What's that? Yes. Lieven (09:33.753) But the happy few probably yes. The happy few probably yes. They have access to those health institutions and they probably have access to the best education, even though I don't agree that it's the best. Chad (09:44.718) That's what it is. It's access. It's access. It's access. I 100 % correct. 100 % agree. But I mean, but that that has really hurt the US because we spent so much on defense. We didn't need to spend that much. I mean, give me a fucking break. But we spent so much on defense. Then it cost us health care, education and prosperity to our people. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why they're so pissed off. Lieven (10:07.537) Probably. Chad (10:11.436) People aren't making the wages there. We've got 40 over 40 million people below the poverty line. They're looking for somebody to blame. And one of the things that Trump is really good at is blaming motherfuckers. Right. Well, and me, I didn't touch her. Right. See your horse. I mean, it's just it's like he's always making excuses. And the people who have much weaker fortitude, they're going to go along with it. Lieven (10:22.587) Blaming. So it's all. Joel (10:28.286) Yeah. Lieven (10:29.809) that Joel (10:39.368) popular narrative in the States is why are we sending Ukraine so much money when you have the LA fires and getting so little relief for that. the narrative in the US is more isolationists, more bad Europeans, more bad Asians. And so that's just going to be the theme going forward. Lieven (10:58.415) And I can even understand that. mean, why sending billions to Ukraine? It's not your war. I can agree with that. And you have bigger problems, probably local problems, which should be bigger problems. Chad (11:11.051) What happened during World War II when Sudetenland happened? Leaven, you remember that? Lieven (11:16.579) Everyone said... Okay, okay, okay, but don't do it again. Stop there. We don't want war. We don't want the war. Chad (11:19.374) It's all good, all good, all good, all good. What did Americans end up having to do instead of just spending money? What did we have to do? We lost American lives. So when we forget history and we forget what happened before, the money that we're sending is actually saving American lives. And it's also trying to, again, pull together a much stronger, hopefully, European Union. The thing is, though, when Trump's talking about like, Joel (11:20.126) Peace in our time. Lieven (11:42.928) Yeah. Chad (11:49.184) economics and stuff like that. It's going to be interesting. It's really going to be interesting because war, economy, I mean, there's so many prongs and he has a hard enough time, you know, focusing on one thing. It's going to be the plates aren't going to be spinning. Let's just say that they're all going to be smashed on the floor. Lieven (12:09.425) And the only promise he didn't keep seemed to be ending the war in Ukraine and they won. Now he's talking about six months and I need to talk to Putin. But he also, he gave me the impression he doesn't like Putin that much anymore. He thinks he's a loser anyway. So I think he changed his mind about the whole Putin thing. He used to admire him. He's a decisive making man and he's a powerful leader. And now he thinks... Chad (12:31.842) He'll get back to that. Yeah, he'll get back to that. Joel (12:32.564) Yeah. I think Macron had a really good, uh, I don't know if was an interview or a lecture that he did, but he said, quote, uh, the United States of America has two priorities. The USA first, and that is legitimate and the China issue second. And the European issue is not a geopolitical priority for the coming years or decades. So we're going to be focusing on Asia and the challenges there. You guys are going to have to like. Lieven (12:46.225) Mm. Joel (13:01.18) Spend money on defense and fill in the gaps. Yes. Lieven (13:03.345) we will belgium already belgium already bought 30 f35s or something Chad (13:10.701) Hahaha Lieven (13:13.051) So everything will be fine. Yeah. Joel (13:13.428) I love this. I love the spirit. And there were no, there were no tariffs in Europe that were brought up yesterday. It was only Canada and Mexico. So maybe you guys will be spared some of the, tariff pain. Lieven (13:23.107) Indeed, Chad (13:23.214) Those are probing issues. We'll see how those work and see how they actually impact the economy. The one thing that I thought was interesting is reading through some of the articles that we share in our group. Trump had said that he doesn't want to see any Mercedes-Benz on the street in New York. He's literally like trying to put the press on Germany. So Mercedes-Benz USA employs 1,400 people and that Mercedes-Benz plant in Tuscalooga, Lieven (13:28.186) Yeah. Joel (13:44.414) Mm-hmm. Joel (13:53.63) Tuscaloosa! Chad (13:53.946) Tuscaloosa fuck Alabama. I try to forget that place produces the GLE. It produces a bunch of different automobiles exclusively for the world market in 150 different markets. Right. So that money is being made. Fourteen hundred jobs. Then you take a look at another German company where my cousin actually works at BMW in South Carolina. And as of 2019 the BMW Spartanburg manufacturing plant South Carolina had the highest Lieven (13:58.235) You Chad (14:22.542) production volume of all BMW plants in the world, producing about 1500 vehicles per day and has reportedly 11,000 employees in different locations across the US. Plus the CEO of Ford is driving a Xiaomi. Why would a big three CEO be driving around a Chinese made EV? We're seeing. a lot of different things in industries happening that is just, it's alarming to be quite frank. Joel (14:53.876) Competitive research, obviously, is why he's driving a Chinesey. Chad (14:56.418) Yeah, good luck with that. Good luck with that. Joel (15:00.414) Well, speaking of Tuscaloosa Chad, I hope all those Bama fans enjoyed Ohio State racking up another national title. Chad (15:07.852) topics. it's good to have another night. Joel (15:10.58) All right, too much Trump talk. No, shout outs today. Let's get to a holy shit. got, we got more layoffs. talked about a hay job last time, but blaming blaming challenges due to slowed growth in 2024 employment site. Welcome to the jungle is refocusing on core activities that achieve profitability. That's Latin for Chad (15:18.413) Mm-hmm. Joel (15:34.354) You're fired. think they're launching a voluntary separation plan in France involving 35 roles across several departments and ceasing operations in the Czech Republic. The company says such measures will allow the company to concentrate on high potential markets. you guessed it, the UK and the USA while innovating in recruitment, particularly with AI Chad, you can have anything you want, but you're better not take it from me. What are your thoughts on welcome to the jungle? Chad (16:02.914) So here's a quote over the past decade. We've explored numerous initiatives while these ventures have been enriching. Some have taken us away from our core mission, matching the right talents with the right companies. That's one of the biggest problems that I see startups having on a daily basis. They just don't have focus. And when they have new initiatives that pop up and let's just say a company comes in and says, will you build this for me? will pay you, right? Well, you can do that, but you're going to be using resources that could be more, you know, across the market with different brands instead of just one brand and you're putting all your eggs in one basket. We saw this with the programmatic side of the house with Amazon and Amazon went to one company and they bought that hell out of pay per click and then they pulled it all away and gave it to somebody else. And that first programmatic company went into dire straits. Same kind of shit happens, right? You can't put all your eggs in one basket. Number one. Number two, you have to stay focused. Then I go to YouTube just to kind of, you know, get more of a flavor of what these guys are up to. And they're talking about the UK and they're talking about the US and yada yada yada all their shit on YouTube's in fucking French. I mean, I not that I hate French, but for God sakes, at least you can have a French channel. UK channel, a US channel, but if you're trying to get into those markets, you better speak the fucking language. And for some reason, they're just not doing it. Joel (17:36.178) Yeah, yeah, no doubt. Joel (17:41.022) So this is definitely not a paradise city for some employees this past week. Sorry. I just couldn't, could not, could not, could not. What a, what a dumb name for a company. Like let's, let's just launch, some sugar on me.com and make it a job board. what you would, you got, you degenerates would like that obviously. or some shirt. Lieven (17:46.976) Nice one Joel, nice one. Chad (17:47.95) Not for my Michelle. Not for my Michelle. Chad (17:58.158) I do like that. I do like that. Lieven (18:01.179) Don't you cry tonight, Joel, Joel (18:08.198) So, so these guys raised 54 million. Lieven (18:09.913) Are you talking about untr-menschen now? Degenerates? It's spreading the whole fascist thing in the US. Anyway, sorry, continue. Chad (18:16.91) Ha ha ha! Joel (18:18.182) Again with the fascism, Levin. Again with the fascism. Lieven (18:20.047) Nah. Chad (18:21.038) It's just out there in plain sight. He can't do anything but talk about it. Joel (18:25.042) I know I'm very scared for Europe's opinion on the, the Trump administration. they raised a bunch of money. launched about 10 years ago. They raised most of the money in 2019, 54 million. made some acquisitions like they bought. I'm sure Paul Forster, former indeed a founder enjoyed that acquisition, but it was probably not the best acquisition you could make. they have probably hit a ceiling in France. They focused really. Chad (18:43.01) Yeah. Joel (18:54.738) really laser focused on France and it's a tough market. So if you've hit a ceiling in France, what the hell do you do? Well, you shut down Czech Republic, which probably was not a big market to begin with. I don't know if that was an acquisition or, or Joey bag of donuts had an office in the Czech Republic. So let's open up an office there. but that was dumb. Chad (19:08.354) Yeah. Joel (19:15.764) Your assets that you have in the UK and the US in comparison to France is kind of stupid. They have 697 associates in France and they have 133 in the UK and only 132 in the US. So this seems like a smart move to me. Let's shut down the things that aren't working or where we've hit kind of a ceiling or where we've saturated the market. And this is going to be a big story in 2025. It's companies in Europe. that are coming to the U S because that's where the dollars are. That's where the growth is. You're going to see a lot of these companies, try to salvage their business by coming to America. And this was simply, let's lay off a few people in France. Let's focus more on the UK and the U S, good luck with that. The history of job boards that have tried that is not very great, but, Hey, with the name like welcome to the jungle, what could possibly go wrong? I'd love to be on one of those sales calls by the. Chad (20:07.832) Shun-un-un-un-un-un-un-un-un-un-ease. Joel (20:11.09) Welcome to the what? You're with who? Lieven (20:13.617) Hello, it is I from Welcome to the Jungle. Joel (20:15.613) Leave in your thoughts. Chad (20:21.55) What do you think, Levin? So French companies buying Czech companies buying Ottawa's UK, was it not? Yeah. Joel (20:29.36) Ottawa's UK, which might've been their strategy to come to the UK. but auto was a brand like that was a startup. it's all millennial warm and fuzzy. It's like, kind of, what kind of focus do you have? Is it environmental? Is it career growth? Is it life work life balance? So it's very warm and fuzzy Gen Z, millennial job board. I don't know. It's Chad (20:33.614) Yeah. That was not a great brand. Chad (20:51.256) Are they on your &A board, Cleveland? Joel (20:53.885) Yeah. Lieven (20:54.831) No, no, no. Lieven (20:59.057) No, but to be fair I... Joel (21:01.224) You don't want the jungle to come to the house, house of HR. Lieven (21:04.049) We've got plenty of jungle, believe me. Sometimes I feel the monkey in the jungle. But anyways, I don't really know them that well. They've been around for 10 years, think. I founded in 2015 somewhere. But from time to time I hear about them, but I don't really know them. I never worked with them and I don't think any of our companies has them as a partnership. during the past 10 years, they're... Chad (21:16.974) Mm-hmm. Lieven (21:33.603) Situation has changed drastically. I mean, there has been a lot of consolidation going around the lot more competition the Way people are hiring is changing very fast has become a very technical very professional and I think the biggest companies Are the very creative companies are going to win and and I might be wrong because I really don't know them, but well but I don't think they're one of both and I feel after 10 years they need to change drastically or just close down in a and check here and in France and et cetera, and maybe do something else. Chad (22:06.264) Sounds like it's gonna be a shuddering of more than that soon if they don't get their shit together. Lieven (22:11.307) No, I'm afraid so. Joel (22:12.296) Yeah. mean, they, they tout, about 4.7 million people that use the site each month. I think that's a little bit of an exaggeration. That's a little bit of, you know, eat, eat your own dog food. But, we know that the job board business is a hard business. I mean, we talk about the public companies on a regular basis, the same companies that aren't public have to be feeling the same pressure where it's talent.com. Lieven (22:19.921) Hmm. Lieven (22:27.377) It's hard to check. Joel (22:39.602) Welcome to the jungle job and talent. Like they're all, think being challenged in this environment. We'll see how they come out. Chad (22:45.048) It almost feels like these these guys are trying to be a muse. And I mean, you know, the muse in the US where it's more media, it's more media, but it is job board and helping companies, you know, pretty much create their own portfolio of of of content that goes along with the job, yada, yada, yada. Yeah. And I don't know. I just I think as a creative agency, those are great. But unfortunately, you already have a bunch of creative agencies that are already there that have huge portfolios. Joel (22:50.056) Yeah, Warm and fuzzy. Chad (23:14.752) So, and there are all these other job boards that are out there in the first place that the agencies don't need to buy. I mean, they don't need to own, right? They just buy. So it seems incredibly redundant, unfortunately, especially in the US. They're coming to the US, a much different market than the UK or Europe overall. I think that's a huge mistake. Joel (23:21.811) Yeah. Joel (23:32.105) Yeah. I was trying to remember Chad, if I had ever seen welcome to the jungle at a conference and I don't think I have, have you? All right. All right. Chad (23:39.342) I don't think so, no. Lieven (23:41.604) No, me neither. Joel (23:46.384) Alright, no more jungle for us. Let's take a quick break and we'll play a little Hoodie-a-rather. Chad (23:46.509) Not this time. Chad (23:56.714) Okay, did you see the picture that I sent to you from the street food place here in Portugal? Yeah, it's called I poppy. Joel (24:02.958) the I poppy. Yes, I did. I'm sorry. It was, it was too early in the morning for me to comment. What it was it a product. got food food truck called I poppy and it was a Y poppy. All right. I love it. Just, just, just for that. I'm to play it again. All right, boys, you know, the game let's play a little who'd you rather. This is where I talk about two startups that have raised money recently and you guys. Chad (24:11.232) I know it was just a food, food truck, food truck. Yep. Street food. Yep. Hi, Poppy. Lieven (24:22.673) You Joel (24:32.104) compare and contrast and tell us who you'd rather. That's right. Who'd you write? Let's get to our first contest and it's Mackie, a Paris based conversational AI solution. They've secured 26 million euros, a lot of money in series a funding led by blossom capital. Mackie's AI agents promise to automate 80 % of the HR process, reducing time to hire by three X and cutting turnover by 20%. The funding will help drive global. expansion and you guessed it, US market growth. is Mackie. Next up and in this corner, have Talent Mapper, a London based HR tech company. They've secured 2 million pounds in funding. The company's platform is trained on 675 million career histories to analyze employee skills, aiding and reducing recruitment and training costs and promoting equal career opportunities. The investment will be used to enhance the platform. Chad (25:04.096) Mmm. Joel (25:30.022) expand the team and target new sectors like financial and professional services. is Talent Mapper. So Chad, you're up. Who'd you rather Mackie or Talent Mapper? Chad (25:39.476) I'm going to start with talent mapper. So internal mobility, strategic workforce planning, mentoring, succession planning and career mapping. They're all, all immensely important in building teams and stabilizing a company's talent lifecycle period. Period. The problem is that I don't believe most companies think that any of these are top tier problems for them. because they are sucked into the minutiae of the day to day instead of being in a leader's mindset, right? Not to mention a lot of consulting companies do this anyway. So they're just gonna go ahead and push it off, project-based stuff. Why do I need a platform for that? Mackey, on the other hand, are focused on a buzzword that's stronger than AI right now. Wanna take a crack at it? You wanna take a crack at it? Agentic, agentic, right? Lieven (26:23.375) Yep. Yay! Joel (26:27.346) I can't say. Chad (26:28.726) Why? Because the AI will be bundled into a specific area of expertise, into agents per se, who perform specific duties alongside their human counterparts. So imagine a recruiter interacting with the candidate and then switching their disposition in the CRM or the ATS. An agent can then take over and start online, you know, the on-site interview scheduling or even the onboarding process, right? That stuff, that gets companies hot and heavy and a little wet, right? They want that. I want that. Who'd I'd rather? I'd rather me some Mackie. Mackie all day, baby. Joel (27:11.508) All right. That's one for Mackie. Uh, I'm a little confused about what Mackie does. I'm glad you sort of encapsulated everything and framed it for me. Uh, they say on their website that they're a quote conversational AI agent for enterprises. And then they go on to really just talk about how they're an assessment tool for employers. So I'm not quite sure what they are. I thought maybe they're poor man's paradox. And then I think, maybe they're like a test gorilla kind of thing. Um, I think the confusion is a bad thing for marketing. And frankly, their marketing and the lack of focus for me in that space says a lot. Their copyright date on their footer is 2022. Like I know that's a small thing, but if your tech team can't update the date for three years on the footer of your website, to me, that is a symptom of a bigger problem that your tech team sucks and or they don't care. and or both. They have super few followers on all social medias. They haven't posted on X since 2022. somebody, the lights are on, but nobody's home in Mackey from what I can tell. So let's go to, let's go to Talent Mapper. I will admit they're both on a really good wave. Agente, Commerce, like they're all the buzzwords at Mackey are there. I also think internal mobility is a nice little wave to be on. Companies are really concerned about Uh, workers being engaged, new research, uh, a new study from Gallup came out saying that only 31 % of workers are engaged. 17 % of workers are actively disengaged. I'm not sure what that means. Are they just stealing the post-it notes on purpose? Uh, I don't know. Um, but, companies like recruiting is expensive. Companies hate it. They, they want to get more out of the people that they have. They want to keep the people they have. want higher retention. So I think talent mapper. Lieven (28:52.432) You Chad (28:53.87) They're taking naps. Joel (29:06.43) does tap into that. think it's a pretty good name, talentmapper.com. It kind of says what it does. It's a bigger market. You have more people concerned about their current workforce than they are maybe recruiting. I think there's going to be greater demand to keep the employees that they already have. And lastly, a small thing, but there's just more attentiveness to the details at TalentMapper. And to me, that says a lot. So for me, I'm going to go TalentMapper. As my hoot you rather, which means leaving is going to break a tie. What you got leaving. Lieven (29:36.901) Hmm. Chad (29:37.383) I gotta make a note real quick to change the date in our footer. Go ahead. Joel (29:42.194) We don't have 32 million euros in the bank. If we did, I promise the date would be... Chad (29:46.188) I just said I gotta make a note. Lieven (29:49.841) But maybe if we, if the three of us would put all the money together now. Anyways. Joel (29:56.18) 2022 is the foot, come on man. Sorry. Lieven (30:00.369) But you said they weren't posting on X since 2022. That's a good thing, not posting on X. Joel (30:06.61) All their social suck. just, I just pointed out X. LinkedIn's all right, but they should just focus on LinkedIn. Like most startups, like just pick one and make it, make it good. Chad (30:10.764) His favorite. Lieven (30:10.821) No. No. I'm- I'm going to, by the way, leave X today since the whole show yesterday X for me is it will be I'm an X user but Joel (30:25.982) Well, XX user, he's double X, not quite triple X, not triple X. Chad (30:26.286) And xx. Lieven (30:29.541) Double X, double X. Na na, naughty, But I'm with chat on this one. I think Talent Mapper might be the best company. You're totally right, y'all. But in the end, it's all about the right momentum. And agentics today are where you need to be. And if Mackie is able to do what they're claiming, then I'd rather be in Mackie's camp. And by the way, I'm working on the Chad (30:29.55) Join the club, Levin. It's warm out here. It's warm out here. Joel (30:34.012) Peace. Lieven (30:58.065) Recruitment Congress for 2026. We talked about it. I think Agendix will be the main thing. It will be the main team. I'm digging into it right now. Chad (31:00.642) Ooh, say more. Yeah. Joel (31:04.308) Chad (31:08.462) That's right. Yes! Joel (31:10.332) That's two votes for Mackie one for talent mapper. All right. Let's get to, let's get, let's get everyone as a winner. Everyone is a winner for sure. All right. Let's get to a sick leave detectives. it's not quite the Gestapo since we have a Nazi theme today. but Germany's rising sick leave is straining its economy. The increase in absenteeism, major problem apparently, has boosted business for private investigators. Chad (31:13.294) Everyone's a winner on chat and cheese. Lieven (31:16.482) Yeah. Chad (31:27.928) Not yet. Joel (31:39.838) who check on suspected fraudulent sick leaves. Chad, as someone who only gets sick when Levin invites us to the Moulin Rouge in Paris, what are your thoughts? Should we side story that one? Chad (31:47.981) I know. Lieven (31:48.024) Yes, chat. Chad (31:53.642) yeah, we should definitely side story. Okay, everybody. So we were unleashed Paris. And yeah, couple of nights I probably went too hard. And people were getting sick at the end of that. I think my buddy Chris long actually had gotten sick too. And we spend way too much time together. That's a problem. But yeah, no, I got sick and I didn't get a chance to go to the Moulin Rouge, which I love. I love I think I heard land with leaving was crying in the corner because because I did I just Lieven (31:55.921) You Joel (32:21.662) haha Chad (32:23.212) But yes, I'll be there next time no matter what leaving, but I didn't want to get you sick. I didn't want to get you sick. Lieven (32:24.785) But your charming, your charming wife did come. Yeah, so we didn't miss you that much. Chad (32:31.288) She's amazing. mean, she, she represents that. It's hard not to, hard not to miss me when she's around for God's sake. Lieven (32:41.137) You Joel (32:41.288) If Chad is, if Chad is passing on tits and ass, he's really sick. Like he's not, he's not faking it, but, this is apparently a pretty big issue in Germany. Chad, any of your thoughts on absenteeism gone awry? Chad (32:45.87) You Lieven (32:45.999) Yeah. Chad (32:54.098) Yeah, so this is a very interesting topic because nobody sees the Germans as a lazy society. I mean, it's quite the contrary. And you can always find fringe cases of a person who once stayed home to finish home renovations that will live on an office lore forever. Right. And but but I mean, these are these are fringe cases to for the most part. But the article makes pretty much the great sick seem like a concerted effort. But Klaus. Reinhardt, you can't get more German than that, Klaus Reinhardt, president of the German Medical Association, sees increased infections as the main reason for the record number of sick people. Quote, playing sick does not happen on a large scale, end quote. So what Klaus is actually saying here, paraphrasing kids, is that these people are not colluding in the great sick movement, right? So plus, Joel (33:47.636) Ugh. Chad (33:49.802) In the German culture, they understand the math of being sick, which we don't get in the U.S. If you're sick and you come into the office, you probably infect two to three more people, maybe even more. Right. Well, that makes instead of one person out sick, you got four or five, who knows how many that are out. Right. So Germans are encouraged to stay home as it's best for the business. I was reading one article where one company gave their employees six Joel (34:08.787) Mm-hmm. Chad (34:19.764) weeks of sick sick leave six weeks. So this is something that's common and they want them to get the job done. They want them to get their sickness out and they want them to get back to work. So I think this is kind of like a confluence of just shit and things happening in Germany. Maybe we'll call it the German flu. I don't know. Yeah. Joel (34:40.756) Slow news day, maybe. Slow news day. And you wonder why Germany's in a recession. For God's sakes, we've got absenteeism run amok in Germany. So German workers average, they average 15.1 days of sick leave last year. That's up from 11.1 in 2021. That's a study from DeSantis. Lieven (34:42.661) Hmm. Joel (35:06.386) You apparently can get a note from your doctor over the phone, which apparently is automated in some places. So we can't be shocked that people are taking sick days when all you have to do is say like, does is mine. I, Algon is whatever I'm trying. I'm trying to do German, but can I said something about my eyes? so, it's no shock that people are abusing the system. I don't know if it's a government system. I don't know if it's just the healthcare. mean, maybe leaving who's a neighbor. Lieven (35:15.601) Thank you. Lieven (35:23.801) Hehehehe Yes? Joel (35:36.328) can shed some light on this, it's obviously going to be a thing if you make it so easy and give people so many sick days through the year like Chad mentioned. Leven, what's your take on, yes, and German should be the last ones. If Germany's falling apart, there's no hope for Europe. Lieven (35:53.233) But thank God Spain and Luxembourg, Spain and what is it, Italy are taking over now. They're leading us. Portugal indeed. No, but I agree with Joel and I checked the surrounding countries, number of sex days in the surrounding countries and Germany actually is high. If you look at the Netherlands, there's about 12 sex days on average. And Luxembourg, did you even know Luxembourg is a country? Do you know Luxembourg? Okay. Joel (35:57.884) In Greece, yeah. Chad (35:58.158) Portugal, no, Portugal. Joel (36:21.278) Yes. Lieven (36:22.309) Luxembourg is one of the smallest countries. Very rich, mostly bankers. Anyway, so they have about 11, six days. So 15 is, if you look at it, 15 is a lot. But then again, indeed, it's like socially unacceptable these days to sneeze during a meeting. So when you're feeling ill, you are obliged to stay at home. It's a corporate policy. So the moment you got a cold 10 years ago, Chad (36:23.33) very rich. Yeah. Lieven (36:50.989) Nobody would stay at home for having a cold. You would just take your handkerchief and feel miserable during the meeting. But now people stay at home. And of course, it's kind of easy to stay at home. It's fun. And people got used to it, staying, feeling a bit ill and staying at home. But there is, it's not only that, there is also, and that's factor is long COVID and a significant part of the population actually still isn't as they used to be. They aren't feeling as they used to be. Apparently it's a lot and I don't have numbers about that. But there are plenty of reasons why the sex days are getting up. But in Germany, they're getting up fast. And the weird thing is, if there's one country in Europe where people really are into privacy, then it's Germany. People will get really angry if you take your phone and make a movie on the streets and someone is, you're filming accidentally someone, they got angry. Joel (37:38.238) Mm-hmm. Lieven (37:48.187) They don't like it. So privacy is a very big thing. So sending a private detective must be kind of the biggest insult you can get. So I think for a company doing that, it's like saying, okay, we want to fire you, but we give you the opportunity to, to leave yourself. I don't think people would appreciate it. Definitely not in Germany. So to all those companies, I don't think our companies would do this, but I'll check. Joel (37:49.47) Hmm. Chad (37:55.716) yeah. Joel (38:13.15) Germany is Germany is out of control and what better way to end the show than a joke With a German bit of flavor. Alright guys, what do you call an angry German? What do you call an angry German? Chad (38:17.58) no. no. Chad (38:27.148) German? Joel (38:30.164) A sauerkraut. A sauerkraut. Boys as always, it's been fun. We out. Lieven (38:31.665) great. Chad (38:38.67) We out. Lieven (38:39.096) Way out.

This Week on the Chad & Cheese Podcast: Keith Sonderling Tells All Buckle up, folks—this one’s a wild ride. Former EEOC Commissioner Keith Sonderling joins Chad & Cheese for an unfiltered (and occasionally eyebrow-raising) look at the workplace circus we call 2025. What’s Inside: Discrimination Through the Years: From ageism after the 2008 crash to the pandemic’s “suddenly religious” workforce. $30 for an online blessing? You bet Keith’s seen it all. Remote Work Meltdowns: Anxiety about commuting? PTSD from small talk by the watercooler? Keith explains how HR is navigating a workforce that would rather Zoom in their pajamas. AI in HR: Want a hiring tool that promises to be bias-free but might still discriminate like your boomer uncle? Keith has thoughts—lots of them. Generational Showdowns: Gen Z says they’re “leading with their mental health,” while Boomers roll their eyes and tell them to “rub some dirt on it.” Who’s right? (Hint: Everyone’s annoyed.) PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION [music] Joel Cheesman: I'm Joel Cheesman. He's Chad Sowash. And I want you to help me welcome to the stage, the man. Chad Sowash: Former. Joel Cheesman: The myth. We call him the Commish, the Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla, Keith Sonderling. Keith Sonderling: Oh, man. Joel Cheesman: Too early. Too early. Keith Sonderling: These are the guys you want waking you up. Chad Sowash: And also sixth in our fantasy football league. Keith Sonderling: That's right. Chad Sowash: Just so you know. Keith Sonderling: Now that I'm not in the federal government anymore, so I can engage in your gambling. Joel Cheesman: He gets to play. He gets to play. Good morning, everyone. Audience Members: Good morning. Joel Cheesman: Is that too much? Chad Sowash: Wide Awake. I love it. That's good. Coffee. Everybody have. The drinks. Come on in, everybody. Joel Cheesman: Plenty of seats. Chad Sowash: We've saved the best for last. Joel Cheesman: Let's meet Keith, shall we? Chad Sowash: Yeah. Joel Cheesman: Who is Keith Sonderling? Keith Sonderling: I don't know anymore. Joel Cheesman: You don't know anymore. Say more about that. Keith Sonderling: Hi, everyone. I'm Keith Sonderling. I just finished up being the commissioner at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where I was there for four years. Before that, I was at the Department of Labor. I was the Deputy and also the acting Wage and Hour Administrator. I was there for three years. And before joining the government in 2017, I was a labor and employment defense attorney in Florida. So I've lived this world. I know your world, both from being on your side, being on the other side. So I have a unique perspective across two agencies that I know outside of your federal contracting practice, also, you have to deal with all the time. Joel Cheesman: So no pressure. But, Jeremy, you weren't here on day one. I know. Because you're a busy guy. But he said the reason we have the former EEOC guy is because he's not tied to the script. He's going to name names. He's going to be open and honest. So no pressure, but the groundwork has been laid. Keith Sonderling: Chatham House Rules. Not recording at all. Chad Sowash: Yes, because we're a podcast. We don't record stuff. Joel Cheesman: He just got really nervous. Chad Sowash: So how does it feel to be out? Keith Sonderling: It's nice. I'm not really out because I'm still coming to HR conferences and I just can't get enough to talk about HR compliance at 8:00 AM in the morning on a Thursday. Chad Sowash: You lucky bastard. So why don't we go ahead and start talking about trends? Start talking about trends, what you've seen. I mean, they're at the EEOC. Keith Sonderling: Yeah. So, the EEOC is unique in the sense where it applies to all industries, whether or not you're a federal contractor and both the private sector, state and local and federal government. So, really from DC at the EEOC, we're in a position to see what all the trends are in HR across industry, across the country because whether you know it or not, employees cannot go directly to court. Whether you're state, federal or a private sector employer, have to come to the EEOC. Keith Sonderling: So we literally see every single case of discrimination. And it puts us in a position to come out here and actually talk to you what those are, to get ahead of it and see what the trends are, where things are going and where things have been, which is what I really want to talk about this morning. So if you look at the state of employment discrimination going back to, I like to start around 2008 to 2010, after the recession. We saw a huge spike in discrimination claims. So between 2010 and 2012, it was record high discrimination charges every single year, around 100,000 plus charges at the federal level. Keith Sonderling: And you look back and say, why did this happen? Because at the time, it's a little different than now where people lost their jobs, after the economy tanked and there wasn't really anywhere else to go. You couldn't find a remote job paying more at that point. So a lot of people were coming to the EEOC. So we saw a lot of recessionary era discrimination claims that made those so high. And then looking specifically at that, where we came out of that, it was a lot of age discrimination because a lot of the reduction in workforces impacted older workers because they were being paid more. And it's an easy metric. Chad Sowash: Was that the biggest chunk that you saw? Keith Sonderling: Yeah, it was a very large chunk. Well, it was just across the board. But age certainly was impacted significantly. So then, like for all of you as HR compliance professionals, even at the EEOC, there's a lot of distractions. So say, okay, now we need to focus on age discrimination, because that is what happened coming out of the recession. And the next thing you know, the Me Too movement happens, so around like 2015, 2016. So then it's all about sexual harassment in the workplace, preventing it, enforcing those cases, and then we saw record sexual harassment cases at the time. And then, you start focusing on that. Keith Sonderling: And then the US Women's soccer team makes global news about not being paid equally. And then it's all about pay equity. And then COVID happens and it's all about accommodations and vaccinations. And then George Floyd, then it's all about racial discrimination. So there's always something too, like all your professions where you have to shift your resources there across the board. So anyway, historically, from where we were in the early 2010s of that 100,000, right before the pandemic, discrimination was really, really going down. So around 2019ish, early 2020, the charge of discrimination went all the way down from that 100,000 peak to around 63,000. And I looked at it as a really good thing. And, you know, less discrimination is good. That means all of you in HR are being... Chad Sowash: Being told. Keith Sonderling: Empowered to be able to actually do your jobs. And employees are feeling that they're able to come and file a charge of discrimination or talk to HR to remedy it. And other people, and we'll talk about the political nature of this area, and other people are saying, well, there must be some other reasons for it. Maybe they're just going to get another job, maybe they don't feel comfortable and that systemic discrimination is going to occur. Whatever the reason was, it started really significantly to go down. Keith Sonderling: But since then, and the pandemic played a large role in this to where we are today, it's creeping up every single year. So it went from 63,000 to 70. Excuse me, to 67,000, and then another big jump in the 70,000s to where this past fiscal year, it was at 81,000. So we're going in the wrong direction. Charges of discrimination are starting to go up again, and we're starting to see a lot of discrimination complaints. Almost now 20,000 more than we were a few years ago. Joel Cheesman: What's the flavor of those? Have they... The flavors... Keith Sonderling: This is where it's so difficult and it's so dependent upon what's going on. So if you look, everyone wanted to know, how did COVID impact discrimination claims? Joel Cheesman: Yeah. Keith Sonderling: In the middle of it, right? So I get there and then everyone's like, it's the middle of COVID. Tell us what charges are coming in related to COVID. And it's really difficult in this area too, because as you all know, employees generally have 300 days to file a charge of discrimination alleging employment discrimination. And then, unfortunately, you probably, you wouldn't be in HR if you haven't seen a charge of discrimination against your company or seen that form. On there, it only has sex, age, religion, national origin. Keith Sonderling: So everyone during COVID is saying what's happening? And there wasn't a box for COVID discrimination, right? So we actually had to see when those cases came in and then actually do some investigations to see what the issues are. But you talk about something globally, how it impacts employment discrimination, the big takeaway from COVID was religious discrimination. And we had an additional 10,000 charges of religious discrimination related to the vaccine mandates. Keith Sonderling: And then that all required everyone in HR to suddenly not only be in the business of having to put these policies out to mandate vaccines in areas outside of healthcare for the first time, but for the first time again outside of health care. HR departments had to question their employees' faith because every employee who didn't want to get the vaccine suddenly became very religious, went on the Internet for $30 and got a... Joel Cheesman: Don't we all. Keith Sonderling: And got the letter from the church of Internet saying, I'm religious, even though you have their social media accounts and you're friends with them and they do very unholy. Chad Sowash: We started this. We started the church of... Joel Cheesman: Unholy things. Chad Sowash: We started the church of Chad and Cheese. Keith Sonderling: Right, exactly. For 30 bucks, get that. But in all seriousness, it just shows where you don't know which area is going to be the next hotspot. And because of that, the year before the COVID vaccines, religious charges were only 3.4% of all charges. The next year, it went to 19% of all charges nationwide. So you get to see something like that just can explode, and it completely shifts the dynamics of what that the most amount of claims are that year, which also drives where you need to spend money internally within your organizations on compliance. So it's so keeping up with these trends that's so important and also getting ahead of some of those issues. Joel Cheesman: So if we're looking at trends going forward and one of the things we talk a lot on the show about is the return to office phenomenon. And I know, I want to say the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act was recent. Was that a part of the return to office? And are we going to see more sort of return to office cases come into play as companies make workers go back? Keith Sonderling: Yeah. So this is the hottest issue still across the board in HR, no matter what industry you're in, is the return to office policies. And just to set the groundwork because there's so much confusion about where employees are allowed to work and how we got here, and just taking a step back, everyone needs to know, outside of an executive contract or a collective bargaining agreement, employees have no right to work from home. And we've lost sense of this, that all of you still control, it's a legal term, the essential functions of the job. So if you want your employees in the office seven days a week from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM you can demand that. Will they all immediately quit? Absolutely. But just don't lose sight of the fact that if you believe it's necessary for your business, people to come to the office, you are still allowed to do that in HR. And I think we've lost some of that with the whole employee experience and the shifting dynamics. Chad Sowash: And wanting to keep really good talent. Yeah, no. We've lost. Keith Sonderling: I mean, all that. Chad Sowash: We've lost a lot of that. Yeah. Keith Sonderling: But that's just the... Let me just be a lawyer for a minute. Just say you can do whatever you want. Chad Sowash: So what he's saying... Keith Sonderling: And you'll deal with. Chad Sowash: [0:10:09.6] ____ to be less of a human, he has to be a lawyer. Keith Sonderling: Right. You could deal with the consequences later. But in all seriousness, now as we see a lot of companies, especially in New York City and big cities, finance, tech in California, are demanding these return to office policies. It's really causing a lot of issues within the workplace, both for HR professionals who have to administer them, but for these employees, a lot of them who you recruited to be remotely. So people are very curious about where the law comes into this. And really, for the most part, employees just don't have that federally protected right to work from home. However, and this is where it's so important about the trends and where things are going. Employees are starting to get that right. And let me step back for a moment to understand again, to this conversation about the amount of charges that come in and how things shift over time. So I'm going to detour here to what I see the biggest trend in HR right now is disability discrimination, and... Chad Sowash: Which could go hand in hand with remote work. Joel Cheesman: Yep, yep. Keith Sonderling: You're getting. That's exactly where I'm going. Chad Sowash: Okay. Joel Cheesman: Let's explore the space. Keith Sonderling: That's why you're a good interviewer. Joel Cheesman: Let him go. Keith Sonderling: Reading my mind. If you look at disability discrimination, generally, it's the number one cause of discrimination every single year at the EEOC. Does anyone know what the actual number one underlying cause of discrimination is at the EEOC every year? Audience Members: Retaliation. Keith Sonderling: Retaliation. Very good. This is a sophisticated crowd, though. It's not fair. So retaliation is the number one cause every single year across all labor agencies, not just at EEOC, at Waging Hour, at DOL, at National Labor Relations Board, which is why a lot of employee groups thinks that the charge numbers are lower than they should be, because retaliation is the number one charge. But disability discrimination generally is the number one underlying cause of discrimination every single year. And the dynamics of disability discrimination are changing so drastically, where we think about disability discrimination historically, what do we think about, employees with illnesses, employees with physical disabilities, employees recovering from all sorts of diseases. Keith Sonderling: And HR departments have gotten really good about the accommodations in that process, whether it's through [0:12:21.2] ____ JAN or a lot of these other services, that if somebody is missing a limb, you know exactly how to deal with that and what adaptive equipment you need to buy. But we've seen such a shift from physical disabilities to mental health in the charges that we've seen, to the point where if you look at all of our disability claims, right now, 36% of all... Americans with Disability act claims that come to the EEOC are related to mental health. And think about all the illnesses, all the diseases out there, everything that would qualify somebody for a disability accommodation, 36% of that is related to mental health. And the big drivers of that, the big three, which is almost 30% of that, is anxiety, depression, and PTSD. Keith Sonderling: Technically, our categories of mental health, anxiety, PTSD, depression, schizophrenia, cumulative trauma disorder and manic depressive disorder, and then kind of a catch-all. So out of the anxiety, depression, and PTSD, that's almost 29% of all the charges in the ADA last year. And to put that in perspective, in fiscal year 1993, anxiety, depression, and PTSD was 0.1% of the ADA charges. Now it's 30%. Right? So this is where things are going and there's a lot of drivers to where we're getting here. Keith Sonderling: Going back to the return to work, what we're now seeing is companies are mandating come back to the office four days a week, five days a week, and employees are saying, Well, I can't. Well, yes, you can. Get to the office. No, I have anxiety about my commute. I don't. I'm worried about getting the next virus if I ride the subway. Some of these cities are not safe anymore. And I have anxiety about potentially getting mugged outside of the office. Or I'm depressed at the fact of having to go back to the office and BS with my colleagues at the water cooler when I've been in my pajamas, locked in the basement and we've had record profits. Why are you doing this to me? Chad Sowash: He's been watching you. Keith Sonderling: Right? Joel Cheesman: Yeah. Keith Sonderling: You just look like that every day. [laughter] Chad Sowash: Wow. [laughter] Keith Sonderling: Haven't shaved in a year. All this stuff. Chad Sowash: See what we have to put up with. Keith Sonderling: But you know, that's they're coming, they're saying, why are you doing this? Now you're impacting my mental health and I can't, I PTSD about returning to the old way in this new work environment. Like, basically, why are you doing this to me? And employees are coming forward and they're saying, I can't come back to the office because I'm disabled under the Americans With Disability Act and you have to accommodate me. And here's where I'm seeing the biggest issue. For all of you in HR, your mandate, especially from these very large, well known companies, the CEOs on TV, the boards that are saying to the CHROs, we want everyone back in the office and get that plan back in the office. Keith Sonderling: So now in HR, you're being graded in a sense of how quickly you're returning people to the office. And there's a tension there with the ability to actually do your job and be empowered to say, well, if you are claiming you're disabled under the Americans with Disability Act, what is your disability? We need to engage in the interactive process and go through all that. But what you're seeing is such a rush to get in there where whether or not you're believing the employee, just not even engaging that process because you need to get everyone back to the office is causing a lot of claims under the ADA of not engaging that process. Keith Sonderling: And the reason I see that a lot of HR departments or companies are unwilling to do this is because they think the employee is going to win. So every time if an employee comes through and I have a mental health issue, I can't come back to the office, I want to work remotely, if you don't dive into it, you may think, well, the only accommodation we can do if we go through this process is to allow them to work from home. And that's not true. Say we both have anxiety and the analysis of what that accommodation, we both have anxiety, we go to HR, we both want to work from home, right? That's the only cure. Keith Sonderling: And the analysis is actually much different. Not only working with your own medical providers, with their medical providers, because of course they're going to come with the accommodation to work from home, from their provider. And it's going through that analysis saying, well, you have this type of anxiety, I have this type of anxiety. For me to be able to work with that, with an accommodation would be maybe noise canceling Bose headsets, for you would be working in a dim light area, right? So going through that process, which you all know very well may actually lead you to give them accommodation where they're allowed to perform the essential functions of their job with their disability absent working from home and actually coming to the office. And look, the employees may not like that, but from your legal obligation, that's sort of where it ends. And we're not seeing that now because of this just rush to come back. Chad Sowash: So no plan. Keith Sonderling: And these pressures. Chad Sowash: There's no plan. It's just get them in. Keith Sonderling: And the plan is going back to basics, to what you would do with any other type of disability. But there's just such pressures now on HR to do this and it's really driving a lot of the mental health issues. Joel Cheesman: I mean, forgive me for saying get off my lawn, but this sounds like a generational problem. Can you break down what we're seeing? Chad Sowash: I don't think so. Joel Cheesman: This sounds like a millennial problem. Keith Sonderling: Well, actually it's funny because the next driver of mental health is related to the Gen Z in the workforce. Joel Cheesman: Of course it is. Keith Sonderling: Which is... And that's the attitude I'm going to give you a prime example of. You do not want Joel interacting with your Gen Zs to do the interactive process. Joel Cheesman: You do not. Chad Sowash: I can second that. Keith Sonderling: Because the next driver of men's health is just this multigenerational workforce. I think there was a stat recently. There's more Gen Zs in the workforce now than boomer generations are one of them where they're really exploiting... Chad Sowash: Millennial. Keith Sonderling: Millennial. Yeah, it's getting pretty significant. And just the way they're working. Work has changed. They've always started on their phone. They're much more technologically advanced and they want a much different lifestyle and they're leading with their mental health, which other generations... Chad Sowash: Did not. Keith Sonderling: Never did. Chad Sowash: Stuff it down. Keith Sonderling: So what we're seeing now is claims from Gen Z related to their mental health that really HR departments need to be equipped with, regardless of how the claim sounds. So everything from... And I'll use Joel as the main manager here. So I'm Gen Z and I come to Joel and say, Joel, I have a lot of anxiety about my yearly performance review because I feel like I'm going to get a bad review and I need an accommodation not to have a yearly performance review. [laughter] Keith Sonderling: Please accommodate me. Joel Cheesman: This is when I say rub some dirt on it and get back. Keith Sonderling: Exactly. Okay, so we all laughed. Ha ha ha. And you're not going to laugh when the EEOC charge comes. And let me tell you why. As ridiculous as that may sound, and nobody's going to argue that it's not a part of your job to get a performance review. Or in all seriousness, we've all seen claims saying, I can't take more than one assignment at once, I can't work past 5:00 PM on Wednesdays because that's when I have my yoga classes. Just the absurdity of some of these coming in, which may sound ridiculous to certain generations, right? Like I can't take more than one assignment. Yes, that wouldn't have worked before. Or this, I don't want a performance review. Keith Sonderling: If you laugh it off and they're saying, it's related to, I'm anxious about this, I'm depressed about this, you still have to go through that process. As ridiculous as the claims may sound to you, if they're being genuine about it, you still have to go through that and say, is there an accommodation for not having a performance review? And the answer is going to be no, you have to have a performance review. Keith Sonderling: But if you completely blow by that process, and this is where it really takes a lot of training outside of HR, like you can sort of in HR, even though we all laughed, and I laughed too, at this accommodation, and you're all HR professionals, imagine what a manager somewhere in the middle of the country is going, at a factory is going to be there. Chad Sowash: Gonna sound like that. Keith Sonderling: Gonna sound like this guy and look like this guy. [laughter] Keith Sonderling: Maybe they'll shave, but... [laughter] Joel Cheesman: Damn, he wasn't like this. Chad Sowash: He was not like this before. Joel Cheesman: He's nasty. Keith Sonderling: You could like beat me up now. There's nothing I could do about it. Joel Cheesman: I know. Now you're fighting back. Keith Sonderling: Before, it would be a federal crime, so... [laughter] Keith Sonderling: But in all seriousness, it really goes to outside of HR now, going to those managers and really having that kind of generational training, or it's just going to lead to these claims, even though they weren't actually entitled to an accommodation, but they were entitled to go through that process. And the good thing is that's what all of you as HR professionals know best. It's just whether it's the remote work, whether it's these Gen Z issues, it's going back to the fundamentals of engaging in those processes, as ridiculous as it sounds to you. Because if you don't, you're really going to have no defense to that. Keith Sonderling: And then the other part of this too, which on the whole manager training outside of your offices as well, what we are seeing is that there's teams where, say, you have a group of five, a team of five people and a manager. So two of the five people request an accommodation to work from home. They actually have a reason to work from home. Doctor's approved. That's the only accommodation given. HR actually gives them the accommodation, which occurs. And then the manager and then the rest of the three members are in the office, and everyone's just sitting on their computers on Zoom or Teams, right, in a conference room because these two people aren't there, but everyone's in front of their computers or sitting in front of their office. It ends. Keith Sonderling: And the other employees say, oh, it's really not fair that Chad gets to work from home and we're here. And then manager Joel goes, Well, Chad, just... You claim you're crazy too. You can go get an accommodation. Right. Why don't you just go tell HR you're crazy? I don't want to be here either. But look, these are not trained HR professionals. And that's happening. And what that does, in a sense where that manager should be trained and say, there's a process to request an accommodation in this company, through our handbook, through HR. If you feel like you need an accommodation, you need to go to HR versus the reality of it, say, yeah, it sucks. I'm here too. I'm the manager. I don't want to be here. We're just sitting on teams. It's not fair either. And then that's going to be not only a disclosure of unlawful disclosure of medical information, violate, interfering with their leave. So you get to see how it can spiral out of control way outside of your HR organization, even though you've done everything right on that side too. Chad Sowash: What about all these people who were hired to be remote and they were disabled beforehand, and now they're being thrust back into the office. Keith Sonderling: Yeah. And this is another big question about, especially during COVID where a lot of... Especially, for tech companies. Chad Sowash: Well, we saw the other day that for individuals with disabilities, they're at the best hiring rate they've been. It's like seven... Keith Sonderling: Because of that work from home accommodation. Chad Sowash: Yeah. And then we've got employers saying, get the hell back in the office. Like, I wasn't in the office in the first place. Keith Sonderling: Yeah. And this goes to the point before where I said that even if you're getting outside executives, right, that have those very long contracts generally drafted by lawyers, that HR professionals generally don't see for the most of your employees, especially the ones that you recruited during COVID to work from here in Louisiana, when the company's in Silicon Valley. Those are just offer letters. And again, the employer can still change the job requirements. So you've seen people who've been out in Costa Rica living a nice life and saying, if you're not in the office in Oregon on Monday, you're fired. And they could sort of do that in that sense as well, because they can change that. So you're starting to see that as well. And employees want to know what their legal rights are there. Not many. Right? Keith Sonderling: But this is where if they say, well, I can't because of disability. This is... I wouldn't have applied to this job if I didn't have this accommodation. It's not really an accommodation. I wouldn't have applied to this job. And you have to start. They have to start that process fresh and saying, Well, even though I've been working from remote from home, that hasn't been an accommodation, it was just part of the job. I'm unable to return to the office because of this and going through that process. And again, you all see the news too. The fear here is that it's just happening so quickly across the boards. And when it's the CEO's on TV saying everyone's back in the office and they want it quickly, all this, these violations start occurring. Chad Sowash: So what about... Real quick. What about in the same vein, you have a lot of these employees that are not coming back because it feels like almost a forced layoff at some point where people are just going to quit. Joel Cheesman: You think. Chad Sowash: That's what companies are looking for, right? They're looking for, instead of paying severance, they just want them to quit. But there are employees that are out there saying, No, you hired me from here, I'm working from here. Fire me. Keith Sonderling: And they'll get fired. Chad Sowash: It just seems... Keith Sonderling: Unless they can show it has a disparate impact on a certain group or what we've seen or targeting a certain group, we just want to get rid of this team, and this team is mainly of this race, this national origin. You'd have to get into these more complicated, is there intentionality there or is there just [0:25:27.8] ____. Chad Sowash: Why you need a plan. Keith Sonderling: Right. I mean, this is really going through these. So you don't have that. And we'll talk about with some of that when we get into the technology stuff. For older workers and disabled workers, there's going to be significant impact there as well. But, yeah, to your point about having a plan and going back and as complicated as all these new challenges are, whether it was with COVID, whether it's with these working from home or as we'll discuss technology, it's really going back to the basics and going back to the boring part of what you've done. And these same processes just apply to these newer issues, but sometimes we lose sight of that. Joel Cheesman: So you touched on technology and we'll get to that in a second. The political winds are raging and I'm just curious, your take on a Kamala presidency versus a Trump presidency, what can we kind of expect to see at the EEOC? Chad Sowash: Talk about trends. Jesus. Keith Sonderling: Yeah, so I think that HR is going to continue to be in the spotlight and it's just really fascinating to see how these issues are now front and center in Washington, DC. It wasn't always like this. And you'll hear from Craig after. For most people going into these political positions like we did, working at the Department of Labor, working at the EEOC, it's not necessarily the most elite thing like going to the Department of Justice or Treasury or any of these other agencies historically, but there's just been such a switch in that where labor and employment issues are really top of mind in DC, and it started too with obviously President Biden being the most pro-union candidate and President. Keith Sonderling: And then even if you look at the Senate, the Senate Health, Education, labor and Pension Committee that oversees the EEOC, DOL, NLRB, Bernie Sanders is the Chair of that committee and that's a job he wanted his entire career in the Senate because it deals with health, education and labor. So there's just a lot of scrutiny now from both sides on employment practices, post pandemic. So I think it's going to continue with that. Keith Sonderling: I think that just the shifts of what the focuses are going to be are going to be different whether it's Harris or Trump and even different than Biden, where Biden, the Biden administration was just so heavy on traditional labor and unions and strikes and being involved in that process and unionization and you've all seen the explosion of unionization across industries that were the last you'd ever think to be unionized because they're the ones with the ping pong tables and the cafes and all this stuff were outside of the traditional where you would see labor. So I don't think if Harris wins, it's not necessarily that will go away, but I think there'll be a big shift for her from that kind of old school, like I like to say, old school Detroit Unions and strikes and unionizations to much more back in this world of the things that she was interested in like pay equity, racial discrimination. Keith Sonderling: More of the core practices here, I think will be in a much bigger spotlight if she wins with the paid family leave initiatives, pay equity initiatives and really going back and rooting out racial discrimination kind of focus in some of the gender issues there, where if former President Trump wins, you have a record to see what he did when he was in office. And it was a lot more technical business regulations that were occurring then and that will occur again, like dealing with independent contracting issues, dealing with joint employers issues, franchisee and franchisor liability, a lot of those more structural business foundation regulations to make it easier for businesses... Chad Sowash: Reinsert NDAs. Keith Sonderling: Well, maybe. Things like that. But no, I don't want to say. It's much more technical in that sense of what the initial priorities I believe over there will be, like the overtime threshold and things like that, just changing some of those. But across the board too, I still think there'll be a lot of interest too. And I think, even I'm sure it's been discussed in this conference, like with the diversity, equity, inclusion initiatives. I think both, whoever wins, it's going to continue where, if Harris wins, it's going to be still continue push on DE&I on one side. And if Trump wins, you'll see some of the advocacy groups having a DE&I push on the other side relating to some reverse discrimination claims. Joel Cheesman: How about headcount and funding? Do you see one candidate putting more resources into it versus another? Because under Biden, we've had more money and more resources put in. If Trump gets in, do you see that pulling back or do you see it... Keith Sonderling: Well, a lot of that depends on Congress too, and how much, on the makeup of Congress. If it's a Democrat like Congress, these agencies will get a lot more money even though they've been kind of flat the last few years just from dynamics. If Republicans control everything, what you'll see is probably more of a flatline budget, but the additional resources will go to compliance assistance and training. Less on the investigator side and more on the outreach side. So generally you see the shifts in Democrat administration, hire a lot more investigators, hire a lot more lawyers. Republican administrations, you hire more people to do some of the compliance outreach and less in the investigatory side. And you see those numbers going down on the actual amount of frontline... Chad Sowash: More education, less enforcement. Keith Sonderling: Generally. Leading with education versus enforcement versus in Democrat administrations, leading with enforcement and then doing the education after. It's been pretty consistent, no matter who the President was, going back decades, on how Republicans look at enforcement, how Democrats look at enforcement. Chad Sowash: Democrats are... Joel Cheesman: Should we get into tech? Chad Sowash: Yep. Go ahead and roll that beautiful bean footage. S?: How do you guys know what the hell you're looking for in the first place? S?: With a lot of companies saying, hey, wait a minute. We've never even thought about the dangers of what we just purchased. S?: Conversational AI is a transformative technology. S?: All you have to do is talk. S?: Let's talk about trust real quick, because you blew up the whole system. S?: But also for the candidates itself to not be discriminated against. And that's new, and that's a benefit. S?: I think the future looks seamless. S?: There's really a great opportunity here to give individuals a much better experience. Chad Sowash: So, as you can see, we take Keith Sonderling wherever we go. Jesus. Yeah. Joel Cheesman: He's the secret to our success. Chad Sowash: Yeah. So needless to say, we talk a lot about AI. And it was amazing because I had a Chief of staff reached out to me, of a EEOC commissioner, to talk about AI. And this is three, three years ago. Three, four years ago. I'm like, you're full of s***. EEOC doesn't know how to spell AI. This is not a thing. So it's hard to spell. [laughter] Keith Sonderling: I-A-A. Chad Sowash: So we sit down with Keith and we start having discussions and we start having these very... I've worked with the EEOC and OFCCP for 10 years plus, and I've never had these higher technical conversations. We're talking about mainframes, we're talking about basic stuff. So it was really, it was great. Had great conversations. And we're able to start talking about things on the government side of the House that I've been trying to get many of these conferences to talk about for years now. AI, it's coming, and now that it's here, everybody, they're having problems. Joel Cheesman: Freaking out. Chad Sowash: They're having problems. Joel Cheesman: Freaking out. Chad Sowash: And as you saw from the presentations the other day, you've got CEOs, 70% of those are like, yes, we're going full forward with AI. How many companies in here today have already started to institute automation and AI into your hiring practices? Keith Sonderling: I'm not in the government. You can raise your hand. Chad Sowash: Yeah. Keith Sonderling: It's fine. I can't do anything anymore. Chad Sowash: So thank you, thank you for all of you who did not raise your hands. I bet you are. I bet you already are and you don't even know it. Two weeks ago, we were in Scottsdale and we were talking to tons of major brands. You saw GM, Eileen Kowalski from GM there, General Motors, not a small organization, right? They did some amazing efficiency work with technology, AI, automation, saved millions of dollars. We were having conversations with the global VP of Talent Acquisition. No compliance people were around. Right. But she had to go through that process, even though again, a lot of the tech that we're seeing today is starting to automatically push automation efficiencies and it's just baked into the system. So this is for us one of the most important areas from an education standpoint. And that's exactly what Keith was trying to do. So... Joel Cheesman: It's full of risk. Isn't it, Keith? Chad Sowash: Why in the first place, why did you make that call? Why did AI matter for you? Joel Cheesman: Set the table for AI? Keith Sonderling: Because, when we talk about these trends where I started, I wanted to get ahead of it when I got there and say, what are the next big issues impacting AI? And it's very hard. Actually the next big issue is impacting HR. That's where I learned about AI, because it's very hard with all these things going on to focus on something in the future when you literally can't deal with what you have on your plate that day. And I didn't know anything about this kind of software, I didn't know anything about this whole industry. And that's when I learned through reaching out to a lot of people in the industry really how prolific it is being used within the HR function, not to, and this was 2020, 2021, not to displace workers in that conversation now, but just to actually do core functions that HR professionals have been doing, all with the promise not just to do it more efficiently and effectively than all of you humans in the room, but without bias. Keith Sonderling: And I was like, okay, now that's where we can get involved. Because a lot of the vendors out there at the time, if you remember early on, were just saying this is a bias-free solution to use AI instead of your human recruiters to get perfect diversity, equity, inclusion, to get... Chad Sowash: Famous last words by the way. Keith Sonderling: Hiring. And if you remember really early on, they were saying, and we're certified by the EEOC and OFCCP [0:36:01.7] ____, and they don't, EEOC and OFCCP [0:36:04.6] ____ doesn't certify anybody, as you all know. But using some of these old standard tests in the aggregate and kind of playing with that. So I would say this is worth getting involved. And you get involved and you realize it's just really every function that HR professionals do, there's AI software out there promising to do it better. And that's where I thought it was really important to get in because in looking at it and it's extremely complicated, so many people are just getting lost in how the technology works and trying to keep up with what is AI, how does it actually work in the HR function. Keith Sonderling: And what I found was all the vendors in this space and all the people investing in this space, they all have one thing in common. And I know, you know all of them was that they've never worked in HR. They're very smart entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley that sees HR as a function that they've only dealt with from the outside and saying, oh, that's something we can automate, that's something we can make a product to do better. The difference about using AI and HR versus other areas in your business, where they're coming from, is that when you're dealing with AI and HR, you're dealing with fundamental civil rights and that's the ability to enter and thrive in the workforce, provide for your family without being discriminated against by a human or an algorithm. Keith Sonderling: So that's really why it was so important to spend so much time here to go through each one of these softwares and tools and just to take a step back and where I've kind of just simplified all of this, is saying at the end of the day, all these AI tools that are being sold to you, that you've bought, been using, at the end of the day, they're, what is the employment decision you're using them to help you with, assist or make? Right? Because that is what we're going to look at and that's what the law requires to be fair. So what are the results of these decisions? And then we can sort of backtrack from there how you got there versus how it's compared to what your functions are now without using technology. But there's only a finite amount of employment decisions, right? Hiring, firing, wages, training, promotions, demotions, and that's really what these tools are getting involved in and that's what we regulate and that's what you all know. Keith Sonderling: So throwing in so many layers of technology has caused so much chaos and confusion, saying, we don't understand this, we don't even understand our function anymore because all these products and tools are being designed to do it better, but what are they actually to do? So I've kind of flipped the narrative saying it's no longer a question, are you going to use this in HR? We need to go back and rephrase it and saying, what are we using it for? What are our existing practices? How is this going to potentially make it better from removing bias? Or is it going to actually increase potential discrimination? And at the end of the day, what is the results of those tools? Because that's what the EEOC looks at, that's what the OFCCP looks at, that's what judges and courts are going to look at. Show me the results. Less about all the numbers, how you got there, but let's look at the results because that's what you all know and that's what the process you already have in place. Chad Sowash: Outcomes. Joel Cheesman: So we had some pretty high profile cases early on. Amazon had their own sort of homemade AI that they actually canceled because they did see bias in their efforts. We saw a HireVue case in Illinois and a lot of laws we saw getting passed and legislation. To me, and we talk about this pretty frequently, it seems like things have kind of died down, but I know that you live this stuff every day. Are we still seeing laws passed at a state, local level? Have things cool down? Should we expect some sort of federal guidance on this issue? Keith Sonderling: Yeah, and that's where I got involved early in just saying, well, so many people were hesitant about using this technology because, oh, all these new proposals and these new laws and we don't know how to comply with them or there's no federal laws yet. Maybe we can use it quickly. And that's just not true because at the end of the day what I've said is that there's an employment decision, right? And that's what's being regulated. Whether or not there's new laws from states, the EEOC is still regulating your use of AI or humans through the employment decision. Right? Keith Sonderling: And that's really ultimately what the law is always going to look at, but that doesn't ignore that there's a lot of pushes for additional requirements on AI, whether it's transparency, whether it's auditing, which is getting done by the states, which is getting even more confusing because in certain states like for Illinois was the first state to pass an AI law within HR saying it's almost impossible to use facial recognition stemming from some of the cases you mentioned. And you have to do all these Disclosures, it's just so difficult to use it. And then Maryland filed, then everyone knows in New York City they had their Local Law 144, which then required, if you're going to use it in New York City to do a pre-deployment audit and to do a yearly bias audit. So if you look at some of these state and local laws, what are they asking to do even in New York? Keith Sonderling: And I know there's a lot of controversy around it saying, okay, we'll do a bias audit. That's something the EEOC has encouraged and something a lot of you do anyway with all your other hiring practices as well. So as these states and local governments try to put new requirements in there or even what's going on in Europe with the EU AI Act designating the use of AI in HR as higher risk. Well, what does that require? It requires you, disclosure, doing a bias audit. So when states and foreign governments start poking around saying, okay, well how do you do a bias audit? Right. Well, tell us New York, how do you do a bias audit? Tell us Brussels, how do you do bias audit? Then saying, look to the EEOC's 1978 guidelines on uniform employment selection procedures. Keith Sonderling: So like, okay, thanks for nothing, right? They're dumping it back on us. But that shows where your strength is there too, because this is not new about how you actually do these underlying tests to see whether it's an employment assessment you're giving out or these AI tools have bias. And that's something you can get ahead of. So I don't necessarily fear a lot of these state and local laws. I think it causes confusion because in New York, the bias audit only needs to be done for hiring and promotion for race, sex and ethnicity. Keith Sonderling: So that could lull you into thinking that you're in compliance in New York because you've done that, but then for the federal government, if you're going to do an audit, the EEOC would then require the other protected categories, age, religion, and then also two, more than just hiring and promotion, termination, just the whole, all the employment actions too. So you can see where it kind of gets a little choppy there too. So I think at some point with all these states trying to get involved, it will even out where you're going to see a lot of the requirements are going to be, maybe disclosure to candidates, disclosure to your employees, requiring that audit. All things you could voluntarily do now, those are just how much do you want to get ahead of it in advance? Chad Sowash: So the fun part is that this is really, I mean, so if you've been a job seeker since the Internet, the process has become horrible. Takes half an hour to go through, actually apply for a job, but what we're seeing is, we're seeing a lot of this AI push is also starting to restructure the whole thought process around talent acquisition and how we go after talent. How many of you hire without resumes? One. How many of you have different hiring processes, technically going through your technical system for somebody going into a management position versus a different departments. Do you have customized? Okay, so not a lot of you. Chad Sowash: Get ready. That's the next step. If I'm using, if I'm hiring frontline workers, they're not going to get on a laptop. Why do you have me filling out a form? That's the dumbest thing I've ever seen. They're going to have a chatbot. And guess what? They love it. GM was talking about how they saved millions of dollars by changing the process. They don't need a resume. They just need to know what? Are you meeting the requirements? Keith Sonderling: Will you show up to work? Chad Sowash: Yeah. Wow. Do you meet the requirements? We've gone so far overboard that many talent acquisition professionals can't fill roles. They're losing great talent because we've layered in a bunch of attorney stuff. Keith Sonderling: And I think... Audience Members: [0:44:10.7] ____. [laughter] Keith Sonderling: I mean, it's true. But you talk about the benefits of this because there's so much focusing on the risk. So let's just talk about that example now of, forget a resume, forget an interview with a person. Your entire experience is going to be on an app. And there's a lot of programs now, not just on the chat, that will do the entire interview through an app on your phone. And you think about what is the potential benefits of that is that the app can't see the color of your skin, it can't see if you're disabled, it can't see if you're pregnant, it can't see if you're wearing religious garb. Keith Sonderling: So, so many people historically have gone into an interview, whether it's on Zoom or in-person, and what's the first thing that happens when you walk in an interview? You literally see everything about that person the EEOC says you're not allowed to make a hiring decision in. And for disabled workers, and particularly that hiring manager may say in the back of their mind, how much is this person going to cost me? How much accommodation is it going to cost me? Pregnant. How much is leave? You're going to have to hire somebody else. And there's just been so many people who historically have not been able to get past that first step, even though they're qualified because of those biases. But the app can't see any of that. Keith Sonderling: And forget the resume. If it's asking you to do a real life scenario of what it's like to work there, then for the first time you're being able to actually judge that candidate not based necessarily what their background was, what the color of their skin, or where they went to school, all these inherent biases there, and actually seeing if they were able to perform the job. So there's just so many people that stand to benefit from this that historically have not been able to get past that first step because of the AI not being able to see that. But then of course, like anything else, I can flip it and tell you how that could potentially discriminate. It's really important to look at that as well, because people want to say it's the best thing and people want to say it's the worst thing, and it's neither. It's how you design it and how you use it. Keith Sonderling: So let's say some of these programs saying, here's a real life situation at our store. How would you respond to this? And a lot of times you have to dictate saying, here's how I would react. The customer is coming here, and here's how I've dealt with it before. And it uses natural language processing to go through your voice and rates you you on the words you say in the order you say them to the employer satisfaction. Again, a really good thing. But you go to the design of these tools which are out of your control, which is you're relying on a vendor to actually build these. Keith Sonderling: And for instance, if the person has a very thick foreign accent and it can't pick up what they're saying versus us who speaks fluent American English, that person with a really thick foreign accent may be giving a much better response than us, but it picks us up more than that person, so that's going to be national origin discrimination. Or if the person has a stutter or slurs, that could be disability discrimination at scale for all those people. So as you're giving these people now an equal opportunity, if the vendor can't account for that disability, can't account for that foreign accent, or to the example you gave before with the all women being excluded from the applicant pool because it was for a position that has historically, 99% of the resumes are males. Keith Sonderling: So if you're a female, you went to a women's college, you automatically got the lowest score. That wasn't a misogynistic intent on behalf of the algorithm because it wasn't designed properly to see, Well, there still must be some underlying skill to be able to do the job, male versus female, to be able to eliminate that. And that's a challenge for all of you because you're not designing these tools and you're buying them and you're relying on the vendor to be able to account for those protected characteristics. And if they can't, you all are 100% liable for that mass discrimination against those people with foreign accents or those women who were excluded. Not the vendor, all of you. Chad Sowash: And the thing is that we used to... Unless you're in California, where they might pull the vendor into that. But the hardest part is that we used to buy technology, set it and forget it. Put it in place, walk away. That is not going... The auditing process, the ensuring that we get a chance to actually take a look at outcomes very quickly, because the scale that happens is going to be much larger. What happens with scale, if there's any bias in that process whatsoever? Before, you might not been able to see it because it was so minuscule, but then you start to scale it up, bias explodes, not to mention things change. So now with this new technology, we're going to have to be more fluid. We can't just set it, walk away and forget it, put our processes in place and think that we're done, because that's going to bite you in the ass. Keith Sonderling: And you have to also... The way this whole industry is, and you guys have been in it much longer than I, that's, you raise a great point. They're selling it like other kinds of software that you buy across your organization. And within HR, where you're buying this to set it and forget it, to make it more efficient, and it just doesn't work when you're actually having it doing HR functions because as you all know, each individual job description, each individual applicant, they have different requirements, and you have to go through it that granular. And that's just a different way of how you design and purchase this software. Joel Cheesman: Keith, we've talked about the employer side this morning. I want to get a little freaky for a second. And things are going to get weird. All right. I mean... Keith Sonderling: They're already weird. Joel Cheesman: We're hiring robots in the metaverse who are... They look like alligators and whatnot. We have AI that we can be a video personality that is not who we are that may interview for us. People may interview and look like a woman of color and show up a white guy on day one. And like, this is going to happen. Does the EEOC have a North Star for this? Do they try to prepare for it? Like, how do you view the freakiness that is about to happen in technology from the job seeker side? Chad Sowash: And make it short so we can at least get one question. Keith Sonderling: Yeah, what kind of question is that? [laughter] Joel Cheesman: You know me. You know, there's got to be one [0:50:11.0] ____. Keith Sonderling: The bottom line is it's still going to be on you to have those policies and procedures in place to prevent fraud. Right? Because applicants can't commit fraud against you, just like they can't say they went to Harvard and they didn't. They can't show up on the metaverse. Chad Sowash: Fraud's fraud. Keith Sonderling: Allegedly a person that looks a certain way to get the job and then show up somebody else. So, that's where the policies come in place that if an applicant commits fraud using these tools. But that really goes on you setting the guardrails of what these tools can do. Joel Cheesman: Yeah. Chad Sowash: Okay. Any questions? One question. We don't have a lot of time. If not, we're just gonna riff, and that's scary. Joel Cheesman: Come on. An EEOC commissioner. Chad Sowash: Former. Yes, ma'am. Joel Cheesman: See, I'm not the only one. I'm not the only one. Chad Sowash: Come on. Jesus. Audience Members: [0:50:52.4] ____ you say, hire them. Keith Sonderling: In your process, you have to have those disclaimers in there that... First of all, I mean, I don't know how many tools allow you to do that or if we're... This is down the road. It's really how you set the tone of using that kind of software to ensure that you're representing yourself. You're not doing anything that would mislead the employer to believe what your qualifications are or your... Goes across the board. Chad Sowash: And think of it. I mean, there are people that are... And this is very fringe case. Okay, he's very fringy. So there are people that show up and do interviews for people, and then somebody else shows up. That's very fringe. Right? We've had people taking SATs for people for how many years? I mean... Keith Sonderling: It's called fraud. Chad Sowash: It's the same s***. [laughter] Keith Sonderling: Yeah. Joel Cheesman: It's the same s***. Keith Sonderling: It's exactly right. Joel Cheesman: But you know, there's a lawyer out there thinking about this. The interview is a... Chad Sowash: He's following ambulances and yeah, I totally get it. Keith Sonderling: Don't commit fraud. Let's just leave it there. Chad Sowash: So at the end of the day. Anymore? No, no, no. Audience Members: I'll ask another question. So can you give us some examples of situations where work from home was a considered a reasonable accommodation? Keith Sonderling: Yeah, it's really dependent on the type of disability the employee... It's so granular, it's really tough where you really can't. There's no broad stroke approach to it. Like I said that example too where two employees are saying they have anxiety but the type of anxiety and the type of differences are completely the accommodation to be able to perform the job are different. And that's why all of you, it's going to take a lot of work to go in and work with the medical providers and work with your own medical providers. Keith Sonderling: I'm sure through your FMLA processes you have third party medical facilities that do those evaluations. It's really your appetite and it's the same thing with religion and having just gone through this, do you want to be in the business of questioning your employees' faith even though the law allows you to challenge to see if they really believe what they believe? That's a lot of time and resources versus here too where employee wants to work from home and it's related to PTSD, it's related to depression. Keith Sonderling: You could take it at face value and if that medical doctor or therapist, whoever they went to saying this is the accommodation, you can just approve it or you can say we don't believe you and we are going to send you to a third party which you're allowed to do. The problem is it's just the inconsistent application where you'll see the friends of the managers will be able to work from home and the people who actually may need to work from home don't get that accommodation because they don't trust them, they're not as good employees. And it always breaks down on racial differences, on gender differences. Keith Sonderling: And that's where you can really get in trouble not having those consistent policies of saying look, we're going to challenge every request for accommodation, we're going to send to a third party medical provider and we'll let them work it out. Or you know, there's a lot of services that do this as well versus we're going to do it on an individualized basis. So it's that consistent application. And that's more of a business decision that you need to work with outside of HR saying, how do we want to handle this? Do we just want to grant it, or do we want to actually go through our process to being able to see whether or not to challenge that? Chad Sowash: What is your risk tolerance? Keith Sonderling: Yeah, exactly. Joel Cheesman: Keith, thanks for joining us today. For everyone out there that may have a question for you that they don't want to put out in public, they want to know more about what the EEOC is doing, I know they have some AI guidelines that might be helpful to them. Where should they go? Keith Sonderling: Reach out on LinkedIn or wherever or find me in the hall. Joel Cheesman: Let's hear it for Keith Sonderling, everybody. We are the Chad and Cheese podcast. Check us out at chadcheese.com. You can find Keith on LinkedIn. Thanks for everything. Chad Sowash: We out. Joel Cheesman: We out. Speaker 5: Wow, look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese Podcast or maybe you cheated and fast forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey, or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No. You hung out with these two chuckleheads instead. Now, go take a shower and wash off all the guilt. But save some soap because you'll be back. Like an awful train wreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.

In this side-splitting episode of The Chad & Cheese Podcast Does Europe , the boys, joined by the always-unfiltered Lieven, navigate the continent with the grace of a bull in a china shop. From sexy Belgian bureaucracy  (yes, you read that right) to the AI apocalypse  taking over the workplace, no topic is too wild—or too inappropriate. They'll unravel why Germany’s economy is as flat as yesterday's beer, dish out GDPR truths that’ll have American tech giants crying into their LinkedIn profiles, and throw in some bold predictions about AI being the next HR overlord. Oh, and startups? They're here to roast a few: will CoachHub, Popp AI, and Talentium be the next unicorns, or just another parade of LinkedIn buzzwords? Spoiler: nobody is safe from the snark. Grab your coffee (or something stronger) and prepare for laughs, gasps, and a crash course in European chaos! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:34.516) Three guys who are still waiting for their presidential pardon. Never convicted. You are listening to the Chad and Cheese Podcast Does Europe? I'm your cohost, Joel Sickleaf, Detective Cheeseman. Chad (00:46.19) This is Chad Blue Monday, so watch. Lieven (00:49.423) And I'm busy bringing in, unifying, van evenuzen. Chad (00:53.006) You Joel (00:53.81) And on this episode, just grab them in the euro, sick leave detectives and who'd you rather? It's an episode that'll bring you to your shananananese, nice. Chad (01:07.192) So bad. You Joel (01:10.802) When I wrote that it was about eight o'clock at night and reading it at 9 a.m. in the morning doesn't quite have the same, same hit. But yeah, that's my, that's my axle Rose everybody. Lieven (01:19.929) Here it's... Here it's afternoon and I liked it. Chad (01:20.11) Especially if he had more bourbon. it was good. It was good. I like how you tied it back to Welcome to the Jungle. was very nice. we know. we know. we know. Joel (01:25.864) Alright. Yeah, I weave it. I'm like Trump. I weave everything in together to where it all makes sense at the end. I've already brought Trump up. For God's sakes. So he's officially in. People want to know what Europeans think about the Trump inauguration and what's coming. Leaving? Lieven (01:38.225) Trump. Chad (01:42.69) Mm-hmm. Chad (01:46.536) yeah. Lieven (01:51.121) I actually watched it and I must say I was surprised. I really thought during the election phase, I thought he was playing a role and he was trying to get the votes from those angry people and unhappy people and all those other people. And he was actually trying to get their votes, but he's going to play along. He's actually going to do it. It was creepy watching the whole thing really. And normally I don't like those cheap references to Nazi Germany because it trivialize. Chad (02:05.442) He was. Joel (02:06.771) Mm-hmm. Chad (02:08.49) yeah. Chad (02:14.402) Yeah, yeah. Chad (02:19.299) Yeah. Lieven (02:20.847) what happened back then. But if you look in this case, you can't get around the similarities. mean, it's like they're actually trying to make a 21st century adaptation of the whole thing with Musk pretending to be globals and showing his right arm and excitement, or maybe even Albert Speer, the one who did the government for Hitler. Anyways, so Musk was playing his role, and then they're actually Joel (02:21.243) huh. Chad (02:22.092) Mm-hmm. Chad (02:30.072) Mm-hmm. Chad (02:36.525) Yeah. Lieven (02:45.807) releasing all the Proud Boys, the Proud Boys who are like the Sturmabteilung in Germany, the brown shirts, which later became the black shirts and the SS. But there really are many similarities. talking about, we need Lebensraum, we want to expand our territory, and we need to take the Panama channel because we gave it to Panama, now the Chinese, they took it, so we need to take it back, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The whole list goes on. Chad (02:48.622) Mm. Joel (02:50.334) Mm-hmm. Chad (02:52.067) Yeah. Yeah. Joel (03:04.532) Mm-hmm. Lieven (03:15.129) and signing those hundreds of, what's it called? Presidential dictates, executive orders, whatever. And just playing the big dictator, I was just astonished looking at it. I mean, in Europe we have presidents, but they don't have any actual power. mean, you have the parliament and the president is in charge, but his power is limited. But what this guy is doing, suddenly it actually felt like a new dictatorship. Chad (03:19.18) And yeah, Eos, yeah Joel (03:19.302) executive orders executive orders Joel (03:36.148) Mm-hmm. Chad (03:38.029) Yeah. Lieven (03:43.299) Okay, but you're the Americans and I'm not going to tell you how to... Joel (03:47.732) So are you literally thinking we're going to have boots on the ground in Greenland taking over Greenland and we're going to have soldiers in Panama take, like what, is that what you think is happening? Lieven (03:57.571) No, the Greenland. No, I can't. I just can't imagine that he would take Greenland without Denmark giving us consent. And by the way, Denmark will never give it, give its consent. Denmark are the Vikings. Remember? They're small, but are pretty tough people. I used to have a girlfriend in Denmark. know it. know it. Believe me. But yeah. And Sophia, if you hear this, I'm sorry. But I really am. Chad (04:08.846) No they shouldn't. Chad (04:13.293) Yeah? Joel (04:14.258) Let's put a pin in that one. Let's put a pin in that. Okay. Girlfriend in Denmark. Chad (04:15.756) Hahaha Chad (04:21.358) Eh. Joel (04:22.013) You Lieven (04:25.659) But back to Panama, that I actually can imagine that he would send some force because what's Panama going to do? Chad (04:33.454) Yeah, I lived right on the Panama Canal in the military. So I mean, I was there as in Fort, Fort Clayton in Panama. And so I got up every morning. I was on the third floor. First thing I saw on my way to the latrine to take a shower was the Panama Canal. The mirror floor is locked, watching big boats come through. And I couldn't believe that we gave it back to them, to be quite frank. So when it happened, it was like, holy shit, man, I can't believe that we're releasing this, although we did. Joel (04:53.107) Yeah. Chad (05:01.58) Right. So we made that decision. It did happen. So being able to go into a sovereign territory, which is what Panama is, and try to reclaim something. And then talking to Denmark about taking Greenland. mean, it just see this is the this is one of the biggest problems that Trump has is he doesn't understand strategy at all. It's all they're all specifically little tactics. Right. And OK, great. China's saying, yeah, please take Greenland. Take take. mean, Joel (05:03.444) Yeah. Chad (05:31.352) try to take the Panama Canal, right? But take Greenland because we're going to go and get Taiwan, which has the biggest chip manufacturer in the world. And guess what? That'll be ours. So I mean, Lieven (05:31.505) course. Lieven (05:38.789) and Lieven (05:42.703) And where is your moral superiority if you take Panama? Of course! Chad (05:45.496) Gone, gone. Well, it's gone now anyway. But I mean, OK, so from a European standpoint, I personally think it's good for Europe long term. And stick with me. As we saw with Russia invading Ukraine, it brought the European Union closer together. Now with economic hardships, the EU countries can't and they won't run to the US rather to each other to hopefully create a stronger, more stable European Union. So remember. The US is literally just 50 different countries. call them states, but there are 50 different countries that have been somewhat united for hundreds of years. Now, the EU is a collection of countries who've been around for thousands of years, but they've never really been united. I mean, you know, Ottoman Empire. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. Lieven (06:30.011) We've mostly, to be honest, we've been enemies. So I mean, you have different languages and it's not the same thing. Chad (06:37.754) It's not the same thing, although it can be the same thing from the standpoint of actually unification and stabilization. That's one of the reasons why you guys are not stable is because you don't look toward each other. You try to isolate in some cases. So if you take a look at the US again, one currency, one language, that's not going to not going to change in the EU, but it's a stabilizing force. And then people will say, well, what about Italy in Greece? Those guys are tanking us. Well, have you heard of Mississippi, Louisiana and fucking Alabama? For God's sakes, we have our own versions of that. Right. So I think this could be if leadership gets, know, gets their head out of the sand, could be good for Europe. And again, I'm just I'm trying to be trying to be positive, trying to be positive. Joel (07:23.676) You certainly will be forced to protect yourselves in a way that you haven't had to do since World War II and whether that creates more of a pre-World War II Europe where you guys kind of lick each other with little suspicion and what's going on over there, or if you guys unite and pull resources and military intelligence, et cetera. I like to think that it's the latter and not the former. Chad (07:28.258) Yeah? Yeah? Lieven (07:29.507) effect. Chad (07:46.433) Yeah, let's hope. Joel (07:47.86) but yeah, the good news, I guess, is you guys in some ways are going to be thrown out into the pool. And if you swim and you all swim together, it could be a very, very good thing, but unquestionably, you're going to spend more on military. you're going to have a, you probably have a lot of cheap Chinese goods that are going to flow into the country. If there's a trade war, with us in China, that's probably tough on local businesses. I know you guys have a real soft spot in your heart for the local businesses, but it'll be a, it'll be a time of change in Europe. Lieven (07:54.801) And I... a lot more. Joel (08:16.934) as it historically always does, we'll either rise to the top or it'll, you know, fall into warfare and, realignment. Lieven (08:25.233) And it's a fact we've been taking advantage of the United States military protection for 50 years, even longer. Chad (08:31.574) It's what the US wanted though too though. I mean, this was very much something we engineered. Yeah. No, of course not. Joel (08:34.854) It is. In return of controlling the oceans. Lieven (08:39.761) cars. And they don't want a strong Europe or they didn't want a strong Europe, why would they? So they were being our big brother and taking care of us and we happily took advantage of it, being naive. But now suddenly, we've got a problem. Joel (08:50.004) Sure. And what that does to entitlements and retirement age and I mean, lot of things are gonna, it's gonna be a wild time in Europe, man. It's gonna be a wild time in Europe. Chad (09:01.486) Well, I tell you, the thing is that Europe was able to, instead of spending on defense, they could spend on healthcare and they could spend on education. So now we take a look at the US, who was much less healthy and dumber than we were many years ago. If you take a look at the actual global standards, US isn't even in the top 10. We've got the best healthcare institutions, the best educational institutions, and yet... Lieven (09:01.616) No. Chad (09:30.744) We're not the most healthy. We're not the smartest, right? So it's one of those things. What's that? Yes. Lieven (09:33.753) But the happy few probably yes. The happy few probably yes. They have access to those health institutions and they probably have access to the best education, even though I don't agree that it's the best. Chad (09:44.718) That's what it is. It's access. It's access. It's access. I 100 % correct. 100 % agree. But I mean, but that that has really hurt the US because we spent so much on defense. We didn't need to spend that much. I mean, give me a fucking break. But we spent so much on defense. Then it cost us health care, education and prosperity to our people. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why they're so pissed off. Lieven (10:07.537) Probably. Chad (10:11.436) People aren't making the wages there. We've got 40 over 40 million people below the poverty line. They're looking for somebody to blame. And one of the things that Trump is really good at is blaming motherfuckers. Right. Well, and me, I didn't touch her. Right. See your horse. I mean, it's just it's like he's always making excuses. And the people who have much weaker fortitude, they're going to go along with it. Lieven (10:22.587) Blaming. So it's all. Joel (10:28.286) Yeah. Lieven (10:29.809) that Joel (10:39.368) popular narrative in the States is why are we sending Ukraine so much money when you have the LA fires and getting so little relief for that. the narrative in the US is more isolationists, more bad Europeans, more bad Asians. And so that's just going to be the theme going forward. Lieven (10:58.415) And I can even understand that. mean, why sending billions to Ukraine? It's not your war. I can agree with that. And you have bigger problems, probably local problems, which should be bigger problems. Chad (11:11.051) What happened during World War II when Sudetenland happened? Leaven, you remember that? Lieven (11:16.579) Everyone said... Okay, okay, okay, but don't do it again. Stop there. We don't want war. We don't want the war. Chad (11:19.374) It's all good, all good, all good, all good. What did Americans end up having to do instead of just spending money? What did we have to do? We lost American lives. So when we forget history and we forget what happened before, the money that we're sending is actually saving American lives. And it's also trying to, again, pull together a much stronger, hopefully, European Union. The thing is, though, when Trump's talking about like, Joel (11:20.126) Peace in our time. Lieven (11:42.928) Yeah. Chad (11:49.184) economics and stuff like that. It's going to be interesting. It's really going to be interesting because war, economy, I mean, there's so many prongs and he has a hard enough time, you know, focusing on one thing. It's going to be the plates aren't going to be spinning. Let's just say that they're all going to be smashed on the floor. Lieven (12:09.425) And the only promise he didn't keep seemed to be ending the war in Ukraine and they won. Now he's talking about six months and I need to talk to Putin. But he also, he gave me the impression he doesn't like Putin that much anymore. He thinks he's a loser anyway. So I think he changed his mind about the whole Putin thing. He used to admire him. He's a decisive making man and he's a powerful leader. And now he thinks... Chad (12:31.842) He'll get back to that. Yeah, he'll get back to that. Joel (12:32.564) Yeah. I think Macron had a really good, uh, I don't know if was an interview or a lecture that he did, but he said, quote, uh, the United States of America has two priorities. The USA first, and that is legitimate and the China issue second. And the European issue is not a geopolitical priority for the coming years or decades. So we're going to be focusing on Asia and the challenges there. You guys are going to have to like. Lieven (12:46.225) Mm. Joel (13:01.18) Spend money on defense and fill in the gaps. Yes. Lieven (13:03.345) we will belgium already belgium already bought 30 f35s or something Chad (13:10.701) Hahaha Lieven (13:13.051) So everything will be fine. Yeah. Joel (13:13.428) I love this. I love the spirit. And there were no, there were no tariffs in Europe that were brought up yesterday. It was only Canada and Mexico. So maybe you guys will be spared some of the, tariff pain. Lieven (13:23.107) Indeed, Chad (13:23.214) Those are probing issues. We'll see how those work and see how they actually impact the economy. The one thing that I thought was interesting is reading through some of the articles that we share in our group. Trump had said that he doesn't want to see any Mercedes-Benz on the street in New York. He's literally like trying to put the press on Germany. So Mercedes-Benz USA employs 1,400 people and that Mercedes-Benz plant in Tuscalooga, Lieven (13:28.186) Yeah. Joel (13:44.414) Mm-hmm. Joel (13:53.63) Tuscaloosa! Chad (13:53.946) Tuscaloosa fuck Alabama. I try to forget that place produces the GLE. It produces a bunch of different automobiles exclusively for the world market in 150 different markets. Right. So that money is being made. Fourteen hundred jobs. Then you take a look at another German company where my cousin actually works at BMW in South Carolina. And as of 2019 the BMW Spartanburg manufacturing plant South Carolina had the highest Lieven (13:58.235) You Chad (14:22.542) production volume of all BMW plants in the world, producing about 1500 vehicles per day and has reportedly 11,000 employees in different locations across the US. Plus the CEO of Ford is driving a Xiaomi. Why would a big three CEO be driving around a Chinese made EV? We're seeing. a lot of different things in industries happening that is just, it's alarming to be quite frank. Joel (14:53.876) Competitive research, obviously, is why he's driving a Chinesey. Chad (14:56.418) Yeah, good luck with that. Good luck with that. Joel (15:00.414) Well, speaking of Tuscaloosa Chad, I hope all those Bama fans enjoyed Ohio State racking up another national title. Chad (15:07.852) topics. it's good to have another night. Joel (15:10.58) All right, too much Trump talk. No, shout outs today. Let's get to a holy shit. got, we got more layoffs. talked about a hay job last time, but blaming blaming challenges due to slowed growth in 2024 employment site. Welcome to the jungle is refocusing on core activities that achieve profitability. That's Latin for Chad (15:18.413) Mm-hmm. Joel (15:34.354) You're fired. think they're launching a voluntary separation plan in France involving 35 roles across several departments and ceasing operations in the Czech Republic. The company says such measures will allow the company to concentrate on high potential markets. you guessed it, the UK and the USA while innovating in recruitment, particularly with AI Chad, you can have anything you want, but you're better not take it from me. What are your thoughts on welcome to the jungle? Chad (16:02.914) So here's a quote over the past decade. We've explored numerous initiatives while these ventures have been enriching. Some have taken us away from our core mission, matching the right talents with the right companies. That's one of the biggest problems that I see startups having on a daily basis. They just don't have focus. And when they have new initiatives that pop up and let's just say a company comes in and says, will you build this for me? will pay you, right? Well, you can do that, but you're going to be using resources that could be more, you know, across the market with different brands instead of just one brand and you're putting all your eggs in one basket. We saw this with the programmatic side of the house with Amazon and Amazon went to one company and they bought that hell out of pay per click and then they pulled it all away and gave it to somebody else. And that first programmatic company went into dire straits. Same kind of shit happens, right? You can't put all your eggs in one basket. Number one. Number two, you have to stay focused. Then I go to YouTube just to kind of, you know, get more of a flavor of what these guys are up to. And they're talking about the UK and they're talking about the US and yada yada yada all their shit on YouTube's in fucking French. I mean, I not that I hate French, but for God sakes, at least you can have a French channel. UK channel, a US channel, but if you're trying to get into those markets, you better speak the fucking language. And for some reason, they're just not doing it. Joel (17:36.178) Yeah, yeah, no doubt. Joel (17:41.022) So this is definitely not a paradise city for some employees this past week. Sorry. I just couldn't, could not, could not, could not. What a, what a dumb name for a company. Like let's, let's just launch, some sugar on me.com and make it a job board. what you would, you got, you degenerates would like that obviously. or some shirt. Lieven (17:46.976) Nice one Joel, nice one. Chad (17:47.95) Not for my Michelle. Not for my Michelle. Chad (17:58.158) I do like that. I do like that. Lieven (18:01.179) Don't you cry tonight, Joel, Joel (18:08.198) So, so these guys raised 54 million. Lieven (18:09.913) Are you talking about untr-menschen now? Degenerates? It's spreading the whole fascist thing in the US. Anyway, sorry, continue. Chad (18:16.91) Ha ha ha! Joel (18:18.182) Again with the fascism, Levin. Again with the fascism. Lieven (18:20.047) Nah. Chad (18:21.038) It's just out there in plain sight. He can't do anything but talk about it. Joel (18:25.042) I know I'm very scared for Europe's opinion on the, the Trump administration. they raised a bunch of money. launched about 10 years ago. They raised most of the money in 2019, 54 million. made some acquisitions like they bought. I'm sure Paul Forster, former indeed a founder enjoyed that acquisition, but it was probably not the best acquisition you could make. they have probably hit a ceiling in France. They focused really. Chad (18:43.01) Yeah. Joel (18:54.738) really laser focused on France and it's a tough market. So if you've hit a ceiling in France, what the hell do you do? Well, you shut down Czech Republic, which probably was not a big market to begin with. I don't know if that was an acquisition or, or Joey bag of donuts had an office in the Czech Republic. So let's open up an office there. but that was dumb. Chad (19:08.354) Yeah. Joel (19:15.764) Your assets that you have in the UK and the US in comparison to France is kind of stupid. They have 697 associates in France and they have 133 in the UK and only 132 in the US. So this seems like a smart move to me. Let's shut down the things that aren't working or where we've hit kind of a ceiling or where we've saturated the market. And this is going to be a big story in 2025. It's companies in Europe. that are coming to the U S because that's where the dollars are. That's where the growth is. You're going to see a lot of these companies, try to salvage their business by coming to America. And this was simply, let's lay off a few people in France. Let's focus more on the UK and the U S, good luck with that. The history of job boards that have tried that is not very great, but, Hey, with the name like welcome to the jungle, what could possibly go wrong? I'd love to be on one of those sales calls by the. Chad (20:07.832) Shun-un-un-un-un-un-un-un-un-un-ease. Joel (20:11.09) Welcome to the what? You're with who? Lieven (20:13.617) Hello, it is I from Welcome to the Jungle. Joel (20:15.613) Leave in your thoughts. Chad (20:21.55) What do you think, Levin? So French companies buying Czech companies buying Ottawa's UK, was it not? Yeah. Joel (20:29.36) Ottawa's UK, which might've been their strategy to come to the UK. but auto was a brand like that was a startup. it's all millennial warm and fuzzy. It's like, kind of, what kind of focus do you have? Is it environmental? Is it career growth? Is it life work life balance? So it's very warm and fuzzy Gen Z, millennial job board. I don't know. It's Chad (20:33.614) Yeah. That was not a great brand. Chad (20:51.256) Are they on your &A board, Cleveland? Joel (20:53.885) Yeah. Lieven (20:54.831) No, no, no. Lieven (20:59.057) No, but to be fair I... Joel (21:01.224) You don't want the jungle to come to the house, house of HR. Lieven (21:04.049) We've got plenty of jungle, believe me. Sometimes I feel the monkey in the jungle. But anyways, I don't really know them that well. They've been around for 10 years, think. I founded in 2015 somewhere. But from time to time I hear about them, but I don't really know them. I never worked with them and I don't think any of our companies has them as a partnership. during the past 10 years, they're... Chad (21:16.974) Mm-hmm. Lieven (21:33.603) Situation has changed drastically. I mean, there has been a lot of consolidation going around the lot more competition the Way people are hiring is changing very fast has become a very technical very professional and I think the biggest companies Are the very creative companies are going to win and and I might be wrong because I really don't know them, but well but I don't think they're one of both and I feel after 10 years they need to change drastically or just close down in a and check here and in France and et cetera, and maybe do something else. Chad (22:06.264) Sounds like it's gonna be a shuddering of more than that soon if they don't get their shit together. Lieven (22:11.307) No, I'm afraid so. Joel (22:12.296) Yeah. mean, they, they tout, about 4.7 million people that use the site each month. I think that's a little bit of an exaggeration. That's a little bit of, you know, eat, eat your own dog food. But, we know that the job board business is a hard business. I mean, we talk about the public companies on a regular basis, the same companies that aren't public have to be feeling the same pressure where it's talent.com. Lieven (22:19.921) Hmm. Lieven (22:27.377) It's hard to check. Joel (22:39.602) Welcome to the jungle job and talent. Like they're all, think being challenged in this environment. We'll see how they come out. Chad (22:45.048) It almost feels like these these guys are trying to be a muse. And I mean, you know, the muse in the US where it's more media, it's more media, but it is job board and helping companies, you know, pretty much create their own portfolio of of of content that goes along with the job, yada, yada, yada. Yeah. And I don't know. I just I think as a creative agency, those are great. But unfortunately, you already have a bunch of creative agencies that are already there that have huge portfolios. Joel (22:50.056) Yeah, Warm and fuzzy. Chad (23:14.752) So, and there are all these other job boards that are out there in the first place that the agencies don't need to buy. I mean, they don't need to own, right? They just buy. So it seems incredibly redundant, unfortunately, especially in the US. They're coming to the US, a much different market than the UK or Europe overall. I think that's a huge mistake. Joel (23:21.811) Yeah. Joel (23:32.105) Yeah. I was trying to remember Chad, if I had ever seen welcome to the jungle at a conference and I don't think I have, have you? All right. All right. Chad (23:39.342) I don't think so, no. Lieven (23:41.604) No, me neither. Joel (23:46.384) Alright, no more jungle for us. Let's take a quick break and we'll play a little Hoodie-a-rather. Chad (23:46.509) Not this time. Chad (23:56.714) Okay, did you see the picture that I sent to you from the street food place here in Portugal? Yeah, it's called I poppy. Joel (24:02.958) the I poppy. Yes, I did. I'm sorry. It was, it was too early in the morning for me to comment. What it was it a product. got food food truck called I poppy and it was a Y poppy. All right. I love it. Just, just, just for that. I'm to play it again. All right, boys, you know, the game let's play a little who'd you rather. This is where I talk about two startups that have raised money recently and you guys. Chad (24:11.232) I know it was just a food, food truck, food truck. Yep. Street food. Yep. Hi, Poppy. Lieven (24:22.673) You Joel (24:32.104) compare and contrast and tell us who you'd rather. That's right. Who'd you write? Let's get to our first contest and it's Mackie, a Paris based conversational AI solution. They've secured 26 million euros, a lot of money in series a funding led by blossom capital. Mackie's AI agents promise to automate 80 % of the HR process, reducing time to hire by three X and cutting turnover by 20%. The funding will help drive global. expansion and you guessed it, US market growth. is Mackie. Next up and in this corner, have Talent Mapper, a London based HR tech company. They've secured 2 million pounds in funding. The company's platform is trained on 675 million career histories to analyze employee skills, aiding and reducing recruitment and training costs and promoting equal career opportunities. The investment will be used to enhance the platform. Chad (25:04.096) Mmm. Joel (25:30.022) expand the team and target new sectors like financial and professional services. is Talent Mapper. So Chad, you're up. Who'd you rather Mackie or Talent Mapper? Chad (25:39.476) I'm going to start with talent mapper. So internal mobility, strategic workforce planning, mentoring, succession planning and career mapping. They're all, all immensely important in building teams and stabilizing a company's talent lifecycle period. Period. The problem is that I don't believe most companies think that any of these are top tier problems for them. because they are sucked into the minutiae of the day to day instead of being in a leader's mindset, right? Not to mention a lot of consulting companies do this anyway. So they're just gonna go ahead and push it off, project-based stuff. Why do I need a platform for that? Mackey, on the other hand, are focused on a buzzword that's stronger than AI right now. Wanna take a crack at it? You wanna take a crack at it? Agentic, agentic, right? Lieven (26:23.375) Yep. Yay! Joel (26:27.346) I can't say. Chad (26:28.726) Why? Because the AI will be bundled into a specific area of expertise, into agents per se, who perform specific duties alongside their human counterparts. So imagine a recruiter interacting with the candidate and then switching their disposition in the CRM or the ATS. An agent can then take over and start online, you know, the on-site interview scheduling or even the onboarding process, right? That stuff, that gets companies hot and heavy and a little wet, right? They want that. I want that. Who'd I'd rather? I'd rather me some Mackie. Mackie all day, baby. Joel (27:11.508) All right. That's one for Mackie. Uh, I'm a little confused about what Mackie does. I'm glad you sort of encapsulated everything and framed it for me. Uh, they say on their website that they're a quote conversational AI agent for enterprises. And then they go on to really just talk about how they're an assessment tool for employers. So I'm not quite sure what they are. I thought maybe they're poor man's paradox. And then I think, maybe they're like a test gorilla kind of thing. Um, I think the confusion is a bad thing for marketing. And frankly, their marketing and the lack of focus for me in that space says a lot. Their copyright date on their footer is 2022. Like I know that's a small thing, but if your tech team can't update the date for three years on the footer of your website, to me, that is a symptom of a bigger problem that your tech team sucks and or they don't care. and or both. They have super few followers on all social medias. They haven't posted on X since 2022. somebody, the lights are on, but nobody's home in Mackey from what I can tell. So let's go to, let's go to Talent Mapper. I will admit they're both on a really good wave. Agente, Commerce, like they're all the buzzwords at Mackey are there. I also think internal mobility is a nice little wave to be on. Companies are really concerned about Uh, workers being engaged, new research, uh, a new study from Gallup came out saying that only 31 % of workers are engaged. 17 % of workers are actively disengaged. I'm not sure what that means. Are they just stealing the post-it notes on purpose? Uh, I don't know. Um, but, companies like recruiting is expensive. Companies hate it. They, they want to get more out of the people that they have. They want to keep the people they have. want higher retention. So I think talent mapper. Lieven (28:52.432) You Chad (28:53.87) They're taking naps. Joel (29:06.43) does tap into that. think it's a pretty good name, talentmapper.com. It kind of says what it does. It's a bigger market. You have more people concerned about their current workforce than they are maybe recruiting. I think there's going to be greater demand to keep the employees that they already have. And lastly, a small thing, but there's just more attentiveness to the details at TalentMapper. And to me, that says a lot. So for me, I'm going to go TalentMapper. As my hoot you rather, which means leaving is going to break a tie. What you got leaving. Lieven (29:36.901) Hmm. Chad (29:37.383) I gotta make a note real quick to change the date in our footer. Go ahead. Joel (29:42.194) We don't have 32 million euros in the bank. If we did, I promise the date would be... Chad (29:46.188) I just said I gotta make a note. Lieven (29:49.841) But maybe if we, if the three of us would put all the money together now. Anyways. Joel (29:56.18) 2022 is the foot, come on man. Sorry. Lieven (30:00.369) But you said they weren't posting on X since 2022. That's a good thing, not posting on X. Joel (30:06.61) All their social suck. just, I just pointed out X. LinkedIn's all right, but they should just focus on LinkedIn. Like most startups, like just pick one and make it, make it good. Chad (30:10.764) His favorite. Lieven (30:10.821) No. No. I'm- I'm going to, by the way, leave X today since the whole show yesterday X for me is it will be I'm an X user but Joel (30:25.982) Well, XX user, he's double X, not quite triple X, not triple X. Chad (30:26.286) And xx. Lieven (30:29.541) Double X, double X. Na na, naughty, But I'm with chat on this one. I think Talent Mapper might be the best company. You're totally right, y'all. But in the end, it's all about the right momentum. And agentics today are where you need to be. And if Mackie is able to do what they're claiming, then I'd rather be in Mackie's camp. And by the way, I'm working on the Chad (30:29.55) Join the club, Levin. It's warm out here. It's warm out here. Joel (30:34.012) Peace. Lieven (30:58.065) Recruitment Congress for 2026. We talked about it. I think Agendix will be the main thing. It will be the main team. I'm digging into it right now. Chad (31:00.642) Ooh, say more. Yeah. Joel (31:04.308) Chad (31:08.462) That's right. Yes! Joel (31:10.332) That's two votes for Mackie one for talent mapper. All right. Let's get to, let's get, let's get everyone as a winner. Everyone is a winner for sure. All right. Let's get to a sick leave detectives. it's not quite the Gestapo since we have a Nazi theme today. but Germany's rising sick leave is straining its economy. The increase in absenteeism, major problem apparently, has boosted business for private investigators. Chad (31:13.294) Everyone's a winner on chat and cheese. Lieven (31:16.482) Yeah. Chad (31:27.928) Not yet. Joel (31:39.838) who check on suspected fraudulent sick leaves. Chad, as someone who only gets sick when Levin invites us to the Moulin Rouge in Paris, what are your thoughts? Should we side story that one? Chad (31:47.981) I know. Lieven (31:48.024) Yes, chat. Chad (31:53.642) yeah, we should definitely side story. Okay, everybody. So we were unleashed Paris. And yeah, couple of nights I probably went too hard. And people were getting sick at the end of that. I think my buddy Chris long actually had gotten sick too. And we spend way too much time together. That's a problem. But yeah, no, I got sick and I didn't get a chance to go to the Moulin Rouge, which I love. I love I think I heard land with leaving was crying in the corner because because I did I just Lieven (31:55.921) You Joel (32:21.662) haha Chad (32:23.212) But yes, I'll be there next time no matter what leaving, but I didn't want to get you sick. I didn't want to get you sick. Lieven (32:24.785) But your charming, your charming wife did come. Yeah, so we didn't miss you that much. Chad (32:31.288) She's amazing. mean, she, she represents that. It's hard not to, hard not to miss me when she's around for God's sake. Lieven (32:41.137) You Joel (32:41.288) If Chad is, if Chad is passing on tits and ass, he's really sick. Like he's not, he's not faking it, but, this is apparently a pretty big issue in Germany. Chad, any of your thoughts on absenteeism gone awry? Chad (32:45.87) You Lieven (32:45.999) Yeah. Chad (32:54.098) Yeah, so this is a very interesting topic because nobody sees the Germans as a lazy society. I mean, it's quite the contrary. And you can always find fringe cases of a person who once stayed home to finish home renovations that will live on an office lore forever. Right. And but but I mean, these are these are fringe cases to for the most part. But the article makes pretty much the great sick seem like a concerted effort. But Klaus. Reinhardt, you can't get more German than that, Klaus Reinhardt, president of the German Medical Association, sees increased infections as the main reason for the record number of sick people. Quote, playing sick does not happen on a large scale, end quote. So what Klaus is actually saying here, paraphrasing kids, is that these people are not colluding in the great sick movement, right? So plus, Joel (33:47.636) Ugh. Chad (33:49.802) In the German culture, they understand the math of being sick, which we don't get in the U.S. If you're sick and you come into the office, you probably infect two to three more people, maybe even more. Right. Well, that makes instead of one person out sick, you got four or five, who knows how many that are out. Right. So Germans are encouraged to stay home as it's best for the business. I was reading one article where one company gave their employees six Joel (34:08.787) Mm-hmm. Chad (34:19.764) weeks of sick sick leave six weeks. So this is something that's common and they want them to get the job done. They want them to get their sickness out and they want them to get back to work. So I think this is kind of like a confluence of just shit and things happening in Germany. Maybe we'll call it the German flu. I don't know. Yeah. Joel (34:40.756) Slow news day, maybe. Slow news day. And you wonder why Germany's in a recession. For God's sakes, we've got absenteeism run amok in Germany. So German workers average, they average 15.1 days of sick leave last year. That's up from 11.1 in 2021. That's a study from DeSantis. Lieven (34:42.661) Hmm. Joel (35:06.386) You apparently can get a note from your doctor over the phone, which apparently is automated in some places. So we can't be shocked that people are taking sick days when all you have to do is say like, does is mine. I, Algon is whatever I'm trying. I'm trying to do German, but can I said something about my eyes? so, it's no shock that people are abusing the system. I don't know if it's a government system. I don't know if it's just the healthcare. mean, maybe leaving who's a neighbor. Lieven (35:15.601) Thank you. Lieven (35:23.801) Hehehehe Yes? Joel (35:36.328) can shed some light on this, it's obviously going to be a thing if you make it so easy and give people so many sick days through the year like Chad mentioned. Leven, what's your take on, yes, and German should be the last ones. If Germany's falling apart, there's no hope for Europe. Lieven (35:53.233) But thank God Spain and Luxembourg, Spain and what is it, Italy are taking over now. They're leading us. Portugal indeed. No, but I agree with Joel and I checked the surrounding countries, number of sex days in the surrounding countries and Germany actually is high. If you look at the Netherlands, there's about 12 sex days on average. And Luxembourg, did you even know Luxembourg is a country? Do you know Luxembourg? Okay. Joel (35:57.884) In Greece, yeah. Chad (35:58.158) Portugal, no, Portugal. Joel (36:21.278) Yes. Lieven (36:22.309) Luxembourg is one of the smallest countries. Very rich, mostly bankers. Anyway, so they have about 11, six days. So 15 is, if you look at it, 15 is a lot. But then again, indeed, it's like socially unacceptable these days to sneeze during a meeting. So when you're feeling ill, you are obliged to stay at home. It's a corporate policy. So the moment you got a cold 10 years ago, Chad (36:23.33) very rich. Yeah. Lieven (36:50.989) Nobody would stay at home for having a cold. You would just take your handkerchief and feel miserable during the meeting. But now people stay at home. And of course, it's kind of easy to stay at home. It's fun. And people got used to it, staying, feeling a bit ill and staying at home. But there is, it's not only that, there is also, and that's factor is long COVID and a significant part of the population actually still isn't as they used to be. They aren't feeling as they used to be. Apparently it's a lot and I don't have numbers about that. But there are plenty of reasons why the sex days are getting up. But in Germany, they're getting up fast. And the weird thing is, if there's one country in Europe where people really are into privacy, then it's Germany. People will get really angry if you take your phone and make a movie on the streets and someone is, you're filming accidentally someone, they got angry. Joel (37:38.238) Mm-hmm. Lieven (37:48.187) They don't like it. So privacy is a very big thing. So sending a private detective must be kind of the biggest insult you can get. So I think for a company doing that, it's like saying, okay, we want to fire you, but we give you the opportunity to, to leave yourself. I don't think people would appreciate it. Definitely not in Germany. So to all those companies, I don't think our companies would do this, but I'll check. Joel (37:49.47) Hmm. Chad (37:55.716) yeah. Joel (38:13.15) Germany is Germany is out of control and what better way to end the show than a joke With a German bit of flavor. Alright guys, what do you call an angry German? What do you call an angry German? Chad (38:27.148) German? Joel (38:30.164) A sauerkraut. A sauerkraut. Boys as always, it's been fun. We out. Lieven (38:31.665) great. Chad (38:38.67) We out. Lieven (38:39.096) Way out.

In this jam-packed episode, Chad and Cheese dissect the hottest topics shaping the world of work. From the end of resumes as we know them  to the uphill battle for MBA grads, they dive into how AI is redefining job hunting. Plus, they break down the strategic moves behind Shaker’s acquisition of Jobadx and DHI Group’s restructuring shake-up. And it doesn’t stop there: Mark Zuckerberg’s latest Meta drama, the ripple effects of a potential TikTok shutdown, and what it all means for job seekers, creators, and the workforce of tomorrow. Don’t miss this candid conversation packed with insights, shout-outs, and hard-hitting truths about the future of work. 🌟 PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:32.116) clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right. Hey boys and girls, it's the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel, MAGA makeover cheeseman. Chad (00:41.523) This is Chad, video killed the resume star, so watch. J.T. O'Donnell (00:45.794) And I'm JT, what the heck did I get myself into, O'Donnell? Chad (00:49.247) That's a question. That's a good question. Joel (00:50.228) On this episode on this episode shaker ring things up Zuck gets intense and is twit talk in our future. Let's do this J.T. O'Donnell (00:51.118) you Chad (00:59.007) Hello? Joel (01:03.838) JT in the house. Doodle. You little devil. You little devil. Showing me, look, showing me. Chad (01:04.319) Uhhhh Chad (01:10.547) Ha Joel (01:15.012) He's showing me the beer. It's happy hour in Portugal. Freezing my tootsies off in central Indiana. Love it, love it, love it. JT, welcome. Welcome to the show, welcome to the show. Welcome back. Guess who's back, back again. Yeah. Chad (01:15.271) J.T. O'Donnell (01:19.074) He's hydrating. He's hydrating. Chad (01:23.635) Ooh. J.T. O'Donnell (01:27.032) Same. Chad (01:29.161) Welcome back. J.T. O'Donnell (01:30.232) Thank you guys. It's good to be here. Happy 2025. Hey everyone. Chad (01:33.791) I'm saying, real quick though, I gotta say your 2025 death of the resume, video takes the lead on LinkedIn, everybody has a hot take, which I think it's awesome, right? Because the resume has been dying for years, but we've seen tech really gain some momentum and speed. yeah, but everybody has a hot take on that. So good prediction for 2025, love it. Joel (01:39.559) It's hot. J.T. O'Donnell (01:48.536) forever. Joel (01:59.144) Money prediction, money prediction. it. Love the t-shirt as well. J.T. O'Donnell (01:59.95) Thank you. Chad (02:02.163) Money! Chad (02:05.971) Well, this one's for Joel though. Joel, I have it on good authority that you've already pre-ordered something and I'd like you to roll that beautiful bean footage so that you can show everybody. J.T. O'Donnell (02:08.396) Thank Joel (02:19.764) It took me a second to know what you're talking about. All right, let's go to what Chad's little joke is here. Chad (02:22.013) you know what I'm talking about. Chad (02:28.435) Highly realistic. She looks high. That's what you said. J.T. O'Donnell (02:34.254) exactly what I thought, 100 % what I saw, I was like. J.T. O'Donnell (02:44.651) The face is gonna drive me nuts. I just would be annoyed looking at somebody that has that look, that face. Joel (02:50.708) That's how my wife looks at me. I don't know if there's any connection. Chad (02:51.005) That face. Which is why Joel's already pre-ordered for. J.T. O'Donnell (02:52.974) No. Warning. Joel (03:01.168) I've ordered, I've pre-ordered for, for Fembots and you get a, you get an annual subscription to Bluetooth. so I'm set, man. I'm set. My 25 is going to be lit everybody. J.T. O'Donnell (03:06.039) Ugh. Mm-mm. J.T. O'Donnell (03:14.561) Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (03:18.296) I don't know. The whole thing is disturbing. It's disturbing to watch. It's really disturbing. Yep. Chad (03:19.025) Okay. Yeah. Cut it. Cut it. Cut it. Cut it. Cut it. If you're not watching on YouTube, you just missed the animatronic little blonde that looks like she's high and apparently in need of some Bluetooth. Joel (03:20.18) You Joel (03:37.636) So JT, you're not threatened by the Fembots yet? You're not thinking they're going to take your job? J.T. O'Donnell (03:41.9) No, not really worried about. I'm serious, it was annoying to watch. I don't think I could stand in front of a bot that goes, you know, back and forth like that. That was weird. Chad (03:51.103) It's weird. Joel (03:52.212) But now we all remember the seventies. I mean, we've gone from blow up, you know, dolls to this. I'd call that progress if nothing else. you know, another 50 years, I don't know. think our species. Chad (03:59.507) Yes. I'd call that progress. J.T. O'Donnell (04:06.328) Where was the guy version? Why is it a lady? Can I just ask like, why is it a gal? Where's the guy? Chad (04:09.289) Yeah. Joel (04:10.696) The guy version sits there and listens to you and says, uh-huh, yeah, that's frustrating. Chad (04:15.967) And all you really need for that is an app. J.T. O'Donnell (04:20.12) while flexing, just promise me he's flexing when he's doing it, right? Like, eh, that's it, okay, well then when I see that, I might change my mind. Chad (04:23.731) The entire time. Yes, yes. Joel (04:23.826) Yeah, yeah, the eight. Chad (04:29.752) He's still gonna look like he's high, just so you know, because I mean, think that's actually one of the things that sells the animatronic robot. Joel (04:33.544) Much again, again, like the seventies, it's going to be a hundred, like girly mags to like the one play girl that's for women. There's going to be a thousand fem bots for the one, like male, male bots. J.T. O'Donnell (04:33.717) Hmm. Chad (04:45.852) What Joel's trying to say is there's not much of a market for the male versions. Let's just say that. Joel (04:50.644) What I'm saying is, is we are dead as a species. We are screwed. As soon as this thing is lifelike, we're screwed. We're dead. Remember the bill Burr caught, you know, like, there's no way this game can get any better. wait. Yes it can. Sorry. Jeez. This is going south quickly. So let's, let's get to some shout outs. JT, what you got? Chad (05:00.521) Yeah? Yeah? Chad (05:08.485) Anyway, shout outs, shout outs, there we go. J.T. O'Donnell (05:13.486) I get to this week, so I'll start with my first one and it's to Jerry Crispin. When you did the interview, it warmed my heart. He's an OG. He nerds out on his craft. He has no problem telling everybody that he's been in it 50 years and he's still so freaking curious about our industry, has a complete growth mindset about our industry. And I don't know, I just love the way he talks about it. It was a joy to hear. was walking the dog, cheering him on and it just, Jerry, I'm a fan. Chad (05:17.501) Yay! Joel (05:22.036) Mm-hmm. Chad (05:22.089) Yes. Yes. Chad (05:36.318) Yes. J.T. O'Donnell (05:42.936) That was awesome. Chad (05:43.785) Curiosity is his superpower, no question, no question. J.T. O'Donnell (05:45.944) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Joel (05:46.558) Yeah, and behind the scenes, he still emailed us this week saying, I'd really love to hear your guys' thoughts on X, right? Not the company X, but just a subject, whatever subject. So yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (05:54.188) Yeah, see, Chad (05:56.989) Yeah, things lined up. He's like, you guys should talk about this this year. I mean, it's so great because he's not just a part of the discussion. He is pushing the discussion. I love it. Still, still. J.T. O'Donnell (06:00.898) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (06:06.382) Exactly. Yeah. Joel (06:07.602) Yeah. Literally 20 years ago, was a much younger entrepreneur launching stuff in this space. And I knew about Jerry in the nineties when he was writing career crossroads. And he literally called me to say I was, he liked what I was doing. And it was literally like God had called me from down, from above. Like, really? You're Jerry, you're calling me. Like it was awesome. So yeah. Chad (06:19.495) huh. Chad (06:30.207) Joel, this is Jerry. J.T. O'Donnell (06:31.512) Thank Joel (06:33.556) He does have a God type thing going. of windstreaks, my shout out goes out to Doug Berg. Industry people will know Doug. He's the man behind Techies, Jobs to Web, Webclip Drop, which eventually became Zap Info acquired by Indeed. By the way, our first ever sponsor was Webclip Drop. So we have Doug to thank for this show. Anyway, he's... Chad (06:35.635) He does. That's great. That's great. Chad (06:43.475) Dougie. Fresh. Chad (06:56.521) Yeah. Doug and Peter, Joel (07:02.164) He's now chairman head of whatever company called Match2. It's a little bit of a mystery, but looks like you're embedding matching stuff into your ATS or your HCM solution. So I'm certainly going to be on the watch for Match2 and what they're doing. Who's involved with this and who's helping, Doug? Well, a few names like Elaine Orler, Jason Costello, and Chris Forman to name a few. I mentioned Techies, and I was curious because Chad (07:18.077) Mmm, love it Chad (07:24.585) Mm-hmm. Joel (07:32.052) Chad and I are around in the 90s anyway, and this was a, this is an old Techies commercial from the 90s, Chad. You'll enjoy this. Check, check this out. Chad (07:38.155) shit. Chad (08:07.327) you Joel (08:10.206) blast from the past. How hard do think it was to find a woman to be in that commercial? And do you think she was actually a techie? We need a woman. We need a woman back in the nineties. Not a lot of women. What you got, Chad? Chad (08:10.64) They don't know what I do. J.T. O'Donnell (08:11.661) Ahem. J.T. O'Donnell (08:15.607) my god! Chad (08:18.687) Back in the 90s. Definitely back in the 90s. Yeah, so friend of the show, big shout out to ex EEOC commissioner, Keith Sonderling. The guy deserves a velvet jacket by now. He's been on the show so much. Shout out number one for baby number two, which actually arrived during the holidays. Congrats, Papa. Congrats, Papa Keith. And number two for then gaining the nomination for Joel (08:38.548) Mmm. Chad (08:48.051) Deputy Secretary of Labor. So if confirmed as Deputy Secretary, Labor Secretary, Keith would be tasked with overseeing the DOL's nearly 15,000 employees and the agency's day-to-day operations. It's a good thing to know that we actually have somebody, possibly with some sanity, that's going to be on the hill for the next administration. So we can watch the circus and hopefully have a great ringmaster to watch as well. Joel (09:17.8) Do you think his association with us will have any bearing on how he does with the Senate? Chad (09:22.719) it's one of the reasons why I got in. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Joel (09:28.372) Good, good, good stuff. All right, JT, your final shout out for us. J.T. O'Donnell (09:34.617) So my final one is for Harvard MBA students. Yeah, so the study just came out that almost one in four of them can't find a job. That's the highest it's been in 10 years. Harvard's MBA program is the number one out of 98 schools ranked. 2022, to give you an idea, 10 % of those students weren't finding jobs. It's now up to 23 % in climbing. Chad (09:47.359) Wow. Mm-hmm. Joel (09:52.468) Mm-hmm. Chad (09:59.625) Whoo! J.T. O'Donnell (10:00.578) Just want to give people an idea. If you think the job market's bad, I know, I really want you to feel sorry for those MBA students, those Harvard MBAs. It's a job economy problem. the reality is that these people paid a lot of money for that degree, for that advanced degree. We talk about ROI, you're getting an MBA, return on investment. I don't think they're seeing it for the kind of money they're paying. And one in four are not going to get a job. The article goes on to say that, Joel (10:07.718) Is this a Harvard problem or a job economy problem or both? Okay. Chad (10:18.899) Yeah. Yeah. Joel (10:26.515) as well. J.T. O'Donnell (10:30.392) They're all taking lower paying jobs that they could have got without MBAs in order to get into the workforce. Chad (10:33.609) So it's really interesting because my daughter just moved from Budapest to Brighton so she could get her MBA. She's the youngest one in the class because in Europe, they want you to have experience before you go into the school. Now in the US, what do we do? It's a cash game, right? It's a cash grab. So all we do is we push these kids. like, undergrad, that's great. Now it's time to go get that MBA. It's all bullshit, right? And all the reason why we're turning these kids out with no experience and great education is all down to money. And unfortunately, it has nothing to do with their money and their ability to actually go and get into a six figure job right out of the gate, which they should be able to. But guess what? As Americans, we're focused on getting as much cash as we can out of the consumer as opposed to doing the right thing. And shout out to Kennedy who is the youngest in her MBA class in Brighton. So yeah. Joel (11:35.302) As someone with a kid entering college, I appreciate the commentary on that. Chad (11:40.261) So the thing that these young adults can do though is they can sign up for free stuff. They can go to ChadCheese.com slash free. What can you win? Look at that t-shirt that JT has on. Gorgeous, form-fitting. Yeah, it's like a hug from Chad and Cheese. That is provided by our friends over at Erin App. It's beautiful, feels good, gonna love it. Bourbon barrel. Joel (11:46.603) yes. Joel (11:54.002) Mm-hmm. Joel (12:04.884) Feels good. Chad (12:06.647) aged syrup from our boys up north from key yora that's right key yora bourbon bay i mean if you're have belgian waffles you're gonna have bourbon barrel aged syrup beer craft beer from aspen tech labs that's right lands on your front door along with possibly two bottles of whiskey two bottles of high class whiskey from van hacke and if it is your boat day then you could win some rum with Joel (12:08.358) you Joel (12:22.002) Hmm. Chad (12:36.223) Plum. Go to ChadCheese.com slash free. Register to win. Mm-hmm. Joel (12:43.782) That's right, Chad. Another trip around the sun for listeners, Jill Patterson, Tom Bertels, Paul Drake, Chris Gross Jean, Chanel Nelson, Jenny Olson, Michael O'Dell, G.J. Vosdorp, Joanne Lockwood, Rita Dushi, Roy Shoemaker, and Chris the Love Muscle Russell. All celebrating another trip around the sun. J.T. O'Donnell (12:44.118) Sounds good. Chad (12:49.427) Whoo! Chad (12:55.048) you J.T. O'Donnell (12:59.114) Mmm. Chad (13:02.493) Wow. J.T. O'Donnell (13:09.496) He's gonna kill you for that. Yeah, sorry Chris. Yeah. Chad (13:10.899) Which, no, he loves it. Everybody else is like, no, don't think. His wife's like, stop it, stop it. Yes, almost. Joel (13:13.682) He loves it. Joel (13:17.812) He loves it almost as much as Chad likes traveling. Almost, almost. Where are you going to be this month, Chad? And where are we going soon? Chad (13:27.623) Well, in early February, just a couple of weeks down the road, I am headed to Madrid. It's a Smart Recruiters, wait a minute, yep, Smart Recruiters, all hands events. There's gonna be a simulcast that we have, a gala, and whatever the hell else they wanna throw at me. So we're gonna have a good time in Madrid, coming back to the United States under protest, but I'm coming back. Transform is happening, that's right kids, The win in Las Vegas, March 17th through the 19th. Can't wait to get there. If you've never been to Transform, you got to check out Transform. It's a different feel. Yes, it's in Vegas. We always go to Vegas. There are a bunch of conferences in Vegas, but the win and Transform kind of put a spin on it. So really dig that. What do you think, Joel? Joel (14:10.676) Mm-hmm. Joel (14:20.222) about Transform. I dig the win. I dig Vegas. It's our first trip of the year. So we're kind of itching to get back out. Maybe not you because you're trekking Europe, but it's nice for me to get out of the cold, go to Vegas. Great people. We had a blast last year on stage with some great companies, talk and shop. We're looking hopefully to do some cool events, little cool extracurricular activities. Probably more on that later. But yeah, I'm I'm a fan. We are choosing quality over quantity a little bit more this year. And this is a quality conference for sure. Chad (14:57.801) What about you, JT? Have you been to this one yet? J.T. O'Donnell (15:00.142) not been, but I think I want go to Vegas for St. Patrick's Day. Well, I mean, did they plan that one right or what? You know, I don't know. Can I tag on last minute? I think I'm in. That sounds fun. Chad (15:05.439) Doesn't suck, doesn't suck, yeah. Joel (15:07.331) You Uh-huh. What's your... Chad (15:13.321) I know some people who can get you passes, I think. Joel (15:17.054) to the show. Yeah, not the Michael Jackson musical. Or maybe the Carrot Top Show. We can get you into that. We might know a few people to get you into that. yeah, maybe we'll see everyone in Vegas. Who knows? Chad (15:18.321) Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (15:21.163) Ha Chad (15:21.833) Well, maybe. Who knows? J.T. O'Donnell (15:26.469) You Chad (15:32.539) Topics! Joel (15:35.78) All right, this is becoming a habit. got some to talk about. DHI Group is restructuring separating dice and clearance jobs and cutting its workforce by 8 % with $2.2 million in severance costs. But wait, there's more. Paul Farnsworth will now lead Dice while Alex Schilt heads Clearance Jobs. The move aims to... Chad (15:40.148) Layoffs? J.T. O'Donnell (15:40.334) Hmm. Joel (16:01.812) Save four to $6 million annually and that'll all come together by February of this year. Wall Street got a bit of a boner on the news. The stock is up roughly 25 % in the last month. Chad, your thoughts on the restructuring, the right sizing going on at Dice and Clearance jobs. Chad (16:22.313) I love how you talk about the stock being up 25%. What's the current share price, Joel? Joel (16:27.572) It's like 183 or something. Yeah, it's 233. 175, yeah. Chad (16:28.735) It's $2.33, $2.33. yeah, pretty much a junk stock. Anyway, anyway, DHI Group stock price currently at $2.33 a share. You gotta love hearing about failing CEOs getting a free pass while cutting heads of the hardworking employees. DICE has been the proverbial anchor around clearance jobs and DHI's neck for years. J.T. O'Donnell (16:40.238) Thank Joel (16:40.743) It's not Nvidia, for sure. Chad (16:57.607) Art the Dart Zeal failed to run both companies under one umbrella. So instead of axing art, they're restructuring? That's kind of odd. Seems like a friendly board playing into a, I don't know, diversionary tactic for an inept CEO to keep his job while others lose theirs. Plus, Paul, poor guy, will be the one with his head on the chopping block. J.T. O'Donnell (17:06.094) Mm-hmm. Chad (17:23.891) while Alex becomes the president of obviously a very thriving clearance job. So Dice's failing leadership and inability to move with the market has put them in this current position. Art's fault, guy still has a job. He's got other people to blame underneath him now. This is classic. This is very classic. All you CEOs out there, watch what Art the Dart is doing because this is classic distractionary. Joel (17:51.924) And watch ZipRecruiter follow suit in a few months for sure. If there's one thing Art does well, it's financial engineering. He did this a few years ago. The stock popped. It has since gone down. And this is his next move to re-engineer the company to get the stock price back up and going. Chad (17:54.695) Ian yeah Chad (18:02.363) and running. J.T. O'Donnell (18:09.326) Hmm. Joel (18:12.232) This is his, this is what he does. He doesn't innovate. doesn't create new products that people like. He doesn't do anything but re-engineer the company. It reminds me a little bit of remember when Sal was, was writing, riding the head chair at monster. They stopped innovating. They stopped doing anything that was interesting or exciting. It was all about the stock price. How do we re-engineer everything? And we're, it's just, yeah, it's just blueprint material for how to get your, your stock price up. when the company's really got nowhere to go and bad leadership. Chad (18:25.513) Monster, yep. Chad (18:32.562) spend that money. Chad (18:41.855) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (18:42.926) Yeah, I mean, it's in the playbook, right? It's in the boardroom playbook. It's written in the boardroom playbook that in order to make shareholders happy, all we got to do is restructure and cut staff. mean, literally every time a company does these types of layoffs, their stock price goes up. It's in the boardroom playbook. So they're just flipping to that page and going, I guess we need to institute this now. As the voice of the job seeker, it's sickening. I ditto everything you just said, Chad. It's frustrating to watch. Joel (18:59.476) Mm-hmm. Chad (19:00.095) Yeah J.T. O'Donnell (19:11.126) It's big bad business, you know, and I hope that more and job seekers get angry. We're seeing it on my side and I'm here for it. And I think hopefully the next generation is going to shy away from working for some of these companies that pull those tactics. Let's hope. Joel (19:27.412) All of those Harvard grads that you mentioned all know this strategy, by the way. So they don't need to hire them to do them. All right, let's get to some real news going down in our industry. Shaker Recruitment Marketing, good friend of the show, also from Chicago, has acquired Canada's Jobadx, another friend of the show. They're a programmatic job advertising service. Financial details not disclosed. J.T. O'Donnell (19:31.894) They do. Yeah, it's in the book. Chad (19:44.595) Mmm. J.T. O'Donnell (19:45.709) Mm. Joel (19:53.62) Side note, this may be the first acquisition involving two of our sponsors. We have a great track record of sponsors getting acquired or acquiring. This may be the first time, Chad, correct me if I'm wrong, the first time that two previous former sponsors have gotten together and gotten married. What are your thoughts on this marriage? Chad (20:00.969) We do! Chad (20:11.721) Yeah, depends. think because iSims has been, they've sponsored before and then they bought Candidate ID. It wasn't kind of like the same thing, but we do have a great track record. Great on pointing that out. Very solid with regard to sponsors. Getting money, exiting, &A, all that fun stuff. Anyways, anyways, Why buy job at X? Simple. Recruitix buys KRT, Raiden C buys Perango, and then AppCast buys Bayard. This move by Joe and the Shaker team only makes sense. Your provider becomes a rival. So do you continue filling your rival's pockets with cash? No. You buy a platform, get rid of the middleman who's taking a cut and provide the same service for a much lower cost and the ability to sleep at night now that Shaker is out from underneath the thumb of Avcast. So if you think about it, The market is splintering. We talked about it last week on the 2025 prediction, which is good for prices because those splinters are competitors and competition brings prices down. Plus, since the new service is wholly owned underneath Shaker, they can control pricing while focusing on helping companies with their hiring experience, their actual tech stacks, their CRMs instead of... building new platforms and spending money and then trying to keep that legacy tech going for CPH, CPC, CPQC. Those types of products, mean, Shakers is not interested in. So for me, it's smart and it was a must do. Now flipping the script just a little bit, when we talked to Chris Foreman about buying Bayard and pissing off partners like Shaker, we talked to him a couple of weeks before this actually happened. Joel (21:52.692) Mm-hmm. Chad (22:01.949) He said, quote, we endeavor not to piss off anyone, end quote. Well, Chris, you can check some people hard into the boards. That's a hockey reference that he used, by the way. You can check some people hard into the boards, but don't expect them not to get pissed off about it. This was a smart move. It's a great move for the markets. to be quite frank, I think... This could prospectively send AppCast into a tailspin, especially if more start leaving AppCast. Joel (22:33.62) Hmm. Yeah. Joe shakers not falling for the banana in the tailpipe on this one. And you know, Chad, I want to say that we interviewed him shortly after app cast, uh, acquired Bayard and he gave sort of the yearbook answer. You know, we do what's best for our clients, but, you and I, as we know Joe, he was internally talking about, okay, what's our plan B if they pull the rug, if prices go up, like if J.T. O'Donnell (22:35.49) Hmm, interesting. Chad (22:39.613) Not in this one. Chad (22:59.443) Gotta have it. Joel (23:01.3) Like they have, if they have control, what do we do? Frankly, there aren't a lot of programmatic solutions left. Uh, job edX is one of the last ones. Uh, one of the last ones that they could buy. So I, I imagine that this is, this is, this was probably a year in the works talking about it, strategizing it, getting a plan B, not being beholden to app cast and Baird. And so to me, this was a, a smart strategic defensive move by Joe. can still use. J.T. O'Donnell (23:07.095) Ahem. Chad (23:12.639) Like independent, yeah. Joel (23:29.95) click cast or any of the other solutions. But if the rug gets pulled out from under them, they can tell clients, Hey, we have our own, we own job at X like why they're similar or better. They can use it as a complimentary service. So I, was just a brilliant strategic move. whereas an ATS can always have an, marketplace where, okay, well they got bought by someone else. Well, we have a, we have a marketplace where we have other people that provide that service. An agency can't do that. J.T. O'Donnell (23:44.43) Cough cough Joel (23:56.626) Like he doesn't have a tech with a bunch of marketplace solutions. He's got to pick and choose the ones. So he's beholden if, if, if appcast screws them. So smart strategic move where they move totally off appcast. that'll be interesting. when we talk to him, when we talk to him next, we'll ask what, the plan is there, but, smart strategic move. Not surprising. well done. Well done, Joe, as usual, as usual. J.T. O'Donnell (24:03.693) Ahem. Chad (24:10.399) slowly. slowly. J.T. O'Donnell (24:20.376) Yeah. I'll just... Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (24:25.87) I have to say really quick, when you sent this, that you were gonna talk about this today, I immediately went back to the past podcast where you've been talking to both sides and everything you just said, I was like, they said that, they predicted it. So hats off to you boys for knowing what was coming down the pike. Very proud of you, very proud of you. Chad (24:39.647) Aww. Say more. Say more. Say more. Joel (24:40.468) you Joel (24:45.876) The bigger question is what's going to happen to Programmatic in the future, think, regardless of who they own, but it was a smart move. J.T. O'Donnell (24:48.525) Yeah. Chad (24:52.703) I think it's interesting because Joe can look at this through different lens than APCAS can, because APCAS has to worry about the tactical clicks that happen all the time, right? Because that's how they make their money. And they have to worry about the other side of the house on the Bayard's side to be able to help companies become more efficient and to be able to not set it and forget it, right? So they're fighting each other because if Bayard's doing their job well, then CPC Joel (25:06.473) Mm-hmm. Chad (25:22.791) starts to dwindle, right? If Bayard starts, yeah, if Bayard starts pointing and doing searches inside the applicant tracking system for candidates you've already paid for, then AppCast starts to dwindle. Shaker doesn't have that problem. They don't have that problem, right? It's not a two-sided marketplace for them. They're all focused on one thing, and that's that enterprise client. Joel (25:23.952) Mm-hmm. Yeah, price to the bottom. Joel (25:33.427) Mm-hmm. Joel (25:40.626) The, yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (25:40.672) Okay. Joel (25:46.408) The question to, yeah go ahead JT. J.T. O'Donnell (25:46.626) Raising my hand on this one. Yeah, I just, want to ask both of you this question. So we're watching all this acquisition, right? It had to happen. It forces everybody to up their game. I love watching it. But at the same time, we have this whole world of AI, new companies in stealth market, starting up left and right. And I just wonder how hard these companies are to work fighting these, you know, the devils they know and out of the blue out of left field is going to come something agile with no technical debt that isn't big that could just blow them all out of the water. I'm going to be honest, I'm seeing tech every day. I'm sure you are too. I'm like, what? Stuff in our industry is amazing to me. And we're in the infancy of this. So I'm curious if you think this big fighting and all this isn't even going to be worth it. Chad (26:28.905) Yes. Joel (26:34.916) Ooh, the relationships matter, JT. These agencies have really good personal connections with their companies. The companies trust them and the advice that they give. Technology comes and goes very quickly. I companies generally have a risk averse opinion about new technologies. So until, until Shaker tells McDonald's, yes, this is a tech that you should use. They're usually not embracing those technologies. Now it could be different this time, but I think companies will be really cautious about all these. J.T. O'Donnell (26:37.856) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Joel (27:04.626) new companies that are popping up. Do they have staying power? Do they get investment money? They're going to be pretty cautious about it. Whereas it's the smaller companies, the small businesses that like, yeah, let's roll the dice on this new stuff and see how it goes. So that would be my opinion on how agencies and the traditional companies look at new tech. J.T. O'Donnell (27:16.195) Right? Joel (27:27.038) Chad, you're on mute. Chad (27:29.905) As you were, think Shaker's pretty smart from the standpoint of, doesn't want to create new products because again, that is perspective, not today, but tomorrow will be legacy, right? They work directly with those vendors who are best in breed and that's their focus. So they become the expert in the space that literally can talk about any platform as opposed to like a radency. who's literally just gonna talk about their stuff for the most part, right? They're gonna talk about some other platforms, because they gotta throw it in there a little bit just to seem relevant and obviously, know, legit, but they're gonna sell their own shit. Joe's not really worried about that, which is really cool and refreshing, not to mention it's lightweight with regard to the tech question that you just had, because I don't have to stay up to date on the tech, because it's just distribution, that's fairly simple, but I can go out to my partners. Joel (28:07.924) Mm-hmm. Chad (28:27.046) and they need to stay up to date. Joel (28:30.056) What will be really interesting, Chad, and it's not really Joe's style, but what if he funds JabatX and says, release the Kraken and go straight after AppCast business and their market share as opposed to just being a defensive move? I would love to see Joe go right at AppCast, Ditka style, and see what they're made of. Take them on. Don't just be a defensive move. Be a little offensive. I'd love to see that. Chad (28:56.105) Well, and Chris actually said they only focus on enterprise customers at Abcast, and that is Joe's portfolio, right? So when they bought Bayard, who again, very focused on enterprise, that was a threat. So at the end of the day, beautiful move, smart move, and again, a company that's almost been around 75 years, Shaker, they're making smart moves. Joel (29:20.244) And congrats to the job edX folks. I know they've been working hard for a long time. Yeah, a mitten team. Good job. Good job. All right, let's go to some more news at a, actually, let's take a quick break. Let's take a quick break and we'll get back and talk about LinkedIn. J.T. O'Donnell (29:23.372) Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Chad (29:23.401) yeah, emitting team, you guys kill it. Chad (29:32.147) Yeah. Joel (29:40.66) All right. What show is complete without LinkedIn or indeed we'll cover LinkedIn this week. LinkedIn has launched the following AI tools, something called jobs match for job seekers and an AI recruitment agent for small businesses. Both are currently free to use. These aim to simplify the job application process amidst high competition, leveraging LinkedIn's own AI and data. They're hoping this move will boost user engagement on the platform. JT, you're usually pretty opinionated. Chad (29:44.831) Ha J.T. O'Donnell (29:51.928) Mm-hmm. Joel (30:10.31) about job search tools. What are your thoughts on LinkedIn's latest? J.T. O'Donnell (30:10.67) Yeah. So the job search tool side of it is to deter people from applying. So right now you go there and see a thousand applicants in four hours and people are, you know, that's now going to the recruiter. The recruiter is now responsible for sorting through that. It's dysfunctional. We're talking to recruiters all the time that have had it. You know, they don't even want to post jobs anymore for this reason. And so LinkedIn has to come up with a solution. And the thought is, if I can show a job seeker, don't bother. You're not a fit. I can hopefully deter them from doing that. My issue and the thing that scares me the most is the number of AI tools that are popping up that are helping job seekers just automate their applications. mean, just last week, three different startups hit my inbox telling me, JT, we have the solution. We can apply to a hundred jobs overnight for them. I don't want that. I don't want that for recruiters. I can't believe they think that's a solution. They're clearly not from the industry. They don't understand how they're further breaking the system. So for me, I can see why LinkedIn's doing it. And I hope to some degree that debtors people for the job seeker, the bigger concern is you tell me to apply online. You tell me that's how I have to get a job. That's my channel. And there's no other way to do this. And yet I'm up against a thousand people or you're telling me I'm not a fit for any job. Pathrise came out with a study. I think it was last month. It said you have a 0.3 % chance. Chad (31:16.062) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (31:42.222) of getting called for a job when you apply right now on any of the platforms and that it takes like 294 applications to get a job on average. What other thing do you all do with a 99.7 failure rate and how long would you stick with that? So you can see why. Yeah, well, I'm sorry. But my point being that people are just going to automate it. They're going to continue to do this. So will they even pay attention to what LinkedIn is saying? Because Joel (31:46.024) well. Joel (31:56.816) Leave my marriage out of this, JT. Leave my marriage out of this. J.T. O'Donnell (32:11.348) uneducated job seekers end up spraying and praying. That's what they do. And there are just too many tools telling them that's what they should do right now and they don't know any better. It's a bigger systemic issue. think LinkedIn's trying to fix it. I just don't know how well it's going to Joel (32:31.348) JT, I've thought about this question for you for a while, and I'm sure there's a real simple answer. Why can't LinkedIn or whoever create a CAPTCHA system that eliminates the automated stuff? Are bots just too good at detecting and getting around that? Do companies not care? Because there's an incentive for them to get applicants, right? The minute they don't get applicants and it's like, well, we suck because someone else will get more applicants. So it's kind of a lose-lose situation. Why can't they just capture this or get something to fend off the bots. J.T. O'Donnell (33:03.512) So to your point, it's very sophisticated. The bots, they're able to get through. I also think there's this push and pull, right? They're making a lot of money off of recruiter seats that you spend a lot of that, right? So we want to give you enough candidates. We're obviously trying to get you the right candidates. Where I think they have done a good job is pivoted the algorithm. It's far less about your profile now. Your profile is like a resume. You could fake that all you want. Joel (33:15.092) clicks. J.T. O'Donnell (33:32.046) So let's not focus on that anymore. Let's use an algorithm and pay attention to what you're putting in your feed. How frequently are you posting in LinkedIn and how relevant is what you're posting is gonna determine that there's a far greater likelihood you are real. Other reason why they've got the clear thing up there now where they're trying to get people to verify. So I like that direction and putting it back into the job seeker to say, give the evidence that you are who you say you Joel (33:36.648) Mm-hmm. Joel (33:47.592) Okay. J.T. O'Donnell (33:55.842) do and you can do what you say you can do. And the reason I like it is because there's a whole lot of job seekers out there that want to switch careers, want to switch industries. And so a resume or a LinkedIn profile is useless because that's based on your past, not where you want to go in your future. So focusing on feed and engagement and participation is the future and why I predicted the death of the resume. We're going to need to get the current and immediate evidence from job seekers that they can do. Joel (34:05.363) Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (34:20.206) what we need them to do. We already do that through the hiring process. This is why hiring processes are now four to 12 weeks long and 17 interview rounds because of the amount of evidence we want before we hire them. And so when we lock into that, I think it's gonna be huge. This is why I'm a fan of LinkedIn's video tab. Whether people like it or not, that is the new first interview and the sooner you get over that and get on and start talking about your knowledge, you're gonna have recruiters coming for you and knocking on your door again. And I think that's what every job seeker wants. Joel (34:22.996) Mm-hmm. Joel (34:36.552) Yeah. Joel (34:48.838) That's nice advantage for LinkedIn, because job boards don't have that algorithm to know that stuff. Chad, any thoughts on the new tools from LinkedIn? J.T. O'Donnell (34:51.118) 100 % That's right. Chad (34:57.671) Yeah, well, think thus far we already know that their algorithms are all shit anyway. So conceptually, this is wonderful. mean, yay, the skies are opening. looks nice and blue like it is here in Portugal, but that's not the case. It never has been. We know how bad LinkedIn's matching was. They suck at it when they should be amazing because the amount of data that they actually have, as JT had said also, the content, the relevance, right? So... J.T. O'Donnell (35:02.222) You Joel (35:02.43) you Chad (35:25.021) Enter Microsoft and OpenAI, both great options, but how do they inject this tech into a 20-year-old platform? The features LinkedIn are creating for companies on the hiring side really are on the SMB side of the house and focused there because any company worth their salt already have a platform or seeking a platform that performs these tasks inside their own ecosystem. Recruitment AI agents will be embedded into core enterprise platforms by this time next year, easily, right? LinkedIn, once you addicted to their database of candidates and employers are starting to understand they've already attracted and paid for qualified candidates and their profiles reside in their CRMs and applicant tracking system. So agents will engage qualified candidates, ask them clarifying questions and continue to make their profiles more robust and engaged. I think indeed has a great idea, but once again, we have not seen them execute on the most easy part of it, which is taking my data, contextualizing it, and actually matching it to shit that I care about. Joel (36:33.96) Mm-hmm. Joel (36:43.316) Yeah, I didn't until I read the story in tech crunch. had no idea the weight of, of resumes that come into companies. Uh, so the data that I saw 9,000 applications per minute. Come into LinkedIn. Of course they have about a billion users globally. So they're a little bit of a victim of their own success. We get 9,000 applicants a minute. Most of those suck. How do we limit that? How do we improve quality? Uh, this is an attempt to do that. guess time will tell whether or not. J.T. O'Donnell (36:51.074) Yeah, it's bad. J.T. O'Donnell (36:55.096) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Joel (37:12.68) They are successful. on the business side, you know, when, indeed launched, have up to five profiles on your indeed account, said, they're coming after LinkedIn. so to me, this is like, maybe there was a gentleman's agreement that we'll stay in the enterprise stuff and you guys deal with, know, the jobs, job search stuff. And now they're sort of getting more competitive. So I think this going after small businesses, whether it works or not, where they put any kind of money into marketing this. Chad (37:25.074) Ruh-roh. Joel (37:41.62) Cause selling into small businesses is really hard, but it, to me, this is a, this is a strike out against zip recruiter who has abandoned their small business brand. They've totally like left that to be taken up by somebody indeed. Indeed hasn't really embraced it, but they have a good foothold in, that market. So to me, going after small business is what LinkedIn has left to kind of conquer, particularly in the, in the Americas and out in Europe. So Chad (37:50.138) idiots. Joel (38:07.518) Good strategies both, they can execute and get it right, I don't know, but I do approve of both strategies and getting more in bed with OpenAI. J.T. O'Donnell (38:14.668) Mm. Chad (38:18.121) Good luck. J.T. O'Donnell (38:18.872) Mm. Joel (38:18.908) Yeah. Good luck. And speaking of good luck, tick tock is, is tick tock and you don't stop. color me bad, Chad color me bad. all right. I'm sure you've, you've heard the news. Tick tock is set to shut down. it's us operations on January 19th. By the time you listen to this, it may be gone. January 19th of this year impacting some 170 million Americans. Unless there is a Supreme court intervention or bite dance and. Chad (38:21.321) Yes. And you don't stop. Joel (38:48.54) divest TikTok's US operations between Trump wanting to delay from the Supreme Court to Elon rumored to be a bitter to copycats like red note gaining newfound traction. This is one hell of a drama. Chad, what are your thoughts on TikTok? Chad (39:07.657) So I have a history lesson, kids, and this is going to be fun. This is going to be fun for most of us. For some of you, take notes because you're going to need this. Joel, do you remember Tipper Gore? You remember Tipper Gore? Remember the Parents Music Resource Center, aka PRMs or PMRC, the group that created the infamous parental advisory explicit content stickers that were supposed to kill record sales on any album displaying the sticker? Remember what happened? I do. J.T. O'Donnell (39:16.078) you Joel (39:25.224) Mm-hmm. Joel (39:35.358) Mm-hmm. Chad (39:37.307) Albums displaying the sticker had explosive record sales. NWA and Twisted Sister could probably thank Tipper and the PMRC for all of the, a good amount of their success. Let's just say that. What does this have to do with TikTok? Well, have you tried telling one of your kids no before? I remember all three of our kids were in middle school and high school and the school administration blocked everyone on their wifi from getting on social media. Guess what the kids did? Joel (39:41.972) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (39:42.027) Mm-hmm. Joel (40:04.989) Mm-hmm. Chad (40:07.293) This is before, it's probably about seven years ago, before you had the Express and all the different easy VPN systems. We were all using those really clunky fucking business ones every day that sucked. Kids found free VPNs, they got around it, they were on social media at school, right? Needless to say, people will find a way to get to TikTok. This is the new Printol advisory sticker. And this is, again, nothing more than a way of saying, Joel (40:17.662) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (40:32.919) Ahem. Chad (40:36.685) you love that TikTok? we're going to take it away from you. No, you're not. We're going to find a way in. Joel (40:42.482) By the way, if you had Tipper Gore on your bingo card, mark that off. I think it's the first time Tipper Gore has gotten a hat tip on our show. JT, what are your thoughts on the TikTok ban? Chad (40:45.464) hahaha J.T. O'Donnell (40:45.902) Yeah. Chad (40:49.348) J.T. O'Donnell (40:54.06) Yeah, I think I take it from a different perspective. don't think people understand how many people have that as a gig. TikTok is their gig. It's their side hustle that's making them full-time income. You are talking about hundreds and thousands of US solopreneurs out in the middle of nowhere making an income they could otherwise never make where they live due to TikTok shop views. And I don't think people, those individuals, aren't business owners in the sense that they're prepared for how to replace that income and what else to do. So you're talking about hundreds of thousands of people whose revenue stream is gonna shut off. And while I'm with Chad, they'll find another route that won't be overnight. And those people bought cars and houses and apartments and built lives around having this additional income in their life. And it's going away. And I see that on the TikToks that are coming through my feet. I mean, there are people that just bawling saying, I built this, worked so hard, I'm gonna lose everything. Now we all know, we've watched it for years. Facebook, they change algorithms on social platforms, all of a sudden you weren't making money, now you're not. But there's a massive group of people this is the first time that's happening to. And that to me, it just kind of breaks my heart. We are the country where you're supposed to have this entrepreneurial spirit and create things for yourself and hundreds of thousands of people have. And they're gonna lose it all when this goes away. And to me, it just seems wrong. You know, I love the app. It's been great to me. I've been able to reach a whole audience that not on LinkedIn, that's on TikTok that I can coach for free people I'd never otherwise get to work with and change lives. And that's just in job search. Like in every place that tool has taught and helped and let people serve audiences. And it's out. It's going to be gone. Something else will replace it. I know I'll survive, but there's a lot of people that are going to be crushed by this financially and emotionally. Joel (42:49.586) And as long as we're getting sentimental, JT, I never knew that bug fights and big booty Latinas could bring so much to my life as well. You mentioned the users that'll be impacted. Let's talk about a few more people that will be impacted by this. TikTok employs 7,000 people in the United States. I think their jobs might be at risk if it goes away. 60 %... J.T. O'Donnell (42:58.038) Mm. Mm. Joy. Chad (42:58.207) Joy. Joy. Joel (43:15.576) of ByteDance is owned by institutional investors such as BlackRock and General Atlantic. Those are big dollars coming out of the US. Trump is talking about an executive order as soon as he takes office to save TikTok. It's questionable whether he can legally do that or not, not that it's ever stopped Trump before. Would you be shocked if Elon Chad (43:21.769) Hmm. Chad (43:36.787) Hello. Joel (43:45.079) acquires and it rolls it, it rolls it into X like anything can happen. I haven't been to red note yet. J.T. O'Donnell (43:51.562) Yeah, that's, that's, know. I mean, I've checked out Red Note and the Elon Musk stuff is all, you know, just not true. That was the big rumors going around. I do think Trump will extend it or reverse it. I do. I mean, it helped him get elected. I do feel that he will do something about Joel (44:00.308) I mean, we'll get... Or maybe he makes it roll into truth social and truth social becomes tick. Like we've gotten, we got big meta energy from Mark Zuckerberg. mean, he's playing nice with Trump. this meta liking like this, this is a, this is a soap opera that's going to be really fun to watch over the next, over the next couple months for sure. J.T. O'Donnell (44:15.278) E? Chad (44:25.94) Yes. J.T. O'Donnell (44:26.616) Yeah, 100%, 100%. If you're pro-business, you try to figure out a way to make this work for all those small businesses. If you think, you know, in my opinion, there's just so many people out there. This is a gig, a side hustle that's helping them live their best life, you know, and so. Joel (44:41.908) There's so much money. I mean, know that Congress has gotten flooded with letters and emails about don't cancel TikTok. To be devil's advocate, I do think it is a propaganda machine or at least a potential propaganda machine for the communist China. I told Chad, said, it's going to take a Chinese military action to like really kill TikTok. I think it's going to be on the back burner. It's just going to slow roll. J.T. O'Donnell (44:58.69) Mm-hmm. Joel (45:11.764) It's going to be an ongoing thing until something like that happens. But yeah, it's going to be a fun soap opera to watch in 2025. And speaking of soap operas, we're going to take a quick break and talk about another great soap opera happening now in America. J.T. O'Donnell (45:18.21) Mm-hmm. Joel (45:32.18) All right, kids, let's talk about some big Zuck energy, shall we? Some coverage featuring Metta and its fearless leader, Mark Zuckerberg, this week include the following workforce reduction affecting some 3,600 employees, embracing Trump and donating $1 million to his inauguration, as well as throwing a party, ending their third party fact checking in the US, and even dissing Apple on Joe Rogan. J.T. O'Donnell (45:35.054) You Joel (45:59.218) JT, is this Zuckerberg hitting his midlife crisis a bit too early or is something else going on here? J.T. O'Donnell (46:06.734) mean, it definitely points to signs of that, right? Just the way you set that up, you have to think what's going on there with him. You know, it doesn't surprise me that AI is going to replace middle managers. We've been talking about this forever. I mean, if you did listen to any of the futurists over the last two years, they explained we're going to lose 70 to 85 million jobs. We're going to create 95 to 140 million jobs. The problem is there's going to be this painful time where that doesn't line up. We're in it. Joel (46:13.575) Mm-hmm. Joel (46:32.894) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (46:34.158) know, we're in it. We're going to continue to be in it in 2025. So seeing that from him didn't surprise me. Also what we talked about earlier, it's in the boardroom playbook. But the other stuff, I mean, it's wild. I don't know if it's a I've hit a phase in my life where I just don't care anymore. And I want to be who I want to be. And I'm tired of everybody telling me how to, you know, how to think how to act. mean, I don't know. It's certainly fascinating. It's very public, very public. Joel (47:01.652) And I didn't even bring up his visual appearance. Someone said he looks like a Chechen meth dealer, which I thought was pretty funny. He has visually changed quite a bit. J.T. O'Donnell (47:04.693) Right, thank you. Chad (47:08.755) Yes. Yeah. What a great gold chain, Mark. What a great gold chain. J.T. O'Donnell (47:09.484) You J.T. O'Donnell (47:14.894) You know, being famous, that's one of the things that we get to watch, right? You know, we watch all these childhood actors grow up and watch them go through the awkward years, you know, Britney and would we think any different that maybe he was protected all this time and now he's getting to a level and an age where, you know, he doesn't feel like he has to do that? I don't know, but we're definitely seeing something unfold. Chad (47:34.227) Yes. Joel (47:35.444) Chad, your thoughts? Chad (47:36.799) So it's funny because you talk about TikTok being a propaganda machine. mean, Facebook's already demonstrated it is the ultimate propaganda machine. Unfortunately, testosterone and Brazilian jiu-jitsu are making Zuck feel for the days of move fast and break things, that mantra that led Facebook into breaking society with Brexit and the 2016 election, right? They had to move past that. So what did they do? J.T. O'Donnell (47:46.712) Mm-hmm. Chad (48:07.027) Does anybody remember Cambridge Analytica? Remember? It really seems that nobody remembers how Facebook broke society. Facebook data was weaponized against its own users and disinformation propaganda campaigns. Yeah, we're talking about TikTok. Fuck you. Those propaganda campaigns would have been severely hampered by fact checkers. So fact checkers were installed and ramped up in a show of contrition, which we all knew J.T. O'Donnell (48:09.514) No, right? Yes. Joel (48:09.576) You do. J.T. O'Donnell (48:22.798) Mm-hmm. Chad (48:35.559) was just bullshit and Zuck was not feeling contrition at all. So fact checkers cost money. And of course they're never perfect. So why not follow in the steps of Trump's new VP, Elon Musk, and just do what he does. He changed Twitter into X, a Nazi porn bar. Thanks Kara Swisher for that one. And now it's time to turn Facebook into a Nazi porn bar. So this is what happens when we don't remember history. We keep We don't keep people accountable. If Zuckerberg would have faced criminal charges, whether he was, he, they, they stuck or not, right? They would have sent a message to the burly garkey. mean, nobody likes Zuck anyway, but I think he would look really good in orange. Joel (49:29.524) Breathe, Chad. Breathe. Breathe. J.T. O'Donnell (49:32.278) What's in that beer? What is in that beer? Chad (49:32.547) This might have to do with me getting kicked off Facebook and then having to pay to get back on Facebook. There might be some of that there, but also Cambridge Analytica, Cambridge Analytica. J.T. O'Donnell (49:37.195) Yeah, yeah. Joel (49:43.22) I was going to, I was going to go with Euro Chad is sort of coming in and into the final month of his, uh, European stay, but yeah, Chad's Chad's fired up today. Even the church bells in the background, aren't relaxing him at all. Um, yeah, Chad's Chad's very unhappy with Facebook. Uh, I'll tell you who's happy with Facebook are shareholders. Uh, and I think at the end of the day, Zuckerberg bows down to his shareholders and Trump in office. He's making nice with Trump. He's going into the X form. J.T. O'Donnell (49:47.086) The... Yeah. Joel (50:13.508) of fact checking or peer review. I don't have as big a problem with that. Unlike Chad, I actually use X and I think that the community policing is pretty good. And I do think there is probably some bias in human beings fact checking stuff, which they said they found. I'm not as angry about that as I think a lot of the people on the left are. Chad (50:32.479) Are you angry about Cambridge Analytica? That's the question. Because you're skirting the entire issue. There was an issue where data was weaponized. They put fact checkers in place to be able to actually skirt that. Yes, fact checkers were not perfect. Go fucking figure. But look at the scale I have to deal with. But when it comes down to having another Cambridge Analytica on fucking steroids with AI, are you cool with that? Joel (50:40.66) I- Joel (50:58.812) Am I cool with my data being sold to companies that will market to me? Chad (51:03.603) We're talking about disinformation campaigns. We're not talking about fucking marketing. Joel (51:06.682) Okay, which has happened since the days of yellow journalism. If you're not a smart consumer of content, then that's partly on you, frankly. Chad (51:10.717) So it's all good. All good. Chad (51:16.019) talking about pretty much all of America. Joel (51:19.538) that doesn't have the ability to filter what's real and what isn't and check facts and other sources. I can't control all of America. I can control me. I can control me. Chad (51:24.883) Where have you been the last fucking 10 years? You can't know, but we're actually talking to America, therefore, well, and Europe and so on and so forth. So to be able to say that you have no worries over it is cautionary tale for me. Joel (51:35.859) Right. Joel (51:40.372) If you don't think that everything about you is already getting molested by government and big corporations, like Facebook is a fly on the ass of the elephant that is your privacy being killed. Fixing Facebook is not gonna fix it. It's gonna take fundamental change across lot areas, which I don't have the time or the energy to worry about. J.T. O'Donnell (51:46.158) Right. Chad (51:54.387) So don't fix it. So don't fix it. Yeah, it's not a problem. Not a problem. Don't fix it. It's all good. Joel (52:07.654) I can worry all all about Facebook, but it's part of the problem. If you cure Facebook, you're not going to end. mean, privacy is not coming back and and all that like. Chad (52:18.975) How many people use Facebook? That's the thing. That's the thing. It's like it is the nexus for people to actually go get their news. And if the news is bullshit and it's disinformation, not everybody actually goes outside of Facebook to fact check. To be quite frank, most people don't go outside of Facebook to fact check. Joel (52:19.538) We just disagree. Joel (52:40.264) And that's my fault, why? Chad (52:45.361) Nothing like an old white man saying, is about me. Joel (52:47.334) I just... I don't... Joel (52:53.448) Mark Zuckerberg's God is money. If you're expecting corporations, better angels to show up, you're gonna wait a long time. Buyer beware has been around a lot longer than we have, and it still is pertinent today. J.T. O'Donnell (52:54.798) This is awkward. J.T. O'Donnell (52:58.926) This. Chad (53:04.319) I am pressing for people. No, yeah, but acquiescing is not the fucking answer though, is it? Is acquiescing the answer? Just go ahead and lay down and let them stamp on you because... Joel (53:16.562) No, education objective analysis, looking at multiple sources. Chad (53:22.171) Again, which is exactly what I said nobody fucking does, which is why we need fact checker on these platforms. That's probably it. Joel (53:27.252) I do, so maybe that's why I don't worry about it so much. I can only control me, Chad. J.T. O'Donnell (53:33.144) Chad, how do you feel about AI fact checking in? Chad (53:36.349) I think it's better than no fact checking. think having some type of, some type of filter in there. And again, nothing's going to be perfect, right? Not to mention human scaling isn't going to be that easy on a platform that big. So AI fact checking and possibly kicking down some of my things that they see not right, or maybe hitting me on, on messenger saying, you know, this is what we saw or what have you. I would rather have that than just a free for all. J.T. O'Donnell (53:38.071) Okay, so. J.T. O'Donnell (53:43.32) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (53:55.128) Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (54:04.364) I have to say, I wish there was a world where there was something outside of all these social apps that I could overlay onto it, right? So third party AI fact checking that they can't control, that I could then go, okay, put this over my Facebook, fact check for me, put this over my TikTok, put this over so that I control the fact checking. That's our issue. Because if you tell them they have to fact check themselves, this is what we have, right? We need... the ability to utilize a third party source to filter where we're getting our information through fact checking. So whoever's out there listening, go build that. That would be amazing. Chad (54:40.563) FairNowGuru at FairNowAI. Build it. Joel (54:42.516) Snopes needs an API to plug into all these sites and give us separate. And what is truth anyway, Chad? What is truth anyway? J.T. O'Donnell (54:47.53) Yeah, yeah, yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (54:53.314) I mean, and we live in the country that can, you know, build these things. So let's do it. Joel (54:59.412) Quickly though, this friendly debate with my son drenched friend there, the employee, the mid manager stuff, if I'm a developer, I'm scared to death. If I'm in college becoming an engineer right now, a computer engineer, I am scared to death. I don't know what you're hearing on your side, JT, but like I'm thinking pivot, I'm getting out of this profession, there's no future. J.T. O'Donnell (55:07.702) Yeah. 100%. Chad (55:15.711) grade. J.T. O'Donnell (55:20.728) Look. Chad (55:20.937) Mm. J.T. O'Donnell (55:23.054) I'm so tired of saying this like a broken record, but every single job should be looking at how AI is going to take a piece of your job. Every job. And people go, plumbers construct every job, whether it's going to be robots or AI. We are in an age where efficiency is coming. My question is you go wipe out all those middle developers. You go write about all middle management. This is what we're hearing now, right? Middle, middle, middle is gone. The only people you keep are the highest level. Joel (55:50.74) They'll die eventually. J.T. O'Donnell (55:51.092) So when they go, thank you. Who's replacing them? Where's the learning curve and what's gonna happen in between? Wait, so are we thinking ahead on that? Who's getting selected for that? No, because right now, let's save money and watch our stock price rise. Let's wipe people out. And that's what's happening. Chad (55:57.575) Not training them up. Yep. Yep. Joel (56:08.692) Mm-hmm. Chad (56:10.601) JT, we got rid of vocational schools. That was talent pipelining. We got rid of all of these things. Yes, which was talent pipelining. When companies tell you about talent pipelining and you start talking to them about, they have no fucking clue what that even means. No. Yeah. J.T. O'Donnell (56:16.31) Apprentices. J.T. O'Donnell (56:24.802) Mm-mm. I agree. Nor do they care. Joel (56:25.396) By the way, did you see Southwest Airlines halted their internship program? We're gonna see more of that because entry-level jobs and needing those kids to fill, that's going away on a big scale too. That's gonna be a story in 2025, internships going away or reduced. Can I lighten the mood with a dad joke? Would that be possible after we're gonna, it's so fired up over here. Okay. J.T. O'Donnell (56:33.413) 100%. J.T. O'Donnell (56:39.224) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. J.T. O'Donnell (56:45.558) I agree. It is way worse. Chad (56:49.798) I was hoping so. What took so long? Hahaha Joel (56:54.74) All right, all right. What's the difference between a tire and 365 used condoms? What's the difference between a tire and 365 used condoms? Chad (57:10.579) the rubber on a tire can be used over and over? I don't know. Joel (57:17.546) One's a good year, the other one is a great year. J.T. O'Donnell (57:21.578) jeez. Chad (57:22.909) It's an amazing year, I would say. Joel (57:25.246) JT, thanks for joining us. If you want to know more about Heretic, check out where. Where do you send them? J.T. O'Donnell (57:30.648) Please come on over to LinkedIn. I would love you to message me there. And of course, hit up work at daily.com. If you are a fan of the job seeker, all my recruiters, TA people out there, please care about the job seeker this year. Come see me. Let's talk. Chad (57:42.835) Work it daily. J.T. O'Donnell (57:44.362) Mm-hmm. We out! Joel (57:44.596) Go Bucks. We out. Chad (57:46.473) We out.

Gerry Crispin drops into the Chad & Cheese podcast from the Shaker Green Room at RecFest USA, sharing 53 years of recruiting wisdom. From Johnson & Johnson to Roche and a boutique search firm, Gerry’s learned the ropes and always stuck to fairness. His advice? Master the basics, especially comp and benefits. Worried about AI replacing recruiters? Gerry’s not—he thinks it’ll make things smoother, not take over, but he's frustrated that Talent Acquisition leaders aren’t embracing AI faster. His parting wisdom: find a company that aligns with your values, stay positive, and take action. He’s still active with CareerXroads, spreading optimism and know-how. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Podcast Intro: 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: All right, let's start with who are you and why are you here today. Gerry Crispin: So, I'm Gerry Crispin for those that don't know me and I'm a lifelong student of recruiting. I have been in this business for 53 years in various ways. In career services in college. In an executive search at Johnson & Johnson, at Shaker Advertising. All right, that's the only thing you get. Joel: Chad and I... We're both 53, if that makes you feel any older. You're welcome. Gerry Crispin: You were around after I graduated from college, but when I was in graduate school. Joel: It was a good time brother. Gerry Crispin: It was a good time. And I care about how we treat all the stakeholders in recruiting. That's been my interest for a life's work more in hindsight than foresight. First, you try to make a living and do stuff and then they ask you to do stuff and you go "No... No, I don't think I wanna do that." And I was pretty obnoxious about that at J&J. And fortunately, my bosses had my back. We had a Credo. And if we weren't treating employees right. If we weren't treating candidates right. I could step up and protect that. And it was okay. Now, I left J&J thinking I was gonna change the world, and lo and behold I found a company that didn't believe quite in that Credo. And that gave me an opportunity to become a contract recruiter with Roche, working for an executive search firm... A boutique executive search firm. And I learned something in every one of those. So I have no regrets on all of the changes. Gerry Crispin: The journey. The journey. Joel: The journey included 10 years with Shakers... Chad: Gerry's journey. Gerry's journey. So wait wait wait. Give us this. What is your sage advice for any listeners or any viewers that are out there? One thing one nugget that you think is incredibly important for everybody in our space to know. Gerry Crispin: I think you have to master the elements of what you have decided to make a living on. So, if you're in a job, and your job for however you fell into it, is recruiting. You better be curious about all the things that impact that. So if you find what's going on in rewards that they're telling me I can only offer this much money. You better start learning something about compensation and compensation theory. You need to be able to talk to that person in rewards and argue your case for how their language is. Marketing versus how we look at structurally about this and our philosophy of broadband, or we bring people in in the first quartile, or whatever the hell it is. You need to learn that. If benefits are something that is amazing for some part of the audience that you're trying to recruit then you could give a shit about it. You better learn a lot about those benefits and why they're important to them. Chad: You'd better give a shit about it. Gerry Crispin: I'll tell you one thing... Joel: Gerry what you're talking about sounds like a lot of work. Gerry Crispin: It is. But it's a joyful work. Joel: So that brings me... Well to my question we have some people we've talked to that are optimistic about the recruiting profession. Gerry Crispin: I am. Joel: Others that are not. You are. Tell me why. Tell me why you've just laid out all this extra work for a recruiter. Now tell me why you're bullish. Gerry Crispin: It's not extra work. I'll give you one more that I always did. When in every job that I went to. Every time I got promoted or went to a different job I job-shadowed the people who were going to be my clients. So if it was marketing, I went out on the road with salespeople, and I made that as a negotiable deal. You could not deny me the ability to do that. I used to go out on third shift and sit and watch assembly while I'm at work as in the middle of the fricking night and then get yelled at by the vice president of manufacturing. What are you doing spying on my people in the middle of the night? Then I go "No I need to learn enough to be able to do my job which is HR... Which at that time was HR and recruiting but optimism. I've got to tell you it's been waves of three steps forward two steps back. You know that. You've gone through enough of them and I've gone through many of them, and I don't know if we're in the two steps back at the moment. Some folks... Chad: It depends on the topic. Gerry Crispin: It depends on the topic and where it is. Yeah. Chad: It does. Gerry Crispin: If we talk about the promise of AI. It's tomorrow. It's not today. So, you shouldn't be sitting here getting rid of your recruiters waiting for AI to suddenly replace them all. That's bullshit. But long-term technology will help us capture and more reliably collect information from the people who are interested in our company. If there's 500 of them we should be able to get 500 of them to be able to compete in how they reliably talk to us. Maybe not humans at that point at the top of the funnel. But in a way that's fully transparent where we can say to them look you're talking to a non-human here but I am friendly. I will ask every one of the 500 people the same questions. I know how to probe in appropriate ways and I'm going to organize the data in a way that humans can make a better decision in the future with more reliable data about who goes forward. And if you want I'll come back and talk to you about what you could do to be more competitive in the future for this job or other jobs you might wanna apply for now. Gerry Crispin: But it's up to you. Now if we had something that could do that and there ain't nothing doing it right now but is that that far away? And if it is what is really gonna change? It may not be the quality of your decision but we might improve the quality of the candidate's decision. We're certainly going to improve the perception of the candidate about recruiting as a profession that actually offers something that's fair and reasonable as opposed to the doubts that many job seekers have now about how they're being treated by so many companies. And that's what makes me optimistic. Chad: Next question. Looking back in 2024 what has surprised you the most? Gerry Crispin: It's how slow TA leaders are in doing what they have to do to continue to learn. To upskill themselves. TA leaders should be at the forefront of upskilling themselves so they can help deal with that whole issue. And when I talk to TA leaders about what's going on with you and AI how confusing is it? They go it's still too confusing. And our leaders don't want us to use it. So we're just waiting. And I'm going "You're killing yourself." I said "You have to be fully engaging on your own on your own computer on your own phone and learning so that when we are able to do something you know what's coming. You have some sense of this. You're willing to get to the next level." So I think we're slow to adopt out of uncertainty fear that we're gonna be in trouble. And that's not... In my opinion, it's just not a great way to live. I think we should be embracing risk and enjoying it. Joel: You deal with some of the biggest companies in the world I think it's fair to say and you more than not most can talk to the question of having a seat at the table that we've talked about for decades. What is your take on the current state of HR having a seat at the table? Gerry Crispin: The folks in HR who don't pay attention to that, they just step up and do it. They already have a seat. They already have a seat. When I started with Johnson & Johnson, I sent them a note when they made me an offer and said, "Thanks." But the only thing that's really a problem for me is I really asked if I could get access to the computer. The computer in those days. That's a long long time ago. There was a computer building 25 miles away and there was a guy in charge of that. And he wouldn't let anybody like me coming out of grad school have access to the dumb terminal the one dumb terminal in the building that I was in, unless the president of the company authorized it. And my boss. Joel: The president of J&J. Gerry Crispin: The president of J&J. So my boss said oh we have accountants who come every single week and you can tell them what you want and in a week or a month you'll have a report. And I go, "No that's not the same thing. I wanna be able to go play and do whatever." So long story short and back to the relevance of this, I said, "I'm not sure I can come but I am waiting for another offer but I'll let you know in the promise of the next week." Two days later I'm told that I have access and please make a decision. And I said absolutely I'm there. So it took two years for me to find out that he went to his boss his boss went to his boss and so on and somebody... VP of HR or whatever, went to the president of J&J and said we'd like to get access for this kid who's just coming out of graduate school. Gerry Crispin: We think he's gonna do some interesting things in learning how we can make better choices and so on. And the president goes let me make sure I understand. You're in HR and you're telling me there's somebody deep in your organization who wants access to a computer. Our computer. And they go, "Yeah." And he goes, "Give him access but I wanna know what he does." Now I did do some cool shit but that gave me enormous power. And what I'm telling all leaders is you got to decide whether you're gonna take risks and step up and do the right thing. There are principles that your company should be living by and if not why are you there? It's not just about the money that stockholders make, it's also about how we treat employees. It's how we treat our clients and customers and the candidates that come in. So if you're not working for an organization that doesn't value those things at least aspirationally then you should get yourself out period. Find another job find another career. I'm here because I care about this and because there's a Credo on every door in relation to this. And that was a 1932 employer brand the J&J Credo, which I'd love anybody to look up. It's incredible. Chad: You heard it here first. Kids if you can't do it you can't step up. It's not additional work Joel, then get the hell out. That's Gerry... Joel: Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way. Chad: Gerry Crispin friends. Gerry, if somebody wants to find out more about you connect with you where would you send them? Gerry Crispin: They've got to be able to Google my name and spell it right. So it's Gerry with a G. G-E-R-R-Y Crispin C-R-I-S-P-I-N. And yes I founded Career Crossroads 20-some-odd years ago almost 30 years ago now. Dedicated really to understanding and sharing how we evolve recruiting into something that is a world we would like to be in ourselves. There's no sense in doom and gloom. There's no sense in pessimism. That's not the world I wanna be in. So I've got to be able to look at the world I wanna be in. Chad: That's it. Joel: Gerry. Thanks for hanging out with us always. Chad: Thanks for coming on man. Joel: Enjoy the rest of your... Gerry Crispin: It's a pleasure. Joel: Enjoy the rest of... Gerry Crispin: Thanks for having me. Podcast Outro: Wow, look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast-forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey, or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckleheads instead. Now, go take a shower and wash off all the guilt. But save some soap, because you'll be back. Like an awful train wreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.

From the illustrious Shaker Green Room at RecFest USA—where coffee flows freely and buzzwords hang heavier than the Wi-Fi signal—Joe Shaker, President of Shaker Recruitment Marketing , dished out insights on his company’s magic touch in industry partnerships and advisory. Joe didn’t hold back: the secret sauce to retaining talent? He also acknowledged the current economic uncertainty (a polite euphemism for "wild rollercoaster") but reminded us that the talent war rages on—because apparently, companies just can’t quit hiring. Ever the optimist, Joe peered into his crystal ball and predicted that 2025 will be all about amped-up employment branding and retention strategies and of course, Joe couldn’t resist sprinkling in some tech prophecy, hinting at impending MarTech disruptions. These innovations, he claimed, will simultaneously woo candidates and streamline recruiter workloads—though probably not before we all survive another round of software updates and system crashes. Classic Joe, leaving us inspired and maybe just a little skeptical. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Podcast Intro: 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, brash opinion and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast. [music] Joel: Thanks for hanging out. Who are you and why are you here today? Joe Shaker: Thanks for coming. Joe Shaker, President of Shaker Recruitment Marketing. Joel: And why are you here? Joe Shaker: I'm told to be here. Joel: Okay. Joe Shaker: I'm running a calendar. Joel: This is like a good... Joe Shaker: I'm still trying to figure out... Chad: When Gina says something, Joe shows up. Joe Shaker: When I show up. I'm trying to figure out how you guys got here. Joel: So, let's get to... Chad: No clue. Joe Shaker: No clue? Joel: When I say you here, let's expand it. I've known you for a long time, you've known us for a long time. At events, you guys have been, let's say, not aggressive. You've been classy, haven't gone overboard. You've been... You pull back, I guess, in what you could have done. This is the first event in a long time that you guys have really... I don't wanna say go all out, but you have taken it to another level. I assume that was by design, but why was that? Chad: I've heard the word chic. Joe Shaker: Chic? Joel: That's 'cause we're here. Chad: Yes. Joel: But yeah, chic. Joe Shaker: So, I have to give my hats off to the team, my team that put this on. Joking aside, I appreciate all that you guys are doing past as well as present and helping us today. To answer your question, Joel, we're trying to show the industry how we can be a true partner and advisor to our clients. Why this event? Also, I have to congratulate Jamie for, I believe, putting on an event that creates not just a conference but a community of bringing in some of the world's best talent leaders. I was able to spend yesterday at RL100 and Chad was there as well, but also bringing in some amazing partners. So, outside of the organizations that are here, walking around even I've learned some great pieces of information from many of the vendors in an environment that allows really a community and a culture to be built. And that's something that Shaker's always had for seven years. So, it just seemed like a logical fit for us if we were gonna do exactly as you said, come bigger, come bolder, this was the event to do it. Chad: One piece of advice in today's landscape, what would that piece of advice be to any listener or viewer in our space? Joe Shaker: Find good partners, whether it be me, whether it be some of my competition or whether it be some of the various different companies that are out there. I think our industry has gotten very complicated. There's a lot of different pieces that move on a constant basis. Chad: Now, is that complexity really necessary? Joe Shaker: Yeah, because it's not just, where do I run my ads? It's... We talked about it yesterday, how do I authentically build a message? What should that message be? Is also gonna differ depending upon the platform or the tools that you're utilizing to deploy that message to then even looking at conversion. So, doing this by yourself is a very difficult task. I am biased as I'm one of those advisors, but I'm truly saying my piece of advice is find that true partner that can help you navigate through that creative landscape, through the media landscape and through the conversion. Joel: You talk about the right partner but you obviously have a lot of the right employees, and one of the things that's always impressed me over the years is your ability to retain talent, to get some of the best talent. What's the secret sauce? Joe Shaker: My father gave me a great line, "Hire people smarter than yourself and get out of their way." My joy of my job, one of the things that I am really most appreciative of, is I get to work with some of the best in the space, past as well as present. I get to partner with some of the best and biggest organizations out there. And truly, I partner with some of the best organizations. And so, when I look at my job, I get to work with some of my best employees, I get to talk to some of the best clients and I get to talk to some of the best partners. And that's why too... One of the things you're seeing today is when we look at even just like our logo, like the three heads and changing our navigation, without my employees, without my clients, and without my partners, there is no Shaker Recruitment Marketing. Chad: So, looking back at 2024, we still got a little time to go but still looking back at 2024, there's been a lot that's happened. What surprised you the most? Joe Shaker: Surprised me the most is that in a state of the economy as well as politically, there's a lot of uncertainty and organizations are still hiring. They may not be hiring at the levels that any of us would wish for and companies still are trying to open up more recs, but we are still in an uncertainty. And in an election year, they're still hiring and I believe they are still hiring not just because of current need, but everyone knows what we got a little taste of in 2020, 2021, 2022 is the war for talent is here and it's only gonna get harder and they know how hard it's gonna be this year, next year and the years to come. Joel: So, let's talk about next year... Joe Shaker: Bears are gonna win the Super Bowl. Joel: [0:05:06.2] ____. Joe Shaker: Are we gonna go there? One and 0 baby, one and 0. Joel: God. Pretty sure I won our last bet on the over/under of Bears victories. So, I won't... Chad: We're looking forward now, Joel. We're looking forward. Joel: Yeah, I won't bring the Bears into this. 2025, more of the same, more hiring, greater... I mean, the geopolitical challenges that we have now are not gonna go away... Joe Shaker: They're not. Joel: But you see a much sunnier road ahead. Joe Shaker: I am optimistic and I also think you have to prepare. So, the organizations, as you look for the years ahead, continuing to invest in your employment brand to find ways to differentiate yourself, to increase retention, continue to market to either current clients... Well, we spent a lot of time, again, yesterday on future employees that are gonna work for the firm and then literally look at the data and don't lock yourself, don't be married to anyone and move to where the data dictates the money should move to. Chad: So, Shaker was a firm of column inches for a very long time, newspaper. Joe Shaker: Not that many people know what that is. Chad: Column inches. Yeah. If you don't know, look it up. What is tomorrow look like? The velocity of technology is dizzying in some cases. So, for you, in an organization like yours to stay up with it, number one, not easy, let alone all the heads of TA trying to do it themselves. What does it look like moving into 2025? Joe Shaker: One thing what have been said before, so much has changed yet so much has stayed the same. So, from the days of running, to your point, column inch ads, we still ran them in multiple newspapers across the US and then you read trains journals and you ran, obviously, even into radio and cable. It was a diversified media strategy then it went... It got real simple. You use one, two, maybe three sources. We're back now to running a diversified strat and pulling levers. The difference now though is you can be flexible. So, you don't just set it and forget it. And so, as long as you build out a diversified plan, put it out to as many places as you possibly can and then let the data dictate where it should go and also create that good experience. And that's where I believe you can use technology coupled with people in terms of making out what's gonna be best to deliver and convert those data points. Joel: You sit in front of a metaphoric dashboard every day about those data points, what's performing well, what's trending, what's declining. Give us a broad picture of what is working, what you see on the horizon and what do you see fading. Joe Shaker: Well, answer that in three different scenarios. You're gonna answer it from a creator perspective, you should see retention. So, if we did the brand and we did it right or your partner did it right, you should see an uptick in retention. And that's not something you're gonna see in three months, six months or 12 months. It's gonna take some time, but that data should dictate, did my message that I developed in my employment brand that I went to market with increase retention? Short term, to where I think you are going, CPC, CPAs, throw them out the window. We want quality applicants. My opinion of quality applicants is interview scheduled and our job should be filling out as many of those interviews as you possibly can and then time to fill them. But at the end of the day, it still is go back to when we were running column inch ads, cost per hires. But to judge your cost per hire and to drive it down, it's looking at the messaging, it's looking at the media and it's making sure we convert. Chad: From what you can remember, what was the most expensive full-page newspaper ad? Joe Shaker: New York Times. Chad: New York Times? What was it? Joe Shaker: $40,000. Easy, easy. Chad: $40,000 for a Sunday. Joe Shaker: And that's one category. Chad: One category. Joe Shaker: Remember, and you couldn't run an ad for multiple categories. So, if you were hiring engineers as well as running sales managers, it's two ads, $40,000, $40,000. And then if you wanted to run a paper... Right? Chad: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Joe Shaker: Outside of the classified section, then you're paying on a CPM basis. Joel: All right, I'm gonna bring us back to the present day because you seem to be stuck in the olden times. Chad: Gotta make people remember. Joel: So, you talk about... Joe Shaker: I agree. Joel: I wanna know more about what you see. Where's the disruption gonna be? What do you see sort of on the upswing in terms of, oh, we need to watch that, whether it's TikTok or some social media or we hear a lot about AI. What are we gonna be looking for in 2025 to be like, I saw that coming? Joe Shaker: Conversion. I think personally, applicant tracking systems are not gonna go away but I think they're gonna continue to get pushed further and further back. I mean, walk outside this lovely tent, bias, but lovely tent that we have today, and you're gonna see a lot of great technology that is helping us convert leads and helping us make those leads then become applicants that ultimately will become hires. So, I think you're gonna continue to see disruption in the Martech sector in terms of other technology that just helps us create a better experience but then also lets recruiters be more effective. It's a win-win for not just the candidates, but also for the companies themselves. Chad: Well through that disruption, through that noise, you can always go to Joe Shaker. Joe Shaker: You can. Chad: Joe, if somebody wants to connect with you or part of your team, where would you send them? Joe Shaker: Come to shaker.com, we just launched it on Monday or feel free to hit me up on LinkedIn. Chad: Beautiful. Joel: It's a wealth of information. Shaker.com. Joe, thanks for hanging out, man. Joe Shaker: Hey, thank you, guys. Joel: Enjoy the rest of the show. Joe Shaker: Hey, good to see you. S?: Now, we return you to our regular scheduled program in progress. Podcast Outro: Wow, look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese podcast or maybe you cheated and fast forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back, valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckleheads instead. Now, go take a shower and wash off all the guilt but save some soap because you'll be back. Like an awful train wreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.

In this lively episode of the Chad and Cheese Podcast, Joel and Chad reflect on their holiday escapades and revisit their 2024 predictions, celebrating the wins and roasting their misses with comedic flair. They’re joined by a stellar lineup of guests, including industry leaders like Matt Lavery, Emi Beredugo, Lars Schmidt, and more, who share bold predictions for 2025. The conversation dives into the future of recruitment, where automation and AI are reshaping the job hunt, and the possible demise of traditional resumes in favor of digital innovations. Predictions range from a wave of IPOs and European startups rising to prominence to shifting trends in programmatic ad spending. Packed with laughs, insights, and tech talk, this episode is a must-listen for anyone navigating the fast-changing world of work. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheeseman: We're back. Podcast Intro: 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 Cheeseman: Oh, yeah, it's dry January, which means we're drinking all our whiskey without the water. Hey, boys and girls, it's The Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel, 51st State Cheeseman. Chad Sowash: And this is Chad. Get your hands off my tarot cards, Sowash. Joel Cheeseman: And on this week's show, predictions with a little help from our friends. Let's do this. Oh, we're back, baby. Chad Sowash: We are back. We're back. Joel Cheeseman: You look much more tanned and rested than I do. That's all good. Chad Sowash: So much more rested. Quick thanks to Sergei and Tricia. Real quick before we... Before we start blowing past this. Joel Cheeseman: Who are they? Who are they? Chad Sowash: Those guys? Those guys actually hooked you wonderful listeners and viewers up with our 2024 wrap up and our 2024 top ten topics. So we actually went back into the archives of 2024 got the best and brightest to be able to talk about the top ten insights and topics. So great, great stuff there. And then we took the top five. That's right. One, two, three, four, five. Top five episodes from Chad and Cheese. Got those sliced up and put together. And I mean, they did a great job. So thanks so much. Appreciate Sergei and the team. Tricia and the team. You guys do great audio, video all the way through. Thanks so much. Joel Cheeseman: And my local liquor store appreciates it because I was able to drink way more eggnog than I normally would because of that. Yes, I know they're listening 'cause they have to edit this shit. So, yes, Tricia, Sergei, thank you so much for all you do and giving us a little bit of a break. So what'd you do on the holiday? Chad Sowash: You first. You first. Tell me. Joel Cheeseman: Okay, fine me first. Well... Chad Sowash: You first. Joel Cheeseman: I think I mentioned the wife and the little guy. Chad Sowash: Yeah. Joel Cheeseman: We took a little trip to New York, saw Elf on Broadway, did a lot of the other New York stuff that... Chad Sowash: That's awesome. Joel Cheeseman: Is certainly fun and then had some time off, did the holidays. My 85-year-old dad, wheeled him in, got him a new walker. He is very excited. It's funny to see a 7-year-old excited about toys and a 85-year-old as excited about toys. And then we took a little time, hooked up with the Canadian family in Orlando, did a little bit of NASA, did a little bit of R&R. Chad Sowash: Oh that's cool. Yeah. Joel Cheeseman: The Canadians are all fired up over Trump. It's very, it's very funny. Chad Sowash: Imagine that. Joel Cheeseman: Yeah, as if any of this 51st state shit is gonna happen. But yeah, it's... It makes for fun with the Canadians when America's pissed them off. Otherwise, yeah, just took some time to relax. I mean, we're in eight years of doing this and we've got some big changes coming for next year... Chad Sowash: We do. Joel Cheeseman: Which will unfold as appropriate, but excited for 2025 and good to be back. How about you? Chad Sowash: Damn, damn, damn excited. So we had. Joel Cheeseman: Oh, and Ohio State is ready to play for a championship. Chad Sowash: Dude, knock on wood, knock on wood, knock on wood. They've been knocking it out of the park and hopefully they continue to do so. I tell you what, man, I had a blast. We had 10 in total people come to Portugal for Christmas. So. Joel Cheeseman: That's a basketball team. Chad Sowash: Family and friends. Few friends came over. Joel Cheeseman: Yeah. Chad Sowash: We had a great Christmas here. And then we went to Marbella, southern Spain, for New Year's, which is bougie as fuck. It was funny 'cause Adam Gordon, as probably everybody knows, friend of the show, listens to just about every, if not all of our episodes. He responded back to me on WhatsApp. He was like Cadiz, where we went a couple of months ago and had a little Spanish flag and then had Marbella and had a little UK flag. And yeah, there are way too many fucking Brits in Marbella. That's for fucking sure. So anyway, it was great. Got to check it off the box. But other than that, had a great time. Drank way too fucking much. Joel Cheeseman: Yeah. Chad Sowash: So I've scaled down a bit. I haven't gone dry, but I've scaled down a bit. Joel Cheeseman: I'm trying some alternatives, just just testing. Chad Sowash: What? Joel Cheeseman: There's some CBD drinks. There's some mushroom drinks. Chad Sowash: Oh dude. Joel Cheeseman: I'll let you know after a month of how this stuff works. But yeah, I'm trying at 53. I mean, come on, like you got to balance it. You got to compromise. We're not 25 anymore. So, yeah, I appreciate that. Chad Sowash: I like my two to one or one to one gummies. CBD... Joel Cheeseman: Yeah, you're a gummy guy. Yeah. Chad Sowash: Yeah. The THC dude. It's just so mellowing and relaxing and just amazing. So, yeah, I think I'll just continue to stay on that trajectory. Joel Cheeseman: And if you do two or three of really good stuff, it's a lot better than doing like six to eight of the shitty stuff. Chad Sowash: Oh, God. Yeah. Joel Cheeseman: So you kind of like, yeah, it's yeah, this will be interesting in 2025. Yeah. When... How can I sign up to be your kid? I get trips to Europe. I get trips to like sunny locations. Chad Sowash: No toys however. No toys. Joel Cheeseman: Do your kids thank you? Do they just bow down and kiss your feet that you're their dad? Chad Sowash: I mean, they love it. Don't get me wrong. And one of the things that Julie and I really wanted to do was instill wanderlust into all of them. Joel Cheeseman: Yeah. Chad Sowash: Because one of the things I mean, I would have never gotten out of the US if it weren't for the military. Right? I mean, especially when I was young, I was 18 years old. I was sent down to Central America and they started shooting at me. Other than that, though, it was great. That's the thing, though, is that I got to actually understand that, just because those people speak different languages than we do, just because they live differently, doesn't make them less human than we are. And it's really great to be able to get our kids over into Europe and really just understand that, hey, look, we're all just people and we should have more empathy. But also, it's really fucking cool when you can take them to Paris, you can take them to Madeira, you can take them to Marbella, and so on and so forth. So, yeah, no, it's good, but no toys. Joel Cheeseman: Yeah. Chad Sowash: No toys. Joel Cheeseman: Well, viewers on YouTube will notice my Depeche Mode album in the background here. And I quote, I quote Depeche Mode when I say people are people. Why should it be you and I should get along so awfully? Yes. Chad Sowash: That's exactly right. Joel Cheeseman: We're all one people in this all world. Goodbye '24, here's to '25. I'm optimistic as hell. I know you are, too. We're gonna skip shout out. We are definitely shining a light on the sponsors that generously support this show. Chad, who we got? Chad Sowash: Well, I mean, free stuff. We were still giving away free stuff. And if you want a T-shirt, if you're watching on YouTube, you can see this gorgeous Chad and Cheese T-shirt. This is the last year's edition. I love it. These are sponsored by Air Nap. You can have bourbon barrel aged syrup from our friends up north from Kiora. Who else does syrup better than the Canadians? I say nobody. I say nobody. Chad Sowash: Beer from our friends at Aspen Tech Labs, craft beer from those kids at Aspen Tech Labs. Whiskey, we've got a new whiskey sponsor kids. Van Hack. More Canadians. Joel Cheeseman: More Canadians. Chad Sowash: More Canadians. Oh, my God. And then if it's your birthday, you got to have some rum with plum, but you got to go to chadchease.com/free to register for all of the bounty of free stuff. S?: I can feel it all the way down in my plum. Chad Sowash: Yes. And plum is also, plum is also Canadian. Joel Cheeseman: Half Canadian. Chad Sowash: Okay. Sorry. Joel Cheeseman: So, yes. So 2025 birthdays. We're starting the month off right. We got Muir Macdonald. I wonder if he's Scottish. Muir Macdonald. Okay. Zachary Larson, Steve Jule, Cheryl Ford, Rob Art, Mark Katz, Peter Brooks, Mark Becker, Mark Fogel, Keith Sedlick, William Nolan, Nicky Don't Call Me Nipsey Russell, Reggie Martin, Angie Brooks, your girl, Athena Karp, and Peter Zolman, all. Yes. Square up the birthdays from this week. Chad Sowash: Well, and it's getting to the point where, guess what, kids, we're getting ready for events. Now, I've got a special little solo event that's happening in early February, since I'm already over here in Europe. I was asked by Smart Recruiters. They're like, hey, we've got an event. It's just, it's just a little ways to the east in Madrid. Would you like to come? I was like, well, yeah, I'd love to come. So I'm going to be early February at the Smart Recruiters All Hands event. We're also gonna do a simulcast. There's a gala, tons of stuff that that's actually going on. And whatever else they threw out me. So I can't wait to see Rebecca and the crew there. Chad Sowash: Then the first big thing. Conference of the year is at Transform March 17th to the 19th at the Wynn in Las Vegas and I know you love you some Wynn don't you. Joel Cheeseman: I love some Wynn, Steve Wynn my boy. Chad Sowash: That's what we've got going on thus far we'll start solidifying much more of what's going on at those events and then obviously we've got more events throughout the year we'll probably won't do as much as we did last year knock on wood. Joel Cheeseman: But rest assured you'll be sick of us by November of next year. One thing I won't get sick of though Chad... A little bit of a bittersweet moment for me. This is the final leaderboard from the fantasy football with Factory Fix. Big thanks to them. Great guys over there. Chad Sowash: Love those guys. Joel Cheeseman: I feel pretty confident saying that they'll be back next year to sponsor our unhealthy addiction. But this is your final leaderboard. I'm gonna go in reverse and save the champion for last. Chad Sowash: Good call. Good call. Joel Cheeseman: In the last spot, shocker. S?: Welcome to all things Scottish. Our slogan is if it's not Scottish it's crop! Joel Cheeseman: Finishing with an unimpressive four and eleven record. Chad Sowash: Wow. Joel Cheeseman: Well, all four, I think he got in the first four weeks, and then his team just went to shit. Chad Sowash: The Jets have more wins. Joel Cheeseman: Adam Gordon finishes in last place, followed by Jen Tharp. Sean Horton. Sean, if we had another 20, 30 weeks, you might have made it up there, buddy. Jackson Dahlquist, Dean Aparro, last year's winner, Christy Lisbon, Laura Martinelli, Keith the Commish Sonderling with a nice push at the end, Dean the Daddy Mac Macrole out of Australia, who was in the number one spot for most of the season. Joel Cheeseman: You took him out. You took him out. You took him out. You took him out back. Chad Sowash: Boom! Joel Cheeseman: Stuck a Foster's in his face. Got him drunk. And he was no good on that last week. Which made you at third place. You get a medal. That's nice. I got second place. Which I'm not ashamed about. But our champion goes to Paradox employee David Stifle. Nice job, David. Homie got 200 plus points in the final week. Everyone he had, I think, had over 18 points, which is really unheard of. But, yeah, that is the final week and probably not the final sound bite of this. Chad Sowash: No, no. Joel Cheeseman: Thanks again to Factory Fix for helping us out. Well, with no further ado. Chad Sowash: Predictions. Joel Cheeseman: Predictions. So we got lots of news, which we'll get to next week. But this is the prediction show everybody. Everybody loves it. Chad, let's recap what we got right and mostly what we got wrong in 2024. Chad Sowash: Well, I'm gonna go ahead and go through yours first. Okay. First and foremost, your first prediction of 2024 was that there would be no IPOs. And I think that was a win. There was no, there was no IPOs out there. Joel Cheeseman: You made fun of me 'cause it was such a layup, but I'll take the win. Chad Sowash: You got on base. You got on base. Joel Cheeseman: Hey, my record hasn't been good. I had to get a W somewhere. Had to get a W somewhere. Chad Sowash: Well, here's another W. No new unicorns. I mean, I actually dug in, didn't see any new unicorns. Obviously, there are plenty that are out there, but ones that did get funding didn't push them to unicorn status if they weren't already there. Joel Cheeseman: Are you teasing me with two wins? SFX: Naughty, naughty, you teasing me. Joel Cheeseman: All right. I had to get one wrong, right? Chad Sowash: There's a lot of bunting happening here. Death of a unicorn, which that was a big swing because most of these unicorns have so much fucking cash from funding. So that was a no. And last but not least, which deserves a big boo, is the Browns won a Super Bowl. So you just took a swing on that one. Joel Cheeseman: There's always next season, Chad. There's always next season. All right, I'll take I'll take two and one or maybe two and two. Chad Sowash: So my first one, my first prediction for 2024 was two acquisitions would happen from some early stage startups 'cause I thought some companies would really want to get in there and buy them before they became too expensive. Number one was CV Wallet and number two was Poetry and neither one of them were acquired. Chad Sowash: Saw some great lift in 2024, but no acquisition there. Secondly, I said Twitter hiring dies, which I'm going to claim a win on because they acquired Lasky in May of 2023, right, Twitter/X. Chris Bake left in August of 2024. And it's basically on its own island of misfit toys at this point. I mean, there's nothing going on. So I'm going to claim a win because... SFX: 60% of the time. It works every time. Chad Sowash: And then last but not least, I predicted a dominant open AI-like player in the space where it was actually more of an open source AI scenario that was HR focused. And literally the closest that I think came to this was Poetry, being start up with Adam Gordon. Still, I don't think I knocked that one out of the park. So that's a no. Joel Cheeseman: Okay, okay. Pretty good, pretty good. Chad Sowash: Not bad, I think I got one, sort of. But you get an honorable mention. And let me tell you why, sir. Let me tell you why. Went back to 2023, and you predicted that Scott Gutz would be out at Monster. Now it took a little bit longer. SFX: Hauck toah. Chad Sowash: But it still happened, it still happened. Scott Gutz, out. Joel Cheeseman: Well, like I say, Chad, there are no wrong predictions, just not enough time to see them happen. Don't fall. SFX: They're not gonna fall for the banana in the tailpipe. Joel Cheeseman: On that one. All right, that is our 2024 recap. Mostly right, but some misses in there as well. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll get to our guests, a very high profile, oh yes. Very qualified individuals giving us their predictions for 2025. Chad Sowash: Now, let me go ahead and set this up for everybody. So Joel and I are definitely looking to do less work. Joel Cheeseman: But seriously, seriously, it is great to hear all of these different voices that come onto the show. They give us videos, they do a lot of stuff. And I mean, there's just so much engagement with the Chad and Cheese audience. I thought, what the fuck, man, let's do more of this. So reached out to, literally reached out to about 15 different people. And I think we got like eight or nine back, videos. Joel Cheeseman: Yeah, that 500. Right. Chad Sowash: Yeah, and that was during like Christmas week, right? So it was a big ask for me and a lot of these guys came through. So thank you so much. Let's go ahead and start rolling some of that beautiful bean footage. Joel Cheeseman: All right, let's first get to Matt Lavery. If you haven't heard our interview with Matt Lavery from I think. Chad Sowash: It's amazing. Joel Cheeseman: September, it's fantastic. Matt is the global director of sourcing, recruiting and onboarding at a little company called UPS. Chad Sowash: Who? Joel Cheeseman: Let's hear Matt's prediction real quick. Matt Lavery: Chad and Joel asked me to make a prediction for 2025 and I'm gonna make it in the hourly entry-level space. I'm gonna quote my fellow Chicago South Sider, Clubber Lang, I predict pain. 'cause winter is coming. And it's coming 'cause we're gonna go mimic what we did during the early days of the pandemic. When you look at that workforce, entry-level hourly workers, three groups make up a large percentage of that workforce. New entries from US first, people who were born in the US 16, 18 years ago. Illegally legal immigration make up the vast majority of that workforce, a large percentage, I should say. Two of those three prongs during the early days of the pandemic were dramatically reduced. Legal immigration was down 400 grand a year. Matt Lavery: Illegal immigration was way down during those two years 'cause of travel restrictions. And the majority of people that come over here, they don't cross the southern border illegally. They come over on planes and they extend their visas. They don't, they don't go back. So with the new administration and what they're planning to do, we can see a repeat of that pretty quickly. We do get a little bit of a reprieve 'cause when you go back in time, look at 2006 to 2008, we averaged about 4.3 million people versus 4.1 the previous five years. But that's gonna be a short-lived thing 'cause what happened in 2009, the Great Recession, it wasn't the kind of recession where you just couldn't buy your kid the GI Joe, the Kung Fu grip. You lost your house. It was bad. Matt Lavery: US births plummeted below 4 million down to 3.6 in 2013, '14. So this could be a really difficult space for a long time. And we're gonna have to get our heads around it 'cause your recruiters, they're not gonna be able to find people. There's not gonna be a woman to blame. You're not gonna be able to find a Mexican cutie 'cause she got deported. Might find your lost shaker of salt. Better put booze in your blender and hope that frozen concoction helps you hang on 'cause I predict pain in the hourly entry-level workspace in 2025. Peace and love to all in 2025 and I'm out. Chad Sowash: My man. Joel Cheeseman: Telling you're Gen X without telling me you're Gen X. Podcast Intro: Yes. Joel Cheeseman: Jeez, Matt, awesome. Chad Sowash: Big props though to Matt, big Notre Dame fan. He's, I believe right now, on his way to the Notre Dame-Penn State game as it is because obviously whoever wins that hopefully will be facing, knock on wood, Ohio State in the finals. Joel Cheeseman: Huge fan. Have you seen his setup? Chad Sowash: Yes. Joel Cheeseman: Like inflatable couches. Yeah. Chad Sowash: Tailgate oh yeah. Joel Cheeseman: He's a major fan. Chad Sowash: He is the fan. Joel Cheeseman: I've never wanted an old style so badly. I don't know why that is. I'm a little disappointed there was no over-under on the Cubs wins this season. Maybe he doesn't wanna talk about that, but... Chad Sowash: More than likely. Joel Cheeseman: I think he's, I think he's spot on. Chad Sowash: No question, no question. We talked about this in shows past and it's not just gonna be pain from the standpoint of not being able to find people, but also we talked about immigrants actually push in close to $100 billion in tax revenue into the United States. So this is gonna hit us in many different areas and we just have to realize, as he had said that building a wall's not gonna help. Most of these motherfuckers are coming over on planes and guess what? We need them. We need them. America's the melting pot. We always have been we shouldn't stop. Joel Cheeseman: Yeah. The headline I read recently was a Republican civil war. You have Elon and Vivek wanting to up H-1B visas, which certainly makes sense to us, but you also have a Republican party or voter block that put Trump in to not do stuff like that. So it's gonna be tough. It will also, I think, expedite the acceptance of robotics automation because companies are gonna need a way, whether it's kiosk, ordering my Big Mac or something else. Chad Sowash: Gonna have to get fast. Joel Cheeseman: There's gonna be a lot of money pour in to the robotics and replacement... Chad Sowash: It has to happen fast. Joel Cheeseman: Of employees of AI. Well, thanks, Matt. We appreciate that. I mean, come on, you get Penn State. The Domer, if the Domers can't do that, we're in trouble, but there may be a house divided if it's an Ohio State, Notre Dame final. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it. All right, let's get to our second guest prediction. This one's from Emi Beredugo If you listen to the show, you know Emi. She's gonna be on quite a bit more often. We're excited about that. She is a senior level recruiter and occasional co-host on this show. Let's see her prediction. Emi Beredugo: Hey, everyone. So here is my crystal ball prediction for 2025. TikTok isn't getting banned in the US. Now, I hear what the Biden administration is saying. They think TikTok is a massive security risk. They think TikTok is going to take personal user information, pass it on to the Chinese government, who will then use it to influence US citizens. Now, is this scary? Yeah, 100% it is. But here comes a plot twist. Enter TikTok's former nemesis, aka Donald TikTok hater turned saviour Trump. Now, this is the same Trump who in 2020 wanted to ban TikTok because China is bad. Well, look at where we are now. Emi Beredugo: His pivot is wild. Trump successfully used TikTok to get to a broader audience during his election campaign. I mean, the guy now has got 14 million TikTok followers and he's calling TikTok a platform for freedom of expression. And that's not it. Trump is convinced that a TikTok ban is going to benefit Meta, a company that he said was the enemy of the people. And look, he's probably right. I'm sure Meta is going to benefit from this. Ban TikTok and the US government is effectively handing a monopoly to Meta's short videos in Instagram and Facebook. But now he's saying delay the ban so he has time to negotiate a solution. Emi Beredugo: Why? Because he's the art of the deal guy. And you know he's already on the case. I mean, just look at how cosy he is with Jeff Yass. Jeff Yass is one of TikTok's parent company investors and he's a Republican Party mega donor. So do I think this has something to do with Trump's U-turn? Yeah, of course I do. I'm obviously questioning Trump's motives, but here's the thing. There are positives to keeping TikTok around in the US. 7 million US businesses, 1 million influencers and billions of dollars depend on this app. Ban TikTok and the economic fallout in the US could be huge. Now, obviously, we all know that Trump's about the economy. Okay, so I'm going to say it again. Emi Beredugo: TikTok is not getting banned in the US in 2025. So mark your calendars, America. In 2025, you're still going to be like me. You're still going to be scrolling at 2:00 AM in the morning, pretending that you're just going to stop after one more video. Now, Okay, I'm looking at the time. Excuse me, people. I've got a TikTok dance to learn. So happy 2025, people. Bye-bye. Chad Sowash: Oh, Emi. Oh, Emi. I agree with her from the stand point... Joel Cheeseman: This one's close to your heart, yeah. Chad Sowash: Yeah, I agree it's not going to go away. There's too much money, but I don't think it has much to do with the economy. I think it has to do with, as she had said, Trump's political leanings because he got money from TikTok investors. So that's what it has to do with. I don't think it has anything to do with economy. He doesn't give two shits about content creators and influencers or anything like that. He just cares about the money. Joel Cheeseman: This is fascinating to me. This was one of the few bipartisan bills that came through in Congress. There aren't many bipartisan bills. And what I've heard is people that are on the committee on this come out of meetings and research, saying that this is incredibly dangerous. But you have on the other side, Donald Trump, who is the self-proclaimed greatest social media character in history, who is part owner of a social media property. And you have Elon Musk, who has X, who would certainly benefit from TikTok being banned. Meta is getting in bed big time with the Trump administration. This is going to be one of the more interesting shows, side shows of the administration. Chad Sowash: Oh God. So many. Joel Cheeseman: I think ultimately it just gets put on the back burner. Court cases get pushed back or whatever. Chad Sowash: Kicked down the road. Joel Cheeseman: The only thing that changes it is if China gets frisky. If China goes into Taiwan, if China does something really militarily dangerous, we could pull the plug. Otherwise, I think it's just going to flounder around and be around and it'll be put on the back burner. So, yeah, I think 2025 TikTok will still be around. I think you should call your boy Jim Durbin, get another bet on the table, get another bottle of Eagle Rare in your cupboard and and roll with that. But yeah, it'll be one of the more interesting stories this year is the TikTok saga, the TikTok saga. Chad Sowash: We're not going to be short of interesting stories, unfortunately. Joel Cheeseman: Love that. Well, at this point, this show is the smartest Emi has ever sounded. But we're going to we're going to get smarter people. Chad Sowash: It's the next let's go. Joel Cheeseman: We are gonna go to Lars Schmidt. He's the founder and CEO of Amplify Talent, an icon in the industry. I think I can say that. And just an all around super nice guy. We'll miss his podcast in the future. But Lars, let's hear what he's got to say. Lars Schmidt: All right. When Chad and cheese reach out for recruiting predictions for 2025, you've got to heed the call. And this is what I think. I think that 2025 will see a return to in-person interviewing. And there's a reason for that. I think most of these predictions are probably gonna be tied up in AI. This has connections to it as well. In this year already, we started to see more companies using AI avatars in recruiting. Companies like Chipotle worked with Paradigm to create a avatar called Avocado. Clever. Yes, I know. And it's used to help candidates prep for interviews. EY is doing the same. Lars Schmidt: And you're going to start to see more companies actually bringing these into their recruiting process. And so as more companies are doing this, candidates are going to do that as well. We're gonna start to see more candidates using AI avatars to be able to interview at scale. And so that doesn't work for anyone. And I think more companies are going to be burned by this. And they're going to say, you know what, we just need to go back to basics, bring these interviews back in-house, human to human conversations and connections. And I think we're going to see a lot more of that in 2025. So hang on. It's going to be a wild year. And I think AI is going to be infusing almost every aspect of how we think about recruiting. This is just one of them. Joel Cheeseman: Interesting. Power to the people. You said Paradigm. I think you meant Paradox. Chad Sowash: Paradox. Joel Cheeseman: Just for our listeners. Yeah. Thoughts on Lars' commentary. Chad Sowash: Yeah, I love it. The thing I don't agree. We're not going back. It's just not going to happen. There's way too much success that's already happening. And we talked to many, many enterprise companies who are already starting to use better processes, automation and AI. So I don't think we're going to go back. Are there going to be some companies from an anecdotal standpoint that have great stories around their human to human interviews at some aspects of their company? I don't think it's going to happen from the top to the bottom. It's going to happen in swaths of jobs. So we're not going back, kids. Joel Cheeseman: Yeah. I was talking to a former Indeed exec last year, late last year. And I was talking about just what's the biggest threat to Indeed? What do you see? Is it programmatic? I think we just talked to Apkast's foreman, Chris Foreman, and he said the greatest threat to Indeed is paradox. And I thought that was really, really interesting. And the more I thought about it, I thought he's kind of right. And it may be not paradox directly, but that movement, companies taking over the process. Chad Sowash: We'll get into that with my prediction down the road. Joel Cheeseman: All right. No spoilers, no spoilers. So I do think... Chad Sowash: I agree, though. Joel Cheeseman: Companies are going to go back. Where I do think there's risk is if we got to have a good capture system. We got to have a system where you can't just get blown up with AI job seekers and deal with that kind of flow. So as long as 'cause there's a job seeker side of this and if that gets crazy, we should bring, we'll have JT on many times this year to talk about some of the job seeker stuff. That needs a CAPTCHA system, that needs some sort of controls or else the rails could come off. But I agree. SFX: Like that escalated quickly. Chad Sowash: The money companies are saving, the man hours they're saving, like the efficiency, the black hole going. I mean, yeah, I love Lars and he's a people person to the bone. Chad Sowash: Agreed. Joel Cheeseman: But we are not going back, not going back. That was nice. He's got a better camera than we do too. I don't know. We need one of those big lights or. Chad Sowash: I don't want high def. Are you kidding me? I don't need high def on this. Joel Cheeseman: Hey, Lars, that looks like AI Lars. It's so nice. Chad Sowash: It could have been. Joel Cheeseman: All right, going from Lars, let's go to Rebecca Volpano. Chad Sowash: Yes. Joel Cheeseman: She's the VP of product marketing at Cielo. Speaking of robots, here's Rebecca. Rebecca Volpano: Hey friends, Rebecca Volpano here with my 2025 prediction. And I think that 2025 is gonna be the year of the robot. And so what I mean by that is I think that we're gonna see an introduction of a robotic workforce, not dissimilar to when RPA was introduced, but much more fun. And I think that it's really gonna make all of our lives quite a bit easier. So I don't think that generative AI is gonna take all of the jobs in HR and recruiting this year. But I do think that we're gonna be introduced to some new robotic friends. And so things that are kinda pushing me in that direction, Salesforce, for example, has launched their agents. LinkedIn has announced that they will be introducing some agentic AI later this year. Olivia, so Paradox is Olivia, has a generative AI capability. And Cielo might be up to something too. Rebecca Volpano: So more to come on that. But I'm definitely optimistic about the introduction of a robotic workforce, because I think who wouldn't want a robot sidekick? When I think about some of the most famous robots who are really kinda helping that main character or that hero, I can't imagine anyone really turning that down. So thinking about R2D2 would be awesome to work alongside. Or if you're familiar with or a fan of the Alien franchise, even some of the scarier Androids, I think I would trust with my inbox. Like Bishop absolutely answers the emails for me. Joel Cheeseman: My mind went to make it Megan Fox. I don't about you not R2D2, that's just me. Rebecca Volpano: And then when I think about some of the warm, fuzzy ones like Baymax in Big Hero 6, who wouldn't wanna be around that robot? So those are some of the examples that I'm looking to to kinda help us and guide us in the robots that we infuse into our HR and TA processes. And obviously, there are some that we'll watch out for as well. But would love to know who you'd love to have as a robot sidekick. And if you wanna chat about any of the other AI predictions or things revolving around HR and TA, please let me know. I'd be more than happy to have that convo. And I hope you all have a really great 2025. Thanks. Joel Cheeseman: The Sydney Sweeney bot coming soon to a Walmart near you. Chad Sowash: Well, you know what? You might as well go ahead and play Sean's because Sean's like butts up right against hers. And then we can just comment on those. Joel Cheeseman: All right little combo action. Chad Sowash: Let's do it. Let's do it. Joel Cheeseman: Chad calls inaudible. Here we go. Sean Behr: Chad and cheese. Great to be with you guys for your 2025 prediction show. I'm honored. And I promise you that we will have a beer sometime in our future and do another show together. But thanks for all the help. You guys have always educated the industry and keep us laughing and having fun even when things are stressful. As for 2025 predictions, I've got one or two here that I'd love to throw out for you. So the first is, I think 2025 is gonna be a year where the old rules finally die. I don't wanna say put the nail in the coffin. But I think we're gonna see some of that. So the first thing I'll say is I think you'll see about 20% of the Fortune 500 move to fully autonomous AI hiring, which sounds crazy. You know, a couple of years ago, we were super worried about AI and bias and all kinda things. I think you're gonna see 20% of companies in America start hiring frontline workers completely using AI. They're gonna use AI to source workers on different places. They're gonna match them, screen them, onboard them, get them started. Sean Behr: There's gonna be a lot of worry about what does that do? How does it work? And I think we're gonna see tremendous results. We're gonna see higher satisfaction from workers as we're able to find the right opportunity for them. They're gonna show up happier. They're gonna work harder. They're gonna feel better. They're gonna stay longer. They're gonna be more productive and companies are gonna be more profitable. So I think you're gonna see 20% of companies embrace a fully autonomous AI hiring cycle, at least with the frontline worker. I don't know about for all workers everywhere, but, you know, at Fountain, we're obviously exclusively focused on these frontline workers. Sean Behr: So AI hiring comes alive in a big way and you're gonna see the biggest companies in America start to do that, even though we are wondering, hey, how quickly are they gonna adjust to this? I think they're gonna move pretty fast. The second one I'll say is breaking the old rules is the old schedule, right? The other idea of like, hey, we're gonna come in, you're gonna be here from eight to four, eight to two, something like that. I think you're gonna see companies start to experiment with micro shifts. What do I mean? I mean, giving workers really, really bite sized opportunities to work. Maybe it's a two hour shift. Maybe it's a three hour shift. Maybe I can work from seven to nine because that's what works for my schedule. Sean Behr: And so I think you're gonna see some of that as well. You're gonna see this breaking of the rule of moving from a place where I have to show up for four hours that whole time. You're gonna see people show up for two hours, three hours, again, using AI to schedule all of this, but really matching supply and demand in an incredible way for workers and for companies. So anyway, those are my 2025 productions. Let's see how I do. Joel Cheeseman: That was Sean Behr, CEO and founder at Fountain. I'm sensing a theme here in our predictions, Chad. Take a side, the robots or the humans? Chad Sowash: Well, in 20% fully autonomous hiring, I think. Joel Cheeseman: That's bold. Chad Sowash: But I think it can happen, especially if you take a look at Fountain, Paradox and Harry. Those are like new age, you know. Tech stack platforms, applicant tracking systems, chatbots, so on and so forth. So, I mean, I think 20%, to be quite frank, within the realm of companies that are actually using those three platforms, I think 20% is low when it comes to those three platforms, because I think most of those companies are really going to press what they can do because they're going to want to get people in faster, want to be more competitive, and want to save a hell of a lot of money. And they'll be able to do that through automation. Joel Cheeseman: Yeah. And Sean's probably speaking his book a little bit. His product. Chad Sowash: Of course. Of course. Joel Cheeseman: But he also has the numbers. He also sees what's going on more so than we do. So I think what was interesting there is you had sort of two different layers of it. You had Rebecca talking about literal robots. Things that lift boxes and pick out products and put them on conveyor. Like that is one level of the automation. The automation Sean's talking about is the hiring and the scheduling and the flexibility there. So, you have automation on two sides of that, which kind of are coming together. But I think he's right on and we'll get to JT her prediction. I don't want to spoil that, but... Chad Sowash: Let's do it. Joel Cheeseman: A lot of those frontline workers, you know, they don't have resumes. They don't have a LinkedIn profile. They don't have like a tradition. They're not going to mail their resume into the company like we did way back in the day. So, like this way of hiring people works for this demographic. So, if the market is going to decide where this goes, the market is saying, we want to chat. We want to have something that is frictionless or as frictionless as possible. And that's where we're going. So, yeah, I love Sean and love that his transparency on coming on the show. And we will definitely take you up on those beers at a conference near you. Joel Cheeseman: All right, let's get to Tim Meehan's prediction. Tim is the principal at Talent River Consulting and an old white guy like us. So, he's got to say something smart. Chad Sowash: Been in the game for a minute. Tim Meehan: All right, guys, I have two predictions for 2025 and perhaps in a change from the other themes here. Mine aren't these positive hoity-toity things. The first is that next year we'll continue to treat our candidates like shit. They'll continue to make hundreds of applications to companies and they won't hear back. They won't know why and they'll become incredibly depressed. The second prediction is that talent acquisition leaders will continue to be wholly unqualified, unable, and lacking the skills to make the business case for change to their CEO. Which is the only reason a company will continue to treat their consumers, their customers, their candidates like shit 'cause the CEO doesn't understand the math, but it is destroying their brand. Chad Sowash: Boom. Joel Cheeseman: Jeez, Tim. Chad Sowash: Yeah. So, hey. Joel Cheeseman: Cold war. Chad Sowash: I love, I love, I love. So, first and foremost, Candidate Experience, again, I think Tim is right from the standpoint of the macro, but from the micro, again, I'm going to talk about, and I'm going to keep beating the drum on Fountain, Paradox, and Harry. Any companies that are using them right now, they're being incredibly innovative and aggressive. And they are, and that's around candidate experience 'cause they're looking for speed 'cause we all know speed kills, right? So they're looking for speed. And then they're also looking to, and we've talked to these people, Joel, and this is the fun part. Chad Sowash: Don't worry, kids, it's going to be coming out. New AI sessions season. But we talk to companies that are enterprise companies who are saying, no, I don't just have a seat at the table. My seat is fucking warm because I am demonstrating business cases that nobody else in my organization can demonstrate. This is kicking ass and taking names. So these new technologies aren't just making it easier and better and more cost-effective, but they're creating business cases that are allowing our CHROs and our chief of talent or people to actually get at the table and own that fucking seat. And I love it. Joel Cheeseman: Yeah. I think where he's right is there is still a situation of haves and have-nots. And the companies that we talk to are brand name companies. They're the companies that you shop for at Christmas and they're companies you see commercials for and have money and sort of the resources to do this. 80% of businesses are still small businesses. Joel Cheeseman: And that's kind of a lot of the hiring and where that goes on. I don't know at what point the Harrys and the Paradoxes cross over into smaller businesses. I don't know if they ever will. Maybe there are other solutions that'll adhere to small business to give them these tools. But I'm telling you that the Subway franchisee down the street, who I know pretty intimately, does not have any concept of what's going on with this stuff. So, it'll take time. But for the first time in our careers, we're on the right track of job seekers, candidates getting treated like people, oddly through technology, and companies being able to handle the flood of candidates, oddly enough through technology. Technology is making us more human, which is the point we've been making for a long time. So, Tim, thanks for your honesty. Brutal honesty, if you will. Chad Sowash: Love it. Joel Cheeseman: All right. We're rolling through these. Let's go to JT O'Donnell, one of my favorite guests on the show. She keeps it real. She fights for the job seeker. Chad Sowash: Yeah. I love it. Joel Cheeseman: Let's hear her side of the predictions. J.T. O'Donnel: My prediction for 2025 is the death of the resume and I am here for it. And before you come at me and say, Oh, people have said that before, I'm gonna tell you why it's really gonna happen in 2025. First of all, put your hand up if you're a recruiter in talent acquisition and you have seen a massive increase in these so-called perfect resumes. The ones that the job seekers are using AI to make them an exact match to your job description so they can try to get through your ATS system only for you to call them up and find out they're nothing what they said they are on paper. Yeah, those folks. Are you sick of them? Of course you are. Secondly, have you ever sat around and looked at 100 resumes in a row? You can't see straight when you're done and you can't make sense of them. J.T. O'Donnel: The death of the resume is here. What's gonna replace it? Video. And before you come at me with that, hear me out again. See, video is a way for them to authenticate themselves for you. Ever heard the phrase a picture is worth a thousand words? It's true. When you look at a picture, you can interpret a lot more. Video is worth a million. And before you say to me, I'm not gonna sit and listen to 100 videos. You're wrong. You do it all the time. It's called social media. That is why we are able to watch and go through at a much faster rate. Now, there will be AI tools that will read and listen and comprehend those videos and match people based on the depth of information that they shared. Think about that. You put together a job description. You put together the info and the skills that you're looking for, and it goes out and listens to videos for you and brings back the people that are saying the things that you need to hear so that you can watch and validate it and authenticate it. And now what have you done? The first interview. This is gonna hyper speed the recruitment process. J.T. O'Donnel: It is here. It is coming. So goodbye, resume. Hello, video. You'll thank me later. Joel Cheeseman: She's doing a brewing company, sweat pair, sweatpants... She's gonna fit in great on the show. She's gonna fit in great. Some brewings, I don't even own a pair of beer brewing sweatpants. Nicely done. Nicely done. Chad Sowash: It's 'cause they don't come in your size. Joel Cheeseman: That's just mean. I thought this was a brand new Chad in 2025. Come on now. I have fat pants. They're just not brewing. All right, man, here we go. Death of the resume again. Chad Sowash: Been talking about it. Joel Cheeseman: Every year. What you got? Chad Sowash: I think it's interesting that she goes to video and I think that there is a new opportunity with the video, especially being able to transcribe and then also start to get into contextualization context, clues, tone. They're gonna be different things. Video is not gonna be the only thing. There's gonna have to be a screening process up front with verification validation kind of pieces, which will take care of that. And then the next part of it, the video part, you won't have to worry too much about verification validation. That's already gonna be taken care of, but you'll be able to look at those other things, context, clues, tone, verification, context, clues that are for cultural fit. So anyway, I like it. We'll see if it happens. Joel Cheeseman: So literally we've had this conversation for 25 years, death of the resume, and you and I are old enough to remember visual CV and social media tools and like the death of the resume, and it's still here. So I'm not exactly prepared to bury the resume. I think JT, is living in like 2052 or something where they have beer, sweatpants readily available for everybody. But I am willing to say that we are seeing a splintering of the resume. It used to be resume was the only way that you could get in the door job seeker. Joel Cheeseman: That was the only way or fill out this application. And the pendulum is swinging to where companies have to go and communicate with the job seeker on their terms. So when you talk about factory workers, essential workers, frontline workers, they don't have a LinkedIn profile. The job case of like we're for LinkedIn for people who don't have LinkedIn, employers have to meet those folks where they live, how they communicate, how they use technology. Joel Cheeseman: And because of that, we're seeing tools like Paradox, Harry and others that we've talked about. So I do think there's an element of companies evolving to appeal to candidates on their terms as opposed to the company saying, Hey, the only way that you can apply to this thing is fill out this application or give us this resume. I still think that people are gonna have profiles. I'm still telling my 18 year old, you're gonna have to have a LinkedIn profile. I don't think that's gonna go anywhere, but LinkedIn is now more than that. They have video, they have short video, which no JT, is also very bullish on. Joel Cheeseman: So we're seeing a splintering of what it means to connect with candidates. I don't think it's the death of the resume, but I'm willing to say that it is a splintering of how things have been for a very, very long time. Chad Sowash: A smothering... Joel Cheeseman: A smothering and a splintering and a break in the action. When we come back, we'll get to our predictions for 2025. All right. All right. Real quickly here. We've got two predictions each. I'm gonna go first. My first prediction for 2025, Rippling goes IPO. So the battle between Rippling and Deel finally comes to a head in 2025 with Rippling jumping into the public market. First founded in 2016, they've raised $2 billion. So they're heading into year 10 of this journey investors, I think they're gonna start wanting some liquidity. So I think the IPO market also starts to loosen up. I think you're gonna see more companies come to the IPO markets on their last round. They had a valuation of $13 billion. Joel Cheeseman: I gotta think it's up to like 15 billion this point, which is pretty digestible by the markets. In April of last year, tech crunch asked founder Parker Conrad, who's still a jackass, but anyway, they asked him about the IPO to which he replied, "I definitely think it's a bit in the distance." This was an April which means that's laden for 2025. We're going public. I think that distance is closing quickly. I think Deel has a little more, they have a little more runway to not go public. I think Rippling has less runway to do that. So prediction number one, Rippling goes IPO and I'm excited to see a company well-known in our space finally go public and see how that goes. We thought it would be an ATS. I think it's gonna be a platform to rule them all. And it will be fun to watch your thoughts. Chad Sowash: Yeah. I think Parker Conrad's an asshole. Joel Cheeseman: Yeah. Chad Sowash: Other than that, I don't know if it's gonna 2025, 2026, but they're definitely gonna have to, they've taken over a billion in funding. So I think they have the runway. Will Deel beat them there? I don't know. I think they're pretty much. They're in a great position right now with their... Like 500 million plus ARR or what have you. So yeah, that will be exciting to watch. Joel Cheeseman: Yeah. 2 billion. They're too big to acquire. They have to go. Chad Sowash: You're right. I'm just not sure if it'll be this year. Joel Cheeseman: Either way we can agree on Parker Conrad. SFX: You dumbass. [laughter] Joel Cheeseman: By the way, he's still welcome on the show whenever he wants to come on. Chad Sowash: Oh yeah. I'd love it. I'd love it. Joel Cheeseman: All right, Chad, what you got? Chad Sowash: So prediction number one, the Dam is gonna burst in 2025. That's right. Money will be flowing. Prediction number one, European startups will see funding that will increase 3x year over year in 2025, which gets us back to 2022 levels. Joel Cheeseman: Yeah. Chad Sowash: So this from eu-startup.com as part of the step up startup project, the European commission are working toward fixing regulatory inconsistencies funding gaps and limited cross border cooperation throughout the EU. They're also building an interconnected startup network leveraging strengths of local ecosystems. To shorten it up, they are working because they understand that the startups are what's going to fuel their future. So Europe, mainly in the EU in this case are focused on helping startups in countries throughout the EU, just to become more straightforward from a standard standpoint. So what's going to be the driving force to push funding dollars to Europe? You might ask well Matt answered half of it. Chad Sowash: It's gonna be pain and chaos. Pain and chaos is coming to the United States. Immigration? That's our superpower. That might not be our superpower. Trying to bully sovereign countries like Canada, Greenland, Panama for the Panama Canal. That breeds chaos. That breeds pain for Americans. And the new freedom to yell fire in a crowded theater with the newest Facebook news amplify the chaos itself. And what do investors hate? They hate pain and they hate fucking chaos. So investors want a smooth ride as smooth as they can muster with a startup. So face it, there's already enough risk investing in a startup. Chad Sowash: So why enhance that risk without actual reward? Nope. That's dumb. Which is why many investors will start to see what you and I have been experiencing for years now. European startups are pretty damn innovative. And as America turns into a broligarchy where billionaires and bigger companies are just gonna stamp out the little guy it's going to be... My prediction. We're gonna see funding in Europe for Europe startups, 3X year over year in 2025. Joel Cheeseman: That's sexy. SFX: Yi papi. Joel Cheeseman: Broligarchy is a... Chad Sowash: Broligarchy. Joel Cheeseman: I like. I like that. Shocking you would have a European prediction now that you're full on native over in Europe. Chad Sowash: Europe Chad... Joel Cheeseman: I like that. And it'll be interesting to see, so much of the European money is from America. So we'll see how that flows. It used to be a time where Trump would say something about... Chad Sowash: I see more. Joel Cheeseman: A company and that stock would tank and people were freaked out. I don't know if they have a similar freak out. He seems to be going after countries now more than he does companies. But yeah... Chad Sowash: It's chaos. Joel Cheeseman: Buckle up, buckle up, kids. Chad Sowash: Chaos 2020. Joel Cheeseman: Trump is gonna be, jeez, interesting. All right, I like it, I like it. Let's go to mine. My next prediction is I'm gonna be at Chipotle a whole lot. SFX: Oh my God, I love Chipotle. Joel Cheeseman: Oh, sorry, that's from a different show. Let's go to my real prediction. ZipRecruiter goes private. ZipRecruiter goes private. We don't have the full numbers yet, but from 2022 to 2023, net income at Zip was down from 61 million to 49 million. And I'm guessing it's gonna be lower in '24 when they talk in February about their numbers from the last quarter this year. Total revenue in that time went from 904 million to 645 million. Free cash flow from '22 to '23 went from 21 million to 9 million. That's a lot lower than 21 million. The company went public in 2021, which was fun to watch. They closed on the first day at $26 a share. They're currently now trading under $7... So unless Recruit Holdings comes in and adds them as a third leg to the Indeed, Glassdoor triad. Chad Sowash: Possibility. Joel Cheeseman: I'm predicting they go public. I think there's a better chance that Apollo or someone like them comes in. Maybe it's CareerBuilder plus Monster plus Zip. In 2025, the new brand will be as creative as that and they'll create efficiencies. They'll fire Ian finally, which you'll enjoy. And they'll... Chad Sowash: Be too late... Joel Cheeseman: Go private. Look, Zip is a steaming pile of dog shit sprinkled with cat turds and something's got to save it. Either an acquisition or private, but they can't keep going on the road that they're going. And in 2025, they either get a sugar daddy or a life raft. Chad Sowash: I agree. I still can't believe because at one time they were on the right track. And again, it just seems like IPO threw them just out of whack and they've literally, they've lost their way. And I have no clue why Ian's still there. Joel Cheeseman: They lost the beef, man. SFX: Ma! The meatloaf! Chad Sowash: The meatloaf. SFX: Fuck. Chad Sowash: Good one. That was a very good one. Joel Cheeseman: Thank you. Chad Sowash: I'm gonna have to agree with that one too. Zip going private. My second prediction, this one kids, get ready to take notes. Performance driven, AKA, programmatic ad spending goes flat or drops in 2025. So I'm gonna use AppCast as a guide as they are definitely a market leader. I'm not picking on them, but they are a great example. Lemme line it out for you. So at one time AppCast ran nearly the entire programmatic job market for all of the recruitment ad agencies. Then we saw KRT was acquired by Recruitix. So KRT ejects from AppCast and so does their money. Chad Sowash: Ratency acquires Peringo, Ratency's out. But that's okay because AppCast still had plenty of other recruitment ad agencies that they could partner with. And then out of nowhere, AppCast buys Bayard Advertising and becomes a direct competitor with all of those remaining agencies using the AppCast platform. And then this week we see more diversification as Shaker acquires JobAdX. I believe Shaker's move is the epitome of what the rest of the market will be doing in moving away from AppCast to gain better margins and prices for their customers and not feed the beast and or one of their competitors. So a much bigger problem that they have, and we just heard from Matt Lavery, as we talked about on many episodes this year, companies like UPS and General Motors are using more advanced systems like Fountain and Paradox. And those companies are depending less and less on candidates from external vendors like AppCast. Why? Because those companies are reconfiguring their tech stacks and processes to re-engage candidates that they have already bought and already reside in their applicant tracking system. Chad Sowash: So here's an example. UPS hired over 125,000 people in just five weeks last year. Over 30,000 of those hires came directly out of their applicant tracking system, which means they didn't have to go external and spend additional cash. They already had talent in their database, so they used it. Furthermore, UPS had 35,000 additional hires who were former employees. That's over 65,000 of the 125 of those hires that happened without external help. And that is only the beginning, kids. Last year, we interviewed major enterprise hiring companies who are already flocking to this type of tech and process. And as Chris Foreman said in an interview we published earlier this week, AppCast's sweet spot is enterprise. Chad Sowash: That's because performance-driven ad buying is mostly enterprise companies. So quick recap. Recruitment ad agencies will deliver lower costs and more competitive pricing solutions for their customers. That's what we're gonna see out of Shaker, obviously. But return on less budget. Great returns, less budget. Chad Sowash: Number two, enterprise companies are starting to hire through their own databases, which means less dependency on external performance vendors. And last but not least, hadn't mentioned this yet, but neither TotalJobs or StepStone, both AppCast sibling companies, neither have fully embraced performance. And they're continuing to milk the duration-based market dry, which one of these days I think is gonna be a great case study along with Monster and CareerBuilder for innovators dilemma. But wrapping this up, I'm not picking on AppCast, but they are a market leader, and I believe that this is a microcosm of the performance-based job ad spending market. So in 2025, my prediction is, I believe we will see job openings continue to grow and programmatic revenues either flat or drop. SFX: You're not gonna fall for the banana in the tailpipe. Joel Cheeseman: And I would add, employers are wising up. The consumer is getting smarter. Chad Sowash: Yes. Joel Cheeseman: We've talked about job postings as commodities for a long time, and programmatic is the quintessential run to the bottom. It's more of a feature, I think, for most than not. The value was that there were so few of them, and I'm sad that Shaker bought them, 'cause that might have been a prediction that I would have had, is that somebody, an agency was gotten into the game. JobAdX is one of the few that are left. These are gonna be features. Look, I think a lot of companies have figured out if I'm on LinkedIn, and indeed, I'm covering 80% of the market, and this whole programmatic thing, I don't know. Joel Cheeseman: It's kind of a black box. It's sort of mysterious. I don't know if I need it or not. The experience sucks. Go to CareerBuilder and search for a job. It's all AppCast stuff. It redirects you everywhere. You have to register for everything. Job seekers have wised up. They know I'm gonna go right to the company site. This is where job boards are sending me anyway. I'm gonna figure out where that is. I think Google for Jobs has helped get people directly to company websites or get them to Indeed or LinkedIn, where they already have an account and they already trust sort of the experience. So yeah, I think that programmatic probably peaked with AppCast's acquisition of StepStone. But yeah, I like it. I like it. Chad Sowash: All right... Joel Cheeseman: I normally end the show with a dad joke, Chad, but what could be better than a dad joke? Chad Sowash: Stephen McGrath. Joel Cheeseman: Obviously, hearing from our favorite Scott. SFX: Welcome to All Things Scottish. Our slogan is, if it's not Scottish, it's crap. Joel Cheeseman: That's right. Stephen McGrath, our favorite Scott. He's the product experience manager at Poetry. The dude spends way too much time in the shower. If you follow him on LinkedIn, you know this. But let's hear Stephen's prediction to end 2025. [music] Stephen McGrath: Hi, I'm Stephen McGrath, the Chad and Cheese podcast, favorite Scotsman for three years in a row. A relationship built on nothing creepy and a very mutual appreciation for each other. Joel Cheeseman: Yes. Stephen McGrath: So my prediction for 2025 is simple. '24 saw the rise and implosion of AI into businesses. We have tools that are promising to revolutionize the recruitment process through that. But where it becomes really interesting for me is the companies that are going to implement co-pilot like tools into every area of their business. What does that mean? And I think it probably means that your company is going to know more about you than it ever has done before. And that's gonna affect things potentially, like bonus potential. It's gonna affect things like promotions possibly. It might even go all the way up to affecting how you exit a business and maybe even the reasons why. Those things that you thought were maybe incompetence now, if the co-pilot is running through that organization, it might have access to things and pick up on things. Stephen McGrath: And I think we might even start to see some lawsuits or things like that off the back of that as well which could be quite interesting. That might be a fairly doom and gloom one, but it's interesting to know that we might go back to the world where an employee is watched more than they ever have been and judged as a result of that as well. Joel Cheeseman: And we now know way more about Steven than we ever wanted to know. He's apparently a possible loofah guy, a loofah user. Who knew? Who knew? Man, keep drinking that chicken cock, baby. I like what you're dropping. Chad Sowash: I was wondering how his skin got so soft. And now we know, now we know. Joel Cheeseman: This business is about the people, man. I say this at every conference, everywhere we go, it's all the tech comes and goes, the company's come and go, but the people stay. Chad, happy new year. Here's to a great 2025. Thanks to our guest predictors. We'll see how they did in 2026 when we get together. Until then, we out. Chad Sowash: We out. 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.

In this episode, we sit down with Chris Forman, founder of Appcast and the guy who apparently figured out how to keep his sanity while building a recruitment tech juggernaut. Spoiler alert: it involved avoiding the startup graveyard of “too many ideas, not enough sense.” We cover—Appcast’s humble beginnings as the industry's "rail builder," its glow-up via Stepstone’s acquisition (with "Daddy Warbucks" Axel Springer footing the bill), and the drama of the Bayard acquisition. Was buying Bayard a stroke of genius, or a Hail Mary pass to make Stepstone’s IPO look pretty? Chris tells us what’s what—and might even admit to annoying a few agency partners along the way. But it’s not all corporate chess. We dive into why the recruitment industry still struggles with the basics. (Seriously, why are we still overcomplicating “Does this candidate actually meet the job requirements?” with PhD-level nonsense?) Plus, Chris weighs in on why recruitment tech leaders might be facing their own "Blockbuster vs. Netflix" moment. Oh, and there’s a listener question that hits the nail on the head: What even IS Appcast?  An agency? A media company? A tech wizard wearing a recruitment cape? Chris dishes out the real talk on why Appcast is breaking the mold—and maybe some budgets—while shaking up the recruitment industry. Expect snark, surprises, and maybe a cheese joke or two (because apparently, Chris has a thing for dairy farms). This episode is perfect for HR pros, tech geeks, and anyone who loves hearing founders spill the tea on the behind-the-scenes chaos. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Podcast Intro: 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, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast. [music] Joel: Oh, yeah. This is the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman. Joined as always, my co-pilot, Chad Sowash is in the house, as we welcome Chris Forman, founder and current/outgoing CEO of Appcast. Chris, welcome to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast. Chad: It's the only way he'd come on the show. Joel: Yeah. He's going out in a blaze of incompetence on coming on our show. [chuckle] Chris Forman: No, guys. As I consider all the things that have happened in my career, I realize that there was a giant puzzle piece missing. Joel: A void. [chuckle] Chris Forman: And before, there was an emptiness. And so before I step away, I had to make sure that I checked all the boxes and... Chad: There's a hole in his heart. Joel: As he is laying on his bed of cash, he's thinking, "What does my life need?" [laughter] Joel: What am I missing in my life?" A little Chad and Cheese time. Chad: "I don't have enough idiots in my life. I need some Chad and Cheese." Joel: Well, Chris, some of our listeners will not know you, may not even know Appcast. Give us the elevator pitch on you and the business before we get into the Q&A. Chris Forman: Yeah. My name is Chris. I've been married to Angela for 31 years. We live on a dairy farm in upstate New Hampshire. Yep. Yep. Cows. And we have Guernsey cows, which, the cows right here, my grandfather raised them in Northern Ireland. And, let's see here, what else? We got four kids, two married, I'm a grandfather. We got two boys in the army. We got one 16-year-old left at home, and she's fantastic. And, life is good. We moved to New Hampshire 31 years ago because I married up. Angela is way smarter than me. She... Chad: Join the club, my friend. Joel: Yep. Exactly. Chris Forman: Went to Dartmouth Medical School, which is now called the Geisel School of Medicine. Do you know who Dr. Geisel was? Chad: No. Chris Forman: Dr. Seuss. He went to Dartmouth. Chad: Oh, stop it. Joel: What? Chris Forman: Yeah, Dr. Seuss. And so when he died, his wife... Do you know what it cost to get a school name at Dartmouth named after you? Joel: No. Chris Forman: $250 million. Joel: Oh my... Chris Forman: So anyway, it's now the Geisel School of Medicine. And when we moved up here, pizza was still ethnic food. So, I was like, "Babe, I love you. We're gonna be here for four years in one day." And that was 31 years ago. And now Angela is making cheese and keeping people healthy and... Joel: When does the Forman Library open up at Dartmouth? Is that... Chris Forman: Oh my God, no. [laughter] Joel: Now that we know the price tag. Chad: You missed the big one. He made the connection between smartness in our audience with Dr. Seuss. Joel: There you go. Chad: He's already threading the needle. S?: You're not gonna fall for the banana in the tailpipe. Chad: What's your favorite cheese? You guys make cheese? What's... Chris Forman: Yeah. So just to be clear, Angela's the farmer and she's the cheesemaker. She makes ricotta. Angela's family is Italian. So if you think about an Irish guy and an Italian, the fights are fantastic, there's all sorts of sparks flying in the air. S?: I'm happy. [laughter] Chris Forman: Cheese update. So she makes ricotta, also makes cannoli, unbelievable cannoli. And my job... Joel: Oh. S?: That's winning. Chris Forman: Yes, winning. Is I go and I sell this stuff at the farmers' market. Joel: Oh, nice. Chris Forman: So for the last couple of years, you couldn't get me on Thursday afternoon... Joel: Do you have a pair of overalls? Chris Forman: No, no, but I can dress it up. Joel: The CEO of Appcast at a farmers' market selling cheese. Chris Forman: Yeah, yeah. It's great. I'm good at it, man. Chad: Dude, he's in New Hampshire. That's all upscale shit there. It's all upscale. Chris Forman: I'm good at it. Joel: That's true. New Hampshire. Well, give us a bit on Appcast. Chris Forman: I will. But here's one thing. The jobs marketplace... If you're in jobs marketplaces like the jobs business, it's been a tough couple of years, guys. If Appcast and Angela's compounded annual growth rate over cheese sales, I probably wouldn't be retiring. And, there you go. Then maybe we would be doing the library at Dartmouth. Appcast. Appcast is the fourth business in recruiting technology that I've been a part of. It's been a fun one. Founded in 2014, investment thesis was pretty simple. Pay for performance job ads are awesome, unless they're not awesome. Meaning that it's easy to buy a posting that's a duration-based ad, and you give 300 bucks or 500 bucks or a thousand bucks and you get what you get, don't be upset. Chris Forman: With pay for performance, if you don't manage your campaigns and how much you spend, everything can run away, you get a whole ton of applicants that are on easy-to-fill jobs, none on the hard-to-fill jobs, you throw your budget into a trash can and light it on fire. So we decided to build software that made it easy for recruitment marketers to buy and manage performance job ads. And one of the amazing proof points of occasionally blind squirrel finds nut, the business didn't pivot, it's doing the same thing that it has done for a decade, just at a bigger scale, so now we're just over 500 people. And by objective measures, we buy more job ads and optimize more job ads than anyone else in the world. Joel: Are you on other places than job sites or, are you on association sites and news sites and that sort of proprietary information, that's your secret sauce? Chris Forman: Well, it's actually, it's not the... Everybody thinks it's the sites that are proprietary, it's not. This is a funny story. Two years ago, our head of marketing, Heather Salerno came to me and said, "We've been telling people for a long time that our job ads get distributed to 10,000 different sites. Have we checked that lately to make sure that it's true?" And I'm like, "So Heather, are you saying I'm full of shit?" And she's like, "No, no, but sometimes you're expansive." Chad: But kind of. But kind of. Yeah. Chris Forman: "So can we check it out?" We ran the data, and this was in 2022. We found out that we ended up getting job ad traffic from 31,000 different places that year. Chad: Wow. Crazy. Chris Forman: And we didn't even know it because there's something interesting about the job's ecosystem is, is it tends to be relatively incestuous, like job ads go in lots of... Yeah, yeah, go to different places. Joel: No shit. [laughter] Chris Forman: So yeah. But besides the traditional job marketplaces that we all know and love, there's lots of association sites, but also search, social, so this, the software is smart enough to know that when you've tapped out at a particular level, you can't get more of the type of person that you need, then you start to incrementally go to channels that are more expensive or... So here's... You guys wanna know the secret of why all this stuff really works? It's not the distribution list. Chad: Sure. Chris Forman: All right. We track... This is roughly right. It's got an 8 in front of it. Over 80% of the job ads that we buy for employers, we track not just to the apply, but to the hire. And so that signal... So, somebody clicks on a job... We have no idea who the applicants are. Somebody clicks on a job, they go to an applicant tracking system, they apply, we put a tracking code into the ATS, we get that tracking code back, and all that it tells us is candidate is dequeued, candidate is still in the process. Rockstar. And we actually can have it, give us seven different statuses if we wanted them. But it's a... That simple concept is hard to do, but it's a water filter. So when you're hiking, I... Angela and I like to go hike in the White Mountains. There's some long hikes. Joel: What's hiking? Sorry. What's hiking? Chris Forman: Yes, I know, it's heavy pack uphill. Joel: Is that like a quick walk up a hill? Yeah. Chris Forman: When you run into real hikers, they actually say, "Oh, you're going for a walk." And that typically means you're walking 30 miles up 10,000 feet of elevation. But there are places where you run out of water and so you gotta pull water out of a stream and you don't wanna do that. Giardia is no fun. And so you have a water filter that just pulls the water on out. Joel: Yeah. Chris Forman: It is so distilling, because here's the deal in the job ad world, almost every job ad click gets bought by somebody. Okay. The game is buying the right ones. There's that old saw that if you're at a poker table and you don't know who the mark is, it's you. So, in essence what the software that the folks have built is really good at making sure that our clients buy the right traffic and then let others buy the other stuff. Chad: We'll start thinking more forward-thinking in a minute. Chris Forman: Yes. Chad: But I wanna talk about, I think it's important that we take a look at how you started the company and then go to market. 'Cause... Chris Forman: Sure. Chad: As we talk to startups and other companies that are out there, they have huge missteps where you guys created the rails for ad agencies to be able to get into this market. So, what was the whole thought process behind that? Because you could have gone direct. You are now, but you could have gone direct at that point, direct to brand, but you didn't. You were like, "Look, we know that there's already infrastructure that's out there, they're called recruitment ad agencies." Right? Then you built the rails for them. Talk about that a little bit from a go-to-market standpoint and why that made so much sense, 'cause obviously it worked. Chris Forman: Yeah. A lot of times when folks talk to entrepreneurs and they think about why companies are successful, the conventional wisdom is, oh, it's the team. You get the right people in the room and all of a sudden everything happens. Chad: You're gonna say dumb luck. You're gonna say dumb luck, I can hear it. [laughter] Chris Forman: No, no, I'm not, but for me that was clearly the case. But if you take a look at the data, timing. If Appcast was founded a year earlier, or a year later, I don't think we would've been as successful as we happened to be. There was this perfect storm of the rise of pay for performance advertising, as well as the desire within the recruitment advertising world to create more fragmentation. So, if you're an advertising agency and all that you do is you buy one thing for your clients, what's your value? If that's all that you do is you are like, "I just go and I buy this, like this one box," and give you the box, clients are like, "Well, okay, well, maybe I can do that by myself." In advertising agencies, it's actually you get rewarded by bringing new ideas, as well as bringing, I guess to use the investing metaphor, a balanced portfolio. You're not putting all your stuff into one stock. And there was this, one of the things that happened when pay for performance came along is it led to this incredible explosion of job sites that were buying and selling traffic from each other. Chris Forman: And so, they were looking for a solution that would allow them to create higher value products for their customers. And for us, we had this thesis, but it was to build scale, it was a chicken and an egg. You needed money in the system for job sites to wanna integrate and play ball. And you also, to get money in the system, you needed job sites to play ball. And so, it was fairly logical from a startup standpoint, "Okay, we build something, let's go find folks that have a lot of money to spend whose interest are aligned with ours, and were interested in helping us build it." And that's what happened. And so, it made sense. But besides ad agencies, there's been a series of companies over time that adopted programmatic that were transformative. The gig companies came on in. First it was ad agencies, then gig companies, and then all of a sudden you got into e-commerce supply chain. As soon as COVID hit and all, everybody needed to buy stuff in boxes, all that money flowed. And it's interesting, almost at each time, one was starting to wane, the other one would pick up. And so, it was an interesting kind of bridge. Joel: Why do you rob banks? Because that's where the money is, I think is what he's saying. Chris Forman: There you go. [chuckle] Chris Forman: Yeah. Podcast Intro: I'm just curious, Chad and I talk critically about job boards fairly frequently on the show. One of us made more than the other. I'm curious, what's your take on the state of the job board business? Chris Forman: Well, before I came up to the Upper Valley... Joel: He's choosing his words wisely, I can tell. [chuckle] Chris Forman: No, I'm gonna... This is an old Forman saw. I was a journalist on Capitol Hill. And the first press conference that I went to, I stayed up all night, I thought up my questions, it was just some podunk congressman's press secretary giving a briefing. Joel: Yep. Chris Forman: And I asked the question, she looked right at me and said, "That's a great question," and then proceeded to answer the question she wanted to answer, not the one that was asked. So, let's take a look at this through a couple of lenses. One, the state of the job board industry is it's been a tough couple of years in marketplaces. If you take a look at the publicly available data from publicly traded companies that are in this space, the hangover from the COVID go-go years is real. Whenever there's a retrenchment like that, the good idea fairy gets kicked out of the office and everybody gets back to work. And so, I think what you've seen over the last couple of years is a re-focusing on really figuring out what drives value for clients and doing a lot of that. You've seen big companies in this space decide to go do something and then pull it back or change it. And a lot of that is because it's like, "Hey, these aren't the go-go years where we can expect to grow 20% every year on the top line. We need to make sure that we take care of our customers. We need to make sure that we do the right things by jobseekers." Chris Forman: So one is, I think there's been a distillation of focus on performance and real business value versus getting out over our skis. Two is, Buffett always says that you never know who's swimming naked until the tide goes out. Well, the tide has gone out and there's been a flight to quality. So, a lot of people that were endeavoring to innovate ways to fill pipelines aren't in that business anymore. And so there's, people's money has been flowing to the people that actually deliver value. Three, the needs of customers, at least at the enterprise level, have changed. So, if you are looking back in the '20s, or 2020, 2021, 2022, the overwhelming business problem that big companies had was volume. I called it the fog spoon business requirement. The only qualification was fog, breathing. And now, that's not the case. It's snap towards efficiency, and you're seeing organizations need less focus on what matters and what delivers value, and rethink their buying patterns. So, those are the big ones. And... Joel: If the industry was a stock or you buy, sell or hold, let's keep it simple. Chris Forman: Oh, buy right now. 100% buy. Yeah. Yeah. The overall demographics are on our side. Demands are on our side. And so, there's an argument that says AI is gonna disrupt the need for human capital. That tends to be an... Joel: Everybody. Chris Forman: Yeah. That tends to be an argument that's made by people that went to college that work in conference rooms. [laughter] Chris Forman: No, I'm... Well, I'm serious. I think that there's always this huge bias towards... Chad: With a professor before their name. Yeah. Yeah. Chris Forman: That's right. It's like, okay, well, guess what? An AI can't hammer a nail, or fix a toilet, or at least serve a good hot cup of coffee with a smile. Anyway. But... So that one lens is what's going on in the market and demand and how the organizations are responding. I think you're gonna see some consolidation. Okay. So, if you take a look at what... Joel: Seeing it now. Chris Forman: Yeah. JobGet and Snagajob, that was... Joel: CareerBuilder Monster? Chris Forman: Yeah, CareerBuilder Monster. Again, you're having a flight towards quality, the stuff that it needs to work through the system is working through the system, and capitalism is a full contact sport. Chad: Well, I think they ran into innovator's dilemma to some extent, because they didn't continue to innovate, they just sat on the pile of cash that came in. And Indeed flanked Monster and CareerBuilder and Snagajob got flanked by a bevy of other organizations. It's one of the things that we see a lot, not just in our space but in many other spaces. How are you and the kids over at Appcast, how are you going to stop that from happening to you? Chris Forman: Don't smoke your own press release. And trust me, it's really nice to smoke your own press release sometimes. Yeah. [laughter] Chris Forman: That's the point that I was making about people getting back to reality here, is that everybody was brilliant and everybody was smart in 2022 in our space. And now, it's a lot harder to go make a buck. And so taking care of the basics, interestingly, that starts with delivering measurable value. So, when we think about what we do for our customers, performance is number one. Not relationship, not any... It's, we need to be able to show provable performance. Number two, responsiveness. This is an old-fashioned thing, but when a customer picks up the phone, it's, "Yes, ma'am." And you pick up the phone on the first ring and you carry that metaphor through, it's a competitive market. And then the last thing is, is not being not nice. We're all people and it's nice to work with people that you like. And sometimes people just aren't nice in business environments. And I think that's one of the things that people like about Appcast is that, generally speaking, we compete like nobody's business. We play sticks up hockey. We're nice guys and gals, and so that works too. Chad: So you'll give somebody a bloody lip, but then give 'em a hug after the match, that's what you're saying? Chris Forman: Yeah. Again, I live in Northern New England, so all my kids were hockey players. We absolutely will check somebody into the board, 100%, and hard, but we don't get thrown in the sin bin very often. And so, that's part of the game. And there you go. One of the things I've relished is coming on the Daily Mail of job boards and talking to you guys about... You guys are pretty tough on Indeed and Stepstone. And... Chad: Let's get to that. Yes. Chris Forman: Can I share my perspective on this? All right. Chad: Oh, please. Oh, please. Joel: He wants to vent for a little bit. Chad: Oh, I love it. I love it. Yeah. Chris Forman: So, Indeed, let's start with Indeed. Chad: Sure. Chris Forman: These guys are really, really, really sharp. You talked about organizations that sometimes are very successful, then sit on a bunch of cash and smoke too many of their own press releases and don't necessarily keep up. The reality is, is that the partnership that I and we have developed with Indeed has been good and strong, but they... It's also an environment where sometimes our interests align, sometimes they don't align. But if you ask me who are some of the sharpest cats in this industry, it's these guys. They're thinking around the corner more than most anybody else I know. And so, one of the things that's coming up now is they've created... I talked about the value of Appcast is knowing every click, whether or not it converts to an apply and then to a hire. Indeed's going in the right... In the same direction. They're building pipes to be able to do that. And that's happening at Stepstone as well. But there's only a couple of organizations in the world that have the chops to go do that type of stuff. And if you take a look at where this industry is going, you just have to look at any of the publicly available decks that are out there, everything's moving towards the hire. Why? It's a $33 billion a year business and job ads globally. It's a $330 billion a year if you take a look at this more broadly from staffing. And so I sometimes think that you guys might be a little bit tough. And too... Chad: It's our job. Chris Forman: Yeah, I know, I know. Listen, the fourth estate has responsibilities and I get it. As an old journalist, in fact... Oh, hold on. Maybe my press card is here someplace. But... [laughter] Joel: He's got his press badge from 1992. Yeah. Chad: He's gonna pull out a sag after a card next. [laughter] Chris Forman: Anyway, I got it. I can't find it. Joel: Blockbuster membership card. Where's that? [laughter] Joel: Where's that, Chris? Chris Forman: But the... And I get that. And honestly, you guys serve... I'm not joking when I talk about the power of the fourth estate and the role that journalists play and, forcing industries and executives and policymakers to think differently. I think you guys do a really good job, sometimes a little Daily Mail-ish, but good. But now let me talk... You bust the chops out of my friend and boss, Sebastian Dettmers. And... Joel: Here we go. [laughter] Chad: We gotta talk about Indeed first. Just because you're sharp, you're a genius, doesn't mean that you're not gonna use that genius for evil, okay? They're squeezing... There's so much shit that they could be doing that they should already be doing. And I mean, you guys too, we should already be a cost per quality candidate. There's no reason for that. If you can go all the way down to the hire, which I will love to have a discussion around why it's stupid for us to actually go cost per hire, because we don't control, other than getting the candidate to the front door. And you want to be able to take responsibility for a shitty hiring manager? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard, Chris. And then, going back to what Indeed could be doing and they're not doing, they're squeezing the industry. That's all they're doing. Chris Forman: I disagree. Chad: Okay. I appreciate that. Chris Forman: And, while I know some of our customers are unhappy with some of their partners, whether it be Indeed or LinkedIn or Stepstone in terms of like, "I don't like paying this bill." I get that. If you take a look at performance data around what delivers the most efficient value for enterprises in the United States from a hiring standpoint, in the vast majority of cases, it's Indeed. Chad: I'm not saying they're not dominant. They're using their dominance in a very bad way. That's what we're saying. Chris Forman: I'm making a different argument. What I'm saying is the data says, they deliver... If they were selling trucks, these would be the longest lasting, most affordable trucks in America. So the data says their product is really, really good. Now, will businesses use leverage if they have it? Of course, I'm not going to apologize or make a distinction there. But here's the other thing I'm gonna say is, Chris Hyams is one of the most ethical, straightforward people I've ever met in my entire career. And I do believe that leaders matter in companies. And so, I've had lots of conversations with him over the years and none of them have been about leverage and driving revenue and power, it's been about trying to do some good work. And so, take it for what it's worth. We're both named Chris, which clearly means that we have a deep relationship. Both of our first daughters are named Emma. So clearly, lots of checkboxes here. But they innovate, they skate hard, they have a product that delivers exceptional value. And the guy that's responsible for running that place is a good dude. Joel: Now, Chris, if you're gonna go there, let's be a little transparent. Indeed gets a lot of your spend, yes? Chris Forman: Yeah, because it earns it. Joel: Okay. Not that you're doing it for a financial gain, but defending them and also, we should let the listeners know that they get a lot of... Chris Forman: They're close partners. They're close partners. Yeah, but here's the deal. It's like, one of the things that we're doing in the ad agency business, you guys know this, that if you are buying media on behalf of clients, there's a standard commission, it's 15%. You do that. And then, this is an industry-wide practice. Incentives that come at the end of the year rebates based on how much you sell of somebody's stuff. We've never done those. We don't take them. We refuse them. It's in our contract. And so, it doesn't actually matter to me. The money's gonna get spent. The money will get spent because customers have a need. Whether it's Indeed or it's somebody else, I truly don't care. And... Joel: I just want the listeners to understand that there's a lot of, you said incestual earlier. So... Chris Forman: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We're the largest buyer of Indeed, I think in the United States. And so I get it. Joel: There you go. Okay. Chris Forman: But I also, we're starting to get to know each other. [laughter] Chris Forman: I can be pretty direct. Joel: No, it's great. It's great. Chad: We appreciate that. Joel: Let's talk Stepstone. Chad: Talk about Sebastian. Chris Forman: Oh, yeah. Come on. I'm gonna talk about Sebastian. [laughter] Chris Forman: Because I respect Chris, but Sebastian's a friend of mine and you guys are pretty hard. So a few things, all the things that I said about Chris, I feel about Sebastian, but he also is just one of the most genuine, nice people. He's also like a complete nutter, awesome power dork. He runs this giant business. He writes books. In fact, best-selling business book. Joel: Große, it's a dark German book. Chris Forman: In Germany. Yeah, yeah. [0:24:34.7] ____ It's kind of English and Deutsch, so it's kind of, you know, a slave. Joel: Big work, something, yeah. Chris Forman: Yeah, so it's about demographic stuff. He writes mathematical proofs and papers for fun. This guy is just like your best friend from high school... Joel: I don't know. Are we that tough on Stepstone? I know we have fun with them. Chris Forman: No, you're not. No, no, you're not. I'm just busting your chops. [overlapping conversation] Joel: Indeed we're generally critical, but yeah, Stepstone. Chad: What I've said on several occasions is I can't understand why a more evolved tech like Appcast is being controlled by a job board. Joel: Oh yeah. Chad: That just to me seems backward. It's like dropping a V12, which is Appcast, a V12 engine and a horse and buggy, which is Stepstone. So that to me is what I couldn't understand. Whether he was president or CEO or it didn't matter, it was just the dynamics of they were over you guys. And to me, that didn't make any sense because from an infrastructure and a long-term vision standpoint, we're not going heavy into the duration market, we're going into performance. We're going performance. Chris Forman: Let's talk about that for a second. Chad: Yeah. Chris Forman: So, when we sold in 2019, we sold a big chunk of the business to Stepstone. All right. And the employees, Angela and I kept the rest. And then we created a deal where we could sell the rest of the stock. There's no contract for me to stay. And this is my first rodeo. So, this stopped being about a paycheck a while ago. Chad: But you love this shit. Chris Forman: But there's also a reason why I became an entrepreneur. All right. I don't like working for knuckleheads. Right? I mean... Joel: We don't either. Chris Forman: Right. Exactly. Your life is too short. So, I'm still here. Now, why am I here? There's two reasons, but one of them is Dettmers. Okay. When you say Stepstone is over Appcast, that is a completely and utterly wrong definition of the relationship. Joel: Oh, good. Chad: In the umbrella of how the businesses actually are structured, we're saying Stepstone isn't over Appcast. Chris Forman: Stepstone owns all of Appcast stock. So... Chad: Okay. Chris Forman: And Stepstone is owned by Axel Springer, and Axel Springer is owned by KKR and all these type of stuff. But, what I heard in the question was, "Hey, there's this old-fashioned business and now they're the ones that are owning this thing and that's not cool... " It doesn't work that way. We've got a group of people that spend a lot of time collaborating and sharing ideas. We have total freedom to go do what we wanna do because it's just a different business. And so, I got four kids and the whole, "You're not the boss of me, I'm the boss of you." That... [laughter] Chris Forman: It's not junior high. I would also say that the discipline of running a marketplace business is very different than the discipline of running our business. Joel: I would assume so, yes. Chad: Especially in Europe. Europe is an entirely different dynamic, entirely crazy different dynamic than the US is. Chris Forman: And if you take a look at what Stepstone's marketplace business and you look at the marketplaces that have grown in the United States, we've got really big, maybe comedown, all that type of stuff. The dynamic with the Stepstone marketplaces are different, incredible growth, doing really, really well. And so, it may be fair to say that a marketplace business is not the newest business model, but I would argue that in terms of execution and whether or not they're operators, what makes Indeed great? They're operators. What makes Stepstone great is they're operators and they do it really well. Joel: Why Stepstone? Why 2019? And for critics that say you left money on the table in that deal, what would you say to them? Chris Forman: Well, and the last part of it is, is that I rolled the vast majority of my ownership and so the business became a lot more valuable. So, it turned out to be a pretty damn good thing. Joel: Okay. Chris Forman: And part of the reason why we did 2019 is there was some cap table dynamics, some venture firms wanted to have a big success, it turned out to be a great success for them. And so, there's always reasons why you do a transaction. And remember, I told you that I don't like having knuckleheads tell me what to do. Joel: Yeah. Chris Forman: Stepstone aren't knuckleheads and they gave us complete and utter freedom. So in essence, there was, it's like a friends with benefits kind of deal here. We got the deal done. It wasn't a private equity firm, which I'm allergic to, and they've been great and allowed us to be incredibly independent. Joel: They're not [0:28:55.6] ____ shy's and cops. That's good to know. Chris Forman: No. Joel: It's good to know. Chris Forman: Yeah. Zergut. Yeah. Joel: Zergut. [foreign language] Chad: Joel got his standard Deutsch in for this one. Okay. So let's... So yeah, I get it, Dettmers is a very smart, very good guy, understand that, still understand the dynamics. So when we're talking about all this fun stuff, then you had an acquisition of Bayard in July of 2023. Chris Forman: Yeah. Chad: So, big question. And you probably heard us talk about it. Obviously, Recruitics acquisition of KRT, Radancy's acquisition of Perengo. Did those types of moves really force this to happen? Did it force your hand to be able to go in this direction? Okay. Chris Forman: No. Actually, the reason why we did the acquisition was our customers told us that we needed to. Chad: How so? Chris Forman: We specialize in big, big, big companies. So, we don't really sell to people that have less than 2000 employees and most of our customers have 10,000 or more. And when we would be talking to these large companies about using our technology to manage their recruitment marketing spend, the reality is they said, "You guys do a great job. This is awesome. Awesome. We love it. We know that you guys are the best in the world at, let's say, optimizing job ads, but we got 20% of what we do that you guys don't do." And there's some other folks out there that do the whole thing, and they may be less good than you are on this part, but it's one throat to choke. We can just give them everything that we need to do. Chad: Yeah, but you had all the throats at one time 'cause you were working directly with all the other advertising agencies. So why piss them off and becoming a competitor? Chris Forman: Well, at the end of the day, we endeavor not to piss anybody off, and I don't think that we did. And I think that we... You can go talk to the folks in the ad agency business. Chad: Oh, we have, Chris, we have. [laughter] Chris Forman: We were very straight up and we didn't hurt... We didn't... We have a lot of power, we never use that, and we're all still very good friends. But I believe that Appcast can be not just a good business, and not just a good big business, but a very good, very big business. And the reality is, is that for us to get to that level of scale, you need to work directly with big employers. Chad: Well then also, at least we've heard, that Stepstone's poising for IPO, grab a portfolio grab like this seems smart to make everything look a little bit more, a little pretty too. Chris Forman: I don't know and nor could I comment on anything about things in financial. [laughter] Chris Forman: But what I... So... Chad: Okay. Sorry. Sorry. Chris Forman: The reality is, is that we needed to gain expertise. The clients that Bayard had were blue chip and world class. And then, the other thing is, is just an incredible group of people. As part of our reorganization here, we've elevated a bunch of people into very, very senior roles. And one of the folks that we pick, Andrea Abbott, she's now our chief customer officer, and she was the head of customers service at Bayard. She's just world class. And so we picked up an incredible group of colleagues, great customers. We filled in a patch of weakness for us from a product standpoint. And it's really led to an acceleration of our growth. And it was good. But trust me, all my hair nearly fell out trying to incorporate a 100-year-old company into us and... Chad: I can't even imagine. Joel: So I'm hearing, going back to your original statement of diversification, if you were a money monitor. So, I asked you the state of the job board business. What's the state of the programmatic business? Some of the criticism is, it's a race to the bottom. There's so many players. It's just how much margin can you squeeze out of this? The experience isn't great, if I'm citing another criticism with a lot of sites. Which I don't know if you have much control over, but even just some research for this, before this call, I went to CareerBuilder and I clicked on a job that I know was you. Before I clicked on the job, I had to put my info into CareerBuilder. When I clicked on the job, it ultimately took me to a corporate site and took me back to... The point is, I don't think the jobseeker experience is awesome in the current ecosystem of searching for a job. So I wanted to get your take on the state of programmatic, what's it gonna look like in three to five years? How do we improve the user experience? Or do you think it's not broken? Chris Forman: The user experience for jobseekers is still godawful. It's gotten mildly better with native apply capabilities and also an understanding on the behalf of some employers that there's a direct correlation between jobseeker experience and overall recruitment marketing efficiency. You know like that bing bang boom thing where you have to log into one site, go to another site, they push you over, that's actually, that's the marketplaces themselves doing that type of stuff and that's outside the control that we have. Theoretically, we could have a contractual requirement that says that you don't redistribute our ads. Policing that is sometimes hard, and with some we do that and because they tend to do things that are not great. But with others, it's kind of the coin of the realm a little bit. So there clearly needs, work needs to be done there. On the programmatic side, there's, I think you need to bifurcate programmatic solutions for SMBs and programmatic solutions for enterprises. Really what... Joel: Say more. Chris Forman: You can be a job site without being a job site. Let's say I go, in the SMB space, I wanna go and create a little site where you give me $200 and you post your ad with me. I don't run a marketplace. I just take your ad and I go and distribute it to a whole bunch of different places and get people to apply to those jobs and deliver you the applications. That's what I mean by you can be a job site without being a job site. That's super crowded, low barrier to entry, who knows, it's not a space that we're in because it's just not differentiated whatsoever. When you get to the upper levels of using software to buy and manage your performance advertising, there's only a handful of players that can do it. You've got most of the major ad agencies in the United States, a handful in Europe, mostly in the UK, and you've got a couple of pure play providers like us and others that do this for a living. Chris Forman: But if... It's, the comment that it's super crowded, it's less crowded than you would think. There's not a lot of people that show up on big RFPs or make it down selected when you're dealing with big, big, big companies, just because there's a depth that comes with it. Where's programmatic going? It's going down funnel, 100% down funnel. I agree with you. It is about the idea of paying job sites on a per hire basis, is in its current incarnation, the way the market currently works right now would be unfair because yes, it's at the whim of a hiring manager and an imperfect system. But... Chad: Unless your system hires them. And you're not, and you're not gonna be there. Or are you? Or are you? Chris Forman: No. No, no, no, no, no, no. Chad: Wait a minute, time out. Are we breaking some [0:35:57.3] ____ AI news here? [laughter] Joel: [0:35:57.4] ____. [laughter] Chris Forman: But what I can tell you is it's really interesting when you look at the data when we track the apply to the quality to the hire. Chad: Those are all great signals. Right? But they have nothing to do with control. Those are two entirely different things. You can actually manage and make your algorithm much tighter and much better because of those signals, but you have no control over the hire, Chris. So when we start talking about cost per hire, that to me is just somebody who's incredibly naive and doesn't understand what the process really looks like. Chris Forman: Okay. Well, I may know what the process looks like, so I'm gonna make an argument for... Chad: I know you do, that's what I'm saying. [laughter] Chris Forman: I'm gonna make an argument for you. All right? So, [0:36:40.2] ____ Joe always used to tell me that when you have a big problem, you break it into little problems. All right. So, let's break enterprise recruiting into the two most common problems that they have, high volume single profile hiring and one-to-one requisitions. High volume single profile hiring is math. It's total math. Hiring manager deviation... Chad: It's numbers. Yeah. Chris Forman: Is so small, it's just math. So, that represents a huge amount of money and spend. Could there be a CPH model for something like that, if in fact you had transparency between the publisher... 100%. Now, if all of a sudden you get into recruiting business consultants that are... Or they're not even in business anymore, boy, am I old, at Deloitte. Okay? [laughter] Joel: Enron's back, so yeah. Chris Forman: Yeah, yeah. Then all of a sudden, like, "Yeah, I buy where you're at." And so arguably maybe that's more of a cost per quality applicant thing, but it's... But what I'm telling you is, it's moving. Chad: Yes. Chris Forman: And what it looks like, unsure, but it's going that direction. Chad: Well, the thing that bothers me about it though, Chris, is that first and foremost that we talk about little problems where we have to move down funnel little problems, not go all the way to the end of the funnel and try to figure out that little problem. So the process, and this next piece of the process, we have cost per click, cost per application. Next one should be, at least in my opinion, cost per qualified candidate. Chris Forman: Yeah. Chad: Why have we not gotten that? That in itself should be the next at least big money surge for you guys, 'cause a qualified can's gonna cost a hell of a lot more than just an application. So why haven't we done that if the pile of money's there? Chris Forman: So, we've had a series of conversations with our clients. The people that want cost per quality tend to also be in the high volume or semi high volume space. So think families... Chad: Really? Joel: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Okay. But then we say, "Okay, that's great. No problem. We can do that for you, but we're gonna price it with a premium." They're already using technology that optimizes to the quality price, the cost, our technology, if you tell us, "I wanna spend this amount for a hire or a quality applicant," we can land on that dime. All right. And then we go to them and say, "If you wanna move from let's say paying per click or per apply to paying for that, we take more risk." Adam Smith says we should get paid more, right? And they're like, "No, no, no, no, no, no. We want what we currently have, that really good price, we just wanna pay you on that. You don't get a premium for taking more risk." And we're like, "No, we're good." So, at a particular level, this is the nuance of it. Chad: So do you have that product? Chris Forman: Oh yeah. And listen, a bunch of the programmatic folks with certain clients will say that they are paying on the apply, but the definition of the apply actually is much more of a qualified applicant. So, that does happen. Chad: So it's somewhat of a pre-screen before you can actually apply in the first place? Chris Forman: Yeah. Or just, they've got really good knockout questions or, there's enough of a hurdle to go through. Chad: So why are all of these employers bitching and moaning and complaining about getting way too many unqualified candidates when there's actually options available? Do that just not... Do we need to educate the market more that they are available or what? Chris Forman: That's a different question. So paying for a quality applicant is different than getting more quality applicants as a ratio. Let's say I sent you a thousand applicants and two of them were quality and you paid me for those. We can do that today. If what you want is two quality applicants from four applicants and only four applicants, that actually is beyond the role that a lot of programmatic platforms do. That really comes down to... Chad: It's pretty edge case-y, isn't it? Chris Forman: Well, no, in a perfect world, recruiting should be one applicant, one hire. Sniperville, right, one shot, one kill. Chad: But you can offer up slates though. And if somebody says, "I wanna pay for 10 qualified candidates and those qualified, here's the qualifications." Boom. And then you can say, "Of course we can, here's 10 qualified candidates." Chris Forman: For small businesses, yes. But remember, the workflow in big businesses is through applicant tracking systems. What they want is they wanna pay for quality, it goes into the ATS, the ATS just accepts everything. And so you're still gonna have lots of applicants because chaff will come on in no matter how you pay for the applicant. Chad: Well, you can actually kick them out on the front end just through some basic screening. Can you not? Through the internet applicant rule, if they're not qualified, they're not seen as applicants in the first place. Chris Forman: But that's in the ATS. And as a programmatic provider, what we do is we take your ads, we put them in places to get people to apply, and we use data to ensure that they're on the right spot. What you're talking about is more akin to a native apply capability that you'd find on a marketplace, which is exactly what companies like Stepstone, Indeed, LinkedIn, are doing, is the reason why native apply they like. Not only do they get higher conversion rates, because they have higher conversion rates, the unit economics of it tend to be pretty darn good for them. They can use better targeting first to put better quality candidates into that funnel to deliver fewer that have higher quality. Chad: And they force more people to register in their database too. Chris Forman: Well, yeah... No, no... Absolutely. They talk about data chaff, and so there's chaff that comes out of any process and data is one part of it. This is one of those things where there's a lot of value created for everybody. So, is it coming? Yes. But the second thing that's coming in programmatic is insight. Not analytics. Insight. This is a problem for us. We got more freaking data and we have more analytics than any... It just comes out of our ears. Making it easy to understand about what the right thing to do is, is hard. And so, to give you a very simple example... Chad: Sounds like a consulting business by the way. Go ahead. Chris Forman: No. It should be an analytics business. We get asked all the time by our clients, "Does recruitment branding make a difference?" Okay? Chad: Oh, that's a good question. Chris Forman: So we're talking billions of dollars are spent on selling your brand, promoting the brand, not direct response. Just to be technical here, it's money spent not on direct response to job ads. And does it work? It's really, really, really, really, really, really hard to prove that. And there's a lot of people that say that they can. We can do part of it, but that's the next big thing because we don't do it great. And I don't think anybody does it great. Chad: And again, I get that. But the thing is, we are... And I talk to so many leaders in this space who are talking at these great visions of grandeur with PhD papers sitting in front of them, "Why can't we get the little shit done first?" 'Cause that's the stuff that matters. And it just feels like a redirect, Chris, when we start talking about these big things and I love it, don't get me wrong, 'cause we love talking about the future, but the little things, why haven't we gotten those done yet? And you say that... Chris Forman: What are the little things? Chad: You're saying that they're on the way. Like the cost per qualified candidate. When is that gonna be a product that everybody could be able to consume readily available for them? Those types of things. And it doesn't have to be that one, but just one that you guys are working on. Chris Forman: I'd argue, Chad, that in the SMB space, they have a bunch of these slate programs. And in the enterprise space, again, it's more of a, it sounds great on the top line, but again, if you're an employer that already is using technology to optimize your ad spend and you know what your cost per quality applicant is, the idea of paying more for that is actually a little bit hard. This whole premium pricing thing for greater risk is, it's economics and so it's... I don't consider that little. Getting registration pages off of applicant tracking systems, that's little and should be big. But, I think that there's a ton... We talked about $33 billion worth of spending in job ads. I bet 25% to 30% of it... We've improved the efficiency a ton. And when I say we, I mean the people that build software to optimize job ads, not just Appcast. I'd probably say we hit the disruption standard, which is a 30% improvement. I think there's another 30% that we just can't yet measure that whether or not it works. And so... Chad: There you go. Joel: Employment branding analytics. Sounds like a perfect product for an agency to go out and sell and an experienced sales team to go sell a product like that. Chad: I know one of those. Wait a minute. Yeah. Joel: Chris... Chad: Yeah. Hold on. I got one question. Joel: Go ahead. Chad: Oh, good. When are you two gonna get off the sidelines and go... Found something and go solve some of these problems? All right. Joel: This is our show. Chad: I mean, come on. Joel: We ask the questions. Chad: Been there, done that. [laughter] Chad: Been there, done that. Joel: Right, Chris, we really appreciate your time. I wanted to get to this. You're leaving the company, you're an outgoing CEO. January I think is your... When you say goodbye. Why step down now and what's next for you? Chris Forman: I set this date a long time ago. I don't know what I'm gonna do yet. Chad: Good for you. Chris Forman: And I am forcing myself to take some time to decompress because I've been doing the same job for 25 years and it's all I know, but I need to go do something that might actually have a chance of downgrading my business class ticket to hell that I've earned as a business person. So... [laughter] Chris Forman: I don't know, go teach high school history. Run for... Chad: Give back. Chris Forman: Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's hokey. But I've been super lucky, and the reality is, is I've got some work to do to say thank you for that. But the other thing that I'm doing is I'm spending a lot of time with the next generation of entrepreneurs in our space. Like Katherine Allen at Flo Recruit or Omar at JobPixel or Alex at Kombo. There's some unbelievable talent out there right now doing cool and interesting things. Joel: Yeah, there is. Chris Forman: And so, if I can be the gray-haired guy that tells them all the mistakes that I've made, and hopefully they can avoid some of those, that would be great. Chad: Excellent, man. Thanks for coming on. It's been forever outgoing, incoming, doesn't matter, we're glad to have you, we're glad to have you on the show, man. Thanks so much. Chris Forman: Thanks, guys. Take care. Joel: Chris, for our listeners that wanna know more about you or Appcast, where do you send them? Chris Forman: Well, you can go to appcast.io, it's a website. If you wanna learn about the cheese, you can go to millbridgefarm.com. Joel: There we go. Chris Forman: And other than that, I think that's probably the best place. Joel: I eat all the cheese. Chad, that is another one in the can. Chris, we appreciate your time. Chris Forman: Thanks, guys. Joel: We out. Chad: We out. Podcast 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 shout-outs to 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. Anyhoo, 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. So weird. We out.

Live from the Shaker Green Room at RecFest USA, Jason Pistulka—Assistant VP of Talent Acquisition Operations at HCA Healthcare—graces us with his presence to drop some truth bombs on recruitment. Spoiler alert: he's not here to hand out AI participation trophies. Jason throws shade at the industry’s blind faith in AI as a recruitment savior, arguing that maybe, just maybe, getting your operational act together would be a better idea. He spills the tea on HCA's branding game—giving their hospitals local names to charm their markets—and flexes their scale and healthcare cred like a boss. Oh, and remember the COVID hiring apocalypse? HCA brought on 200 new recruiters like it was nothing. Now that the chaos has died down, it all seems almost quaint. Jason also calls out vendors for struggling to grasp the size of HCA’s operation (hint: it’s big ) and says they need a crash course in "How HCA Rolls." He’s all about their talent transformation roadmap and teases some snazzy automation initiatives to make recruitment smoother and data capture less of a dumpster fire. As for AI picking candidates? Nah, Jason’s not buying the hype. But he’s here for automation that makes life easier, proving that even skeptics can be pragmatic. It’s an insightful chat—if you’re into operational excellence, vendor rants, and the occasional AI side-eye. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION (cometh) Podcast Intro: 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, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. [music] Joel: Who are you and why are you here? Jason Pistulka: I'm Jason Pistulka, AVP of TA Operations for HCA Healthcare. Part of the reason why I'm here is because my office is two miles down the road. Chad: Convenient. Jason Pistulka: So yeah, p it makes it easy and speaking some of this afternoon. But a large contingent of the HCA team is here at the conference. Came last year. Enjoyed it. So yeah, it's on my regular conference tour now. Chad: Nice, nice. Podcast Intro: Well, especially since it's here. Chad: So right out of the gate, what... Moving forward into 2025, what piece of advice would you give your TA peers... Jason Pistulka: Sure. Chad: For moving forward in 2025? Jason Pistulka: To me the biggest gap that exists in almost every recruiting organization out there is operational excellence. When you look at lots of people try to bring a magic pill in to solve all their problems but most of their problems still come to lack of operational excellence, and there is no magic pill to solve for that. So mostly now everybody's promising the entire world with AI. How AI can solve everything. I say AI has two definitions, artificial intelligence or artificial ignorance and there's a lot of artificial ignorance being sold out there. A lot of people who had a simple keyword matching that they decided, we're gonna rebrand it to AI 'cause that's what the cool thing is. And so a lot of people I think are chasing phantom wishes to solve their problems that again, their long pole in the tent comes back to that operational excellence, whether that be within their own recruiting teams or within their hiring teams. Chad: Yeah. Joel: I'm waiting for that startup that has, we use no AI whatsoever on their website. I'm always intrigued in healthcare from a branding perspective. As an outsider, this hospital system, this system, this system. They all look the same. You're not Coke and Pepsi. How do you look at branding and separating yourself from the other options that are out there? Jason Pistulka: It's a multifaceted story with HCA because some of our hospitals do have an HCA brand on them but a huge portion of them don't at all. When you buy a great... If we were to buy Vanderbilt, we wouldn't wanna strip Vanderbilt off and slap HCA on. So it depends on what market you're in. If you're in Austin, we're St. David's. If you're in Denver, it's Swedish Medical Center. So in some cases our hospitals have a great brand. They're offering premium services that aren't available in other markets. Other hospitals are more of a community hospital and they don't have the same kind of pizzazz that a big name brand hospital can have. When we're selling to candidates though, the thing where we as HCA can sell is on scale and excellence. So as I like to tell people, HCA births more babies in Sweden and Switzerland combined. That means something to people. As a result, we know how to run a labor and delivery center like no other. And if you're in a community hospital in New Hampshire, you're getting the benefit of that company-wide knowledge. We have AI teams that analyze and can identify early onset of sepsis and things of that nature. Jason Pistulka: And all of that excellence is pushed out to the smallest of hospitals out there, which is why if you look at health grades for hospitals, our hospitals outscore the average hospital in the country and it's because of that operational excellence that we drive as an organization. Which is interesting on the HR side because we have leaders that are so used to data and excellence, and prove it to me that it makes us to have to be just as data savvy as they are in the clinical world. Chad: So in 2024, looking back, what surprised you the most? Jason Pistulka: It's hard to surprise me after COVID and dealing with... So if anything... Chad: Being in healthcare, I bet. Yes. Jason Pistulka: So if anything, I guess what surprised me the most is that we came back to a sense of normality. And so if you look at before COVID, we had about 25,000 open jobs. We peaked in COVID at 43,000 open jobs. We're back into that upper 20s again. We're back to more typical turnovers and everything else, and it felt like we wouldn't get there as quickly as we did. So I'd say that's probably my biggest surprise and that the market has improved significantly for us in employment. So normal, I guess is what's surprising me 'cause I've been stuck in abnormal for quite a long time. We hired... During our peak we hired 200 new recruiters in a year. So we were onboarding, onboarding, onboarding, onboarding and just running at such a pace that everything in comparison right now, I hate to say seems easy. I don't want our senior leadership to see that but in comparison... Joel: It's not easy. Jason Pistulka: In comparison to that, that was a stressful time. Chad: Yeah. I bet. Joel: We talk to a lot of vendors, people who are selling you stuff. You mentioned hiring a lot of recruiters. I'm sure you get a ton of calls. They're not hiring technical people the way they used to. The economy's slowing down in some places but healthcare is that beacon of money, that pot of gold that vendors want to get. Talk about how you filter the services with the number of recruiters you have. Is there a process? Is there a testing period? Talk about that. Jason Pistulka: The typical vendor does not operate on scale very well and they try to take... I was just having this conversation with Jeremy from RecruitBot, they try to take their model that worked in financial services or worked in IT where when I worked in that space, we were spending $10,000 a hire. And bring that model into healthcare where our cost is a fraction of that. We operate at a whole different level of efficiency and the recruiters carry a significantly different rep load. So you can't expect the same level of recruiter behavior and engagement in your tool when you're carrying 100 reps as you do with somebody who's carrying 15 IT reps. So they don't think about how that scales financially as well as actual adoption-wise in an organization. And they don't think about, how do you make that adoption happen across a huge team? I mean, we have 20-ish divisions of recruiters that sit all over the country and I compare to when I ran a team in the pit and we all sat in the pit and I could hear every conversation, I could drive everything. Jason Pistulka: It's completely different when you have to monitor and drive through data. So how do you provide the data and the guidance to a team like us to drive that? What we find is most people can't. What we do is we educate them on here's how we do it. We educate them on the needs and we build them capabilities, which is probably the biggest reason why so many people end up really loving being with HCA and valuing HCA is because we drive them to make them better. We typically break their software and we typically find all of their warts. So many of our vendors, we will identify problems before they know it's a problem because no other customer was big enough to hit it. 'Cause it only happens one out of every 5000 applicants or whatever. When you're our size and you get three and a half million applicants a year, that happens on the quite frequent. Chad: Yeah. Scale. Jason Pistulka: Yeah. So that level of scale ends up really giving vendors chops and see the world in a different way of how do you do change management, how do you do adoption, how do you build tools to do that? And so it's one of the things that I personally enjoy is being that product consultant back into them and here's why you need to think this way and here's the challenges of a large organization. Chad: So let's look forward to 2025. For you, what is gonna be your top priority? Jason Pistulka: My top priority, we're delivering a roadmap that's a talent transformation effort that we've been working on for two years and we're just coming into the piloting phase this fall and we'll start rolling out more broadly after the first year. I'm actually leaving the organization at the end of Q1, so I'm trying to get as much of that laid out before I do and get those tracks laid. Chad: Nice. Jason Pistulka: So a huge portion of what I'm doing at this point is trying to make sure that the organization is well positioned and this has been a multi-year process for me. Chad: Now, is this tech as well being rolled out along with this? Jason Pistulka: Yes. Chad: Okay. Okay. So that's a big undertaking. Jason Pistulka: It is. We have multiple avenues. One, we're going from a single workflow to multiple workflows in our ATS, which is a huge lift and shift. Chad: But smart. Jason Pistulka: Yep. We're doing a huge automation effort in onsite interviewing that we're using sense to do. And that is a custom build that we're doing that is going to allow recruiters to have most of it automatically driven right out of the ATS and capture really great data for us. Again, to recognize the bad human behavior that happens in the field. We've already rolled out BrightHire across our whole organization that we're using... Chad: Nice. Jason Pistulka: For a cooler quality across not just interviewing, they'll offer extensions. Chad: Really? Jason Pistulka: We're gonna start doing it for intake sessions... Chad: Awesome. Jason Pistulka: Et cetera because again, we're trying to speed the first conversation, quality of first conversation, speed the interview. That's what our whole impact is in this transformation effort. And it's been exciting and challenging. Joel: Automation, you talked about it from a recruiting side where most industries I think are fearful of automation. If a robot can flip burgers, you don't need a cook. But I feel like in healthcare I would wanna work in a system that had tools that would help me do my job better, take away some of the monotonous work. How do you as an organization or as a system think about automation and how does that tie into recruiting? You're gonna be working with the best tools with us, you're gonna be innovative. How do you look at automation from the big picture to the employee coming in? Jason Pistulka: In recruiting on the automation front, what I've found is so many people don't use the tools that they have. The number of... I solicited obviously for jobs. One of my favorite things to do is go out and apply for a job on their website. And when I see these major corporations that don't ask any job-specific knockout questions, don't do anything. And you're saying you're making your recruiters review every applicant and not only can you ask the question so I can stack, rank and mass disposition, but in most ATSs you can even automate disposition actions on those things. So people aren't using the basic automation that they do. So they're out there searching for AI. When I say you don't need AI, which some of the automations that you already have at your hands are so helpful. And so we've done a lot in that space. We've always been big users of knockout questions and things of that nature. We have a new function that's rolling out that's gonna be an automated compensation knockout for our recruiters that we custom built with our vendor. It's really cool. And then we're using Sense Journeys to build some automation follow-ups with people. Jason Pistulka: So we're gonna have automations that after an interview happens, say 60, 90 minutes delayed, will send a text to the hiring manager and saying do you want to hire this person? 1, 2, 3, 4? And then automatically updating the ATS what those things are. So none of that's AI. It's just all automation and using different things. And so, so many companies including HCA were skeptical of AI. Obviously there's a lot of legal issues with AI and how you're using it in applicants, and there's studies that are showing that candidates don't like or trust AI. And now with these... In these states where you have to say, well, here's how we're using it. I don't care for the AI on candidate selection just from the candidate experience piece and I kind of want to keep it out of that funnel. But that doesn't mean there isn't all kinds of automation that can make your recruiters faster, more efficient, more accurate and get yourself to better results. And those are things that we have pursued and we continue to pursue. Chad: 100% agree. Well, thank you so much for sitting down with us. If somebody wants to connect with you or I don't know, maybe apply for a job, where would you send them? Jason Pistulka: Yeah, cool. To connect with me, I'm easy enough to find on LinkedIn and happy to accept that connection. If you just search for careers HCA, we will pop up. We are well advertised out there and we operate in 20 states so we've got a lot of jobs floating around out there. Podcast Outro: Wow, look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey, or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckleheads instead. Now go take a shower and wash off all the guilt. But save some soap, because you'll be back. Like an awful trainwreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.

The Chad & Cheese Podcast 2024 Recap Show In this special year-end recap, Chad and Cheese revisit the biggest moments and most talked-about episodes of 2024. Packed with insights, hot takes, and snarky commentary, this episode delivers a curated journey through the stories that defined the HR tech industry over the past year. Featured Highlights: "ZipRecruiter is Lost" (March 2024)  "Workday Sucker Punches Eightfold and Beamery"  (March 2024)  "Bullhorn Strikes Back at Indeed" (June 2024)  "Monster & CareerBuilder Merger" (July 2024) "Indeed Tomfukery" (August 2024)  Chad and Cheese also hint at exciting plans for 2025, promising new voices, brash opinions, and more in-depth analysis. Whether you’re an industry insider or just love the drama, this episode is a must-listen wrap-up of a game-changing—and occasionally ridiculous—year in HR tech. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION COMETH Podcast Intro: 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, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast. [music] Chad: Hey, listener, welcome to our 2024 recap show where we rip segments out of our most listened to shows of 2024. Here's number one, "ZipRecruiter is Lost," from March of 2024. Chad: Which is ZipRecruiter. And this is somewhat of a downer, especially if you are a client of ZipRecruiter. This next one comes from a friend of the show, Tim Sackett, where Tim writes, "Hello, Chad and cheese." No, just kidding. Joel: Hey dipshits. [laughter] Chad: ZipRecruiter, yeah. Hey, assholes. [laughter] "ZipRecruiter came out today, and is asking for price increases for current clients. Our current contract is roughly $92,000. And to keep the exact same products, they now want roughly $160,000. They aren't even a top source for us, so we'll be saying goodbye." So, Joel, is this really time for an increase? Joel: Well, if you do it right, anytime can be a time for an increase. [laughter] Joel: But this... Chad: Oh, so should they have done surge pricing? Is that what I'm hearing? [laughter] Joel: Well, I'm surging right now after talking about deal. [laughter] There's price increases and there's desperation price increases. Chad: Geez. Yeah. Joel: You gotta know how to boil the frog, right? You gotta know how to do it at a degree at a time. Look, Netflix is great at this. Netflix is a great service. But over time, before you know it, you're not paying $7.99 a month anymore. You're paying $14.99 and you're like, "What the hell happened?" But it didn't hurt, so you keep doing it, and pretty soon before you know it, you're paying $29 a month. And if they keep having Mike Tyson fight, it might be 99 bucks a month. But the streaks of stupidity, you don't just drop it at 73% increase or whatever it is on your customers. And I'm guessing Sackett had been a customer for a really long time. Chad: He had to have been. Yeah. Joel: I'm guessing, yeah. So, let's take one of our... Let's take a customer that's been around forever, that is a figurehead in the industry, a lot of people know, and let's stick him with a big price increase. And now he's gonna cancel and not come back, and tell all his recruiting buddies, "ZipRecruiter is full of shit." And then they're gonna think twice about using ZipRecruiter. I don't know how you walk back from this. It's kind of tough. We talked about their quarterly earnings recently. Life is not great at ZipRecruiter, and this is gonna make it a lot worse. You gotta learn how to boil the frog. As much as we love Indeed, right? They stuck the price increase in the terms of service like the new thing, made it look... Did it right at least. And before you know it, you're spending a lot more at Indeed than you would otherwise, but it doesn't feel like it because they didn't put a 73% increase on you overnight. So, bad move, another bad move, and the many bad moves that we talk about from ZipRecruiter on a regular basis. Chad: So, if you take a look at it, same product, almost double the price, at least Indeed is trying to fake, giving more value with the new price increases. We all know it's bullshit, but they're trying to fake it, right? We'll see if that actually passes. But we say it all the time. The SMB market is a bitch. It is. And that's where Zip, that's where they earned their bones, man, was on the SMB side of the house. Zip entered the enterprise market way too late. Bigger accounts, less transactional, and more sustainable, right? Expanding the total addressable market just isn't that easy, especially when you're going after it this way. Not to mention, they were spending much like, and this is very reminiscent of Monster, CareerBuilder, Indeed, spending loads of money on Super Bowl commercials for that SMB market to try to drive those single postings, those small job packs and whatnot. But that was more on the transactional side, spending that kind of money's just not sustainable. Chad: Now, Zip didn't do Super Bowl commercials, but they were the biggest, and I don't know if they currently are. They were the biggest spender in podcast advertising across the globe, right? So, again, to be able to meet the SMB market, you have to spend tons of cash 'cause you have to be on the top of minds of those small businesses. 'Cause they don't need you every day, right? Enterprise needs you every fucking day. So, they went kind of backwards at it. So, it's kicking their ass right now. Joel: Yeah, in many ways. And I know I've said this before, but they're a victim of their own success. They did such a good job of "Work for the small guy," "We're for that bar owner down the street that you went to school with," that "trying to pivot into enterprise, go public, try to be bigger than what you are" has bit them in the ass. And if they're giving these price increases to sack it, I can't imagine what the bar guy down the street is thinking about the price increases. Chad: Yeah. Well, and if you take a look at it, so when I was at Monster, 75% of the revenue that we actually received was from staffing companies. And Tim's a staffing company, right? Joel: Yep. Chad: So, I guarantee you what they're trying to do... Okay, let me knock on wood. What I think they're trying to do is they're trying to juice the staffing companies. Joel: Stick it to them? Chad: Yeah. They're trying to juice the staffing company and say, "Hey look, they can't live without us, so we're gonna make them pay." Well, I think what they're gonna find is that they can probably live without you. Joel: It's good for Indeed. Clip/SoundFX: 60% of the time, it works every time. Chad: Some great moves were happening in March of 2024. Our number two podcast is, "Workday Sucker Punches Eightfold and Beamery." Check it out. Joel: So much for Workday acquiring Beamery, at least not yet. [laughter] Workday is acquiring HiredScore, an AI-powered talent solutions provider to enhance talent management. The deal aims to offer a comprehensive talent acquisition and internal mobility solution, leveraging responsible AI and focusing on human-centric decision-making. The acquisition is expected to be finalized by April 30th, subject to regulatory approval, of course. Chad, your thoughts? Chad: So, congrats to Athena Karp and the HiredScore team who stayed disciplined and focused on the problem they were solving this entire time. HiredScore never played the "we can do it all" vaporware tam expansion game, which I've always respected. I've always respected that. What this all comes down to though is one thing: Timing. We've seen some big names, Rush, Generative AI products into the market to meet OpenAI and ChatGPT. Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Twitter are all either launching GenAI into the market or they're taking steps to do so. So, how does a HiredScore cut through all of those big names and the noise? The easy answer is they can't compete long term. They can't with those big names and those deep pockets. So, this is a perfect time to sell, right? This is the perfect time to sell. The question is, why HiredScore? When we take a look at like the Beamerys and the EightFolds and some of those other companies that are out there, why HiredScore and why now? What do you think? Joel: Because AI bleeds into everything. And if you are a public company like Workday is and you're not talking about AI, introducing AI, using AI, profiting from AI, you're gonna be left; you're gonna be left out by the market. Shareholders and people who buy the stock are... I guarantee you, board meetings at Workday were like, "Where's our AI shit? Where's our AI? We need AI." [laughter] Joel: And somebody said, "Oh, well, we're working on that internally." And finally someone said, "Shit, it's not working. We need to at least buy something with AI in it, and we can announce on our earnings call," which wasn't awesome, by the way, "that we are now... [laughter] we've acquired this itty-bitty AI company." The market wasn't that impressed. Apparently, the stock... Well, it was earnings. I don't know. It wasn't AI but it was more earnings thing. Just, there wasn't a lot of people impressed that they had bought an AI company with 125 or 50 employees. But why did they do it? Because the market says, "If you're not AI, you're not with it, man. You're not hip." It's like the '90s: You need a dot com, you better have a website, you better have some e-commerce shit. It's just the future... The past is present now. Chad: And when ADP applies pressure like they have over the past few months, and being able to talk about the GenAI that they're putting out and the data that they're actually crunching, not to mention... We're talking about HiredScore has mature matching algorithms complete with what Athena would call "defendability" or "explainability," right? Which is something that Workday does not have. [chuckle] And one of the reasons why they're in court, which we'll talk about. Joel: Yeah. Chad: But this is also interesting from the standpoint of a buying binge. Does this start SAP, Oracle, ADP? Will the dominoes start to fall? And then you look at the companies that were sucker-punched in this case. Eightfold, they have close to $400 million in funding. Joel: Yep. Chad: Limited vendors out there can afford them. This is one that is off the table now. This is off the table. Now they're even limited more. Beamery, 223 million, right? There's no way in hell they're buying Beamery. Why? Right? And then the vendor that I think has the most risk that we've talked about, for a while we haven't talked about here lately, is Textio. They have $42.5 million in funding, but again, these are all companies I believe are at high risk with tech and the velocity that's out there today. If they don't sell, they're gonna be worthless. Joel: Yeah, yeah, you're: Clip/SoundFX: Just the team. Joel: HiredScore didn't take any official money VC-wise. From my understanding, they had kind of a sugar daddy or a few people that had money that kept them in the early days going. So, this was... Chad: Rich friends and family, yes. Joel: This was a sweet deal for Workday. Very little risk. Very probably small price tag compared to what you're talking about Eightfold. They do the deal. They probably get some employees. I think Athena's probably gonna move on after her year contract or however long she's there. I don't see her yet. Chad: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Joel: I don't see her enjoying her time at a huge ass company like Workday. Chad: [laughter] Yeah, yeah. Joel: And look, Google's Gemini, I'm sure you saw this, hit a huge speed bump with its graphics and producing popes that were Black and Vikings that were... People lost their minds. And this is Google. This is like, who was testing this? How did they not catch that? And so I think there's real questions about if Google can't get AI right, how can a little company in the workspace get it right? I have my questions, but for Workday, it was a market situation where, "Let's do little risk. We can say we have an AI company... " A lot of our network lost their minds over this deal. They're like revolutionary, amazing... Chad: [laughter] Yes, yes. Joel: And people that we both respect. And I would caution everybody and throw some cold water on this deal and say, look, if you think that Workday, a 20,000 person company, is gonna change after this acquisition, eh, I don't know. Maybe. I'll be surprised if they do. I think they're gonna fade into the ethos of Workday. They're gonna get thrown into this machine when they're used to this startup culture. I think Workday, this is gonna just be another day at Workday. It's a huge deal for Athena and her team. Hopefully they got paid, they can go do other things, go work for a big company like Workday. For Eightfold, it's awful. For anyone that's like Unicorn-ish AI thing, it's bad because the market didn't love this. Workday could have bought one of those companies. They obviously decided not to; took a much safer bet. I just, I think at the end of the day, Workday's not gonna change and HiredSolve is gone. Chad: Yeah. You take a look at any big companies... Joel: HiredScore, sorry. I get them mixed up. "Solve," "Score." Chad: You take a look at all of the big companies, let's just say the acquisition of Taleo. That thing's almost dead, right? And again, you see a lot of the bigger companies really suffocating a lot of the platforms that they've bought, and then they go away, right? Taleo is gonna go away. You take a look at Connexa, right? BrassRing... A lot of these big companies that were big in our space were acquired by larger organizations, and then they were just fricking... They were strangled. Not in the crib, by the way. But yeah, they were strangled. Joel: Acquisitions are hard. You get company cultures, you get politics, you get things that you are not used to. Look, we both applauded when Andreea sold Opening to iCIMS. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Would either of us say that iCIMS is greatly different today than it was when they bought her company? I can't. Chad: I would say from a technology standpoint, internally, yeah. Joel: Yeah? Greatly changed? [overlapping conversation] Chad: You've seen some of the things... Joel: You think so? Chad: What's that? Joel: Greatly? Like, greatly changed the business? Chad: Yeah. Joel: Okay. Well, maybe... Chad: Yeah, 'cause, yeah, you've gotta understand what that foundational platform actually did for a lot of the other platforms, right, that they were actually working off of already. So, yeah, yeah. You can see, that's the thing, is that if you have a HiredScore like this, and we can start to kinda push into the next Workday lawsuit, they needed to do something. Their AI was already on trial. Joel: Yeah. Or at least give the impression that we're doing something. We'll see. Time will tell if this really does change the company. And iCIMS is a much smaller company than Workday, by the way. Workday is a... Chad: Oh God, yeah, yeah. Joel: A big, big company. All right. All right. Well, time will tell, I guess, on this one. But we agree, Athena, great job. Great, hopefully, payout. And then in a year or so, you can go do whatever the hell you want. Good for you. [laughter] Clip/SoundFX: That escalated quickly. Joel: All right, let's go to lawsuits. Derek Mobley has filed a lawsuit against Workday, alleging that its AI-powered hiring software discriminates based on race, age, and disability, violating federal laws. Workday denies wrongdoing, stating it ensures its products comply with laws. The case highlights concerns about AI bias in hiring. But wait, Chad, there's more. HireVue has been partially relieved from a class action lawsuit in Illinois. The court dismissed claims that HireVue profited from selling the data, focusing on software sales instead. The case highlights legal complexity surrounding biometric-data-use in hiring. Methinks a trend is developing, Chad. What are your thoughts? Chad: Yes. So, Workday, we're just talking about it, hence the HiredScore acquisition. What Workday needs at this point is a show of contrition through this acquisition with a "will do better" statement, and then pay a pissy little fine. And thank the gods, this case was not filed in the EU. Because a 6% global revenue fine for Workday would've cost them $420 million. So, hopefully HiredScore helps Workday get through this shit together. So, I see this almost as an optics play as well. It does make sense from a tech play. I don't know if it'll actually work out that way for Workday, but we'll see. Show of contrition: "Sorry, we did wrong. We actually bought these guys over here who understand AI, they can explain AI," et cetera, et cetera. Now on the HireVue side of the house, collecting biometric data on candidates. Illinois was the first state to craft what I would like to call an "anti-HireVue" legislation. Right? Chad: And then Massachusetts, the plaintiff, Jesus, claims that CVS... This is not a claim against HireVue. This is what all companies should be aware of right now. The plaintiff claims CVS, not HireVue, CVS violated state law by subjecting him to an AI-powered interview, HireVue, that analyzed his facial expressions, eye contact, voice annotation, inflection, et cetera, et cetera. So, notice that once again, that was not against HireVue, it was against CVS. The bigger issue, I cannot imagine... See, we know people who work there. We know people who have worked there. I cannot imagine CVS would be happy with the prospect that HireVue is collecting biometric information on CVS' candidates. So, the question is, is that actually happening behind the scenes? Just because that the biometric data product isn't available, or at least I don't believe it is anymore, doesn't mean that HireVue doesn't have the capability to actually collect that biometric information. Chad: And that to me is the scary part if you are a CVS. Not only couldn't you be taken to court because of this, but wait a minute, are they collecting data that we don't know that they're collecting? And what are they using that data for? Right? So, then I reached out to a few practitioners and asked them about this, and they've freaked the fuck out. One said, it is going to be an interesting case to follow, as it could have huge implications on the tech space. No kidding. It's a fine line between... Listen, it's a fine line between biometric data collection, sentiment analysis, which we hear a lot of companies talk about, and lie detectors. Joel: The recent news that Washington really cares about this issue is promising. It's an election year. We've talked about the chaos that could ensue with deepfakes, phone calls from Joe Biden that aren't Joe Biden. That really scares politicians a lot. Well, guess who makes the laws? The politicians. So, in the last 60 days, they have moved really fiercely [laughter] to make sure that Meta and some of these big tech companies... Number one, it's illegal now to do that. So, the FTC now, if you're a candidate and you deepfake politicians, you could be in trouble. We're not sure what those penalties are, but at least the government has said that's illegal. So, the fact that the government cares about these issues, to me, is a good sign. I don't know where it will go or how fast it will evolve, but Washington has their attention on this issue. Joel: I don't know who's representing these these cases. I don't know if it's Dewey, Cheatem and Howe, and our friends Baron & Budd, but lawyers smell blood in the water. They smell an opportunity where they can go after companies. Like, "CVS has more money than HireVue, so let's go after them." Workday has a lot of money. LinkedIn, the lawsuit with them. So, I think it's more lawyers targeting, looking at these laws and saying, "Who can we get?" and "These are the top of the list." We need a healthy balance of laws so that everyone knows the rules. And we need, I think, a greater certification, a greater sort of third party that has everyone's trust that we're doing it the right way. Joel: And FairNow and companies like that, I think, are in a really great position to say, "Look, we've worked with the government. We have all the AI stuff. We're making sure that every company is dotting their I's and crossing their T's. So, if you take us to court, we are certified FairNow or whoever it is, that they can go into court and say, "Look, we're the law of the land. We're doing this the right way." Until then, it's still the Wild West. We're gonna talk about more and more lawsuits. More and more customers like CVS are gonna be worried about using vendors that have AI because they're gonna worry about, "Am I gonna be dragged into court because I'm using this vendor?" Well, yeah, you are. And by the way, a lot of these terms and services on these companies say, "If you use our shit, you're at fault if it goes to court." Like, "We're not at fault if you use our stuff." So, something's gotta come to a head. Chad: HireVue specifically did that. Joel: HireVue specifically. Chad: HireVue specifically did that, yes. Joel: Yeah. Yeah. And more and more will, because nobody wants to be sued. That's not fun. It's bad for business, so to speak. So, I think government giving a shit about this is a good thing. And companies that are dedicated to like "Let's make sure everyone's following the rules" or "Let's certify people" is a good thing. But until then, there's gonna be some stories like this, and more and more stories like this because there's money to be made. Chad: This next segment is from June of 2024 and is entitled, "Bullhorn Strikes Back at Indeed." Joel Lalgee and Tim Meehan step in for a great analysis on Bullhorn's Textkernel acquisition. Chad: This is a pretty big one. This week, Bullhorn acquired Textkernel, an industry leader in sourcing AI solutions, better known as one of the biggest vendors in the world for parsing and matching, which is not an easy fucking business. Plus, longtime sponsor of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Textkernel's, their HQ is in Amsterdam and they power over 2,000 customers globally. And these customers, for the most part, are big vendors that we all know and love, that we think are doing the parsing and the matching. They're not. Textkernel is the one who's doing it behind the scenes, including eight of the top 10 staffing agencies worldwide. We were just talking about staffing. A longtime trusted partner to the staffing and recruitment industry, and one of the companies who have performed the heavy lift for many of the biggest tech platforms in the industry. So, before we get into comments, Joel, let's welcome back the staffing and tech leader, Tim Meehan, for his thoughts. Tim Meehan: All right, guys. So, here's the deal. Years ago, I said that staffing companies had to become technology companies. I've worked for them and they don't understand. And now, acquisition from Bullhorn buying Textkernel, holy crap. The staffing companies and a lot of other techs are all using Textkernel to do their matching. Is Bullhorn gonna pull it off the market? And you want Textkernel, you want a matching algorithm, you got to use Bullhorn? That's gonna be a big game changer for the staffing industry 'cause if they're not using Bullhorn, they're gonna have to. And if they are using Bullhorn, quite frankly they've got them by the short hairs, and it's gonna force... It's like, what is that Japanese term? Seppuku. It's like it's gonna force them to cut their belly open. Either they become subservient to the Bullhorns of the world, or they become pure plain niche and they don't even try and do automated matching. Chad: So, there's a choice, Joel. There's a choice. [laughter] You can continue to stay with Indeed or you can go with Bullhorn. Sounds like they're gonna have tech. It could help out. What do you think? Joel Lalgee: As a former Bullhorn user, I feel bad for all the people who [laughter] are gonna have to use Bullhorn with that prediction 'cause I... Look, I think how you add on these AI tools and integrate is huge. Just in general, I think any AI tool, it all comes down to adoption and how people use them. And that's always the big question for me. Anytime I hear AI conversations, I don't even know if people are aware, the difference between automation and then AI, how to use tools, how to use these tools anyway. But I think it seems like a great move for Bullhorn. And obviously for Textkernel, it's gonna obviously open up more clients as well. But I don't know. I feel like Bullhorn has a better deal out of that one. What do you think? Chad: Well, first and foremost, I guess, say congrats to Gerard and the Textkernel team. This is the type of tech that has performed, as I said earlier, some of the heaviest technical lifts in the history of recruiting, which is why there aren't many successful companies in the space. A quick and brief history of Textkernel, in 2015, CareerBuilder acquired 60% of Textkernel, and they liked them so much that CareerBuilder, then owned by Daddy Warbucks' Apollo, went all in and they acquired Textkernel in 2019. Then, Apollo started selling off bits and pieces of CareerBuilder, and Textkernel was sold to Main Capital in September of 2020. Then, Textkernel expanded their footprints into the US by acquiring parsing and matching powerhouse Sovren in November of 2021. Chad: Now, I'm saying all of this because it's obvious that Textkernel tech is appetizing for many companies. The question is, can Bullhorn pull off an acquisition and technical execution of this size when players like CareerBuilder and Apollo just fucking fumbled the ball? The execution will be fucking massive. And I'm not 100% sure that Bullhorn can pull it off, but I hope they do. To Tim's point and our earlier Indeed staffing conversation, if Bullhorn isn't positioning themselves as an Indeed killer, they're doing it wrong. Staffing organizations spend tens of millions of dollars annually to attract candidates, and many of those candidates are already in their goddamn resume database. Chad: So, now, again, if Bullhorn is smart, they will use the parsing and matching in every resume in a staffing firm's database. As soon as a rec is posted, they'll match it to those candidates with a high degree of match. Then they should automatically be invited to apply through email, text, or whatever messaging they choose. That will then lessen the need for the Indeeds of the world, plus Bullhorn can reach out to candidates that are going stale, to nudge them to add skills, expertise, and just build up their profile. But like I said, it's gonna be a massive undertaking, and I'm just not sure. I'm sure we'll talk to Bullhorn, but I'm just not sure they're up to this task. It is big. Not to mention, will they make Textkernel under Bullhorn, or will they keep it as a separate product? Because they already have a humongous portfolio, and part of that portfolio are other applicant tracking systems, right? So, it's gonna be an interesting dance. What do you think? Joel Lalgee: So, you're saying then, so Bullhorn basically uses all of their resumes in all of their clients' databases as well. So, then when you open up a rack, it will match from not just your own database that you have, but everybody's, right? Is that what I'm hearing? Chad: I didn't go that far, but that would be smart if staffing companies, especially smaller staffing companies, could work together to actually build pools like data lakes, is really what it is. But, yeah, I don't think the Adeccos or the Randstads out there would do something like that. I think they have big enough databases where they don't have to. It'll just be forced to be able to go into their database and the candidates that they already have there. Joel Lalgee: Yeah. Well, look, I just... The one thing I wonder with everything right now is, in general, just outside of even staffing and recruitment, in general, everybody's mailboxes are being blown up. And candidates are the same way. They're getting the same... They're getting all of this. So, I just wonder if the challenge coming up is actual recruitment, and how do you stand out? Right? 'Cause I think finding candidates, to me, finding data nowadays is easier and you can do it pretty quick. But it's like reaching people, getting good with messages. Like you said, texting, calling, that to me, it's just, I don't see how we don't create a big problem with just candidates in general. Or what happens when candidates who are already... I do a lot of social media content. One of the biggest, one of the points that goes viral all the time is if I bash particularly LinkedIn and Indeed. If I say, "Are you sick of LinkedIn and Indeed? Here are three other platforms," those videos always go viral. So, I'm like, does this just compound? Do these tools, they just compounding that? And then how do you... Great, you found the person. How do you really even get a hold of them nowadays? That's what I'm wondering over the next year, 18 months. Chad: Yeah, so I think at the end of the day, first and foremost, ZipRecruiter had it right years ago. And then they just went off the rails when they went IPO. Joel Lalgee: ZipRecruiter had it right... Chad: Way back in the day. [laughter] Not lately, not lately. Joel Lalgee: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Chad: What they did was, they actually had this model where they would go into their database and they would literally, they would invite individuals who matched up against the requirements of a requisition, right? Made a lot of sense. What they were looking to do, and they never did, was just create slates, the ones that are higher match in quality, then just deliver 10, right? Instead of delivering 30 or 50 or 300 to a recruiter, which is not manageable. I really think that if you get a really good score match up against the actual requirements and what the skill sets that you need, what can happen at that point is a recruiter gets more time to actually focus on interacting with that individual, right? Joel Lalgee: Yeah. Chad: One of the things right now is way too much administrivia, not to mention candidates are going into black holes because recruiters don't have enough time to respond to all of them. And in this case, if you get 10 or 15, you can actually take the time to be more human with those individuals. So, yeah, I think they've already applied for a job within your portfolio of companies, so more than likely you have contact information. And if they're smart, they're getting phone number, they're getting Messenger, whatever their chosen form of communication is, and they're gonna be reaching out to them. Then, you've got, and this is the fun part, to get into the chatbots of the world, the Talkpushes, the Paradoxes and whatnot, that can actually help nudge candidates not just for the interview, but also for that first day at work, and to get feedback and whatnot. And from my understanding, and talking to Adam Godson when he was at Cielo, not just now when he's at Paradox, but when he was at Cielo billing these systems, their ghosting went down dramatically just from those little nudge messages, which is pretty amazing. So, I think there's great opportunity here. Joel Lalgee: I want to know with this validation of skills, 'cause I know skills-based hiring keeps everything up. Chad: That's hard. That's hard. Joel Lalgee: But I'm like, this is the other issue which I see is, on the other end, you've got candidates now that have tools as well that can make perfect resumes, they can match up to the job. At some point, where is the skills validation? And then how are you defining what skills are for jobs? How do you actually... Yeah, but for some of these jobs, you really need skills as well 'cause maybe that's... [chuckle] Chad: Yeah. These companies have to understand they've been talking about skills-based hiring forever and they don't know what the hell they're talking about. Because first and foremost, they don't know what skills it actually takes within that job. Because what they haven't done is they haven't actually taken a look at the tasks that are performed by that job on a daily basis. When you do that, you understand that a job is literally just an amalgamation of tasks, right? Joel Lalgee: Yeah. Chad: Can the individual perform those tasks? And then what are the skills that are tied to those tasks? There's tech out there today that can do that. Tadeo, which again, I'm an advisor for, just to be transparent out there. But they are more performance-driven. You have to demonstrate that you can perform that task in a simulation before, boom, you get that skill, right? So, it's becoming more readily available and understandable, but the companies have to do the job upfront of even understanding what the job looks like for the person who's doing it task by task by task, and then they can understand the skills. Until then, they're literally just bullshitting everybody, I believe. Joel Lalgee: So, I got defined skills and then they need it. I think right now they've got to get buy-in from candidates to get that data even. And I like the idea of inviting people to jobs. I like it when, like you said, when that idea first came out. I get invited all the time by LinkedIn to do different things. And it's so off every single time. So, I think they got to figure out a way of, "How do we gamify getting the right data even from candidates?" Otherwise, you're just gonna end up with just wrong matches on both ends. And then be like, "Yeah, it didn't work." Chad: LinkedIn's matching tech is shit. I mean, they have more data on me than anybody does. They should be able to match me up very well. And they do a shit job. Joel Lalgee: I get host of like Olive Garden, 'cause I have "podcast host" in my bio. I'm a hostess at Olive Garden. [laughter] But that's it. And this is where I think... One of the things I noticed with any kind of AI tools, one of the things I've noticed really quickly, is you have like one shot with users like myself, recruiters. And if they don't see, "Saves time, money," or "It works," you miss in that one shot. They just write you off as it not working altogether. And so this is where it's like, you have to... You got to deliver on that and... Chad: Yeah, you do. You got to remember, though, AI is a puppy. I mean, it's gonna piss on the carpet a few times. You got to give it a little grace, but here's where TA leaders need to stiffen their spine, and all of these processes are gonna be happening behind the scenes, and they're gonna be delivered up to the recruiters. So, this should not be a decision made by the recruiters. It should be made by leadership, right? Now, recruiters should be a part of the process to ensure that it actually becomes more fluid; we get the best data to be able to train on the right data for the right jobs in the right positions in the right regions, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But at the end of the day, we can't... And I'll just give you an example. At Randstad, we had so many people who had LinkedIn seats, who weren't even using LinkedIn seats. And we were pushing them off. Oh, we almost had a fucking riot. And it's like, "Look, you guys aren't even using this and money's being spent," right? Joel Lalgee: [laughter] Crazy. Chad: Yeah. So, it's just like, you have to stiffen your spine. And I was there and I was like, "Fuck those guys." I don't care. We can find new recruiters. If they can't use the tools that you're giving them and then they bitch when you take them away because they're not using them, it's... My point is, leadership has to lead, right? And they're not leading today, period. Joel Lalgee: Yeah. No, I agree, 100%. Chad: On that being said, I gotta say: Clip/SoundFX: Ma, the meatloaf! [laughter] Joel Lalgee: Yeah. Chad: This next segment is from July, Monster and CareerBuilder merger. So much juicy meat on this one. Give it a listen. Joel: Well, let's see, what could we possibly talk about this week as the first news item on the show? CareerBuilder and Monster are merging, Chad. I don't know if you heard about this. Led by Apollo, the deal aims to combine their strengths and create a stronger job board. Apollo will be controlling a shareholder, meaning Randstad who acquired Monster back in 2016 for $429 million, is essentially pulling out of the job board biz. The transaction, subject to regulatory approvals, is expected to close in Q3. Again, nice of them to announce bad news or interesting news or controversial news right before the 4th of July Holiday. Chad, I'm sure you have a few thoughts on the CareerBuilder-Monster merger as a former Monster employee. Chad: Yeah. And also former Randstad employee. Kind of weird. What happens when two dumpster fires merge? Well, and they create a larger dumpster fire. Every single day Randstad walks into a big client meeting. They talk about fusing technology into staffing and into next gen hiring. Now, when they leave those meetings, after they close the door, they can hear an eruption of laughter knowing that no savvy business person takes them serious after buying Monster. And instead of reviving the brand, they ran the tech, the brand, and the market trust right into the ground. Then you have Apollo Global Management, who acquired CareerBuilder and successfully chopped it up into little pieces and sold it for an estimated, Whisper is about 10x the investment. Apollo still owns the hollow corpse of CareerBuilder, its brand tech assets and candidate database, which they have failed to unload on a dumb sucker enough to buy it, right, or somebody dumb enough to buy it. Chad: So, on one hand, you have Randstad, a major staffing organization trying to unload Monster brand of yesteryear and gain back the prospect of not getting laughed at at client meetings, and when they want to talk about future tech. And on the other hand, you have Apollo who are trying to sell the bones, the cadaver, of CareerBuilder. So, don't be fooled kids. It's not a saver for Indeed and LinkedIn. It's just another Apollo scheme to sell two rotting corpses instead of one. That's pretty much it. It seems simple to me. And the whole timing thing, if they wanted to make this a big deal, two things. It came out on the Randstad press side of the house, and it came out before a big holiday, which, generally, you're trying to bury things. So, that to me is odd. Joel: Yeah. Clip/SoundFX: Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills! Joel: So, quick question, we've been talking about Indeed getting into staffing, Recruit Holdings, obviously, and Randstad is a competitor to Recrute. Wouldn't it seem like they reviving Monster to maybe stick it to Indeed, or is this a "We need to really focus on staffing because Recruit Holdings and Indeed are coming for us, let's dump the dead weight"? Which obviously happened, but does that surprise you at all that with Recruit Holdings and Indeed coming after all the staffing firms that Randstad strategically didn't do something different than sell Monster 'cause they had that property? Chad: Yeah, I think Monster leadership finally found out that they're not a tech company and they have no fucking clue what they're doing in this space. They had Monster under its own umbrella and kind of shielded for a year or two, and they couldn't do anymore because the losses were so great. They were trying to do all this crazy product fluffy shit that just didn't equal revenue or the prospect of future revenues. So, I think literally this is just, "Let's get rid of this fucking dog." Apollo knows how to cut up in pieces and sell shit, that's what they do for a living, "let's give them this other carcass with the carcass that they have, and maybe two carcasses sell, who knows?" Joel: Well, here are my seven takeaways from the acquisition, Chad. Number one... Chad: Oh, God, is this Stepstone? [laughter] Joel: I promised myself I wouldn't. If it leads that way, so be it. But I do not have Stepstone in my seven thing. Number one... Chad: Okay, okay. Podcast Intro: This is big news for people of a certain age that have been doing this for quite a while. If you're under 40, this is a big nothing burger. No one of us, way younger than us, cares about this shit. Only old people like you, me, and Durbin, and Rothberg, and people like that really care about this stuff. So, number one, this is not a huge news in the big scheme of things. Number two, Scott Gutz is finally gone. Just like they did with Ferguson at CareerBuilder, it may take a year. He may transition to an advisory board guy, but Scott Gutz, as I think we've both been expecting or predicting for a while, will finally be gone. The CPA that's running CareerBuilder and crunching the numbers will be the leader of this organization long-term. Chad: He's a facilities management guy. [laughter] Joel: Whatever, man. He's a bean counter. Apollo loves that shit. It's like, "How can we squeeze more profit out of this turkey?" Number three, if you're currently an employee of Monster, you better be updating your resume, your LinkedIn profile. If you have a duplicitous position, that your time on this world is running out. Jump ship as soon as you can. Apollo gutted CareerBuilder, they're gonna gut Monster as well. So, if you're employed by Monster, keep that in mind and update your resume. Number five, oh sorry, number four. I love that they talked about regulatory issues, antitrust issues coming up in this case, as if this were 2004, there will be no antitrust issues. Chad: Maybe, yeah. Maybe 15... Yeah, 15, 20 years ago, yeah. Joel: That's silly. It's almost like, "We're so big, there might be issues." No, there's not gonna be any antitrust issues on this case. [laughter] Number five, the big question from a marketing standpoint is, do they keep both brands? Do they morph into one, and which one? A little bit of a prediction. But I think in the near term, nothing will change, let's call it a year. But I do think eventually the CareerBuilder brand will go away. Monster is still a decent brand. You can do something with Monster. CareerBuilder, there's nothing you can do. With Monster, you can kind of do some stuff, be cool, be hip, be edgy, connect with the kids. So, I think Monster is going to be the brand that they go with. Number six, I think they will, in addition to brand, condense all the jobs, similar to how Indeed postings are on SimplyHired. You're gonna see cross-posting. I think they'll probably try to increase the price on a double posting from that in that way. Joel: And number seven, I'm sorry, Chad, yeah, StepStone is gonna eventually be the choir of Monster [laughter] as it becomes one single brand. Or they could take this Turkey IPO, who knows? Roll the dice and see what happens. Or they could look at rinse and repeating, and saying, "Well, okay, ZipRecruiter stock is now $4 or whatever it's gonna be in two, three years. Maybe we buy ZipRecruiter and bring them in the fold. Maybe Talent.com, which has not made a lot of waves lately. Maybe we suck them up." Yeah, this is a rinse and repeat for Apollo. They've made seven to 10X, according to rumors out there. And why not continue the trend and just buy job boards, suck them dry, and then just feed off the revenue that's there? Because all these companies are in every budget for a lot of companies, and companies just approve the budget every year, and this money just keeps flowing in. It's a nice little cash cow. Chad: So, I have some listener comments around some of that. First and foremost, I gotta give props to Leah Daniels who said they're gonna ditch both brands and go with Jobs.com, which Monster owns. Then we had other listener comments and these were similarities between the Monster plus CareerBuilder. This is more like VHS plus Betamax. Friendster plus MySpace. PalmPilot plus Blackberry. Or your favorite Cheesman, White Castle plus Waffle House. That's right kids. Joel: Oh, that's sexy. Chad: That is what listeners think of this merger. And again, I think it's funny because there are some people that are pundits that are out there saying, "This is a data play," and I think that's the funniest shit ever. These companies do not have any data that anybody gives two fucks about and/or they can't get somewhere else. So, have a nice day. Joel: Yeah. Some perspective, these were one time both the number one site in the US if not globally. They were both valued at over a billion dollars. Chad: One and two. Joel: They both sold recently for about 500 million. What do you think the value is now? I'm gonna say, if they're at a hundred million, it'd be giving them a little bit more than they are probably worth. Chad: This one is called "Indeed Tomfuckery" and is from August of 2024. You knew Indeed had to make this list, right? Give it a listen. Chad: So, we've seen Indeed's traffic waning, revenues waning, new business models like CPA and CPSA waning and then imploding. Then we hear about Indeed Flex marching into temp staffing. Then Indeed announces charging for API calls at three bucks a clip. And now, wait a minute, and now the following excerpt of an email comes from Eric Epling, strategic partnership manager at Indeed. And that was sent to us from a niche job board. Eric asks, "Would you," the job site, they're actually asking the job site, "be open to a content for traffic exchange? This would mean that we, Indeed, may not be able to compensate you, but your job site would benefit from top tier jobs while we receive traffic from your platform. Also, please note that our strategy now focuses on," get ready kids, "healthcare, tech, financing and accounting, and transportation jobs." What do you think about this, Joel? Sound a little fishy? [video playback] Joel: So, a little history lesson, kids, 'cause I know that's what you come to the show for. [laughter] Outside of SEO, Indeed's backfill model was really what ramped up the company to a different stratosphere. There was a time when pretty much any job board had Indeed backfill. There were very few that didn't. They were the only one that really offered it. You got paid on a click. It gave you content where you didn't have content before. I knew job boards that fired their whole sales and marketing staff because they could just supply jobs through Indeed. And a big problem with job boards is we need jobs, we need employers. Well, Indeed came along and said, "Hey, you don't need postings. You can get them from us." And by the way, this was a really nice Trojan horse where everyone that put backfill had a little link at the bottom that said "jobs provided by Indeed" or whatever. And that jobs link, guess what, was hot linked back to indeed.com. Well, Google loves backlinks. So, basically Indeed, I won't say "tricked," but they leveraged all these backfill relationships to get better search rankings, which ultimately tanked every job board that had enjoyed SEO rankings in the past. Joel: It was very successful. I'm sure it was a pain to manage. There was probably click fraud. And fast forward to today, you have competition from the likes of Pando, Taoru, every programmatic solution out there. And they kind of ended it as far as... We talked about it. But then they launched these channels, healthcare, tech, and it's basically like a way to call their customers like, "Hey. Hey, hospital, regional hospital in Toledo. We have a new healthcare channel. You need to spend more money with us because we have these great partnerships." And now they want you to partner without money, as if they have content that can't be gotten anywhere else. Chad: Exactly! Joel: "Just 'cause we're Indeed, you should want to partner with us for no cost." Chad: Top tier. Joel: They've lost the script. They don't know what they're doing. It's more spaghetti at the wall. They have a few hits but mostly misses. None of this really makes sense to me. What are your thoughts? Chad: Well, first off, you, the job site, get top tier talent, AKA send your job seeker directly to Indeed for no compensation. No compensation. And then they force the job seeker to register, meaning, you just handed over traffic and a job seeker registration for fucking free. So, if you're currently receiving compensation from Indeed, how long do you think it's gonna last? That's the big question. Also, even if you are selling clicks to Indeed, they're paying you to siphon your job seekers and build their database, right? Back to the quote, "only focusing on partnering with healthcare, tech, finance and accounting, and transportation jobs." Siphoning job seekers from niche job sites are the key. Chad: Now, we've talked about this on the show for years. Job sites that are experts in specific spaces, they are much more valuable. In this case, Indeed sees that. They see your model, they understand your model, and they want to siphon it dry. They wanna drink your fucking milkshake, kids. So, at the end of the day, back in the day, Monster, CareerBuilder, Indeed, the general job sites ruled the world. Now, Indeed sees that's not the case, right? So, all of those organizations, those niche job sites, companies understand that quality is better than quantity. The market has shifted. The landscape has shifted. And, last but not least, if you are a job site and you need content, there are plenty of places to go to get great job content. And if you're not sure where, message me on LinkedIn. I will hook you up with some great contacts to be able to get you great top-tier content so you don't have to play this bullshit game with Indeed. Joel: Chad Sowash will make sure you do not fall for the banana in the tailpipe. Clip/SoundFX: You're not gonna fall for the banana in the tailpipe. [laughter] Joel: Oh, Indeed. Oh, Indeed. Chad: There it is, kids. 2024 is over. Joel and I are excited about all of the new voices we have planned and bringing you in 2025, along with analysis and obviously brash opinion. Thanks again for listening. We out. Podcast Outro: Wow, look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey, or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckleheads instead. Now go take a shower and wash off all the guilt. But save some soap, because you'll be back like an awful trainwreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.

Behold! A holiday spectacle so dazzling, so insightful, it’ll practically guarantee you a promotion (results may vary, void where prohibited, don't quit your day job). We've wrangled all our favorite (and some we just tolerated ) guests from 2024 to deliver scorching hot takes on the burning dumpster fire that is talent, tech, and recruitment. Think less "fireside chat" and more "dumpster fire chat." From AI’s inevitable robot overlord takeover of recruiting (will they finally fix the ATS? Don't hold your breath) to the thrilling return of the office (aka mandatory fun times!), we've got the scoop you need to maybe  survive 2025. Or at least have something to complain about at the next holiday party. Witness the assembled brain trust, including: Eileen Kovalsky from General Motors: Because even car companies need people to, you know, build cars. Adam Godson , CEO of Paradox: Hopefully, he'll explain what a paradox is without causing one. Jessica Rush , Chief Talent Officer: We're rushing to find the talent, people! Get it? (We'll see ourselves out). Patti Tabris , Senior Director of Talent Acquisition at ResultsCX: Because someone has to deal with the results. Stefan Premdas , Director, People Experience at sweetgreen: Hopefully, they brought snacks. J.T. O'Donnell from Work It Daily: Because you're going to need to. Julie Sowash , Executive Director and Co-founder of Disability Solutions: Providing solutions to problems you didn't even know you had! John Graham , the VP of Employer Brand Strategy, Humanity & Culture at Shaker: Because branding is everything, even when it's not. (He appears twice! Clearly, he's got a lot to say...or we messed up the guest list). Emi Beredugo : We’re not entirely sure what Emi does, but they’re here! Lieven Van Nieuwenhuyze , Co-host from Europe: Bringing you takes from across the pond (probably involving better coffee). Matt Lavery , Global Director of Sourcing, Recruiting, & Onboarding: The man, the myth, the onboarding legend. Lord Wei , A Member of the Science and Tech Committee in the House of Lords: Adding a touch of British pomp and circumstance (and hopefully some actual wisdom). Rebecca Carr , CEO at SmartRecruiters: Because recruiting needs to be smart, obviously. Courtney Dempsey , the Head of Recruiting at Southern Rock Restaurants: Serving up talent as hot as their chicken. Chloé Rada , the Senior Director of Talent Attraction at ZoomInfo: Zooming into the future of talent (get it?). Dean Da Costa , Senior Staff Talent Acquisition at Lockheed Martin: Recruiting the best of the best to build…stuff. Mary Battle Broxton , Leading Employer Brand and Recruitment Marketing at Tractor Supply Company: Because even tractor companies need marketing. 🎧 Smash that subscribe button NOW! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION (cometh) Chad: Hey, what are you doing here? Okay, no, I'm glad you stopped by. You see here at the Chad and Cheese Podcast, Joel and I, we wanted to give you guys something special because you're the ones who make this. Listeners, our viewers, people who engage with our stuff and it's holiday season, so we're bringing you the 10 top, our 10 top topics for the year with some amazing speakers and just a lot of fun. And, yeah, we're kind of enjoying the holidays too. Again, you make the Chad and Cheese Podcast. You. And we really appreciate it. We love you guys. If you haven't signed up for free stuff, chadcheese.com/free. Free t-shirts, booze. We like to send our people stuff. So anyway, thanks so much from Chad, from the Algarve. We love you and have a wonderful holiday season. We will see you on the flip side. Podcast Intro: 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. [music] Chad: In 2024, the question of AI replacing recruiters was one hell of a hot topic. Here's Eileen Kovalsky, Global Head of Candidate Experience at General Motors. Adam Godson, CEO, and Jessica Rush, Chief Talent Officer over at Paradox, talking about recruitment with AI. Enjoy. Joel: The narrative of recruiting is going away or recruiters are being replaced. It's interesting to note that I didn't hear you say that any recruiters were let go in that process. But I'm curious from your perspective, will the skill set of a recruiter in the future GM look different? And what is that difference going to look like? Eileen Kovalsky: Absolutely will look different. Historically, our recruiters and they're fantastic, but their job was primarily posting and praying. I mean, that's what it was for a really long time. What it will be tomorrow and how it's starting to transform is we've added a significant number of recruiters that come with very specific technical recruiting experience from some big name competitors that I will not name. And they're not only on the hook for like help bringing that talent in, but also helping to educate our OG recruiters on here's how you sell to a tech candidate, 'cause the sell is different. Joel: Yeah. Eileen Kovalsky: They don't necessarily care about that we shut down in July and you maybe have a week off. They want to know that they can work flexibly and that they have cool tools and the technology is modern. And those are the things that attract them. And so it's how do you sell differently? And so that the role of the recruiter absolutely is changing. Again, I'm going to throw another cliche out there. They are now becoming talent advisers. They're advising managers, hiring managers and leaders on what's in the market. They're leveraging data that we have to say, "Hey, you're looking for this purple squirrel with pink polka dots." But guess what? There's five of them in the whole country. So let's talk about if we just took the polka dots away. Eileen Kovalsky: How much does that increase your your pipeline and can we train for those polka dots? And those are the conversations that the recruiters are starting to have. And that will continue to evolve because we can't keep doing what we did yesterday if we wanna succeed tomorrow. Chad: So we had Kevin Wheeler, a futurist, on the podcast a few months ago. Joel: Chad likes to name names if you didn't know that about him. Chad: It's out there. It's out there. Joel: It is out there. Chad: It's out there on ChadCheese.com. Anyway, so he actually said that he sees recruiters going away in the very near future because this technology is so damn good. So where do you sit when it comes to, I mean, recruiters just being flushed, being a recruiter yourself at one time, being flushed out of the entire process? Adam Godson: Yeah, I think it's easy to see that recruiting as it's done today, there will be less of it and it'll be different. Chad: So what do you mean by done today? Adam Godson: Yeah, so I think there are two types of jobs in the future for talent acquisition. There are gonna be people that design processes and orchestrate automation and set up systems that maybe serve as air traffic control and they design how these things work. There's going to be a second group of people that are on the phone talking to candidates, meeting with people in coffee shops, and they are convincing them to join. And they are the real recruiters of our industry. And I think what's gone are people that wish they were doing that, but are working their applicant tracking system, clicking buttons all day, wishing they were talking to candidates. So that version of recruiting I think does go away and I think we end up in this path. And what will drive that is competition. So for a long time people thought technology would replace things, right? Adam Godson: Back to the ATM machine. Well, ATMs are going to take the job of every bank teller. Guess what? There are more ATMs in the next 20 years after that. I'm sorry, there are more bank tellers in the next 20 years than ever before because you can run a bank more cheaply and have more bank branches. And so competition will make that work. So just like we will still have salespeople, the ability to go get the best talent, to go convince people to join will absolutely make recruiting as important or more important in the future to get the best people. But it will look different. A lot of the administrative stuff will go away. There will be system designers, technologists that do that. There will be people that really, really recruit. Jessica Rush: I think this is like the story of time. Technology always has done both. It's taken some jobs and it's created a lot of new jobs. So I think we'll just see more of that. And our CEO Adam talks about that the future of recruiting is really gonna be two types of jobs. One that's kind of the convince connect role and one that's the experience design. And we've really been operating like that for a while now, a paradox on our talent acquisition team. And so I do think that's the way where we've got a team of recruiters that spend their time talking to candidates, understanding what they care about, building a relationship, building trust and spending time coaching our hiring managers, partnering with them to really understand deeply their needs and the market and who's a great fit and providing that information. Jessica Rush: And then we have a team that really thinks about, "Okay, how do we use our technology and tools to create a better experience for our candidates, for our recruiters, for our hiring managers, for everybody who's involved?" So we're fortunate that we get to do that. And we're just always thinking about how do we continue to double down in those two areas? And but I really think that's where we're headed. Chad: Joel, that's AI putting the human back in HR. AI is here, so employer branding is dead, right? Well, apparently the importance of employer branding in tech driven recruitment became a very hot topic in 2024. Here are some of the thoughts of Patti Tabris, senior director of TA at Results CX and Stefan Premdas, director of people experience at Sweetgreen. Patti Tabris: We branded our program as Refer CX and it's a mobile app. Chad: Oh, that's awesome. Patti Tabris: They could go right on their phones. And that was part of what Aaron offered us when we decided to go with Aaron as our vendor. Chad: Oh, that's awesome. That's great. Patti Tabris: Branding it for the company, making them feel like they're a part of something company wide. It's on their phone. They could click in there and make a referral from anywhere. If they're standing in Starbucks and they're talking to somebody in line and they think they're a great fit for our company, send them a referral notice, talk them into applying. It's a great way to have people get excited about their job and their company. So something I'd love to throw out there that isn't, everybody's looking for the money savings, the time savings, all of that. But what we found is the company culture and what it added to our company culture is really exciting as well. Since we set up our referral program with Aaron, we've won five Great Place to Work badges this past year. And I think that has to have something to do with it. Joel: I imagine it does. Patti Tabris: They feel rewarded. They feel excited about the company. Joel: Talk about the branding, employment branding perspective. How has the changes in the business changed the brand or has it? Are you all in on what you're doing now or are you steadfast on we're Sweetgreen? It feels like a Patagonia type brand that you stay the course. What is the new technology meant to the brand? Stefan Premdas: It's actually an exercise that we're kicking off next year. We want to go through a full EVP. We realize that as a company, we're growing and maturing. We've just brought in a lot of new folks to the C-suite and the company's changing. The pace at which we want to grow is we're really kind of on that trajectory that we've always wanted to be in. I think our brand is... And I don't know where it's gonna land, but I have a feeling it's gonna land in. We are kind of a future first company. And if you want somewhere to grow, you can go from a team member to a general manager, our head coach, as we call it in sweet green, in three years. But then what does that trajectory look like beyond that? And that's what we're starting to figure out now. Stefan Premdas: Our investment into succession planning is really going to be the next future. We want to get to the 60%-70% internal growth, promotion growth. So I'm not exactly sure where it's gonna land yet. We still have a lot of research. We want to differentiate. We don't want to be another Chipotle. Chad: Diversity, equity and inclusion was under attack in 2024, and the uncertain future of DEI was on everyone's mind. JT O'Donnell, founder and CEO at Work It Daily, my beautiful wife, Julie Sowash, executive director and co-founder at Disability Solutions, plus John Graham. That's right, John Graham, VP of employer brand diversity and culture at Shaker Recruitment Marketing. They all had something to say about this topic. Give it a listen. Joel: But Chad and I have been talking about the death of DEI and companies abandoning it and the Supreme Court. And so it's a complex issue. But this week alone, Molson Coors said that they plan to cut supplier diversity quotas and DEI-based training programs, as well as sever ties with the corporate equality index of the LGBTQ plus advocacy group Human Rights Campaign. But wait, there's more. Ford Motor Company also joined in. This joins the likes of Harley Davidson, Lowe's and John Deere, who are scaling back diversity, equity, inclusion efforts. JT, what are your thoughts? And specifically, what are job seeker's opinions of what companies are doing here? J.T. O'Donnell: And you've talked about it here before. This seems to be so reflective of a market. When the market starts to contract and businesses are really looking at the bottom line, it gets really easy for them to say this just isn't necessary. And we've seen this before. We know it. Here's my silver lining. Here's what I truly believe as someone who works with so many job seekers and a lot of Gen Z. They were raised to look for inclusiveness. They've been exposed to this, talked about it, want to see it, question when it's not there. And I just have to believe and want to believe that as they become the next generation of managers and business owners, that that will just be organic to them. J.T. O'Donnell: In the same way that all the women that I know will now immediately look and say, "Is there a female on the board? What's the female leadership look like?" We took a long time for us as women to pay attention to that and to call it out. And I think that these generations are going to call out that diversity, I hope. And I certainly am going to nurture that every step of the way. It's a big part of what we coach to. So hopefully that'll help on the back end. Julie Sowash: As the winds change, companies use that as an opportunity to retract. And I know there's pressure in the market and I know I am very protective and very covetous of my brand. I built it. It's my baby. I understand. But it's sheer weakness to see these Fortune 100, Fortune 1000 brands pull back because they're scared of a little political change. You're in or you're out. And it's okay if you're out. Just be who you are. Don't try to pretend that you're into DEI. Don't try to pretend that now you're not into DEI because the political winds change. Be true to who your organization and your culture are because it's whiplash for the job seeker. Julie Sowash: And it's this like fake hope that companies give that that fake like illusion of hope that we're finally going to get pay right. That we're finally going to build our pipeline so that it's Black, Brown, LGBTQ and disabled. And then you just pull the sheet right out from under our feet again and we start over. Joel: Give me your take on the current state of DEI. A few years ago, it was like, yes, that's a good thing. Let's do it. It became politicized, weaponized. John Graham: Sure. Joel: Companies stepped back, didn't want to touch it. What's the current state of that issue? John Graham: Yeah. So I think we're at a point where DEI is now going through its own rebranding. And if you're a student of this space, you know that for the past 60 years, there's been a series of progressions and regressions. It's just a natural ebb and flow. When you start making progress, people will pull it back. But the key is you're incrementally moving forward. I think we're at a point right now where we're being honest about what can change, what people are willing to change. And then what can we do within that construct? What are we doing within the context of employer brand recruitment marketing? John Graham: How honest are we gonna be about our culture? What are we going to do as a company as far as what we're donating to or not anymore? And some companies have made headlines for pulling their commitments back all the way. Based on pressures from activist investors, perceived risk for their consumer bases, whatever the case may be. The challenge is that the issues for the people who are most marginalized didn't go away because a company rolled back its commitments. So they're gonna have to contend with it in some way. Chad: So automation's effect on workforce dynamics was another big topic. And friends of the show, Emi Beredugo, Senior Manager Recruitment Enablement at Elastic, and our friend Lieven Van Nieuwenhuyze, Group Chief Digital Officer in Public Affairs at House of HR, had something to say. Check it out. Joel: Google CEO revealed this week that AI systems now generate more than a quarter, that's 25% for those of you at home that don't know what a quarter is, of new code for its products with human programmers overseeing the computer generated contributions. Does that mean current AI models are capable of generating flawless high quality code that developers can just insert and forget? Likely not. But does it mean fewer employees needed for said coding? What say you, Emmy? Quarter? 25% of all new code out of Google now is automated. Should programmers be worried? Emi Beredugo: Oh, should they be worried? I would still say no, going back to the fact that it helps to increase productivity. It helps to speed up the process, but it won't replace a human. So I don't think tech people need to be necessarily worried in terms of their roles going. But I do think that there will be an increasing need for those people within the tech world to upskill themselves. They're going to have to develop new skills to stay competitive in the marketplace. Roles are changing. So whether you're in product management, UX design, even customer education, all of those roles are still gonna have to need a higher level of understanding of AI functionalities, particularly because their clients and customers are becoming more savvy around AI as well. Chad: 60% of the time, it works every time. Joel: I'm less optimistic. Maybe Lieven can talk a little bit about Europe and some of the challenges that Germany and a lot of the continent is facing. Personio was a German company. A lot of their initial clients were in Germany. They are trying to grow here in the US, which we've talked about. But yeah, ultimately, we're gonna talk about this a lot. We're gonna talk a lot about, especially public companies, headcount reduction, stock price goes up, boats and hoes, rinse and repeat. And it's gonna be a theme that we talk about quite a bit on this show. Lieven, what are your thoughts? Lieven Van Nieuwenhuyze: The whole personial thing. If people are talking about efficiency, I always wonder how is indeed AI going to impact that? And he didn't mention people are being replaced by AI. But if you read between the lines, it's kind of something like that. British Telecom, they were very clear about it. They fired 5000 people and they said we are going to replace those people by AI, first line help desk people, et cetera. So this is going to be a constant in the near future, I think. Chad: In 2024, CEOs started forcing employers back to the office. Is it good, bad or insignificant? Well, Emi, Joel and I, we had a few things to say about this. Give it a listen. Emi Beredugo: Worryingly, I'm seeing more and more organizations, especially the bigger ones, sending a not so subtle message to their employees. That message is, get back to the office or wave goodbye to your promotion. Now, here's the thing. Despite all the data that's supporting flexible working arrangements, I can't shake the feeling that if we are not careful, these return to office mandates might become the norm rather than exception. So why is this happening? Well, companies are thrown out all kinds of reasons, from better collaboration to improve connectivity and an environment where employees can actually grow their skills more easily. But is that actually the truth? Now, I like to think it's what I call executive nostalgia. So this is where senior leaders, they yearn for the good old days of water cooler chats, and maybe they're reminiscent about how they built their internal networks and rose through the ranks because of this. Emi Beredugo: But times have changed. If these execs want their organizations to keep succeeding, it's not their employees who need to conform. It's actually the leadership who need to change. They need to change their mindset. They need to upskill themselves so they now know how to lead a flexible workforce. And why do they need to change? Well, first of all, there isn't enough data out there that shows that in-office work leads to better outcomes. In fact, there's loads of data showing that they aren't even leading to higher profits. And there's also plenty of data showing that forcing employees back to the office can have a detrimental impact and can actually hurt productivity, morale, retention. So who is it impacting the most? Well, carers get hit hard. Not everyone has the help to juggle caregiving responsibilities. So if you force them back into the office, this just adds unnecessary strain. Emi Beredugo: Introverts struggle. Crowded office spaces, they just aren't energizing for everyone. For some they are actually really draining. Neurodivergent employees lose out. So many neurodivergents thrive in environments where they can manage their own time in a quiet space and work from home setups often enables their best work. Then you've got people with disabilities. Accessibility in a home setup can sometimes be far better than navigating a commute to the office and a office that even if they go to might not even fully accommodate their needs. And then you've got the commute themselves, those people who live far away from the office, that return to office mandate isn't just inconvenient. It's actually exhausting and wasteful. So if organizations know all of this, why they doing it? What's the point? I mean, surely they're not that stupid, are they? Well, if you ask loads of employees, that answer is clear. Emi Beredugo: It is a lack of trust. Some leaders just don't trust their teams to be productive if they can't physically see them. And here's the reality. Most of the time people are commuting to sit at a desk, throw on their headphones and do exactly the same work that they would be doing if they were at home. So, make it make sense. And let's not gloss over the fact of what some people are actually quietly thinking. Some people believe that a few organizations are using return to office mandates as a sneaky way to reduce head count. And that's called quiet firing. Forcing people out the door without having to physically fire them. But if they keep doing this, if they keep eroding trust, these organizations are just gonna be running on borrowed time. So here's my message to those drive turkey companies out there who are enforcing return to office mandates. Fix up, get better, listen to your employees, change with the times. Build trust. Let go of all these outdated models of what work looks like and focus on what actually matters. The results. Joel: A new survey by Blind shows that 73% of Amazon employees are considering leaving due to the new five day work week policy starting in January of '25, highlighting significant dissatisfaction in potential turnover, especially among senior staff. Another 80% said they know someone who is already looking for another job because of the new policy, while 32% said they know someone who has quit because of it. Chad, shit's getting deep, deep at Amazon. What are your thoughts on these numbers in this poll from Blind? Chad: Well, there's definitely some reports saying that this is literally just trying to push people out, so this is kind of like a forced layoff without having to pay the severance. But if that's the case, do you think Amazon thought nearly 75% of staff would eject? I don't think so. So Amazon's woes where they are burning through entire populations of warehouse workers, and are also losing billions of dollars in revenue because they don't have the people in the warehouses to do the job, will now be shifting over into the Amazon office space. Amazon is really good at technology. What they're really bad at is people and being human. And this, this could shock Amazon very quickly. Joel: Yeah. So you know when Trump won the election in 2016, and probably 75% of Democrats at least said they're moving to Canada if Trump gets elected, this reminds me of that. Of course, the number of people that actually did move to Canada was probably in single digits. A lot of people were just venting. A lot of people were mad, which is what they do on Blind, by the way. They vent. It's kind of anonymous. Like I can talk shit. I don't think we're anywhere near 70% of Amazon losing that many people. It does show dissatisfaction with like, we don't wanna go back to the way it was, and they are gonna lose people for it. Maybe they can pick up all the OpenAI people that are leaving the executive suite over there. But yeah, Amazon has an issue. They wanna automate as quickly as possible. The C-suite, like being disgruntled. Maybe it is partly they want to get rid of people because they're getting rid of people anyway with automation and robotics. And maybe this is part of that strategy. I don't know. But shit's kind of weird at Amazon right now. Chad: Immigration was a major topic in 2024. How does it impact the economy and workforce? Well, Matt Lavery, Global Director of Sourcing, Recruiting and Onboarding at UPS, plus, Lord Nat Wei, a member of the Science and Tech Committee at the House of Lords had some pretty relevant insights to share. Check it out. Joel: What are your thoughts on immigration as a whole and how it impacts UPS? Matt Lavery: I'd really like it as they brought people in, if they would give them eligibility to work easier and faster. Because we're an E-Verify company, everything gets tracked. I can't hire a lot of the folks that I want to. We wanted to get involved in the Afghan peace when that came in a few years ago when that started, but they weren't eligible to work right away and it was hard to get them on board. It was a chore. So I think when we do these things as a country, we should be able to get these people jobs if they want them. Because in my mind, if someone wants to work here and earn here and pay taxes here, God bless you. Let's go. Because the amount of talent that we need, again, I'm an X, you guys are Xes, I think too. We're not gonna... We don't have enough of baby boomers for these jobs. I wish they would all retire. That's just my personal... Joel: Yeah. Oh, yeah. And get the hell out. Matt Lavery: But, and make more opportunity for some other folks. But we do have... We're not like Europe yet, where we have negative growth. But we're slowing down. So we need to bring in people who wanna take, quite honestly, some of the lower end jobs, but build themselves up. And again, we have a country that can do that for them. Let it work that way. Give them to opportunity to work, earn a living and create a family. Joel: When you talk about population collapse and immigration, part of what... Part of closing the border is those folks become a drain on the system. They become either welfare recipients or government responsibilities. Are you outlying a future where can we train people so quickly that an immigrant can come in and within six months, a year, be a high skilled laborer? And is that part of the solution? Should we open the borders and just educate them much more quickly because we have these systems or do you think we're gonna continue in this death doom spiral of no immigration aging population? Is this technology part of the solution? Lord Wei: Yeah. I think there's a need for nuance. So first of all as the son of migrants, this whole putting all migrants in the same box, there are different kinds of migrants. If a migrant comes from a village somewhere and comes straight to the UK, that might be a drain on our finances. It might be a humanitarian thing to do, but there's a lot of investment you need to put into them and their family. But you've also got migrants from other parts of the world who are amazing. They could be doctors, they could be, filling all kinds of roles that we can't ever hope to fill. And I think the way we do this sensitively is kind of go, well for everyone we bring in to do that, we've gotta train a local person,'cause often and often in the same town where we send the migrant so that the impact on the local population isn't gonna be Oh, they're taking all our jobs. Lord Wei: No, you're benefiting, 'cause we're gonna train you both in AI and in future in the robotic AI by the way. 'Cause a lot of these jobs are fruit picking as well. They're carers. There's gonna be a shift as well, I think in future where you're gonna have automation in those physical roles as well. And so it's gonna be a really interesting world. And some of the best paid work is gonna be how you design that to work in those environments, to both be doing the work, making sandwiches and then figuring out how the robot can also make sandwiches. I was actually working on a project where they were trying to figure out how to get robots to make sandwiches. Joel: Get sandwiches and sausages, making... Lord Wei: Yeah. And guess, this is the really funny thing. Guess the thing they couldn't get the robots to do, which they're still, they haven't cracked, which is they can get the robot to butter the sandwich and like do this to the sandwich. But when you pick up the chicken, you need to kind of, or ham, you need to distribute it on the sandwich really quickly. And they found that the human workers could feel with their hands, the exact right proportion of chicken to put down much better than... 'Cause the robots can't feel yet. So I think it's gonna be a hybrid world where some of us are filling chickens or interviewing candidates. The robots are slapping on the bread or doing the scheduling. Joel: The robots also don't eat the sandwich. So they're not the customers of the sandwiches. Chad: Shocking layoffs happened in 2024. And of course, Joel and I, were not gonna keep our mouths shut. Take a listen. Layoffs. Joel: Layoffs. Chad: God damn it. Joel: Some big ones this week. Some big names cut some heads recently. Intel let go of 15,000 people. Didn't they just get some taxpayer money to compete with Taiwan semiconductor. Anyway Match Group, the company behind Tinder, Match.com, OkCupid and others, which by the way, had downloads fall 12% globally, is cutting 6% of its staff, blaming TikTok, of all people. And industry stalwart, iCIMS said goodbye to 69 of their associates, which equals about 5% of their workforce if my math is correct. Chad, what are your thoughts on all this head cutting? Chad: Yeah. Intel, when Nvidia is printing money, Intel apparently is burning it. It's been outflanked and apparently rushed a buggy product to market. If a CEO is gonna chop that many heads, he's gotta chop his own. It's all there is to it. So this is just ridiculous watching a CEO well up and say, oh, really hate to let this many people go. Well, you're the first one that should go. Give somebody else a fucking turn for fuck's sake. Tinder, wait a minute. They have live streaming services? They have live... Were they trying to become OnlyFans? Why the fuck would Tinder... [automated voice] Automated Voice: What are you doing Step bro? Chad: Whomever signed off on that shit should definitely be gone. And then on the iCIMS front, major leadership changes, CEO, CPO and CTO. And one of the things I've learned in being in any organization from the US Army to Randstad, is that whenever new leaders come in, they change shit. It's all there is to it. Sometimes there are moves, and from my understanding, rumor mill says, ME is gonna get hit in the next week or two. This is, I think, just the start of the arranging of the furniture in the new iCIMS house unfortunately. Joel: I'm glad you said House and not Titanic. That would've been very, very foreboding. Geez. That would've been very foreboding. Chad: I'm nice. Joel: $8.5 billion of government money went to Intel to like build a company that was gonna be world class and compete with the semiconductors in Taiwan. You mentioned Nvidia. What in the hell is going on? There's gonna be like Senate hearings. There's gotta be some accountability for that because that is fucked up. Chad: Orange jumpsuits, baby. Orange fucking jumpsuits. Joel: You can't take $8.5 billion from the government, and lay off 15,000 people without some explaining to do. So that's a major screw up. And we got some layoffs talk about. Well, quick update. We talked about Career Builder plus Monster, that's their official name now. Real creative. CareerBuilder plus Monster. AIM Group is reporting that the layoffs hit about 200 employees, roughly 15% of the workforce. So that was sort of highlighted. And Toptal, a company that Chad says no one knows. So anyway, this might be news for you, just the name of the company. The self-proclaimed world's largest fully remote workforce has laid off a whopping 70% of its engineering team affecting roles across software engineering, data science, and design in multiple countries like the US, Ukraine and Poland. Chad, any thoughts on updates on layoffs? Chad: Yeah. Just a continuation of last week with Monster. That's not anything we should be surprised with, but I do have some insider knowledge that we were talking about. Whether they would have two databases, two types of tech, et cetera, et cetera. Nope. From my understanding, again, this is a rumor from the inside, they're going to go to one platform, one tech platform, and then they'll more than likely merge the candidate databases into that one search platform. So try to make it a big bad CareerBuilder plus Monster. On the Toptal side of the house, it was funny because just literally last week, one of my friends was asking me about them because they were pretty much being dragged into conversations about prospectively being on a leadership team and I was like, don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. Chad: They're so far behind the rest of the competition that's out there, it's just not worth it. It literally isn't worth it. And then this information comes out, I'm like, holy shit. Talk about dodging a bullet. But yeah. Yeah. That a lot of this doesn't surprise me. We're gonna see a lot of the smaller players who haven't evolved fast enough. They don't understand how to partner and build, they're gonna get flushed down the toilet. And that's where it feels like Toptal's going. Tech continued gaining velocity in 2024. John Graham and Rebecca Carr, you know her. She's the CEO at SmartRecruiters. They both had something to say about tech trends in 2024. Joel: Jumping back to technology real quickly. 2024, what were the tech trends that stood out to you? You do a lot of vendors, so I'm sure your take on this is pretty interesting. 2024. John Graham: Yeah. So this year it's been a lot of, Automation AI has been the buzzword in everybody's tech platform. But I think getting to candidates faster, whether it be through your recruitment marketing efforts, getting better higher quality candidates through automation, storytelling and video. A lot of video platforms and ambassadorship for existing employees to be amplifiers of the brand. So I think we've seen a lot of that this year. And it's really a circle back to maybe like 2016, '17, where that was sort of emerging. Now we're having a renaissance, technology's becoming better. But interestingly enough, I think we're gonna see more of that. We're gonna have to. Joel: You touched a little bit about the marketplace vendors, new products and services. There are more companies that make it easier to build apps onto marketplaces. Just curious about your trends, what you're seeing, the amount of growth, any kind of cool technologies that you're seeing being built onto SmartRecruiters that we should pay attention to? Rebecca Carr: Yeah. There's actually, some of the coolest and most interesting to SmartRecruiters are the people doing things that are workflows we know won't ever go away, but have just made that workflow a lot better and a lot cleaner for everyone else. So as a good example, we have a partner in the Netherlands that is essentially building a new agency portal. Who likes agency portals? Nobody likes agency. I have an agency portal. We haven't touched it as a product team in 10 years. Joel: Wow. Rebecca Carr: But agency recruiting is just what happens, especially in certain markets. So we've got probably 40, 50, 60,000 agency hires that are made a year through our platform. These types of apps and experiences are things our customers latch onto immediately and provide impactful business value and also better learnings. I think some of those are the ones that are ultimately gonna, you know, benefit from this moment of consolidation in HR tech. 'Cause someone like me, it's an easy value add. I can like sunset my code from the past that I was never gonna invest in anyway. I can give better experiences. I can drive better adoption. So in this case, this company was called [0:36:50.4] ____. They were really cool, cool thing. But there's a bunch of little ones like that. Rebecca Carr: We're working on a lot of... With a lot of partners that use design systems to embed in our UI. So Visier is doing this with us right now. HiredScore is using some of our stuff to embed. So those people that are, again, not just saying to me, "Hey, I want an iframe in your UI, which isn't gonna help anybody. I actually wanna find a way to like funnel my data to you through a user experience that people are going to engage with." I am finding that they're getting the most attention from some of the big vendors. Chad: In 2024, what surprised you the most? Here's some practitioners. Courtney Dempsey, Director of Digital Recruiting at Southern Rock Restaurants. Chloe Rada, Senior Director, Talent Acquisition and Operations. Dean Da Costa, Senior Staff, Talent Acquisition, and Mary Battle Broxton, Employer Branding Manager at Tractor Supply Company. They all had things to talk about. So in 2024, what has surprised you the most? Courtney Dempsey: The great stay. Chad: The what? Courtney Dempsey: The great stay. Chad: The great stay. Courtney Dempsey: Managers aren't leaving, and those that are lifers have already expired out in our side of the business. So the influx of retail that I'm seeing right now, is about 85% to our lack of 15% of actual people that work in the restaurant industry. That was extraordinary to me. Chad: Yes. Courtney Dempsey: So we have to coach on how to read a resume from the bottom up now versus the top down. Chad: So 2024, what has surprised you the most about this year, this far? Chloé Rada: The emphasis on internal, like activating your employer brand internally and the need to partner and be in lockstep with your people success teams and your people operations teams. I really am going at this from... And this is very different from like past organizations, where we're developing our internal road show together. Not like, here is the brand, I want you to deliver it. Like how can we activate this internally and making sure that it matches the employee experience. That to me is very different. So, it's kind of like a little bit of like internal comms I'm playing here, but then also really relying on our, the people success team to help us make sure that it's matching the promise. Chad: So 2024, what surprised you the most this year? What's happened this year? Chloé Rada: What surprised me the most I think is the, what's the word? The false statement when AI started becoming big, that some companies were like, we got AI, we don't need as many recruiters. We don't need this, we don't need that. And then it took, what, I think just now they're starting to realize, yeah, that's not the truth. You still need, you might be able to make things quicker. Recruiter or source might be able to handle a few more wrecks. But again, AI is not going to, at this point anyway, be able to replace it. And so what amazed me is that the companies were thinking that given we've... It seemed like every seven years something comes out and they think, oh wow, we don't need as many recruiters and sources now. And then they find out they're wrong. It seemed like every seven to 10 years that happens since I've been in the industry. Every seven to, Oh, we got sourcing tools now, we don't need as many recruiters, eh, wrong. Oh, we got CRMs, we don't need as many recruiters. Eh, wrong. And that's what amazes me is that companies continue to make the same mistake over and over and over again. You would think they've had learned by now. Chad: So we're coming into Q4, right? What has surprised you thus far about 2024? Dean Da Costa: 2024 has been very interesting. I think we've seen a lot of change within the traditional or more of the employer brand speak. We've seen a lot of companies pivoting from things that we placed an emphasis on during the COVID timeframe. So what's been surprising to me is how companies are starting to pivot and to be a little bit more authentic about who they are in their hiring experience. Chad: Finally, a little advice for 2025 from Chloe Rada, Courtney Dempsey and Dean Da Costa. Looking toward 2025, what advice would you have for your peers moving into next year? Chloé Rada: Don't be afraid to build the plane as you fly it. So I always like to think about things kind of from like a process standpoint. Like don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. And it's okay to fail and find a safe space where you can do some trial and error and have some risks. So I think find a place that you can feel comfortable being yourself and then also allowing yourself to fail first. Chad: So let's look forward real quick into 2025. What advice would you give your peers, in the new year? Moving into the new year? Mary Battle Broxton: Embrace technology. Chad: Embrace technology. Do they have a choice? Joel: Say more. Mary Battle Broxton: I think there are a lot of people still fighting it. Look for companies that have open API. I cold call a lot of open API companies and I ask to beta test them and see if we can integrate their open API systems into the current system that we're utilizing, which is Paradox. I love LLMs. It's like my bestie. I like, I am... Chad: This is your time then? Mary Battle Broxton: This is my time. I'm a one woman show. I love... Podcast Intro: Did you love them when they weren't cool or before they were cool? Mary Battle Broxton: I had to teach myself. So I was Python back in the early days of that, as did Professor Chuck taught me how to follow data and I just kind of rolled with it. And I listened to your podcast and any company that talks ill of another company, I'm like, I'm absolutely 100% calling them, because they obviously don't like them for a reason and I will become their best friends. So we make sure we integrate that too. Chad: Moving into 2025, what would that advice, that one point nugget of advice be? Dean Da Costa: Learn. Don't accept norms. Break out of the boundaries. Don't just do the simple and easy because guess what? Everybody's doing the simple and easy. And you're looking for the same people and why? Get out of it. And I can give an example. Somebody was looking for a bunch of people that had a particular certification. They went to LinkedIn or as Stevie DV calls it, the Blue Devil, didn't work out so well, asked for help. So I went out and found a website that has listing of every CCIE certified person and sent it to her. And then I scraped it and sent her the whole list. Don't do the norm. Think out of the box. That's the only way you're gonna succeed. Great. There's AI. We'll get into that later, but you can't trust it totally. So you have to use it. Double check it, triple check it, and then you're good. Chad: That concludes this cavalcade of industry experts and topics from 2024. Thanks again for spending time with the Chad and Cheese podcast. If you have a topic we should address in 2025, come on over to Chadcheese.com and contact us or just comment on Spotify or YouTube. While you're at it, hit the subscribe button and feel free to tell your friends and your peers. Chad and Cheese always here for you. Come get some free stuff while you're at it. Happy holidays. Podcast Outro: Wow. Look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell. Enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey. Or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuggle heads instead. Now, go take a shower and wash off all the guilt, but save some soap because you'll be back. Like an awful train wreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite western, you can't quit them either. We out.

Broadcasting live from the Shaker Green Room at RecFest USA, Tim Sackett—dropped some truth bombs with Joel Cheesman about the cringe-worthy mistakes corporations make in their talent acquisition hustle. Oh, and guess what? Sackett's cooking up another  book, creatively titled Talent Fix Volume 2 —because one wasn’t enough. Expect fresh content, hot takes, and, presumably, a few digs at HR's favorite buzzwords. Sackett didn't hold back on the AI hype train, either. Turns out, he's underwhelmed by the industry's cutting-edge "meh" when it comes to applying AI in TA. Meanwhile, corporate America is flailing with performance management as everyone adjusts to the post-pandemic reality of low unemployment. Spoiler: leaders are still allergic to honest performance conversations. Fast forward to 2025, and Sackett has a bold prediction: recruiters won't just recruit anymore—they'll transform into talent advisors , focusing on team dynamics and playing corporate therapist. Vendors, take note: Sackett thinks it's your job to coach TA leaders through this glow-up. No pressure. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION (cometh)

You may know best-selling author Dan Pink for well known books like "When," "To Sell is Human" and "Drive," but you've never heard him like this. A must-listen for subscribers. Enjoy this Nexxt exclusive. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by: Disability Solutions provides training and development to help your workplace leaders and employees integrate with and value people with disabilities. Jim Stroud: Hey. Jim Stroud here, and you are listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast, HR's most dangerous podcast. It's awesome. It's colossal. I listen to it every day. You should too. Jim Stroud: All right, that's it. What? Wait, you said $20. Intro: 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, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel: Rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling. Keep that podcast rolling. Rawhide. Chad: Yes. Joel: Welcome to the Chad and Cheese podcast, everyone. I'm Joel Cheesman. Chad: And I am Chad Sowash. Today is a very special day for me and our listeners because one of my favorite authors of all time and favorite speakers of all time is on the show today. We all know him as Dan Pink. Chad: Yup, that's right, that's right. Joel: If he's one of Chad's favorite authors, it must mean that he adds illustrations in his books. Is that true? Chad: Of course, yeah. Especially in The Adventures of Johnny Bunko. There was a lot of illustration in that. Dan Pink: Oh yeah. Chad: But, Free Agent Nation, a big one. My favorite, A Whole New Mind. Drive because I'm in sales. To Sell Is Human, and today, we're going to do a lot of talk around When. But, until we get ... Give us a second first, Dan. For all of our listeners who don't know who you are, give us a little synopsis of Dan Pink, will you? Dan Pink: Well, you just gave a great synopsis of Daniel Pink because I'm a writer who writes books, and you've just named all of them, and they're books that I think go straight to a lot of stuff that you all talk about, which is work, how it's changing, how we can do it a little bit better, what sorts of skills do we need, how do we motivate people, how do we configure a workplace that where people get good stuff done. Joel: Would you consider yourself a futurist, Dan? And do you prefer Dan or Daniel? Dan Pink: Dan is good, and I do not ever consider myself a futurist. Joel: Fair enough. Because you are the quite the Nostradamus on some of these books. You wrote the Free Agent Nation in 2001, and it seems to be coming true. Has it come true in the way that you thought it would? Dan Pink: That's an interesting question. Yes and no. That book talks about the rise and all these people who are working for themselves, and at some level, I underestimated it, particularly the forces that were contributing to it as I tried to explain what was happening way back then. That book's like 18 years old. Chad: Yeah. Dan Pink: When I tried to explain what was happening then, I said here are the things that are going on, and I talked a lot about not only this ... It was a mix. It was kind of an intriguing mix of personal desire, self actualization, people wanting to be themselves, those kinds of very heavy psychological factors, but that was enabled by technology. Dan Pink: I totally underestimated the technology. When I wrote that book, it was a totally different world technologically. I mean, it's kind of mind boggling to me. I mean, there were not smart phones. There was not social media. There was barely wifi. There was not widespread broadband. Joel: Were eBay resellers the inspiration for the book because that's about the only thing I can remember back in 2001. Dan Pink: Yeah. So, the technology has enabled this in a really, really powerful way that I did not really envision. Some of the other forces, basically the changing nature of firms and people's desire, in a world where they didn't have any job security, to do work that they actually cared about and that was actually an expression of themselves, those things are continuing. Dan Pink: A hundred years ago, I worked in politics, I think that book is a case of what we sometimes say about politicians is that she was ahead of the voters. Chad: That's right, that's right. Former Al Gore speech writer, correct? Dan Pink: Back in the pre-World War I days. Chad: So, you don't consider yourself a futurist, but yet, another book you wrote, I think it was in 2005 or 6 or something like that, A Whole New Mind. And you talk about automation abundance in Asia, which are smacking us clearly in the face today, is it not? Dan Pink: They are. So, that book makes the argument that the skills that are most in demand are changing and that it used to be these more metaphorically left brain skills, logical, linear, SAT spreadsheet skills. Today, those are necessary, but they're no longer sufficient, and it's a different set of abilities, more 'metaphorically right brain abilities', artistry, empathy, and inventiveness big picture thinking. Those are the ones that are most important because it's fairly easy to outsource and automate those left brain reductive, routine algorithmic skills, and we see that happening big time. Dan Pink: Again, let's talk about what I missed if you're interested in that. What I missed there was, what I underestimated was how quickly technology would be able to do certain kinds of these right brained tasks that I thought were way far off in the future. Joel: So, Chad's always giving me grief about not being a very good salesperson. So, I have a question about your book, To Sell Is Human, the Surprising Truth About Moving Others. Talk about that book and how all of us really are sellers and how Chad should shut the fuck up. Dan Pink: Well, I don't know if I'm going to weight in on that second point, but I can tell you what the book is about. The book is ... I'll make a determination on whether you shut up when this conversation is a little bit more fully formed. Dan Pink: That book says if you look at the guts of what people actually do on the job, it's very different from what job descriptions say. This is probably intuitive since you guys spend so much time in this world, but I always had this suspicion that what people actually did all day, when you actually, if you were to follow them around and watch what they did all day, and then look at their 'job description', there would be a pretty large gap between those two. Dan Pink: One of the things in particular that I was curious about is that I had this hunch that people are basically selling and persuading all the time, no matter what job they're in, whether they're in sales or not. So, what I found in doing some of this research was that if you look at the lived experience of people at work, if you actually look at what they do when they come into the office and do their work, a big portion of it is kind of sort of like selling. Dan Pink: So, one idea in that book is that, like it or not, we're all in sales now. There are still, even in a world of automation, an extraordinary number of people in sale sales even today. But, one in nine people in the U.S. workforce are in a sales function, but the other eight or nine are also selling in some sense. Dan Pink: But, the other curious thing here is we're doing it on a remade landscape. It used to be that if you were to sell, persuade, you were doing it in a world of information asymetry where the seller always had more information than the buyer. Today, that world is disappearing. Now, buyers have not as much information as sellers, all kinds of choices, and all kinds of ways to talk back. Dan Pink: So, the idea here is hey, we're selling all the time. We're doing it in a new world. How do you do it effectively and ethically? Chad: So, going toward and keeping the sales conversation going, your book Drive, an entirely different book. Today, Joel and I talk about purpose, which is why people go to work and how, in most cases, drive behind the drive doesn't mean that it's actually dollars and cents. There's more than just that. Chad: So, the commissions behind sales really don't motivate people as much as the purpose and passion do. So, what was behind that book? What was the impetus behind it? What made you write about that? Dan Pink: What got me interested in and to answer your question was if we are moving ... was basically in its predecessor book, A Whole New Mind, which is that if it's right that we're moving to this world where people are doing things that they haven't been doing before, where they have to be empathic, or they have to be artistic, they have to be creative, how do you motivate people to do that? Dan Pink: I went to the research to look at what the science told us about that. What the science tells us about motivation, in general, is very different from what many organizations and many companies believe. As I said, Chad, it's a little nuanced. It's fairly nuanced in that it's, at some level, money is a little bit of a head fake when it comes to motivation. Dan Pink: What we know is this, to make it as straight forward as possible. Fifty years of social science tells us that certain kinds of rewards that we use in organizations. Psychologists call them controlling contingent rewards. I call them if-then rewards, as if you do this, then you get that. If you do this, then you get that. It turns out that if-then rewards are very good for simple tasks and very good for tasks with short time horizons. They're extremely effective. Human beings love rewards. You dangle a reward in front of somebody, they focus, and that's good if the task, you're just following a recipe, like following a set of steps and if the finish line is very close. Dan Pink: However, the same body of research tells us that if-then rewards don't work nearly as well for tasks that require more conceptual thinking, that are more creative, and that also have longer time horizons. The problem in organizations that we use if-then rewards for everything. Dan Pink: So, what we should be doing if we're going to follow the evidence is using them for jobs that require simple task and short time horizons, but coming up with something different for tasks that require more complex thinking and longer time horizons. I think what's interesting, sort of the connective tissue that you are all pointing out here is that if you look at sales today, particularly B2B sales, it's not simple. Chad: No. Dan Pink: It's very complicated. I think that B2B sales today is essentially management consultant. You're going into a company, and you're trying to figure out what are the company's needs, how do I understand that company's business, what are their pain points, what are they missing that I'm seeing based on my own expertise, and how can I fashion a solution that is right for them? Dan Pink: So, for that kind of more high-level management consultant style work, and especially if you're dealing with much longer time horizons in B2B, heavy heavy commissions is not that great of an idea in the same way that we don't pay McKinsey or Bain consultants based on commission. We say these people are serious professionals and serious experts, so what we're going to do is we're going to hire great people. We're going to pay them well, and we're maybe going to have some variable comp tied to some reasonable measures, but we're not going to say that every single person in sales is purely coin operated and that sales is this kind of dumbed down profession where the only way people will perform is if you put a quarter in the slot. Chad: And there are connective pieces there though, right? The individual had to feel like they were getting paid a fair wage, so there was that kind of connection. What other connections were there as well? Dan Pink: When you say connections, in what sense? Chad: So, in the sense of if you did want to go away from 'commission/bonus'— Dan Pink: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, here's what we know as a general set of design principles for compensation, and again, there's a lot of variance from place to place and circumstance to circumstance. It isn't a case where there's a very simple recipe that applies in every situation. Dan Pink: But, what we know is this. First of all, money is a motivator, and one of the things that bugs me is that people maybe look at that book, Drive, and say, "Oh, money doesn't matter." No, I say many many times in there, money matters. Money matters a lot. It just matters in a slightly different way. Dan Pink: One of the things that we know is that, again, for relatively simple straight forward tasks, getting people to think about money is effective. If I want someone to stuff envelopes, I should pay them per envelope and give them a bonus for every 500 envelopes they stuff. I'm going to get more envelopes stuffed that way. Dan Pink: But, if I'm bringing somebody in to consult with my business, I don't want them thinking about the money. I want them thinking about my problem. I want them thinking about the work. So, what you want to do in those cases is pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table. Pay people enough so they focus on the work and not on the money. Dan Pink: Once you do that, they're all kinds of things that you can do. First is you get people a sense of sovereignty, a sense of self direction, autonomy. You help them make progress and get better at something that matters, mastery. We know from the work of Teresa Amabile at Harvard that the single biggest day to day motivator on the job is making progress in meaningful work and, as you guys suggested earlier, we also know that if people have a sense of purpose, that can be a motivator. So, you pay people well. You offer these other kinds of motivations. Dan Pink: Now, as I said before, I'm not four square against any kind of variable comp, but I think that if you're going to offer variable comp, the structure of it should be fairly simply, transparent, and key to things that really matter. One of the things that happens is every salesperson knows is that you have these commission schemes or even other kinds of incentive comp schemes, and people figure out how to gain the system. So, the designers of the system then make the system more complicated, and people figure out how to gain that. So, they make it even more complicated. Dan Pink: A lot of these incentive comp structures end of needing this giant administrative apparatus to run it, to monitor it, to litigate disputes about it when, in fact, you can do something cleaner and simpler. Pay people well. First of all, hire great people. Pay them well. Offer autonomy and mastery and purpose, and if you want, offer some variable comp that's very simple, transparent, and tied to metrics that matter. Chad: Amen. Joel: Dan, we love criticizing millennials on this show, and I want to pick on Drive for my question. Did you find any differences in terms of what drives the generations, or are generations just a bunch of baloney? Dan Pink: Well, that's a great question, and there's differences of opinion on that. I am of the opinion that I'm more leaned toward the baloney side of the spectrum. I'll tell you why without trying to empty the room of your listeners here. Dan Pink: When you look at the research on generations, there are two different phenomenons going on here. One is called, is the cohort effect. The other is the time of life effect. A cohort effect means that wow, I'm a Generation X guy. Generation X, Xers are different from Baby Boomers, and they're different from millennials, and they're different from Gen Z. The cohort, the group of people who are around the time that you were born, are fundamentally different in their approaches to life and work and blah blah blah blah. Dan Pink: There's also something. The time of life effect says, "Hey, listen. When people are 30, they typically act in this way and do these things." When people are 35-ish, they typically act in a way and do these kinds of things. My reading of the evidence is that the cohort effect is woefully, woefully, woefully, woefully oversold. I think that it's one of those things where our cultural view of it is very stark, but the evidence beneath it is very flimsy. Dan Pink: So, to me, what you have is you have every incumbent ... I believe that every incumbent generation since the beginning of human civilization has looked at the generation coming behind it and said, "Ah, they don't work very hard. They're complainers. They didn't have it as rough as I did. They're soft." And I don't think that there are massive, massive material differences between the generations. Now, that's just my point of view. Intelligent people will argue the other side of it. Joel: It's commercial time. NEXXT: Okay. So, we've already established texting is probably the best way to connect with candidates, right? Plus, Nexxt's stats show 73% of professionals are open to receiving job opportunities via text , and with a 99% delivery rate , you cannot go wrong. NEXXT: Those are two big reasons why you've got to love Text2Hire from Nexxt . That's right. Text2Hire from Nexxt, with the double X, not the triple X. Nexxt has over eight million candidates who have opted into receive jobs via text, and you and your clients need qualified candidates . NEXXT: Nexxt can help you find and target qualified candidates who have opted in for job opportunities via text. And, in today's competitive market, you need an edge to reach qualified candidates faster . You need Text2Hire from Nexxt. NEXXT: Just go to chadcheese.com , and click on the Nexxt logo to learn more about how you can gain a competitive edge with opt-in texting. Text2Hire from Nexxt, it just makes sense. Chad: It's showtime. Chad: So, here is a big difference, Dan, and we're going to switch to your— Dan Pink: And I think there is one big difference, but we can get to that. Chad: Yeah, no. We're going to get to it right now. In your book, When, if you think about it, Boomers went to college, and they weren't strapped with a crazy amount of debt verus millennials, who are living in their mom and dad's basement because they have $100,000 in debt. So, the opportunity for Boomers and Xers were much different from that of millennials. Chad: So, in your new book, in When, you talk about this. So, dive deep into that if you would because timing matters. Dan Pink: Yeah, that's a really good point actually. It actually wasn't what I was going to say. I was going to make a less intelligent point, but thank you for rescuing me. Dan Pink: So, what that research shows is there's some very intriguing research. I's in economics. About how important the condition of the economy is the year you graduate from ... These are from people who graduate from college, from college graduates. How much the economic conditions when you graduate from college, how those have a profound longterm effect on your earnings power. Dan Pink: What this research shows is that if you take two people. Person X, I don't want to say X and Y here. Person J graduates in a recession, and person K graduates in a boom time. Let's say that each of these people are fairly similar. They're smart people, graduated near the top of their class at the University of Maryland with a major in accounting or something like that. Dan Pink: On average, the person who graduated in the boom economy will be outearning, and you look at them 20 years later in their careers, 20 years into the careers, the person who graduated in a boom economy is going to be outearning the person who graduated in a recession, 20 years later. The cause of graduating in a recession can be upwards of several hundred thousand dollars in lifetime earnings. Chad: Well, let's put this to another level. The idiot who graduated in a boom economy is probably going to make more money than the standout who— Dan Pink: Maybe. Chad: Yeah, possibly, who graduates in a recession. Opportunity and timing means a lot, or at least, that's how I read into it. Dan Pink: Yeah, that kind of comparison is tougher. But basically, you take somebody. Let's take a mediocre talent graduating ... If you're a mediocre ... For all the mediocrity listening to your show, if you are a mediocre college graduate with not a lot of brain power or skills, make sure you graduate in a booming economy. That's my advice to you young men and women. Joel: Do you guys remember the old Saturday Night Live when Eddie Murphy goes on and says, "Life is luck. You're either lucky, or you're a bum." And his driver comes out, and he says, "Your car is ready, Mr. Murphy", and he says, "Thanks, Sammy." He says, "Sammy went to Harvard." Do you guys remember that skit? Chad: Yes. Joel: No, okay. Nevermind. Dan Pink: But, I mean, here's the thing. The deeper point is really, really important is that we have, in the stories that we tell ourselves and each other about who flourishes and who doesn't, we leave out two very important factors. One of them is where do you start from? And the other one is just pure unadulterated luck. Dan Pink: I think about this all the time. If you take, I'll use me as an example. So, I grew up in central Ohio. I grew up in a middle-class family in central Ohio in post-World War II, 1970s and 1980s America. My parents both had a college education. I won the birth lottery. If I had been born in Guatemala to people without a college education, who knows where I would be today? Chad: Right. Dan Pink: Do you know what I mean? Joel: Are you a Northwestern grad that roots for Ohio State? Dan Pink: Oh, that's a more important question obviously, and I am absolutely not a Northwestern grad who roots for Ohio State. I take the purple and white over to scarlet and gray. Recording: Boo. Joel: Why are we talking to this bum so much? Chad: Yeah, I don't know, I don't know. Dan Pink: The problem is that Northwestern never beats Ohio State. Chad: No, no. But, they have a pretty good school though. So, let's keep talking about the kids since we're talking about Ohio State and Northwestern. In the book, you actually, and I'm going to try to correlate this to the workforce, you actually said that more recess is best. What about in our work schedule? Dan Pink: Good point, yeah. Chad: Can we have a better attitude? Can we get more out of our workers if we just allow them to relax more often like the research showed with kids and recess? Dan Pink: Yeah, it's a great point. There's a whole line of research about breaks. What we know, in general, about breaks is that breaks are more important than we realize. Breaks matter more than we realize. This is something that this whole conversation about what all the things that I got wrong. This is something else I got wrong in my own life in that I was always someone who believed that the way to get more work done, the way to get better work done was to power through, that breaks were for amateurs, that professionals didn't take breaks. Chad: That's what Xers did because we had Boomers telling us, "Get off your ass and go to work." Dan Pink: It could be. Yeah, absolutely. But, when you look at the evidence, the real science of people who have looked at human performance, it turns out that that's totally, totally, totally wrong, that powering through is not the best way to get more work done and better work done, that I actually it completely flipped in that the truth is that professionals take breaks and amateurs don't take breaks. Dan Pink: So, what we should be doing is actually taking ... I'm not talking about going crazy and having four hour breaks every afternoon. What I'm talking about is actually building in a few breaks into our work lives because we are going to feel better, and we're going to do better. What we know about breaks from this research is that we have some good design principles for effective breaks. Dan Pink: We know that, for instance, something is better than nothing. So, literally a one minute break is better than no break at all. We know that social is better than solo, so breaks with other people are more restorative than breaks on our own. We know that breaks should be fully detached, not semi-detached, so you shouldn't talk about work. You shouldn't stare at your phone. We know that breaks outside are better than inside, and breaks where you're moving are better than breaks when you're stationary. Dan Pink: So basically, what this says is that we would have, across the U.S. workforce, no joke, we would have greater productivity, greater satisfaction, and greater engagement if everybody in the U.S. workforce, each afternoon, took a 15 minute walk outside with someone they liked, leaving their phone behind, and talking about something other than work. That would be a productivity enhancer for the U.S. workforce. Joel: Now, Dan, as a guy who loves a good nap, are you including naps in these breaks? Dan Pink: Well, you know what? I looked at the research on naps, and you know what? I was anti-nap, and now I'm not anti-nap. Naps are— Joel: I like Dan now. Chad: I'm not going to be able to get anything out of Joel now. He's going to have three hour breaks and naps. Dan Pink: Here's the thing. Let's go back to the science here. What we know about naps is that the ideal nap is actually very short. The ideal nap is between 10 and 20 minutes long. But, nap longer than 20 minutes, and you begin to develop what's called sleep inertia, which is that groggy boggy feeling you get when you sleep too long. But, a 10 to 20 minute nap in the afternoon is very, very good for us. Joel: I agree. Dan Pink: But, again, you have to hit that sweet spot. Less than 10 minutes doesn't do you any good, and over 20 minutes, it does you some good, but it actually comes with a negative. The sweet spot is between 10 and 20 minutes. Joel: So, for a guy with smaller kids or younger kids, and Chad has kids but they're a little older. For those with younger kids, you seem to have a pretty good grasp of the future of jobs and your book on right brains and timing. What advice and what kind of road should I be steering my kids down as they get older and look to join the workforce? Dan Pink: Yeah, that's a hard one because it's hard to predict. We don't have any idea what the job, the specific jobs are going to be. So, I'm not going to say, "Oh, your kid should be lunar hospitality consultants because we're going to colonize the moon and put hotels there." That's nonsense. Dan Pink: I think what we know is we know at the level of skill that your kids and my kids who are older but are going to be in the workplace for a long time, they're going to have to do things that augment machine intelligence rather than compete with machine intelligence, which tend to be more of these right brained things, discernment, judgment, creativity, those kinds of tasks. Dan Pink: I think beyond that, there are a lot of these so-called, I hate the term, but it shows you what kind of prison we're in and how constipated we are in the way that we think about this, is what are called 'non-cognitive skills.' So, what you want is you want kids to be curious. You want them to know how to learn. You want them to be able to ask good questions. You want them to be persistent and have grit and have a growth mindset, that those kinds of habits of the heart, particularly curiosity, grit, and learning how to learn, those are going to be as important as any specific particular skill. Chad: Talk about age and well-being because there's this dip that happens. We're really happening in our 20s because we have no clue what's going on in the middle of life, 30s, 40s, 50s, early 50s, and we have this big droop because we're not meeting expectations. But then, it skyrockets up. So, tell us a little bit about this mid-life crisis droop thing. Dan Pink: Yeah, this is something that researchers all over the world have found. When you look at people's sense of well-being, sense of satisfaction, over time, it's exactly as you said. It's shaped like a gentle sloping U. People are happier in their 20s and 30s. It starts declining in their 40s, hits the bottom in their 50s, and then rises back up. Dan Pink: I think what's curious about this is that the scholars who have investigated this have found this in something like 70 countries. I don't think we know why exactly it happens, but it does seem to be a part of the lived experiences as human beings in the 21st century. Dan Pink: As for the reasons, again, we don't know the reasons for sure. Part of it is that it could be dual pressure. So, at that age, people will often have kids and aging parents, so they're squeezed on both ends. It could be that there's a certain kind of reckoning that people tend to have at that part of life in that they realize, "Hey, wait a second. I'm been climbing the greasy pole of this company, and wait a second. Only one person gets to be CEO, and it's not going to be me." Or you're a writer and watching to be seen. You think, "You know what? I'm probably not going to win a Pulitzer Price in my lifetime." Again, a totally hypothetical example. Dan Pink: At some level, early on, our expectations are too high. In our 50s, sometimes our expectations are too low. What you see is that when people in their 60s and 70s, in general, are actually fairly happy and satisfied. A reason for that is that they have matured into doing things that are meaningful to them. They have, in many cases, some really, really interesting research from Laura Carstensen at Stanford, they actually have a very different approach to their friendship networks. That is, they have gotten rid of a lot of their friends and concentrated on the people whom they're closest to, and that's a big source of satisfaction. Dan Pink: So, I just think it's something for us to think about, particularly when I'm at the age where I'm basically the smack dab bottom of that U-shaped curve. Joel: In the new book, after each chapter, you have what you call life hacks. What were the inspiration behind those, and what were maybe one or two that you would like to highlight for the interview here today? Dan Pink: Well, the inspiration was is that you can write about science. You can write about research. You can write about ideas, and that's cool, and that's interesting, and you want people to learn. But, if you just leave people hanging there with nothing to do about it, then I think you're doing your readers a disservice. Dan Pink: I certainly feel that way about certain kinds of books. I'll read the books, and I will say, "Wow, it's a big idea book. Wow, this is interesting. Wow, what a persuasive argument. Wow, I'm looking at the world in a different way." Then, I say, "Wow, I should probably do things differently", and the book ends, and I have no idea what to do. Dan Pink: So, each chapter ends with what I call the Time Hacker's Handbook, which is a set of these tools and tips. There are gazillions, not gazillions, but there are dozens and dozens of them. One of the things that people seem to be interested in is I have a whole chapter on how our brain power changes over the course of a day and some guidance on what's the right time to do certain kinds of cognitive tasks. Dan Pink: But, one thing that people seem really interested in is exercise. What's the best time of day to exercise? Here, in the Time Hacker's Handbook, there's some good evidence-based advice on the best time to exercise. It's very simple. You should exercise in the morning if you have certain goals. Exercise in the late afternoon into the early evening if you have other kinds of goals. Dan Pink: So, morning exercise seems to be best. I think the greatest advantage for morning exercise is it gives you a ... Exercise and aerobic and even strength training, it gives you a very significant and enduring mood boost that can last 10, 12 hours. So, if you exercise early in the day, you get that mood boost throughout the day. You exercise, say, at 7:00 at night, you're going to sleep away some of that elevated mood. Dan Pink: Another thing. Exercise in the morning seems to be better if you want to form the habit. I think that's because people are less likely to get interrupted or distracted at 7:00am than at 5:00am. Then, exercise in the morning seems to be slightly better for weight loss, although again, yeah, the research on weight loss, it's really hard to lose weight basically. So, I don't want to oversell that proposition there. Dan Pink: That said, exercise in the late afternoon or early evening has other advantages. First of all, it's a better way to avoid injury. There are fewer injuries later in the day. That's probably because of body temperature and the fact that you're literally warmed up. Again, it's an N-of-one, but I did a race a couple of weeks ago that started at the insanely early hour of 6:30, and it's the only race I've done that ... because I like to run half-marathons. It's the only race that I've done that I didn't finish because it started at this insanely early hour, and I ended up injuring my hamstring, probably because I wasn't sufficiently warmed up. So, it's better for avoiding injury. Dan Pink: People who exercise later in the day report enjoying it more. For some people, morning exercise is just miserable. That's how I feel. I like afternoon exercise so much better. Then also, there are actually performance benefits if you're interested in that. Late in the afternoon and early evening are hand-eye coordination is better. We have higher lung function. There's some interesting effects on speed. Speed is greater. Chad: Excellent. Well, Dan, we appreciate you taking the time. Dan Pink: Thank you. Chad: As I said, you literally are a legend. One of the guys that I love, when you have a new book come out, I always get it. The new book is When, the Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. If you want more of Dan, you can always have more of Dan. He has a podcast called Pinkcast. You can go check out ... You're going to love this, Dan. His TV show that he did in 2014 called Crowd Control, or just go to danpink.com. Any other way that they can get more of Dan Pink, Dan? Dan Pink: That's great. If you go to my website, danpink.com , I also do a bi-weekly email newsletter that has all kinds of reading recommendations, and also, every week, gives people that, what you mentioned, that Pinkcast, which is a very short 90 second video with a science-based tool or tip. Joel: Always be closing. Chad: Always be closing. Joel: We out. Chad: We out. Ema: Hi, I'm Emma. Thanks for listening to my dad, the Chad and his buddy, Cheese. This has been the Chad and Cheese podcast. Be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss a single show. Be sure to check out our sponsors because their money goes to my college fund. For more, visit chadcheese.com. #DanPink #motivation #sales #generations #Millenials #Xers #Boomers #productivity

Welcome to the Chat and Cheese Podcast's holiday extravaganza, where HR gossip meets holiday cheer — and no one is safe. It’s like your company holiday party, but with more alcohol and fewer awkward dance moves (maybe). Holiday Coal Recipients: The Master of Deception The Corporate Grinch The Kings of "Almost There" Holiday Heroes: The Billion-Dollar Badass The Pop Powerhouse The Viral Appetizer Wizard Final Thought: Whether you’re running from accountability or running the world, Chad & Joel see you. In a year filled with corporate antics, unlikely successes, and viral cheese pulls, they’ve made their holiday list — and checked it twice. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:27.893) AWWWEEEEEE YEEEEEEEEAAAAAHHHH! Joel (00:34.254) Yeah, we're making a list and checking it twice. Who's ready for some naughty and nice? Hi kids, this is the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Shitters Full Cheesman. Chad (00:46.626) This is Chad, give me some of that mulled wine. Sowash? Joel (00:51.48) And on this week's episode, a little naughty, a little nice, and Santa's little helper makes a guest appearance. Let's do this. Chad (01:03.672) So Julie would not be happy right now because we are, yeah, take a look, because we're matching and whenever, yeah, yes, yes, and whatever. He will never match me. Just so that you know, listener, this was not planned. This was not planned. I don't even match with my wife. She wants to wear like matching track suit suits and shit like that. Not doing it. So for all the listeners out there who are not watching on YouTube, Joel (01:05.654) Why's that? Joel (01:10.806) It's this. Joel (01:19.064) Yeah. Yeah. Joel (01:30.146) Yeah. Chad (01:32.472) Joel and I are wearing our factory fix Mary fix miss Little ugly sweaters, which are not sweaters Tell him about tell him about these sexy factory fix sweaters that aren't that aren't ugly quality Joel (01:35.784) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes. Very, very sexy. Joel (01:47.444) Yeah. I mean, a sweater as I assume all of our listeners have worn a sweater at some point in their life. the wool even caught, whatever the material is tends to be kind of itchy. doesn't really stretch or move with you very well. These look like sweat sweaters, but they're, don't even know the material. It's like a rayon stretchy athleisure. I could go jogging in this if I ever jogged, if someone was chasing me. Chad (01:52.354) Mm. Chad (01:56.34) itchy. yeah. Chad (02:09.148) At leisure? Like you ever jogged. If Taco Bell was at the front door, you would jog to the front door. Joel (02:17.09) This would be the sweater I would want to Yes. If the ice cream truck turned into the Taco Bell truck and drove down the street, I might get my track shoes on. Otherwise, not so much. Chad (02:33.371) shit. So what's going on? What's going on this holiday season at the Cheeseman household? Joel (02:38.638) Yeah, we've got, you know, this is listeners know my, my oldest is 18. So this should be the last, like he has to attend Christmas. So, divorced, so we don't get the big kids, my daughter and son, till later in the morning, which leaves my seven year old to like grit his teeth and open one or two presents and wait for his brother and sister. So that'll be, that'll be challenging. Chad (02:45.73) poll. Chad (03:08.76) Mm-hmm. Joel (03:08.814) dad, who lives nearby, as a lot of, know, we'll come and hang out with us. We'll watch basketball and eat really good stuff. did talk my wife into making a beef Wellington, which is probably my favorite thing that she makes. So doing that. then, this weekend, I didn't, I don't think, know, this, the wife and the young guy, we're going to take a little weekend trip to New York. Chad (03:15.501) Yup. Chad (03:21.778) that's nice. That is nice. Chad (03:27.402) huh. Chad (03:34.109) well that's Yeah. Joel (03:34.734) We got some points on Delta. got some points on the hotels. We're like going to take a really cheap. I haven't been in New York in like five years. It's one of my favorite cities. So looking forward to that. The little kid gets to the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, all that good stuff. And we're going to go see Elf on Broadway or off Broadway, off or on Broadway. I don't know the difference. I don't really know, really know musicals. Yeah. Got to see the tree and all that good stuff. And then, Chad (03:42.776) Mm-hmm. Chad (03:48.354) That's awesome. Yeah. yeah, yeah. Go to Rockefeller. You gotta see the tree. yeah. Mm. So awesome. Joel (04:01.966) A couple of days after Christmas, we're all driving down, not my dad, but all the kids and us were going to Orlando to hang out in an Airbnb with the Canadians, her family, and her parents. pray for me on that one. Pray for me. Pray for me on that one. A lot of kids and adults and a lot of alcohol. It could get ugly. It could get ugly. How about you in Portugal? Chad (04:10.68) Okay. Chad (04:19.924) in or yeah Orlando or Lando. Yes, yes. Well, we actually have family and friends that are coming here to the Algarve for Christmas. So plenty of paddle Christmas Eve dinners plan Christmas brunch Christmas dinner Christmas hikes. So a lot of kayaking just stuff. Joel (04:32.366) Mm-hmm. Chad (04:46.486) Right. We got we and obviously a lot of drinking. Right. So they so then we're to be hopping in the van. That's for Christmas. We're going to spend Christmas here. Then we're going to be hopping in the van and taking everybody to Marbella on the southern coast of Spain for New Year's. We've never been there. Really excited to go there. We just went to Cadiz about a month or so ago. And that was amazing. So we're really looking really looking forward to that. And I mean, just plenty of food, drinking activities, love having family and friends here to share a little slice of. Joel (04:53.89) Mm-hmm. Chad (05:16.172) The Soosh paradise. Joel (05:17.71) Did you say Christmas hiking? Chad (05:20.536) You gotta see it's it's it's a beautiful. It's a beautiful beautiful scene beautiful scene. It's a gift to all your senses Joel (05:27.128) What is that about? and, and are we at peak peak euro Chad? Kind of like from here on out, it's, it's the, the, does the clock start ticking to your time back in the U S Chad (05:37.168) haha See, I don't know because never been here before. We now have residency so we can come and go as we please. Before I had to stay out, right, for a certain amount of time. So I can come and go as we please. I guess the listeners will have to kind of like chime in and let me know if American Chad, US Chad comes back, comes creeping back. Joel (05:45.964) Okay. Yeah. Joel (06:03.042) Well, let me lobby the listeners right now to say, keep Chad in Portugal. We like Euro Chad. Euro Chad is cool, laid back. He's, he's all good. He's all good. I'll lobby the listeners for that. Chad (06:14.9) I don't have US news to watch over here, which is great. It's easier to get away from, let's just say that. Joel (06:20.074) And, and, and I can lobby a lot of the listeners because I'm sending free shit to the listeners on a regular basis. Chad for the no shout outs this week, cause it's not your nice, Chad, let's, let's tell the listeners if you haven't signed up what they're missing with free stuff from Chad and cheese. Chad (06:24.726) Ha ha ha! Chad (06:28.736) Yes. Chad (06:37.856) Really simple kids, if you don't go to chadcheese.com slash free, you can't win. This is how you register. T-shirts by Aaron App, they're not those scratchy ones. They're the nice, soft, silky ones that feel like a hug from Chad and Cheese. Bourbon barrel aged syrup from Keyura. We're not doing shout outs this week, so we gotta double down on the Keyura. Hence the syrup. Joel (07:00.472) That's right. They're, they're from Canada, Chad. I don't know if you mentioned that or not. Hence the maple syrup. Chad (07:07.692) beer by Aspen Tech Labs, craft beer sent to your doorstep, craft Aspen Tech Labs. Two bottles of whiskey from our friends at Tex Kernel powered by now Bullhorn. And if it's your birthday, you get a little rum possibly from Plum, but you gotta go to ChadCheese.com slash free to register. If you don't play, you can't win. Joel (07:21.898) Mm-hmm. Joel (07:32.012) That's right, Chad. Some listeners are celebrating another year around the sun. I'm just going to finish out the month for all the birthdays in December. got Holland McHugh, Jack Mahoney, Monica Evgy, Nick Bradford, Allison Padgett, Michael Smith, Mike Polatic, Fazla M.T.S., Tina Davis, Angela Aguilar, Jeffrey Tainton, Nick Hutchinson, Kim Gray, Max Armbruster, Alex Micklin, Lex Kramer, Chad (07:32.319) Chad (07:36.152) Mmm. Chad (07:46.667) Joel (07:58.734) Phil Larkins, Ali Raza, Christina Lowry, Craig Rhodes, he's on the 25th, that sucks. Daniel Gailey, Jonathan Martinez, Kelly Hervnick, Dom Rafidi, Kerry Corcoran, Dan Lockhart, Molly Mulvey, Curtis Pixel, Nicky McKee, Herard Mulder, you mentioned Tex Colonel. And last but definitely not least, my father celebrates. Chad (08:02.904) Ooh, wow. Yeah, that's like. Chad (08:19.138) There he is. There he is. Mm hmm. Yes. Will the man cheeseman. Joel (08:26.734) 85 years on planet Earth. This week actually so happy birthday to them and shout out quick shout out to all the people posting the pics of t-shirts asking for liquor like we love we love the shares on LinkedIn so keep keep that up. Chad (08:33.399) Awesome. Chad (08:38.06) Yes. Chad (08:42.282) I you were going to say post and pics of tits. I was going say I didn't see those, so can you forward those to me? Joel (08:51.63) Which brings us to more naughtiness. Chad (08:57.047) Yes. Joel (08:58.722) Fantasy football with our friends at factory fix. Thanks for the Christmas sweaters. Well, the regular season is over Chad, which leaves us with the playoffs. All right. Our championship semi-final. is the final four. If you will. We've got David Stiefel versus Dean, the daddy Mac Mackerel, who's been running away with this. He is the favorite at this point. then we've got to match it. Got it. Yeah. yeah. Chad (09:04.289) Mm-hmm. Chad (09:10.082) for. Chad (09:18.329) Ooh. Yes. Takes one bad week though. Takes one bad week. Yes. Yes. Joel (09:26.478) Any, any given Sunday, I'll tell you a fantasy will kick your ass. and then, and then it's you and me. I don't know how that happened. It's not rigged people. We don't have, we haven't hacked Yahoo fantasy. it is totally organic. And then we've got our best of the worst playoffs. We've got a Dean apparel last year's champion. she's, she's still fighting there at the bottom. She's going to go against Laura Martinelli. And then the second matchup we've got. Chad (09:33.558) I don't know. Chad (09:46.392) Champ, yeah. Joel (09:52.686) Kristy Lisbon versus Keith the commish Sonderling. He's heartbroken that he didn't quite make the semi-final of the championship round. Yeah. Yeah, that was. Chad (09:56.344) I smashed his ass last week. it was horrible. I almost scored 200 points. He was barely, I think, over 100. So yeah, it was bad for him. Joel (10:07.99) Yeah. Yeah, that was rough. And then we got the, the bottom, the bottom for, the big losers. we got action Jackson, who was the factory fix representative. He's at number nine, Sean Horton. Here's a who he started from the bottom. Didn't quite make it to the top, but he's not the big loser that we thought he might be followed by Jennifer Terry Tharp. And of course the man who loves the bottom, if you know what I'm saying, Adam Gordon. Chad (10:24.664) Ha ha! Good job, Sean. Jen. Chad (10:35.064) You He's our favorite bottom. Joel (10:38.21) Who's, who's blaming all of it on the fact that, punters don't make it into fantasy lineups and he couldn't draft the Scottish, Scottish punter for his team. anyway, there's no next year for you, Adam. Sorry. you have to win it to be back in. You had your shot. It's over. go, go back to rugby. Yeah. Maybe McGrath will let him in and see if he can do better than last. Chad (10:50.104) That's awesome. That's awesome. Chad (10:57.516) Get McGrath in next year. Chad (11:02.456) Yeah, we'll see. We'll give Scotland another chance, not you, Adam. That was horrible. That was bad. That was bad as Jasper last year. my God. Naughtiness. Joel (11:06.486) Yeah, see if, if he can do better than last place for God's sakes. Geez. No shit. No shit. Well, let's. Joel (11:19.852) Let's get into some naughtiness. That's right. If you're listening for the first time, here's, here's how this is going to work. Kids, Chad and are both going to talk about some of our naughty and nice lists. we have a guest, naughty, naughty Lister and, that's it. That's the show. there's not a ton of news this time of year. So this is a fun way for us to just sort of get off, get off our chest, some assholes, from the air and, and highlight some, some good folks. So. Chad (11:23.256) I'm done. Chad (11:38.273) It's easy. Chad (11:45.592) Some good folk. Joel (11:48.204) My number one naughty, Illit Raz. Who the fuck is Illit Raz? Well, this year's naughty for me is kind of a part two. Listeners will probably remember last year's Jive Turkey show, which included Junco. Well, the dumpster fire continued to rage in 2024. So let's do a little recap for listeners of Junco in 2022. Chad (11:53.302) again. Chad (11:56.888) Mmm. Chad (12:00.928) Yes. Joel (12:13.422) Junco was riding the DEI train high on the hog. raised 25 million for their quote unquote automated sourcing tool for underrepresented candidates. They had raised a total of $38.5 million. They had a really who's who list of investors, people from Etsy and high profile names, et cetera. So let's go to 2023 when they made our turkeys list. Raz, the founders accused by the board of having Chad (12:19.384) Mm-hmm. Chad (12:35.394) Yeah. Joel (12:43.214) quote, engaged in a grary egregious, unethical, and fraudulent conduct after an investigation found that she had allegedly allegedly misled investors, regarding the company's actual customer list. she made up a few like Walmart and some high profile names. Apparently, that's, that's something you shouldn't do as a founder. Don't tell your investors you have, have clients that aren't, aren't really your clients. Now let's go to 2024. Chad (12:49.738) Ouch. Ouch. Chad (12:54.871) Hmm. Chad (13:10.679) Good call. Good call. Yes. Joel (13:12.984) where the naughtiness is kind of coming to a head. Yes, there is more. The SEC, yes, that SEC has charged Raz with securities fraud and wire fraud for allegedly defrauding investors and misleading them about core aspects of the company. But wait, Chad, there's more. There's more. The US Attorney's Office is getting into the game. They've announced criminal charges with a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for Raz. But wait, Chad, there's more. Chad (13:20.194) Hello. Joel (13:42.606) There's even more to this naughty, naughty story. Raz is suing the company, suing the company for $300,000 in not covering her legal expenses. So let's recap. Chad (13:52.235) Okay. Joel (14:02.176) Illit Raz is very naughty. She is an Israeli. We think she's an Israel. She's an Israeli citizen. Chances are she won't be coming to the US anytime soon because there's a lot of people out there that are not falling for the banana in the tailpipe. And hopefully this is the end for her. Chad (14:09.452) Citizen? Yeah. Chad (14:25.346) Weird. Joel (14:25.388) stealing from investors. By the way, we knew at least one employee that was laid off. A lot of people were impacted. She scammed the whole system and she is naughty, naughty, naughty. Chad (14:31.01) Yeah, yeah. Chad (14:40.702) Yeah, it sounds like a orange jumpsuit is coming her way. Joel (14:45.004) Yeah. Do they wear orange in Israel? I don't, I don't know exactly what's going on. Chad (14:48.6) I don't know, but if they extradite her, and I think we do have extradition with Israel. Joel (14:53.324) Yes. Yes. Israel does play nice. Does play nice. Although she's probably pretty small fish in the big scheme of things. Although the SEC and, justice department are pretty, pretty big deals. All right. Well, let's, let's get past the naughty and get to some nice for me this year. show Wang, show Wang makes my nice list. So who the fuck is that? Well, she's the 35 year old co-founder and chief revenue officer of deal. That's D E E L one of our. Chad (15:02.828) Mm-hmm. Joel (15:22.072) favorite companies. You've probably heard of them if you listen to the show. She's also now number 39 on Forbes richest women list with an estimated net worth of $1.2 billion. $1.2 billion for some context, that's the net worth of Madonna, the queen of pop. Everyone will know who Madonna is. Less than five years after its founding, Chad (15:31.736) 39? Chad (15:47.788) hope so. Joel (15:49.582) A deal surpassed 500 million in revenue. I think they're up to 700 is the last quote I think you get out there. They've made some incredible acquisitions. After moving to China, after moving to the US from China at the age of 16, she sold scooters at flea markets in high school. Then she went to study robotics at MIT. She co-founded an air purification company before founding Deal. Did I mention she's only 35, by the way? Chad (15:51.948) Good. Chad (15:56.457) Mm-hmm. Yes. Chad (16:16.898) Jeez. Joel (16:18.562) She also hires too. talk a lot about founders who should be hiring all the time. She personally interviewed the first 400 employees at deal to quote, help cultivate and maintain a consistent corporate culture. Youth. She's an immigrant. She's a woman. She's a bad ass for all this and more. Wang makes my nice list for 2024. Chad (16:21.976) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Chad (16:33.367) Yeah. Chad (16:42.42) Nice whoo, that's a big one. That's a very big one. Well awesome Joel (16:47.266) That is a big one. think deal may make my predictions list, Chad. That's coming out soon. Deal might make my predictions less, but let's get to your first nice of 2024. Chad (16:51.158) Yeah, imagine that. Yeah, imagine that. Chad (16:57.644) Well, well, my on my list coincidentally is another female on that list that you were just talking about. I believe she's she's probably close to number one. Yes, Taylor Swift is on my my nice list. Nobody saw this coming. I get it. I totally get it. One of the reasons why I picked it. But here are some things that I think everybody should know. This from People magazine after 149 shows, Taylor Swift touring confirmed to the New York Times that over 10 million Joel (17:07.864) Mm-hmm. Joel (17:12.27) Mmm. Chad (17:26.136) people attended the Eris tour and that it sold over two billion in total ticket sales making it the best-selling tour of all time and double the gross ticket sales of any other concert in history or should we say herstory. In addition, Swift scored big with an accompanying Taylor Swift the Eris tour book. Imagine that, which sold over 800,000 copies in the first two days. making it the most successful publishing launch of the year. And Spotify, Apple, and Amazon Music all announced that Swift was the top streamed artist of 2024 and had the top streamed album of the year. Now, over the past two years, Swift gave out 197 million, almost $200 million in bonuses to people working on the tour. Joel (18:23.416) That's nice. Chad (18:23.424) including truck drivers, caterers, instrument tech, merch team, lighting, sound production staff, assistants, carpenters, everybody, the riggers, the hair people, the makeup people, wardrobe, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Again, all this from people. Last but not least, I may not listen to Taylor Swift, however, I can identify an amazing business person when I see one. Plus, according to Apex marketing, Swift has effectively, this is gonna tear me up, man, effectively generated an additional $331.5 million in brand value to the Kansas City Chiefs and the NFL. A game you and I both know and love. It's close to our hearts. However, it's not only the NFL that's profiting from Taylor Swift, her effects, right? Joel (18:56.492) Mm-hmm. Joel (19:11.799) Yeah. Chad (19:19.532) those brands associated with Swift are now benefiting from our influence as well, which means obviously they're gonna amplify it a lot more money. I don't have to attend a stadium tour, listen to Swift on Spotify, or even be a Chiefs fan, which I'm not, I enjoy watching them, but I'm not really a Chiefs fan, to respect and admire the business savvy and real impact, not just the US GDP kids. Joel (19:19.566) Mm-hmm. Joel (19:34.552) Mm-hmm. Joel (19:46.168) Yeah. Chad (19:46.626) but the surge in economic activity for her tour in the UK has estimated to have injected one billion pounds into the UK economy. She is a global fucking whirlwind, which is why Taylor Swift makes it to my nice list this season. Treat your people well. 200 million. Joel (20:04.781) Yeah. Joel (20:09.354) And the UK, the UK, the UK needs a little help these days. for sure. Now my, my wife, as you, as you know, I mentioned, went to Toronto to see, Taylor and yes, she, she takes over a city. I know here in Indianapolis who hosted a super bowl, not that long ago. the, the economic impact that she had on the city was greater than the super bowl, when it was in town and you. Chad (20:13.986) Yeah. huh. Yep. Yeah. Chad (20:23.694) it's amazing. Chad (20:31.352) Huge. Chad (20:35.394) It's crazy. Joel (20:35.662) You may not listen to Taylor, but if you're on Apple music, I know you're Spotify guy, but Apple music will, you can follow people in your friends list. So my, my wife and I are of course friends on Apple music. If I look at my friends playlist, it's all like for a while it was all Taylor Swift. I could not avoid, avoid, avoid Taylor and her many, many albums. Chad (20:46.466) Mm-hmm. Chad (20:53.495) That's awesome. And I have to say by proxy, mean, Julie and Kennedy did go see Taylor in Wembley. So, I mean, yes, the knock-on effects pretty much just about every household somehow, some way are being influenced, either spending money or spending time, engagement, because of Taylor Swift. And this, to me, is just, again, I listen to her music, but I don't have to. She kicks ass, man. my God. Joel (21:26.638) She kicks ass. And speaking of ladies who kick ass, let's take a quick break and we'll get to some more naughtiness from our friend, JT. Chad (21:27.704) She kicks ass. Yes. Joel (21:42.822) All right, Chad, we decided that hearing from us was just not enough this year. We had to get a little bit of a guest host come in. So, JT, who our listeners know, will get to know better in the future, chimed in with a couple of her Noddy. She was not able to donate her opinion for the Jive Turkey show. So here is JT's contribution to the Noddy list. Chad (21:43.17) That's such a great sound effect. Chad (21:50.274) Mm-hmm. Chad (22:02.176) Or nice. Chad (22:59.16) home. Joel (23:03.054) She is concise. She got two in 50 seconds. It'll take us, it'll take us an hour to do a, do three or four. Chad (23:06.292) she's not playing games. She's not playing games. She just gave us a lot of homework is what she did. I'm going to go ahead and start out with the BLS stuff and then we'll just, we'll go to AI after that. So first and foremost, JT, 2009 was much worse than it is now. Okay? If want to talk about 20 years ago, mean, 2009 was much worse, especially on the white collar side than it is right now. So for years we've talked about, I mean, in her defense, we've talked about how the BLS needs to change their bullshit survey methodology, which started in 1915. Yes, 1915. And they need to move toward a more real time or near real time data effect, right? So companies like LinkUp or Aspentech Labs provides nearly real time jobs data as they are constantly monitoring scraping job data directly from corporate sites. The BLS can always adjust their report real-time numbers against the UI, which is the unemployment insurance numbers to make their adjustments. So hell, even if they kept this stupid survey, injecting real-time jobs data into the fray just makes the data sets better. So yes, the BLS jobs data, which reported 818,000 jobs, fewer jobs between April 20, 2023, Joel (24:20.494) Mm-hmm. Joel (24:29.432) Yeah. Chad (24:31.736) in March 2024, so within a 12 month timeframe, which it's about an average of 68,000 less jobs per month during that year, marking the largest downward revision in the last 15 years. But as reported by senior economist Dean Baker, the revision means we still created a net positive 2.1 million jobs or 172,000 jobs a month. So let's be clear. The revision makes the job market less strong, but not weak by any stretch of the imagination. And in the end, yes, we need to move past these stupid survey methodologies that are 100 years old, but also keep the big picture of what's really happening with jobs in full view. That's very key. So love what she packaged there, but she made me do a hell of a lot of homework, Joel. Joel (25:06.839) Mm-hmm. Joel (25:31.576) Sounds like you and JT might have a conversation at some point about all this stuff. Yeah, no one has their finger on the pulse of the job seeker and sort of their opinion and what they're feeling quite like JT. I think that's the tip of the iceberg on the other point that she made with automated two ways, right? Job seekers coming in with AI and employers. Chad (25:34.466) we will. it's gonna be great. I love her. She's great. Joel (25:57.034) using AI. I've seen some really bad examples of AI, particularly with video, in the interview process. She has way more knowledge than we have on what job seekers are using to like get through pre-screening and get into, the ATSs of companies. But yeah, she's, she's spot on and saying, if the data is not good, it's hard to make decisions, whether it's up or down. It needs to be correct. And when, when a company like links up, link up gets acquired, it's no Chad (26:04.738) Yeah. Joel (26:24.374) It's no shock to us because the data is better than what we're getting out of out of the government. So kudos to a kudos to JT and happy holidays to her as well. Let's get on to your. Chad (26:36.088) Yeah, no, I wanna hit the AI segment that she actually talked about. So, I mean, we're in the very early stages of AI adoption or recruitment, and unless it's blatant, it's really hard to call it misuse. And here's what I mean. Currently, we're in the early editing process for the AI sessions, season two and season three. And after having those conversations with TA leaders and revisiting, or, Joel (26:40.844) Hit me. Hit me. Chad (27:03.852) through production, through the production process, listening again. I have to say that I couldn't disagree more with JT about experimenting with AI. Remember the black hole? Everybody seems to forget that over the last 20 years of applying for a job, we had this black hole problem where companies cut recruiting resources or didn't flex when they had hiring to be able to have more Joel (27:13.006) Mm-hmm. Chad (27:31.638) more people actually scale. Now we're hearing amazing stories from General Motors, Rallies and Checkers, Essentia, Healthcare, UPS, who literally just hired 125,000 people in five weeks, These hiring companies are not shying away from AI. They're doubling down. Why? Because they want the black hole ages to be gone and they're using more advanced tech to do that. Will they have some bad choices. You're goddamn straight they will. Will those bad choices be better than the black hole? You're goddamn right they will be. Joel (28:12.952) Did you say Chipotle? I think they're on the AI train as well. Chad (28:18.68) Ooh, they are. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Joel (28:22.22) Yes, you and JT will have a few things to talk about. 2025 is going to be hot. It's going to be hot on Chad and cheese. We're just getting started kids. All let's get to your next your next nice or is this your first nice second I've lost track. What's your nice? Chad (28:25.11) I love it. Chad (28:34.369) yeah. I can't, no, my first nice was Taylor. Second nice is the influencer economy. The influencer economy, let's just say over the last few years we've talked about TikTok. Over the last few months we've talked about influencers, especially when companies like AppCast and Adzuna are focusing on leveraging social now and in the near future, but. We've seen vendors and hiring companies try to leverage social media for over a decade and they just can't get it right. So what was missing? I think we know now, the JTs of the world, right? The influencers. So this from an article in Men's Health, quote, you're gonna love this because it's about Chili's. Chili's is currently seeing a spike in sales. even as we're living in a time where many fast food and fast casual restaurants are struggling to lure customers in the door. And the company has an appetizer combo that has gone viral on TikTok to thank for it. How? Well, it seems this might have all started with TikToker Irene Kim, who has 500,000 TikTok followers recorded on TikTok reviewing Chili's Triple Dipper Appetizer. Have you tried that yet? You haven't tried that yet? Okay, okay. I'm sure you will though. Triple Dipper Appetizer. And when she bit into the much larger than average cheese stick, which I can't believe you haven't had yet, the cheese stretched longer than her arm was, right? So the post caught fire with over a million views. And since then, the Triple Dipper is a very inexpensive. Joel (29:55.136) not. I have not. Yes. Joel (30:09.425) huh. Chad (30:18.872) appetizer. So everyone can get out there and play these reindeer games. They're buying the triple dipper. And then they're doing their own version of this on TikTok to the tune of listen to this kids over 150 million million 150 million posts about the triple dipper. What's the impact? Let's face it, chili has chilies has been on the ropes for years now. with rising costs and low customer traffic, but the success of the triple dipper helped Chili's raise its revenue forecast from 4.55 billion up to 4.75 billion in their forecast. So what's missing from our effects in trying to leverage social media in the past and recruiting? It's influencers. And now we have the influencer economy. Sure, have your CEO say a few words on TikTok. Joel (31:06.978) Mm-hmm. Chad (31:17.344) now and again, that's great. But if you want real traction, collaborate with influencers to create cool stunts and or motions that can get your brand product services or even job openings in front of engaged audiences. The cool thing is Irene has five hundred thousand followers. Somebody like JT who's in our space. She has one point. I think it's one point to one point four million followers. So if you're not looking at the influencer economy, Joel (31:38.071) Mm-hmm. It's a lot. It's a lot. Yeah. Chad (31:46.688) and you want to use TikTok and you want to use Instagram and you want to use socials, you're doing it wrong kids. You got to get into the influencer economy. Joel (31:57.836) All this time I've been doing it wrong, Chad. I've been putting social shit about indeed. I should have just been recording my lunches. Just record my lunches and I become a social media success. Chad (31:58.132) Naked my nice list. Chad (32:07.744) You can eat your lunch while you're talking about Indeed. you can meld. there's melding. there's melding. Joel (32:12.264) hybrid influencing. There you go. I'm all about it. All about it. Well, let me let me take a pause to grab a snack and we'll be right back with my final naughty of 2024. Chad (32:20.312) Mmm. Joel (32:28.974) Are you having fun, Chad? I'm having fun. This is a fun episode. I like this one. Chad (32:31.468) This is always fun. The naughty and nice, the turkeys, they're always fun. Especially when we can inject a little JT into it because she's always a blast. Joel (32:38.67) huh. It's also great because we know no one will listen to the show during the holidays, so we can just be totally stupid. All right, let's get. Chad (32:43.796) shut up. Shut up. Okay. Joel (32:49.454) Let me get to my last naughty of 2024. Okay. My naughty goes to Gerald O'Connor. Who the fuck is Gerald O'Connor? Well, he's the CEO of Impact Plastics. What the fuck is Impact Plastics? Well, you might remember we talked about them. The company allegedly kept employees at work while Hurricane Helene flooded the company and took seven lives to date. The stories are heartbreaking. Chad (32:58.04) Who? I don't know. Chad (33:09.89) Dushbag. Joel (33:18.702) Google it if you want to ruin your holiday. But there's no question, Gerald O'Connor, who should definitely be in a jumpsuit that's the color of orange next year makes it to the top of my naughty list. I'm going to share a story. This was in Tennessee. This is a local news story about what happened. think it can kind of encapsulate what happened much better than I could have a listen or look. Chad (33:21.818) Don't do it. Don't do it. Joel (34:00.373) after. Chad (35:35.512) Imagine that. that. Yeah, yeah. we're doing so much to help. You're full of shit. Joel (35:36.76) Imagine that. Joel (35:42.528) It took weeks to find some of the people that died. I mean, this was bad. We talked about it when it first happened. was a father, many kids were impacted, families, as you can imagine. He was able to text as the waters were coming up. He couldn't escape. ended up, he was able to text his daughter. His last text was, love y'all. And that was it. Like how awful is that? Like CEOs need to get a grip. They've lost the script. Chad (35:45.463) Yeah? Chad (35:52.834) Yes. Chad (36:01.73) Yeah. Joel (36:11.202) Keeping workers at work when there are natural disasters happening, this is a story that's become too common in our show. And it's a disgrace. It's a disgrace. Chad (36:20.758) And how'd that fucker make it through? How'd the CEO make it through? If he's there, and again, this is a leadership issue, if you're gonna be there in demand that somebody's there, you're ass better be there too. Joel (36:27.629) Yeah. Yeah, he allegedly snuck out one of the lawsuits had it in there that he sort of snuck out before I got too bad. Chad (36:34.806) Well, I'm gonna tell you right now, he doesn't look incredibly physically fit, so there's no way in hell he swam out of that bitch. Joel (36:43.374) He'd look great in a speedo though. I will say that he probably would look great in a speedo. All right, well, that's pretty naughty, Chad. I don't know if you can one up that, but give it a shot. Chad (36:43.672) Hahaha Chad (36:49.334) Let me know that he had a single. Is that done? Yes. I had to focus on an industry naughty and something that I've been railing on for all year and I'm going to continue to do it. I have a group for my next naughty. That's right. Indeed, Zipper, Kidder and AppCast are on my naughty list for not already injecting cost per qualified candidate into the fabric of how companies find and pay for qualified candidates. Yes, cost per click. Joel (37:11.246) Hmm. Chad (37:26.706) in cost per application were good steps to move away from duration-based models and focus more on pay for performance. I agree. But let's be frank, CPC and CPA not have any real controls in place to measure quality on the front end. When the seeker hits the apply button, there's no control, right? Joel (37:49.39) Mm-hmm. Chad (37:50.444) Are there algorithms that receive signals from the applicant tracking system to better help target future campaigns? Maybe so, but I've already paid for that fucking candidate that's not qualified, right? So after a company has paid for a load of unqualified clicks or application, which means the company has to waste time digging through all of these candidates, which is not better than what we had back in the old monster days with duration based, right? So cost per qualified candidate. should already be a standard in the industry, but why isn't it? I think here's an example. Monster didn't change their model until well after Indeed was on the scene and kicked them off the top of the mountain. Why? Monster was distracted by the massive amounts of cash they were pulling in and they didn't guard their flanks, unlike Netflix, who understood that mailing DVDs would one day be overtaken by streaming. Yes, Monster did buy FlipDog, but they didn't put enough real energy into it to run parallel businesses. So it's easy to understand that money distracts from threats and changing a legacy model, it's not an easy task. I understand that. But fast forward to today, indeed, Zippercruter and AppCast are happily talking about quality. It's all they talk about, right? But they're also... Joel (38:55.992) Mm-hmm. Joel (39:11.854) Sure. Chad (39:14.774) taking the much easier transactional cash instead of screening and delivering quality. So indeed, ZipRecruiter and AppCast have a choice. Do they build tech that will help identify unqualified candidates from qualified and then charge those companies a premium for qualified? Or wait until somebody else figures it out and buy them. And it feels like the latter is happening. Joel (39:34.552) Mm-hmm. Chad (39:41.56) Why is indeed AppCast and ZipRecruiter on my naughty list? Well, leaders are supposed to innovate. So let's hope in 2025, we see the big dogs actually do some innovation and ZipRecruiter. No, I'm not talking about Phil. Joel (39:53.912) Mm-hmm. Joel (40:01.934) Zip made my honorable mention, we're not putting in there, but for their stock price, their COO leaving, their CFO leaving. and their innovation is an embarrassment and the CEO is still there. Maybe he'll make our prediction show. I don't know. You'll have to tune in. Chad (40:07.104) Okay. yeah. Chad (40:12.566) And they're seeing hope still being there. Still being there. You don't know how many ex zip zip recruiter people have reached out to me over the past year as I've started to talk about this and go, yeah, no, you're right. He should have gone a long time ago. Joel (40:26.883) Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. 25 is looking to be as equally naughty and as equally nice for a lot of people. But speaking of nice, Chad, my dad jokes are a huge hit, which brings us to this week's dad joke. This one, this one's a little naughty. got inspired by the, by the show. All right. What, what do Santa Claus and Bill Cosby have in common? What do Santa Claus and Bill Cosby have in common? Chad (40:36.024) Hmm. Chad (40:43.608) Are you in your brain? Okay Chad (40:58.574) Does it have to do with the jello pop? Joel (41:01.4) They both only come while you're sleeping. Chad (41:04.536) that was OK. That was good. was bad, bad. But good, yes, it was a little naughty being being roofied is not a little naughty. Joel (41:08.814) That was pretty good, right? It was, it was, it was a little naughty, but you know, for this show. Joel (41:21.256) you had to go there. You had to go there. Happy holidays, everybody. Thanks for listening. It'll be business as usual as we head into 25, but for now, naughty or nice, we out. Chad (41:31.97) We out.

Live from the Shaker Green Room at RecFest USA, Chad & Cheese corner Audra Knight , the employer branding wizard at Foundation Medicine, to spill the tea on how companies can stop being boring and actually build a brand people care about. Audra preaches the gospel of internal communications, because apparently, it’s not enough to just have a logo and a “We’re Hiring!” post on LinkedIn. She dishes on the art of getting your employees to share their stories without bribing them (much), making your company seem like a place where people want to work—not just survive. Audra also marvels at the endless buffet of fancy branding tools out there, hinting that maybe picking the right ones is better than throwing spaghetti at the wall. Her secret sauce? Listen and watch to find out! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Podcast Intro: 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, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast. [music] Joel: Who are you and why are you here? Audra Knight: So my name is Audra Knight and I lead employer branding for Foundation Medicine, which you mentioned in the Boston area. And it's a company that I'm, feel so lucky to work for. 'Cause it truly is mission driven. Like every company says they're mission driven. And I was sold that in the interview and I was thinking let's actually see what it's like. But it really is like I just did a story about two of our account executives that are in remission from cancer themselves and now they're going out and helping with cancer care and it's just, it's so inspiring. Joel: So what is the mission specifically? Chad: So in moving forward into 2025, what advice would you have for your peers out there? Audra Knight: For employer branding peers? Chad: Yeah. Audra Knight: I think making sure you're doing more than just recruitment marketing. Chad: Okay. Audra Knight: 'Cause there's so much more I think you can do with your role. Especially partnering with internal communications. Like they're having all these stories about employees, make sure you're both having the stories and they're ensuring them or your stories are going internal and external. And I think we can also help with internal mobility, which is getting really important. Chad: Yes. Audra Knight: Because like the younger generation. Joel: It's just surprising, right? Because it should have always been important, but now it just seems to be incredibly important. Audra Knight: Yeah. And I think in our role we can really help with that. Chad: Yes. Audra Knight: Like I've built internal portals where I can help market, if you have rotations or I've seen companies that are doing like gigs and I think anyway that someone, maybe they can't be promoted every year, but they can still grow and you can help market that as an employer brand person. So not just thinking externally but thinking other ways you can also help internally. Not just advocacy too. Chad: Yeah. Joel: I love that you're actively communicating with internal communications and marketing. And I think a lot of organizations are challenged with, well this is TA or HR, this is marketing. Chad: Silos. Joel: Stay away from each other. But you haven't, talk about how that happened and how you engage on a regular basis. Audra Knight: So that's one thing I learned like early on. 'Cause I have had struggles in the past with like marketing understanding the work I'm doing. So as soon as I got in this company I was like let's go. I'm going right to marketing, I'm going right to internal comms. External comms is somewhat separate and just becoming besties. And explaining right from the beginning like this is what I'm doing and this is how it's a win-win for both of us. So like we can partner on this advocacy tool we have, I'm gonna give you content 'cause you are always looking for more content. I'm gonna help promote your content. And just making it right from the beginning like, we are a team, let's work together. And it's just so, so useful now. Like they come to me and be like, what about a story on this? Or they, and I can go to them and we just have this, I feel really thankful but I did make sure that was a priority. Chad: That's amazing. That's amazing. So in 2024, looking backward thus far, what has surprised you the most? Audra Knight: I think just being here today, seeing the amount of different tools, 'cause I, when I started in employer branding, you had a dusty old ATS, and if you wanted, let's see, if you want, like a CRM, there was like four. And you're like, okay, which of these four am I gonna buy? And now it's like I don't even know where to start looking, in a good way. 'Cause you can be really picky. And I remember if you wanted an employee generated video tool that wasn't even a thing. And now I'm, they're just everywhere. There's so many different options. But tools are so important to our role. Can I give a shout out to mine 'cause they're here today. But, I have quite a few, but Clinch Talent is what I've used now first seven or eight years. Chad: Okay. Audra Knight: And I really can't imagine doing my role without it. Because again, the metrics I'm getting from them, I'm in the tool like every day. I'm building new webpages, the external, internal. And people are seeing that. And I have total like control of our careers website and the blogs. But I couldn't do that with a dust deal, the ATS. So I think if, I think if you have any kind of budget, put it just in the right tools and you don't have to have a massive budget, but. Joel: You're in a very competitive space. You mentioned some of the tools. Talk about the messaging, how you differentiate. What platforms are you leveraging that are successful for you? Audra Knight: I think the trick is knowing how you're different. And I do see, I feel like some agencies come in and then they build this beautiful like tagline and employer brand and you, it looks like every other, so that's the challenge, I think. So I think really if you have an agency like work with them, how actually are we different or I think you can do that internally, which is what I have done. And so first I'll work with like the recruiters of the different functions. Then we will build like a pitch like an EVP per function that we feel like is the sell and what actually is different. So like for mission, that is really important for software engineers because they could work anywhere where it's not mission driven. But we don't push the mission as much in our medical teams and our RD teams 'cause they are probably working in oncology space in the missions. There's some of a great mission either way. Audra Knight: So you, so knowing that, and then after we feel like we have our pitch, we bring that to the leaders of the function or different people in the function and say, do you agree and actually have a workshop. So not just an email 'cause they're busy, they're not gonna write back and be like, but if you have a workshop and be like, go through it. Do you agree with these pitches? Are there things that we missed? And then I actually took that and built with Clinch, a whole like internal tool where employees, because also I think we talk about recruiter enablement, which is great. Chad: Yes. Audra Knight: But what about hiring manager enablement? Like employee enablement. So that's what I'm trying to do. And it's a tool so that any employee or any hiring manager come in there, go to their specific division, see their own EVP that we created just internally for free. And then videos that we've, from our video tool where they can just take 'em, copy and paste, post it to LinkedIn and share the content. Chad: So in 2025, what is your major priority? Audra Knight: Ooh, that's a good question. I think looking internally more because we are a little bit slower, like most people we're hiring just at the moment. So thinking about how I can add value, internally in other ways. And just being really specific to, on our hiring needs, the ones that we are hiring that are critical, how can I get in there, create content, whether that's a blog or a video, and then make sure that gets shared by the right people in scene. Audra Knight: 'Cause I've seen people that create this beautiful thing and they just like post it on their company LinkedIn channel. But I'll be like, we'll do that. But then I give that to the leaders of that function and be like, copy and paste. I would love it if you personalize it, but you might be busy or not have the time. So here's just really easy. You make sure every employee that is in that network, they send this out on their LinkedIn and of course make sure it's trackable. Joel: How do you look at diversity, equity, inclusion and how are you coordinating with marketing to make sure that message is cohesive and packaged for the community? Audra Knight: Yeah. It's really been interesting to see how some companies are putting less effort into that. But I think either way, as an employer, brander, you have to think about your content and weaving it in. But only if that's true. Like if you honestly aren't a very diverse company. Do not be just interviewing and asking for videos for your ERNs. Audra Knight: And then the person comes in and it's not very diverse. So just making sure it's, you are thinking about it and talking to different people in the ERNs. But it's also very authentic. So those people that are saying that they actually truly believe you're diverse and it's just got to be real. 'Cause I feel like I'm seeing some companies that are like, we're so diverse, and they're not. Chad: And if there's anything we know about Audra, she's real. Audra Knight, thank you so much for sitting down with us. If somebody wants to connect with you or maybe, I don't know, apply for a job. Audra Knight: Or be in the band? Chad: Or be in the band. Audra Knight: Yeah. Joel: Or be in the band. Chad: Or be in the band. Where would you send them? Audra Knight: Yes. I think I'm the only Audra Knight on Link... Or easily searchable on LinkedIn. Chad: The coolest name. I love, love it. Audra Knight: Yes. Awesome. Joel: Did I mention I was in first chair in sixth grade for saxophone, so I may be auditioning soon. Audra Knight: Very cool. Our boys are playing piano now and percussions. Chad: That's amazing. Audra Knight: So I'm thinking we might have in the band, we'll have a pianist and a drummer. Chad: Excellent. Joel: A new Chicago. Let's do this. Audra Knight: Awesome. Yep. Joel: Thanks Audra. Audra Knight: Awesome. Thanks for having me. Joel: Enjoy the show. Audra Knight: Awesome. Podcast Outro: Wow. Look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast forward it to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell. Enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuggle heads instead, now go take a shower and wash off all the guilt, but save some soap because you'll be back like an awful train wreck. You can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.

Live from the Shaker Green Room at RecFest USA, Julie Sowash, executive director of Disability Solutions, braved Chad & Cheese’s snark-fest to talk AI ethics, hiring underdogs, and why “data transparency” isn’t just corporate jargon. Julie dropped recruitment wisdom about balancing tech with actual human  connection (wild concept, right?) while reminding companies that “diversity commitments” aren't seasonal trends like pumpkin spice lattes. She also dished on HR's 2024 reality: market consolidation’s crushing vibe and why DEI needs more than a LinkedIn post. Through it all, she stayed real, passionate, and even threw in some love for her co-hosting hubby, Chad — proving that even in HR, romance isn’t completely  dead. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION 0:00:00.0 Podcast Intro: 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, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. [music] 0:00:25.2 Joel: Who are you and why are you here today? 0:00:27.2 Julie Sowash: My name is Julie Sowash. I'm the executive director and co-founder of Disability Solutions. I'm here because I am presenting tomorrow on ethical considerations in AI, on Friday after everybody has an awesome time tonight. And yeah, just a lot of learning, making great connections, got to participate in the RL100 yesterday, which was really fantastic. The inaugural US event tonight, it was great. 0:00:55.1 Chad: So, looking forward, what advice would you have to your peers in the next 12 months? 0:01:03.3 Julie Sowash: I think it's really two things. And they're the same two things I say every time and that's because things like at their base level don't change, right? Recruiting is not rocket science. I know we like to pretend that it is, but it's not. It's human-human connection, it's using technology efficiently, and it's using our data to know what we need to get done. And what's working and what's not working. And so every single time I meet with senior TA leaders, senior HR leaders, I get really intimidated when it starts because I think, oh my God, these guys are gonna have it all together. It's gonna be the one that makes me look like I have no idea what I'm talking about. Inevitably, every time that we still don't have the basics, and the basics is the data. And so, that's really the first thing. And I think the other thing is trying to be a little bit more proactive and less reactive to the environment around them, right. I mean, we've got to go like COVID, George Floyd, we had this really kind of resurgence into the humanity of the world, into how we're gonna make hiring more balanced. We're gonna bring in diverse talent. We're going to do all of these things and talk a lot of talk. 0:02:21.8 Chad: Shit, yeah. 0:02:23.9 Julie Sowash: And then conveniently, as the winds change, companies use that as an opportunity to retract. And I know there's pressure in the market and I know I am very protective and very covetous of my brand. I built it. It's my baby. I understand. But it's sheer weakness to see these Fortune 100, Fortune 1000 brands pull back because they're scared of a little political change. You're in or you're out, right? And it's okay if you're out. Just be who you are. Don't try to pretend that you're into DEI. Don't try to pretend that now you're not into DEI because the political winds change. 0:03:09.8 Julie Sowash: Be true to who your organization and your culture are because it's like it's whiplash for the job seeker. And it's this fake hope that companies give that fake like illusion of hope that we're finally going to get pay right? That we're finally going to build our pipeline so that it's black, brown, LGBTQ, and disabled. And then you just pull the sheet right out from under our feet again and we start over. 0:03:37.3 Joel: So you are presenting tomorrow. Is some of this the focus or some of it sounds like AI in recruiting and bias around that? What's the focus? 0:03:46.4 Julie Sowash: So I think that I'm generally optimistic about AI for our community and the diversity community in general, just because we are having good conversations. I'm actually pleased at the maturity of the conversations that we're seeing at this event, online, and in other places. And so I get to present with FairNow and we're gonna talk about why it's important? What are some of the key components of ethical considerations in AI? Why it's important to underrepresented communities like mine? And then how do we make sure that once we get that in the seat and we get that in place, that we can actually start to move in the right direction and make sure that we're continuously moving in the right direction? 0:04:34.7 Julie Sowash: I'm excited about conversations around synthetic data sets, greater transparency, real time data. And I think the biggest thing that I've heard kind of and I'll say knee jerk again, but that's probably not the right word is companies going, we cannot use AI because there's too much risk because our data is not clean. The reality is that it's not possible to have clean data right now. You have to have tools, partners, and data to drive in what is gonna be a better data set. And we have a starting point and we move incrementally forward. And there's nothing wrong with moving incrementally forward instead of just saying, I can't do this because it might create risk for myself or my company. We need to be excited about what the future holds with AI and really have good governance and good behaviors out of the gate so that we know that we're doing the right thing and that we're using the technology and the data properly. 0:05:34.7 Chad: So looking backward... 0:05:37.9 Julie Sowash: Yeah. 0:05:38.0 Chad: 2024... 0:05:37.9 Julie Sowash: Yeah. 0:05:38.7 Chad: What surprised you the most about 2024? 0:05:42.6 Julie Sowash: I think it's been the constriction in the market. The labor market is incredibly strong. The US economy is incredibly strong. And I think that we're starting to see some attempts to consolidate parts of the HR tech market. And that's a little bit what's driving layoffs. It's what's driving margins down. It's what's driving budgets down. And it's not really as realistic to the actual market itself, as in the COVID money is kind of drying up. And now we're making decisions that we should have been planning for a lot earlier. And some companies are looking again how to raise profits by squeezing out middlemen and other people in the market. And sort of the dismay, I guess. It's like it's January and I'm hearing, hey, the market's gone to hell. Everything is a mess. 0:06:35.8 Julie Sowash: There's 10 million open jobs in the US. We have the lowest inflation in the world. Nothing was bad, right? But we talk ourselves into these panics because we haven't built and thought proactively to what the market's gonna look like in 18 months or 30 months. And that's really what I would love to like see HR leaders do better, right? How do we talk to our C-suite? And you and I got to talk about this yesterday with the RL100 is if you know that you need more money, you need to make a business case for how that money's gonna get to you. You can't just go to, hey, let's build a great EVP and a great career site. We don't need other marketing dollars. We don't need other attraction dollars. That's not, that's not right. 0:07:19.6 Julie Sowash: And so we end up selling ourselves short instead of saying we need multi-touch attribution, we need multiple channels to get in-front of the talent that we need, and we need to be doing it regularly because hiring is gonna ebb and flow. That's part of it. And so we really need our TA leaders and our HR leaders to think more holistically, and further down the timeline than right now. 0:07:42.4 Joel: Yeah. I know that you live this every day, the diversity question, the inclusion question, and it sounds to me like you're, you're creating a picture of the mental hurdle is hard for companies to get over, but I would guess that a lot of companies want to be inclusive. They want to attract a wider net of folks, but maybe don't know how to do it. For those folks that are looking for tactical examples or success stories, what do you tell them to get to that place? 0:08:11.9 Julie Sowash: Yeah. Again, I mean, it's not rocket science. You have the numbers in your database, you know where your candidates are falling out. You don't need to for me to bring you a Pepsi, right? Who we've helped hire 4,000 people with disabilities. You don't need to see that. What you need to do is spend the time and your data and really be thoughtful about your funnel, and then go through it and see where there are opportunities and know that there's not always gonna be an opportunity to hit the metric you want, but we need to be moving forward incrementally because this is a lifetime's worth of work. That's what I tell my team every single day, is we have to figure out how to keep moving the needle, even though the needle's never gonna move as fast as we want it to. 0:08:58.4 Chad: So 2025, looking forward, what is your number one priority? 0:09:04.3 Julie Sowash: My number one priority is continuing to push DEI belonging and not letting it go, because some people are uncomfortable with it, not letting it go because it's not the hot, sexy thing to do right now. This is our job, right? This as DEI professionals is my job to always be the broken wheel, right? To always be pushing because as long as underrepresented communities are not well represented in the C-suite and the leadership and the TA departments, we're never going to get to equity. So, I'm just gonna keep pushing the envelope, making some people mad and saying that brands need to be true to who they are and not try to play this back and forth game. 0:09:46.8 Joel: So the big question is, what's the best thing about being married to Chad Sowash? 0:09:51.8 Julie Sowash: Have you seen him? Case closed. 0:09:53.0 Joel: [0:09:54.8] ____ Oh that. [laughter] 0:09:55.8 Chad: Thanks. Appreciate you stopping by. 0:10:00.7 Julie Sowash: Is that not what I was supposed to say? [laughter] 0:10:03.5 Chad: That was perfect. That was perfect. If somebody wants to connect with you for professional reasons, where would you send them? 0:10:10.7 Julie Sowash: LinkedIn. Julie Sowash. You can find me there. All the socials. Also, disabilitytalent.org. 0:10:18.6 Joel: Thanks For hanging out for a little bit, Julie. Enjoy the rest of your day. 0:10:21.6 Julie Sowash: Thanks guys. 0:10:22.6 Chad: Thanks. 0:10:23.3 Podcast Outro: Wow. Look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast forwarded it to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey, or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuggle heads instead. Now, go take a shower and wash off all the guilt, but save some soap because you'll be back like an awful train wreck you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.

In this episode of the Chad and Cheese Podcast, The Boys welcome Noelle London , founder and CEO of Illoominus , a people analytics platform so cutting-edge even Workday took notes (literally). What starts as a casual chat about ghost tours and crazy Thanksgiving uncles quickly escalates into a snark-filled showdown on the merits of AI-powered HR tech. Highlights include: Debating the correct number of vowels in “ Illoominus ” (seriously, buy those domain misspellings). A deep dive into cleaning up HR’s “garbage data” with AI (because spreadsheets are apparently the devil). Chad’s poetic ode to “dirty data” and Joel’s plea for Delta Airlines perks. Noelle pitches Illoominus like a seasoned pro, blending tech jargon and trying her hardest to dodge the dreaded "firing squad". Does it work? Listen to find out. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:21.97) that's right, kids. You are listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast and this is Firing Squad. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheeseman. Joined as always, Chad Sowash is in the house as we welcome Noel London, founder and CEO at Illoominus.com. Noel, welcome to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad (00:32.258) Hello. Noelle (00:43.374) Thanks. Thanks for having me. Joel (00:46.214) Glad you're here. So before we get into the nitty gritty of the business stuff, introduce our listeners to who is Noel London. Noelle (00:55.534) Well, hi everybody. My name's Noelle London. I'm the founder and CEO of Illoominus. I'm sitting here in Savannah. I'm being convinced by these two to try and go on a ghost tour later on. I'm on my way to Thanksgiving in Charleston. I guess that could be also referred to as the firing squad Thanksgiving as well. So enjoying the weather and hopefully it's not gonna rain on me too much over here. Chad (01:08.728) Mm-hmm. Chad (01:17.496) Thank Chad (01:25.39) Do you have a crazy uncle? Because everybody has a crazy uncle they go to Thanksgiving with. you have a crazy, or do you have multiple crazy uncles? That's first question. Noelle (01:32.186) We've all got crazy uncles, right? We've all got crazy uncles, but no, this will just be the small family that's getting together. So it'll be fun. Chad (01:35.232) Okay, good, Good answer. Good answer. Joel (01:44.946) And speaking of crazy, crazy uncles and family members, you forgot an interesting note about you. You are a Longhorn at some point in your educational journey. Do you have a favorite Matthew McConaughey quote or movie or something you'd like to share as a personal antidote? Noelle (01:55.188) Indeed, hook Yeah, yeah, yeah. Chad (01:55.574) Noelle (02:03.962) not, I'm really bad at celebrity knowledge, but I will say watching, was it the Lincoln commercial that was like the Super Bowl commercial where he was tapping the steering wheel and it was just really awkward. That's probably one of my favorites. Chad (02:15.842) Mm-hmm. Joel (02:22.094) Okay, you gotta work on that Matthew McConaughey story. That's not, all right, let's get to this. Let's do this thing, Chad. Tell Noel what she's won today. Chad (02:22.146) He's very, he's, he's a very awkward kind of guy. Yeah. I'm more of a Wolf of Wall Street guy. Noelle (02:27.874) Yeah. Chad (02:33.582) Well, Noel, welcome to the firing squad. This is how it's going to play out at the sound of the bell. You are going to have two minutes to pitch Illoominus at the end of two minutes. We're going to hit you up with about 20 minutes of Q and a be sure to be concise. Are you going to hear the crickets, which means tighten up your game at the end of Q and a you're going to receive either one of these three from Joel and myself. Big applause. Better than a Debbie Boone sick single. You didn't just light up my life. You lit up this podcast. Big things are gonna come in your way. Golf clap. Man for man said the best. She was blinded by the light, revved up like a deuce, another runner in the light. Now I have no clue what that means, although we're not actually sure what's gonna happen with the luminous either. Last but not least, the firing squad. Noelle (03:21.272) You Chad (03:25.452) Willie Nelson sang it best. Turn out the lights, the party's over, shut it down, try something new. This is not the thing. Noelle (03:29.242) You Chad (03:33.464) You Joel (03:33.51) Noelle, are you ready to pitch the firing squad? In three, two. Noelle (03:36.384) Let's do it. Let's do it. Chad (03:38.605) Yes! Noelle (03:43.098) Hi everyone, at Illoominus' we are an AI powered turnkey people intelligence platform that sits on top of, integrates and gives context to HR data within and across companies. As the role of HR continues to change within organizations, what we're doing is empowering leaders to unlock the full value of their HR tech stack and to help them finally make strategic and dynamic business decisions. I've seen this problem firsthand while I was leading HR tech partnerships at Accenture. I saw that the HR tech landscape was full of point solutions. On average, those companies had over 16 different tools and they weren't designed to talk to each other. So many HR leaders weren't equipped to understand what was actually working and what was not. At Illoominus, we think that now is the time for strategic HR. And so we've built an easy to implement way to unlock the full value of your HR tech stack to show business impact. Our platform equips people leaders to clearly understand their entire employee journey across sourcing, hiring, engagement, promotions, and retention. We integrate across your critical HR tech stack to provide cross-tool learnings and help you to answer questions like which sources of candidates are more likely to stay. Not only are we interpreting key insights across your data, we're actually helping you to understand your peer data and that strategic context for decision-making. We're bringing people analytics to the middle market. We're targeting people leaders and people analytics teams at retail, tech, sports and entertainment and hospitality. And typically we work best with companies that have about 500 to 15,000 employees. We're working through annual subscriptions based on a company's total number of employees. After less than 10 days and for less than the cost of a full-time employee, we're seeing that our customers HR data is finally starting to work for them. And thankfully you don't have to take our word for it. We're proud to work with some awesome companies like Monumental Sports, Shnucks Market, Techstars, Cox Communications, Greenlight Financial and others. Our roadmap at Illoominus. Chad (05:51.412) Ooh, she was rolling too. Joel (05:51.474) Thank you, Noel, for that pitch. It was pretty tight. Yeah, I'm sure you'll find a way to get that in. All right. The name.com gets you points. It's a lot of letters. A lot of letters in Illoominus. How'd you come up with it? I get the illumination in your data. So what were the names that didn't make the cut? What's the genesis of the brand? Noelle (05:52.11) We'll talk about that. We'll talk about that. Noelle (05:57.698) Yeah, for sure. Noelle (06:03.586) Lot of letters in Illoominus. Noelle (06:13.656) Yeah, well, you're right. With Illoominus, I think we're considering starting a spelling bee pretty soon so that we can make sure that people can actually get it right. And the domain was available, and it's all about illuminating data, illuminating us. We were finding that so many organizations didn't have access to visibility and actually understand what was happening across their data. So that's what we're born to do. Chad (06:23.96) Can I buy a vowel? Noelle (06:42.478) We recently were excited that Workday named their AI tool Illuminate. So we know we're on the right track. Joel (06:51.716) Okay, how many misspellings.com do you have of Aluminus? At least five, right? Tell me at least five. Noelle (06:56.48) man, we need to though. We have a lot of misspellings. We don't have them and we're gonna get on that. Joel (07:06.258) Okay, need those redirects because not everyone is smart as Texas grads, So, found in 2022, pre-seed of $500k. What have you done with the money? Are you looking for an official seed round? Talk to me about the money. Noelle (07:11.662) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Noelle (07:25.598) to you about the money. So we raised Precede Round a little bit over a year ago. We'd been listening to our customers. We went to market with a product and with paying customers early in 22. We'd been listening to those customers. They were beginning to tell us, hey, you touch all of our HR data. And the reality is we are still living in spreadsheets on the side. We'd been listening to our customers. So within that funding, what we were able to do is bring in a tech team from Unicorn Company Sales Loft that took their tool from the lowest performing part of the product to the highest performing part of the product and to relaunch our platform to be the turnkey people analytics platform that we have live today. So. Joel (07:48.604) Mm-hmm. Noelle (08:10.776) What we've been able to do is, I was telling you about my Delta headphones early on, we're extremely capital efficient company. We've been able to get pretty far on a small amount. What we're looking to do is as the market opens up next year, go back out for our seed round. Joel (08:30.002) Tell me about Techstars, the importance, what is it, why should we care? Noelle (08:35.736) You should care, because Techstars is also a great customer of Illoominus'. But in addition to that, Techstars is a three-month accelerator program. Companies that want to gain credibility, get some initial investment, sign up for Techstars. What that allows you to have access to is a global network of mentors that you can get expertise. They've been on the journey. They've built companies. You can go to them with things around pricing or product roadmap, that type of thing. They are an incredibly valuable partner to us and continue to be and helping us to build brand awareness and get access to great global mentors. Chad (09:23.254) Excellent, well tell me a little bit about your HR experience and then also leadership within Aluminus. Noelle (09:30.722) Yeah. So in terms of my background, most recently I was over at Accenture Ventures leading our Ventures team. So we were making investments into HR technology companies. While I was there, essentially was going into Fortune 2000 companies, bringing HR software to them. There were a couple of really big market signals that was one, when I would walk up with my pretty startup logo map to an HR leader. Oftentimes I was noticing this thing is full of point solutions. They're not talking to each other. HR is being asked to play a more strategic role. They were asking us to help them play a more strategic role. And the reality is that all of the interesting data points were living in different systems. So one, that was a really big thing that we saw as a market signal is none of these tools are talking to each other. It's hard to actually understand, you know, what works, what doesn't. But then the other thing is that most of those companies, unless they were the Coca-Cola's of the world and had 300,000 employees, they couldn't actually afford to have the top line tools on the market that were built for a Fortune 500 company. So, you know, it meant that, hey, I'm a middle market company, but I can't afford to build a team. I can't afford to have a Fortune 500 level tool. So it means that I'm just living in a spreadsheet and with some duct tape. So those are the big things that we saw as we were talking to lot of HR leaders is, you know, what was within the market was working for, you know, the one person of companies, but not really for the rest of everybody else. Chad (11:06.04) Give me a quick and easy answer around the leadership of your organization. So what other founders, who else is actually there to provide support and experience back to you? Noelle (11:18.168) Yeah, for sure. We are so fortunate at Illoominus to have a great team of individuals who have worked at unicorn companies. They have built companies and exited them. Individuals like actually my former leadership coach Courtney Swafford is leading our community over at Illoominus. I'd worked previously with our head of marketing at a previous startup that we'd worked at together, brought in some of again, sales lofts leadership on the reporting and analytics side around data and around technology. What I'm really proud of is in terms of those investors that you were talking about earlier, we've got some amazing people and leaders around us that have built companies. So. That means it's James White, former CEO of Jamba Juice. He's on about seven different boards right now. The founding team of MailChimp, like Eric Munz, their CTO, their first engineer, Joe Yule, are around us as well. So not only has our team built incredible companies and impactful companies, but also the leadership around us has been... their every step of the way because they've built companies and exited companies themselves. Chad (12:35.064) So it sounds like you're in favor of being the one analytics program or platform to rule them all. How deep are you currently into the talent cycle? Obviously, you've got talent acquisition, you've got talent management all the way through. There's a big loop or infinity loop, whatever you want to call it. How many touch points are you all the way through the talent cycle? Noelle (12:59.416) Yeah, there's always more that we can touch, right? And I think that where we are right now, as I mentioned earlier, I mean, there's over a dozen different tools at a lot of these companies. The reality is that if you think about an S curve of data and like, you know, how advanced is your data program at your organization? The reality is that there's really about four pieces of critical HR tech stack. Chad (13:02.904) Mm-hmm. Chad (13:14.36) Mm-hmm. Noelle (13:24.728) That's going to be your HRAS system, talent acquisition, engagement, and performance and pay. So what we do is we start with that critical tech stack. We bring that data together and by us being able to touch those data points, we can go anywhere from sourcing, hiring, promotions, engagement, retention, slash attrition. What we are showing right now is that full employee journey in one place. Chad (13:33.944) Mm. Noelle (13:48.846) And then I think what starts to get really interesting is that because you see that employee journey and you're able to filter down to understand how that's changing across the organization, then we start bringing in things like L and D data, benefits data to start coming in as almost initiatives that are helping to improve your overall employee journey. So there's a lot of places we can go and we see just massive opportunities and continuing to build in data points. Chad (13:58.062) Mm-hmm. Noelle (14:16.014) But for now, the reality that we're finding is that the majority of companies that we're working with at our place in the market don't have those four pieces of information and critical information talking to each other. So that's really where we've started. Chad (14:31.983) So we recently talked to Rebecca Carr as the CEO over at Smart Recruiters. And she said one of the biggest issues that they have is that, I guess you could just call it dirty data. I mean, the data is not the same from system to system. It doesn't make sense. It's not contextualized. So when you're talking about this huge TAM that you're trying to figure out, because you're talking about salary, you're talking about promotions, talking about internal mobility, mean, all those things. Noelle (14:36.9) Okay. Noelle (14:42.734) Yes. Chad (15:00.534) And I'm sure with AI, there's a lot of prediction that's going to be happening. How in the hell do you pull all of this together with such a broad TAM with literally just a garbage pile full of data at this? Noelle (15:13.37) I love this question because this is the really big thing that we're tackling alongside our roadmap. Like we were all at HR Tech together a couple of months ago. Every single talk that you went into was buzzword over buzzword about AI and somebody's like slapping AI on top of a platform. But the reality is like underneath that's Chad (15:20.044) Mm-hmm. Chad (15:32.13) Mm-hmm. Noelle (15:34.638) that's a real challenge for HR leaders, because they're going to use the slapped on AI and the underlying data foundation that you just mentioned is total garbage. So it means that when they're coming out and saying, like, look, I'm leveraging AI, those results are not trustworthy and accurate. What we're doing, and I think the real opportunity is like we talked about this S curve and the reality is a lot of HR leaders may be saying that they're in a different place than they actually are on maturity and readiness for AI. What we're doing in our roadmap is to improve the underlying data foundation for our customers. So making sure that the data that's, you you said in the garbage pile, like duplications of data, typos within the data, maybe people are using different codes on things like, you know, attrition reasons that we're creating that strong data foundation of, these are the definitions for how we look at data, and hey, here are things that you can improve within your data. That means that as we're adding in more AI-driven insights, more of those proactive features, the data that's coming from Illoominus is trustworthy and accurate because we're actually improving the data quality on the backend. Joel (16:54.864) The first time, but not hopefully the last time, that dirty data gets mentioned on our show. Noel, talk to me about the competition. Noelle (17:06.872) Yeah, the reality is where we see competition most often right now is typically with a company that thinks that they've got to build it on their own. So it means that, you know, the reality is most organizations are tracking the same things. Sure, there are some things that need to be updated and configured for your business or, you know, customized for your business. But the reality is what we run into more than anything else is the idea of DIY, DIYing the data, of feeling like I want to have data-driven insights. So I think I need to build something within Tableau. I need to build something within Power BI, and I need to start from scratch. And the reality is, while that might sound like a nice initiative to get off the ground, the reality is you're ongoing having to maintain those data connections. Joel (17:41.169) Mm-hmm. Noelle (18:01.156) data definitions of like, can we agree on what quality of hire means for an organization? There's so much ongoing work that maintains those. Yeah. Joel (18:09.618) Let me ask it differently. How are you different than Vizier, for example? Noelle (18:15.746) Yeah, mean, Vizier is the type of solution that let's say you're a what's a what's a good organization. Let's say you're a Google and you're eight hundred thousand people. Something like a Vizier is going to be a really good solution for that because it almost is like having a PhD in data science or it's supporting your PhDs in data science. The reality is that the most organizations actually don't have that type of expertise or busier developers in-house to make that type of solution work for them. It's a great solution if you've got a built-out team and if you need that level of insights. But for the majority of companies that don't have that, what we've built is a solution that's really meant to put data in HR's hands, not necessarily in a data scientist or IT's hands so that... Joel (19:05.714) Mm-hmm. Noelle (19:10.83) there's more data-driven insights living within HR and that there's an opportunity to leapfrog some of those organizations that don't have the resources for a tool like Vizier. Joel (19:22.738) So real quick, name names, who is a competitor that you, you're going to get an RFP, who are you competing against? Noelle (19:28.494) Sometimes what we see is something like a workday prism that's gonna be within, that somebody thinks is at that level. Again, that's going to be a much heavier solution that's going to be more expensive than something like an Illoominus. And the reality is most organizations, we have workday customers, most of those organizations may need an HR tech stack that... is more disparate because they have use cases that workday is not necessarily the right fit for. And so what we're doing is saying, if you use workday, great. Use the tech stack that helps you to get the job done and the work done best. What we're doing is simply making sure that all of that is connected to each other and helping to tell the broader context across those various tools. Joel (20:16.978) Talk to me about sales and marketing. How are you pounding the pavement, calling customers? I marketing wise, do like that you are really, I don't want say you're ignoring social media, but we talked to so many startups that have like every single social media and they have like three posts that were four months ago. So what are you doing marketing wise? I mean, like in Google ads, I don't see you if I search people insights platform. How are you getting the word out? How are you driving sales? Noelle (20:43.704) Yeah, I mean, we're, I would say on Go To Market, what we've done is we've been going to HR leaders and building their relationships with HR leaders directly. What we launched about two years ago was a community of chief people officers that we bring together regularly to talk to each other and to support each other. So we're doing invite only round tables, bringing HR leaders together to have real conversations and talk about how to solve real problems. And that what we're finding is about 30 % plus of our pipeline is coming exactly from that. People are saying, so-and-so just called me on the phone the other day and said they were dealing with a similar challenge. I want them to be at the next round table. I think that they'll really benefit from it. So we've been building trust, building relationships with HR leaders, and that's been our primary driver to date. Virtually $0 on sales and marketing at this point. Chad (21:36.748) So how are you taking all that? Chad (21:42.318) That's what we're looking for. Okay. So how are you translating HR data into business case data? Noelle (21:48.954) Yeah, what we've been able to do is because we're able to connect different sources of data together, what that allows us to do is answer business questions. So for example, I mentioned to you earlier, retail is a big industry for us. Retail, some of our customers were experiencing what they call quit quitting when we first started working with them at exponential levels. So losing about 70 % of employees every single 90 days. Chad (21:56.078) Mm-hmm. Noelle (22:17.21) When we first started working with those kinds of customers, this is like a small mid-sized retailer, they were losing 70 % of their employees every 90 days. That was costing them about $100 million every single year. We walked into that situation and what we were able to do is help them to understand certain metrics like quality of hire. So if you think about, if I lose 100 people a week and my strategy is to hire 150 people, because we're able to pull that ATS data together with the performance data and the attrition data, we can start to say which sources of candidates are bringing you quality hires. What that means is that your most expensive part of your employee journey is training, hiring, and onboarding somebody. And so by us saying what's working and what's not, it means that you can start to shift your focus into things that are actually working. The other thing is what we've been able to do alongside them is help them to understand Chad (22:46.286) Mm-hmm. Noelle (23:15.32) why people are leaving. So they're so focused on the hiring side, which is also super expensive for them. How do we actually shift the focus into understanding why are people leaving? Because we're bringing together that engagement data next to attrition data. What that helps us to start understanding and what we've been able to build through proactive attrition models is starting to show things like scheduling hours. How many? Chad (23:22.083) Mm-hmm. Noelle (23:39.482) hours is the ideal number of hours so that a frontline part-time worker is actually more likely to have longer 10 years. So because we're able to tell more of the whole picture by bringing the data together, instead of these data points living in different systems and not really being able to make sense of any of that, that's how we start to say, hey, HR is the most expensive part of the organization. Chad (23:39.875) Mm-hmm. Chad (23:58.862) Mm-hmm. Noelle (24:03.566) How are your dollars working for you and how are we making sure that where your investments are going are most impactful? Chad (24:11.564) So define quality of a hire, number one. Number two, since it means so many different things to so many different people and just take a look at how Sherm defines it. They have no fucking clue. So at the end of the day, are you creating standards or trying to create a standard in specific industries or how are you actually looking at this problem? Because it is a problem. Noelle (24:17.39) Yeah. Yep. Noelle (24:33.23) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think standardization is a really big opportunity for us. It's also one that people are spending way too much time on the semantics of how do we define something as opposed to, OK, how is that helping us to do the work? On something like quality of hire, yeah, we're not necessarily going off of the shirm definitions. And we do. create definitions when somebody is walking into the platform and they get that data definition, that library, if you will, of calculations. But on quality of hire, there's a lot of different industries and you would define it differently in different industries. What I can say is just going back to the example that we were just talking about is who is more likely to have a longer tenure? Chad (25:07.662) Mm-hmm. Noelle (25:26.35) And it's not necessarily there's pieces of it and we're not saying it's just the source of where that individual is coming from. But what we do want to begin to do is begin to learn about if somebody starts as a bagger, can we start to understand when people are moving from that role into another role within the organization? We have all these really interesting examples in retail of people that started as baggers and they end up in C-suite. Chad (25:35.032) Mm. Noelle (25:54.522) executives and that is a but anecdotal piece of information that we have right now. What we're doing is starting to say, can we look at that transition of a bagger into some other role within the organization and start to understand what is happening there and why is that happening? Chad (26:13.12) Okay, so go back to the the go to market real quick with regard to sales and partnership. How are you guys actually going after sales? Are you going direct? Are you actually going through white label types of partnerships? What? Where are you guys actually gaining ground to try to try to build your portfolio? Noelle (26:30.362) Yeah, it's going direct right now. So we go direct to chief people officers typically and at times now some COOs within those industries of retail sports and entertainment and hospitality. What we're finding is that referrals are our biggest source of new customers today and we're going direct. I think there's a huge opportunity. We are a SaaS platform. We're not doing consulting. Chad (26:56.994) Mm-hmm. Noelle (26:58.638) you we're not doing the change management and yeah, that's a huge opportunity within this work as well is how do we actually do the change management around a platform like Aluminus. But to date, we haven't been doing any of those types of channels. I think that's what I was doing at Accenture and that's a big opportunity for us ongoing outside of referrals outside of the chief people officer round tables that we're doing now in that community. The other sources, we do have some partnerships with other HR tech companies like a Lattice and a Greenhouse of being a part of their marketplace, which allows us to add additional value to their customers that are also trying to make their systems work with some of these other systems. Chad (27:45.698) Gotcha. Marketplaces are to some extent somewhat easy to get into. The big question is very close partnerships so that you can actually start working with some of those bigger platform companies where they're town acquisition, they're HCM. When do you think that you're going to actually start moving in that direction with regard to go to market? Because obviously going direct to a company, that's one thing you get a lot of feedback, you get a lot of information, you also get a lot of recommendations. But when it comes down to actually getting portfolio penetration, the way that you do it is through partnerships. When are you guys going to start moving? Noelle (28:21.838) Yeah, we're, mean, right now we're still going direct. I think we will do the partnerships when we find the right partners for us. It's something that we've explored in the past, but looking for those right partners. So that is something that in the next year or two, we'll be doubling down on even more. Joel (28:41.426) What's the greatest threat to the business? Something that comes to mind as we're talking, know, LLMs, companies just being able to dump their data into this thing, ask the chat bot like the questions and have them answered. But you live this every day. What are the main threats to the business that you see? Noelle (28:59.544) Yeah, it's a good question. I think the biggest threats that we see to the business are probably, I mean, right now it's awareness of, as I mentioned, you know, we're very cost effective, capital efficient. So right now I think that the biggest thing that we're seeing is, you know, we need more people to know about what we're doing at Aluminus. So That's probably what I would say is the biggest thing. I'm not as, in terms of LLMs, chat, GPT, these other innovations that are coming out. As I mentioned, we were at HR Tech together and I think hearing about a lot of those innovations. But I think the way that we're approaching of bringing people along the journey for AI and supporting them in readiness for these types of solutions is something that we're hearing from our customers and hearing from our community is very differentiated. Joel (30:07.666) your geographical footprint? it US only or do you have customers in other countries and what does that look like growth wise? Noelle (30:13.378) Yeah, we're now global, but the vast majority of our customers are going to be North America based, but they are going to have a global footprint. So they're going to want to be able to look at international data and, you know, geographically how the employee journey differs. Joel (30:33.362) Chad, this sounds really, really expensive to me. I'm a little scared of the price tag. Now, well, let us know and our listeners know, what am I going to pay for this service? Noelle (30:43.438) Yeah, so the good thing is, again, we're a SaaS solution. And so what we've been able to do is build this in a way where we're sharing those learnings and we're distributing the learnings across companies. We do a per employee per month price point for Luminous. We're typically working with companies one to two years at least at a time. But we cost less than the cost of a full-time employee for an organization. So we're really able to leapfrog organizations to having both access to their own data, but then the learnings and the improvements across customers. Joel (31:29.84) It's an answer. There weren't any numbers in that answer, but it was an answer. All right, Noel, the Q &A is over. Are you ready to face the firing squad? Chad (31:32.957) Hahaha! Noelle (31:40.174) I am. Joel (31:41.65) All right, get her Chad. Chad (31:43.64) She's excited. All right. Right out of the gate, as I'd said earlier, this is a huge, huge, huge tam. There's so many issues. The data's dirty. You're looking at people data, which focusing on attrition, salary. There are whole platforms that are dedicated to one thing, pay equity. Right. And you're doing salary, internal mobility, performance, quality of hire, quality of source. But I mean, this is a small list compared to what you guys I'm sure are focusing on. So trying to get one of those right is going to be tough. But but I got to say. First and foremost, Noel, one of the things as I advise or I'm actually brought on as an advisor. Number one thing is the founder. I like you. I like your background. I like how you're talking about data, capital efficiency. As soon as you said that, I almost fell in love. AI is a commodity. Data is queen and you're digging into that dirty data and making sense of it. LLMs can't get into these walled gardens, data lakes, data oceans. They can't. Not enough focus is happening in this space. You can be a vizier pilot fish and make a killing. Core platforms don't want to build this. Partnership, partnership, partnership. Noel, you light up my life. You give me hope. This is a big applause. Joel (33:14.66) Almost fell in love. Almost. Not quite. Not quite there. Yeah. Chad (33:15.148) Good job. Noelle (33:17.29) wait, that was the golf clap. That was a really good golf clap. Chad (33:21.654) No, that was a big applause. That was a big applause. Joel (33:21.874) No, that was applause. That was a rousing applause. That was a rousing applause. And when he says background, he doesn't mean your actual background, which is very cool. Kind of a real Southern esque background. so one of the things in Chad mentioned, we talked a lot of startups and, and TA folks and a consistent challenge is making sense of what all these fucking SAS tools that I buy are doing for me. Noelle (33:23.457) that was a big pause. Great. Chad (33:30.446) Yeah Chad (33:51.074) Yes. Joel (33:51.43) They're telling me what they're doing, but I don't really know. I'll take them at their word. I'll believe them. You have a really good triangular strategy of saying, we're unbiased. Give us the data. We'll give it to you in an unbiased way, in an objective way. And then you can make your decisions on what kind of vendors you use and who you renew with. I think you're going to save companies a lot of money by not just blindly re-upping with a service that they don't really know what the hell they're getting. for their money. So I think you're solving a very real problem with a lot of companies. If you can start talking about how much you saving companies based on not having to re up, services that they're using, I think that's, that's a, that's a huge win for you. You're growing out of a way that I like, you've taken very little money. your bootstrapped you underscore that you're using a free Delta headphones on this call. Chad (34:47.296) Ha ha! Joel (34:49.106) I think you're just showing off a little bit. headphones don't cost a lot. Yeah. There you go. Shout out to Delta. Shout out. She wants the diamond status. Everybody she wants the, if you're listening Delta, she's willing to trade an Illoominus. Illoominus license. Yeah. Illoominus license for a diamond diamond, status. so you're growing in a way that I like your team is small. It looks like about seven on the website. Noelle (34:50.308) Shout out to my hometown airline. Chad (34:53.72) Too, too far, too far, too far. Chad (34:59.16) Ben 10 bucks, Noel. Noelle (35:02.18) Chad, you were wondering earlier how you're gonna get diamond. I'm just saying. Sponsored over here. Joel (35:17.69) Now there is, there's a little fear of me. You you spent some time in Texas. There's a Texas phrase, all cat, all hat, no cattle. you gave me some answers that were non-answers. You kind of danced around some stuff, which makes me a little fearful that what are you hiding? What, what, why wouldn't you tell me pricing? You have a marketing person, but you're not doing marketing. like a little witty, leery about that, but I do think that the problem you're solving. is so big. I can't name any competitors really, which is why I kind of pushed you on that. And then either you're bullshitting me or you really don't have many competitors. are an acquisition darling. Some big fish is going to eat you up. You have not taken hardly any money. So your investors are going to be very happy. You're going to be very happy when that day comes. So for me, yeah, aside from the straight shooter, issue and what am I really, you know, what am I getting from you, Noel? I don't have any cute illuminating comments like Chad does. He's good at that, but I as well. I'm gonna give you a rousing applause and on the doorstep of Thanksgiving, we'll probably air this in Christmas because of the Noel thing. I think that'd be cute, but give thanks to your double rainbow big applause for Illoominus. Now for our listeners who want to know more about you, maybe find out what your pricing actually is. Where would they go? Chad (36:31.01) Hello. Noelle (36:38.116) love that. Chad (36:45.944) Good job. Noelle (36:53.112) Go to our website and I'll spell it for you so that you don't have to be a really good speller. It's I-L-L-O-O-M-I-N-U-S.com. If you guys wouldn't mind putting in the show notes. Go to our website. We've got demos up there. Schedule some time with our team and we'd love to learn more about what you're focused on for this year and if we can help. Chad (37:05.923) Of course. Joel (37:16.114) Yep. And she's going to go out and buy like a dozen misspellings of Illoominus.com. So don't worry about how you spell it. That's right. Go daddy's going to be happy. Chad, that is another one in the can. We out. Chad (37:17.079) Love it. Noelle (37:21.058) That's what I'm going to go do for the rest of the day. Thank you. Chad (37:21.134) Do do it quick Chad (37:30.518) way out Noelle (37:31.361) Thank you.

AUDIO VERSION In this riotous episode of the Chad and Cheese Podcast, Joel and Chad cover everything from sleep-deprived dog tales to the latest "Skynet Lite" drone news out of New Jersey. Spoiler: It’s like a Black Mirror episode, but with more traffic violations. They dissect corporate stress management—or lack thereof—with a jaw-dropping story about a company firing employees for  being stressed. Nothing says "we care about mental health" like a pink slip for looking frazzled at the water cooler. Next up: AI in recruitment and marketing. Translation: robots deciding your job future while probably judging your LinkedIn photo. They even squeeze in a fantasy football update, proving that even AI can’t predict how badly your QB will tank this week. The boys also tackle AI in education via Khanmigo, a platform designed to help teachers personalize learning—or, as it’s known in schools, "please make grading less soul-crushing." Rounding things out, they ponder the job-crushing potential of AI, the soft skills hiring managers actually want (hint: it’s not being good at Excel), and whether nuclear energy can power our TikTok-fueled future—or if TikTok will be banned before the next viral dance craze. It’s a wild ride through tech, trends, and corporate chaos—with enough snark to power a small city. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:25.984) Awwwwwwwwe YEAAAAAAAAAAH! Joel (00:32.454) As cuddly as a cactus and the other is charming as an eel. Hi kids, it's the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Mystery Drones Cheesman. Chad (00:37.538) Yes. Chad (00:43.906) And this is Chad, you're stressing me out. Sowash. Joel (00:46.996) And on this episode, branching out is TikTok out and what you talking about. Let's do this. Chad (00:55.064) Willis? Joel (00:57.824) That wasn't a very good Gary Coleman, circa 82 different strokes, was it? Man, I am tired today. Here's why. Little story. So the wife is out of town, which means sometimes Peepers gets to come into bed and Peepers has the Jimmy leg. He snores, he farts, like he's a nightmare to sleep with. But at 13 years old, which I think is like 94 in human years, Chad (01:00.91) Let's do this, Willis. Chad (01:12.302) parties. Chad (01:25.196) You allowed it. Yeah. Joel (01:27.44) I can't, I don't have the heart to kick him out of bed. So I just have a shitty night's instead of, kicking the dog out. don't know if that's, that's, you know, that's, that's humanitarian that I am, but I slept, I slept really poorly. In addition to that, are you, are you seeing this news about the drones over in New Jersey? Are you getting that in Portugal? Chad (01:40.046) appreciate that. Chad (01:43.885) Yes. Chad (01:51.394) I am not. I am not. Joel (01:53.172) The news is freaking me out, Chad. First we had aliens in the ocean. Okay. We had people go in front of Congress, talk about alien ships in the ocean. And now we have drones over New Jersey, apparently other parts of the world. We're not shooting these. The government doesn't know what they are. We can't shoot them out. Apparently they disappear if we get too close or something. It's just really, really weird. We don't know. That's the problem. Some congressmen said they think there's a mothership. Chad (02:16.75) Are they alien drones? What the, mean what? come on. Joel (02:22.496) an Iranian mothership that's launching these things. The Pentagon said that's bullshit. People are saying China, people are saying the aliens are finally here and they're, they're hooking, they're, they're setting up in New York, the tri-state area with drones. It's just, it's, and these things are apparently as big as a car or a truck. These aren't like the recreational drones that your kids got for Christmas. Like these are huge drones. It's really creeping me out. Yeah. It's the, it's the end of the, the end is near. Chad (02:25.164) Ha ha ha ha! Chad (02:35.992) with drones. Okay. Chad (02:48.866) Really? Wow. Yeah, no, that does end of the world as we know. Yeah, no, I've been watching a bunch of YouTube videos about how Ukraine has beaten the shit out of Russia with drones. I love it. You got like Mattel toys that are taking these T-90 tanks out. That to me is the coolest thing ever. This little thing, a little block of C4 on it right into the crease of the turret and a multi-million dollar tank. A dud. That's pretty amazing. So yeah. Joel (02:52.639) telling you. Joel (03:07.072) Mm-hmm. Joel (03:13.45) Mm-hmm. Joel (03:17.246) Yeah, they got drones look like birds. got like it's the, the, the, the world of warfare is going into some weird places and I'm not sure it's, it's great for humanity, but anyway. Chad (03:25.837) I know this. not that, none of this is going to be great for humanity, kids. None of it. None of it. Joel (03:33.384) Yeah, let's just get to shout outs, which you know is sponsored by our friends. Chad (03:38.526) at Kiura. Joel (03:39.864) up north. That's right. Keora, the key to, solid and inexpensive text recruiting. That's I just made it there. Tagline the key to text recruiting, text recruiting. What do you got? I got, I got, I'm to go first for shout outs because I gotta, I gotta come back from the, the, ledge a little bit. there's a, there's a new documentary on HBO or max, whatever you prefer to call it. It's on yacht rock. Chad (03:42.07) Mm-hmm. Yora. That was nice. The key to Yora. Yeah. Okay. Chad (03:57.774) You Chad (04:02.2) Do tell. Joel (04:04.84) It's called yacht rock documentary and documentary is spelled D O C K like dock of a boat, I guess. But if, if you lived around the late seventies to early eighties, mean, Steely Dan Toto, Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, like I smiled half the episode. It like just the memories, the cool laid back California, just the sounds. mean, Michael McDonald with the hair and the beard, Chad (04:06.944) Nice. Chad (04:20.11) Christopher Cross. yeah. Joel (04:33.962) Just a really great feel good documentary if you remember those times. Yeah, you gotta watch it. I highly recommend it. Yacht Rock documentary on Max. Check it out. Chad (04:37.311) watching that that's for sure. Chad (04:44.928) Yeah, the Christopher cross a guy who looks like you but has the voice of an angel. MTV MTV is what killed that man's career because he looked like baby Ui. But he had a he had a great voice right and MTV I mean, Joel (04:50.836) Ha ha ha ha! Joel (05:01.288) And the industry, you're kind of spoiling it, but they talk about the demise of yacht rock. was, it was MTV. Like if you didn't have the look, if you couldn't perform on camera, if you weren't Duran Duran or Madonna, like you were out. So, but also a little bit of, a little bit of spoiler. a lot of the Toto guys were responsible for a lot of the thriller, and Michael Jackson's career. So there is, there is a link there. I won't spoil it, but, you gotta check it out. It's pretty, if you like music history, it's also very. Chad (05:04.366) yeah. Yeah. Chad (05:12.11) Luckily Kenny Loggins was a good looking guy. Yeah. Chad (05:23.723) really? Okay. Okay. That's good. Joel (05:31.508) Very interesting. yeah, shout out to Yacht Rock and the Yacht Rock documentary. Chad (05:32.86) yeah, nothing. Nothing but a good yacht rock playlist on Spotify kids go check it out. Yeah. Well, my shout out goes to workplace stress. Why? Because it's a problem Joel. It's a problem. Recently. Yes, madam and in house spa service was in house spa service was seemingly concerned, concerned about the Joel (05:40.94) yeah, totally. Totally. Joel (05:49.376) Mm-hmm. Joel (05:56.288) Ha ha ha ha! Chad (06:01.28) workplace stress of their employees and it's understandable because 62 % of Indian employees experience burnout, which is about triple the global average due to work related stress and poor work life balance. 12 billion working days are estimated to be lost every year around the world to anxiety and depression. That's 96 billion working hours lost. Productivity gone down the drain because people are stressed the fuck out. So Yes, madam, did the only prudent thing that you should do. You should survey your employees, find out who needs help. Well, yes, madam did that. And just after receiving the results, sent the following email from yes, madam's go figure, very empathetic HR manager, which was then leaked to linked in, quote, recently we conducted a survey to understand your feelings about stress at work. Joel (06:32.256) Mm-hmm. Chad (06:57.398) Many of you shared your concerns, which we deeply value and respect as a company committed to fostering a healthy and supportive environment. I love this already. We have carefully considered the feedback to ensure that no one remains stressed at work. have the difficult decision to part ways with employees who indicated significant stress. This decision is effective immediately. Impacted employees will receive further details separately. End quote. Wow. Apparently, yes, madam solution to high stress for 100 employees was a you're fired, because losing your job isn't stressful at all. No, wait, no, it's stressful as fuck. So yes, madam denies they fired or laid off anyone. wait, Joel. So yes, it's just a misunderstanding. Right? Like, again, the just a couple of excerpts, kids. Joel (07:29.93) That is not a happy ending, Chad. That is not a happy ending for those employees. Joel (07:57.472) Mm-hmm. Chad (07:57.646) quote, we have made the difficult decision to part ways and quote, and quote, this decision is effective immediately and quote, neither of those two sound like go to the spa for a day, right? So yes, madam, was this a, was this a stunt? Did they care? Who knows? It's just, this is, this is, this is the asshole of the week kids, the asshole company of the week. Joel (08:10.816) Mm-hmm. Joel (08:22.078) Yeah, yeah. And we actually have the message before Grammarly, Nye stood up a little bit. Chad (08:27.926) You Good day, ma'am. Joel (08:34.174) Jeez, that is fucked up. All right. my shout out, a second shout out goes to artisan, artisan AI. We've talked about them on the show. They are the company that is creating AI, workers. So your sales staff, your customer service staff, this is all going to be automated by a company called artisan of one of the many, but anyway, they have ads running now at bus stops and billboards in San Francisco that have digital people. Chad (08:37.118) Exactly. Chad (08:55.534) Crazy. Crazy. Joel (09:04.028) With the message on the ad that says stop hiring humans, artisan, et cetera, et cetera. Now. So critics are coming out. Reddit apparently is blowing up. people are calling this a dystopian nightmare, but Chad, I call it good marketing. Good marketing is, is marketing that enrages people, gets people on, on X and Reddit and gets everyone fired up. so for my, for my take, shout out to artisan, the startup. They raised about a million and half dollars. say they're on their way. Keep your eye out on these guys. Stop hiring humans. Add. know it. I know it gets your heart heart all, all excited for sure, but yes, it does get attention whether you agree with it or not. Artisan. Chad (09:44.28) Yeah. Yeah, apparently, yes, madam and artisan have the same PR agency. So so we're not traveling, but we are traveling. And if we weren't traveling, shaker recruitment marketing would be powering the travel. But in lieu of travel, we always do free stuff. So doesn't matter. Free stuff by Chad. She's got to go to Chad cheese.com slash free. What could you register to win? What Joel what t shirts? Joel (09:51.956) You Joel (10:13.882) so much goodness. Chad (10:15.79) T-shirts the beautiful soft cuddly t-shirts that are Chad and cheese t-shirts that are sponsored by our friends at Aaron app bourbon barrel aged syrup they're so so amazing on the waffles by Kiara Beer craft beer by Aspen Tech Labs. Love those kids whiskey two bottles two bottles you can buy Tex Colonel Birthdays if it's your birthday and you want some rum Joel (10:29.888) So good. Joel (10:34.505) Mm-hmm. Chad (10:44.492) You can get it from plum. That's right. Plum.io. Got to go to ChadCheese.com. Flash free. Joel (10:53.45) That's right, Chad. Some listeners are celebrating another trip around the sun, including Matt Miller, Kim Stewart, Lars Kuz, Chaz Johnson, Patrick Hodgdon, Lana Schuman, Craig Anderson, Bob Scruggs, Paul Gunderson, Brandy Dawson, Tanya Truelove, Charlene Williams, Natalie Coxworth, Matt Stubbsy Stubbs, Alen Bailey, Anub Gupta. Chad (10:58.434) Mm-hmm. Chad (11:14.466) There he is. Joel (11:16.87) And some chick named Julie, so wash happy birthday to everybody celebrating another year. What'd you guys do for her birthday? Chad (11:19.948) There she is. There she is. Went out to eat, sat and enjoyed Portugal. I mean, it's what we do every day. Every day is Julie's birthday. I mean, that's just the way it is. Joel (11:34.752) By way, remember Monica Evgie, Evie, whatever. So she messaged me this week and said, if by chance I'm on the giveaway upcoming, I'd really love some of that syrup. So Kiara making a difference in Monica's life. A little bird tells me she might get some maple syrup here pretty soon. Yeah, she might get some goodness. Which brings us Chad, one of my favorites. Chad (11:38.768) yeah, yeah. I take them, okay. Chad (11:49.05) Hahaha Chad (11:53.526) Yes. She she might get some maple syrup. That's nice. Yeah. Joel (12:03.594) parts of the show, although it's, it's in the fourth quarter fantasy football by our friends at factory fix. we're going into the final season of, of the regular season. After that it's it's playoffs baby. Top four next four. Like it's, going to be interesting. So here's your leaderboard going into the last week of the regular season. Dean, the daddy back macro man, the guy from down under just keeps, he stays, he stays on top. man from down under. Chad (12:09.102) There it is. Get ready. Chad (12:15.742) Mm-hmm. Playoffs? Chad (12:25.516) Mm-hmm. He's killing it. Killing it. I know. I know. Joel (12:32.228) I I'm sticking out number two spot followed by you with a bullet coming up at the number three spot. David Stiefel, Keith Sonderling, Keith could be the upset guy. If he wins this week, he could move into that, that playoff position. the commissioner might have his best trick safe for last followed by Laura Martinelli, Christie Lisbon, action Jackson, Dalquist, Dina, para for pyros number 10, Jennifer Terry. Chad (12:36.258) What? Chad (12:42.542) It could be. It could be. Yeah. Yup. Chad (12:56.236) Mm-hmm. Joel (12:59.336) Sean Horton, here's a who stays at that 11 spot and scooping up the shit at the back of the parade is our friend Adam Borden, apparently. Joel (13:12.0) Apparently some things out of Scotland are crap. Stay away from fantasy American football to our Scottish friends. But that is another week of fantasy football brought to you by our friends at factory fix, which rolls us right into. Chad (13:25.582) think I play the Commish this week. Atopics! I think I'm playing the Commish this week. Joel (13:33.364) Who do you have this week? Joel (13:38.034) Okay. So if he wins, does that drop you to like the fifth and he comes now? No chance. Okay. Well, anyway. Chad (13:39.148) I think. No, nope. Nope. Yeah, no, no. I have the second most points in the league at number three. yeah. It's all about luck and timing, baby. Luck and timing. That's right. Joel (13:48.862) Yeah. And I have the least amount of the playoff teams currently, but you gotta win. You gotta win, man. You gotta win. All right. Let's, let's go into some education as if our show hasn't been educational enough. from a recent episode of 60 minutes con Migo, con an AI tutor is now in 266 us schools. Chad (14:01.198) Chad (14:05.952) Mmm. Yeah. Joel (14:13.0) It offers rapid lesson planning and interactive learning by encouraging critical thinking over rote answers. It's been tested for its ability to provide feedback, detect plagiarism and personalized learning with plans for integrating advanced vision technology. This tool aims to revolutionize teaching by providing time-saving benefits and tailored educational experiences while maintaining the importance of human interaction and education. Sounds too good to be true, Chad. What are your thoughts on Chad (14:40.568) Mmm. Joel (14:42.752) Han Migo and the AI in the classroom trend. Chad (14:47.638) So have you ever used Khan Academy? It is fucking amazing. I remember when kids were in middle school and high school and they'd have homework questions. And in many cases, I would pull up Khan Academy to search for the type of math equations or what have you. And we would solve them together. Because to be quite frank, you know, I was rusty, right? And whenever your kids come to you with questions, you want to at least try to help, right? Well, I knew I didn't. I was rusty. I needed a little Khan Academy, so I used Khan Academy and it was fun for both of us. It was really cool experience. So I am a huge fan of Sol Kahn. And let's just put it this way. I'm going put it out in the universe, kids. Sol Kahn should be leading the Department of Education in the US. He created Khan Academy in 2006 where he used recorded videos of himself teaching how to solve math problems for his nephews. Joel (15:30.761) it out there. Chad (15:44.94) And then he scaled it to help teach math and science to thousands via video with math, engineering and computer science degrees from MIT. He's not a dumb guy. genius was amplified with money from the Gates Foundation, allowing Khan Academy to reach millions. Right. So now Khanmigo is being piloted by 266 school districts in the U.S. providing teaching assistance for teachers and personal tutors for kids. We have an education problem in the US and in many countries all over the world. We don't have enough teaching talent. Those teachers are being stretched way too thin with bigger and bigger classes. And then, in their off slash downtime, they need to create lesson plans that could take hours, days, maybe even weeks. So having the right people in place to guide the tech and then allowing LLMs to learn then scale support as teacher assistants or tutors is exactly what AI was used for. We hear about all these bad, deep fakes, hallucinations, but what about the great stuff? This is the great stuff and we need to have more humans like Sal Khan doing the good work. This is, think, one of the best stories of 2024. Joel (17:04.96) That's nice. So necessity is the mother of invention. And here's a few numbers for you. There are currently 55,000 vacant teaching positions in America. 270,000 of those are filled by under qualified teachers. The annual salary for a teacher is 8 % less than the average wage for all workers in the country. a recent survey of teachers, 40 % of them say they're Chad (17:16.012) Mmm, yeah. Joel (17:34.782) looking to leave the profession in the next two years. So we need something teaching our kids. And if we're not going to pay people like the rock stars they are to teach, which doesn't seem like something that's going to happen. I've called for it on the show quite a, quite a bit. They should all get six figures coming out of college to teach schools. if local state governments don't want to pay teachers, they should be able to find a way to pay. Chad (17:41.432) Yeah. Chad (17:54.344) hell yeah. Joel (18:03.072) I think it's $15 per student to have this technology in the classroom makes a teacher's job that much easier, much more interactive and engaging. It's able to get in front of every student and be a friend. The ability to track students are having a hard time, which ones are having a hard time. It's basically bringing AI, what we talk about in the workforce, into the classroom. Who's struggling? Who's excelling? Where do they need help? Who should I focus on today? All that AI and that data comes in. Chad (18:07.948) So. Joel (18:31.028) to teaching, which makes it a lot more efficient. I love the visual stuff. Like to be able to watch you, you know, the, the, the, where's the brain go? Like, excellent. goes in the head. Like where's the liver? You know, it's on the other side. so this is the future. has to be because we're not going to pay teachers what, what we should, but we can find ways to pay for, for technology. my hope is that it dem dem dem democratizes. Chad (18:40.056) Yeah. Yeah. Joel (18:57.888) Education. so our rural kids, urban, know, urban inner city kids that don't have good teachers, two full classrooms, don't get any attention, is, hopefully going to happen. I do have some fear that the equipment that you need, which isn't crazy, right? You need desktops, know, you need laptops, need a tablets. A lot of school districts don't have the money to have those things. rural districts. Chad (18:57.954) Yeah. Joel (19:25.632) Broadband internet is not common in a lot of rural areas. 25 % was the last number I saw. 5 % of urban areas don't have broadband internet. So some of those things have to happen for this to really come to fruition. But again, like you said, if we're going to spend money, it's a lot easier to spend money on technology and the equipment to do those things than it is to hire people and keep those people happy in a job. The one criticism or the one nuance I think of this is that Chad (19:46.2) scales. Joel (19:54.44) The examples they had on 60 minutes were pretty much the sciences. So it was math, was biology, was kind of stuff like one plus one equals two. When you get into stuff like history, the social studies, the things that there's nuance around, I wonder how the technology can give you different aspects of different events in history, right? Because things can be looked at differently. So I'd like to see it in that. in that aspect of education, but there's no question that for our kids to be educated, something has to happen. And it looks like AI for all its scariness that is permeating society. If we can educate a lot more kids and get them on the road to success, I think that is a fantastic thing. this is a feel good story for sure. If you haven't seen it, go to YouTube, search 60 minutes. Chad (20:34.274) Hmm. Chad (20:49.934) it's awesome. Conmigo. K-H-A-N. Yeah. I mean, so we can, I think, pretty much all agree that one plus one is two, right? And so the math and science stuff is pretty solid. The hard part is... Joel (20:50.666) Conmigo and it's about 15 minutes of good stuff. Yeah, for good stuff. Chad (21:06.158) You know, the the the history around, you know, very volatile figures like Hitler or things of that nature. Right. When you have individuals who are out there who are like, well, he did some good stuff, you know, so I can see why they haven't gotten into that. And they might not. Right. They they they they just might not just because of, you know, how how flaming. Bullshit is happening all over the place. Yeah. Joel (21:18.922) Yeah. Joel (21:24.532) Mm-hmm. Joel (21:32.256) Sure. Well, this is the story in Florida, right? you know, I, I can tell you, Chad, I, I had the fortunate, setup of, in Indiana in fifth grade, get Indiana history in Texas in seventh grade, you get Texas history. the book in Texas is about that thick and Indiana it's about like that thick, but that's a different story. And I can tell you that the description of slavery in Indiana history is just a little bit different than the description of slavery. Chad (21:44.142) jeez. Mm-hmm. Chad (21:51.053) Yeah. Chad (22:00.493) I'm sure it is. Yeah, in the South. Joel (22:02.248) It is in Texas. So how is AI going to handle those nuances throughout history will be interesting. Chad (22:09.076) Mmm, it will be, much like. Joel (22:14.686) What you talking about Willis? Let's talk about what jobs Chad, what a London based job search engine founded in 2019 will launch in the U S in January of 2025, appointing Angie Brooks X ad Zuna to lead the organization. Brooks with 25 years in recruitment will hope to enhance ties with recruiters and drive us growth. The platform will introduce AI job matching, of course. Chad (22:16.354) Yeah Who? Who? Joel (22:42.546) offering curated job selections to improve what they say is better efficiency. Another senior hire is planned for January, 2025 to aid this expansion. Chad, what's up with what jobs? Chad (22:56.974) Angie Brooks is a player man in our space. She's a player. I mean back in the early aughts. She was with True Star Solutions. Remember those guys out of Indianapolis. Then she was with Next for 10 years and then she obviously did some time in Edzuna. Now I've never heard of what jobs until recently but it's as you'd said a London based company. So I reached out to some friends in the UK for some insights. I mean a company trying to break into the US has to Joel (23:05.29) Hmm. Chad (23:26.124) be a known entity in the UK, right? Well, the answer is no. My contacts knew little to nothing about what job, and it's pretty simple to understand because Europe is a duration-based market. They haven't gone all in on performance-based. So here are the three problems I'm saying for Angie and the crew. Problem number one, they are a performance-based platform in the UK, a duration-based market. That's an issue. They're selling a product to a market that just isn't buying. Problem number two, they only sell CPC, which is a signal that they're just looking for a money grab and or that's just another signal that their tech is prehistoric. Only been around from 2020 though. Problem number three. They want to come to the US, which is where they should have started. And the timing is not great. So there's light at the end of the tunnel. We've seen performance based companies like Sonic jobs start in the UK and successfully cracked the US market. The big difference is that Sonic is much more than basic PPC. They're providing advanced tech and brought on advisors who knew go to market and how to properly crack the US market. everybody in the US does Joel (24:33.535) you Chad (24:41.972) CPC. That's fucking table stakes. So what's so special about what jobs? We've also seen companies like Vonk who are duration and performance based. Vonk tried crack in the US market, hired some great US talent, and then in the very short time found themselves sounding the retreat horn back to the European shores. So I really hope that what jobs has a big funding round. Joel (24:54.163) you Chad (25:10.952) that they're preparing to announce along with this other senior position because if they want to come to the US, they're going to need a lot of cash, going to need a lot of cash. Joel (25:16.17) Mm-hmm. Joel (25:26.196) Or they could just hire art zeal from dice and then it's, and it's all gravy. It's all gravy from there. yeah. Tell me if you've heard this one before. I don't know. Auto new vo now talent.com jobs, careers, job.com ad Zuna. mentioned a few, apparently there are 10,000 job sites. this is per Chris Foreman, that cast who we interviewed recently. Like it's really, really hard to have a job board. and cut through the noise and the clutter and make an impact. Like, was it, mean, well, 30,000 sites, I think, but I think he's, said 10,000 job boards. and I don't, don't, Angie Brooks can walk on water. I like show me the go-to-market show me the money. Show me what you're going to do to spend because they are as, they are as traditional a job site as I've seen in a long time. Like they still have the links at the bottom of like every. Chad (25:59.342) thought he said 30,000. I think he said, yeah, I think he 30,000. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Chad (26:22.318) Hmm. Joel (26:25.298) every location, every job, like all the SEO stuff. so like you have your job cut out for you no matter what. indeed in LinkedIn kind of have 80 % of what's going on. That leaves the 20 % left for you. and you're coming into this market out of the UK, hire some people, but you better spend some money. You better spend some pounds. You better get some sterling. You better like drop some coin. and then it's just a game of like keep Chad (26:39.096) Mm-hmm. Chad (26:50.35) Mm-hmm. Joel (26:52.97) keep spending because once you stop spending the traffic dries up and the attention and the jobs dry up as well. I Okay, we'll see. Good luck. Good luck, Angie. Angie must love getting hit in the head on a regular basis because that's what she's going to deal with, is these guys try to come into the market for sure. Chad (27:08.27) Well, she is in strategic partnership. So yeah, that's kind of part of the job. Joel (27:16.274) I mean, who's she partnering with? Facebook? mean, shit better be huge. They don't, and they don't even have a TikTok presence, Chad. What kind of job board today that wants to break into America? It doesn't have a TikTok. TikTok platform. Jeez, jeez. Chad (27:21.646) yeah, I don't know. Chad (27:26.647) god. god. Joel (27:36.436) Good luck, Angie. Good luck. What's up? What up? What jobs? We'll be right back. Joel (27:46.976) All right, Chad, from one company to another. And this one, this one is not out of England. They are out of Canada. Chad (27:58.286) Grenada. Grenada. Joel (28:00.052) Hiring Branch, a Montreal company focused on evaluating job candidate soft skills, has secured 3.5 million USD in a Series A funding round. The funds will support expansion into markets in North and Latin America, Asia and the UK. Founded in 2014, Hiring Branch specifically uses AI to assess soft skills through interactive voice and chat, aiming to reduce the need for traditional interviews. Chad, your thoughts on this deal? And did you bring your Montreal Canadiens jersey to Portugal? Chad (28:32.398) I did not because it's heavy and I don't need something heavy on when it's nice and warm here. First off, reached out to Beth, you know, friends with the the peeps over at hiring branch love them to death in a study entitled accurately measuring soft skills, large language models versus hiring branch quote hiring branch ran a series of fine tuning experiments using the Dilbert machine learning technology. No, that's not. Joel (28:33.194) Okay. Joel (28:43.996) Yeah, yeah. Chad (29:01.208) Dilbert's that's distill a Burt distill Burt. Yeah, I'm using distill Burt to measure what the accuracy it's soft skill predictions would have on different various data sets while equipped with billions of variables large public data sets led to poor accuracy results. Meaning there wasn't enough data for an algorithm to learn to detect soft skills accurately, end quote. So Very simple. We've talked about this story before. In this very early era of mass AI adoption, it's starting to become clearer and clearer that the large language models are powerful engines, but the training data sets are the rocket fuel. And without the right fuel, your engine just doesn't perform. So yes, hyper-focused point solutions will easily outperform massive LLMs, at least in the very early era of AI. The key for all of these vendors is to do exactly what hiring branch is doing. Hone in on your expertise, find a market that will buy it and then sell the living hell out of it. And wait, wait for that &A hiring department to come knocking. Wait, hopefully many of them come knocking because as we've seen the shift in tech, Joel (30:13.376) Mm-hmm. Chad (30:27.254) There are going to be many less companies who want to become quote unquote a platform and they're going to be just a killer point solution that's going to be gobbled up by some of these bigger Goliath platforms that are more legacy, although have a shit ton of cash. Joel (30:39.028) Mm-hmm. Joel (30:45.376) Did I mention my wife is French Canadian in the, in the opening? Probably did not. yeah, I, I'm a little biased in the sexiest language in my opinion, probably French. God. so yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm biased. I like, I like the gang and hiring branch. we've done at least one event. I took my wife out to Montreal. They took us to a Canadian's game. Like very nice people. Stefan is great. Chad (30:47.598) I didn't sound Canadian. Chad (31:00.482) deal with Columbia. Chad (31:13.218) Yeah, Canadians. Joel (31:15.552) I, I first, I met a company in 2003, think, called Psymax who did assessments and they, and they, they spewed all this thing about algorithm and science and PhDs and it felt like witchcraft to me then. And it still feels kind of witchcrafty to me now. when I look at tradeify plum hired score, like tradeify to say, we just, show some images and we can like, Chad (31:30.062) Mm-hmm. Joel (31:45.566) That all seems so witchcrafty and beyond, guess, sort of my P brain. But the proof was in the pudding. Companies use this stuff and apparently retention goes up, hiring is faster. I did love the initial messaging from a hiring branch. was like, fuck interviews. Still have the t-shirt, got a t-shirt from them. Chad (32:05.189) Yes. Yeah. Now that's great PR. Joel (32:09.906) If it's good stuff, Evan white, shout out to our friend, Evan white, for that one, probably. And, Beth as well, marketing person there. if it works, it works and companies love this shit. Like if you can take out interviewing from the process and these guys have a way to do it with assessments, I mean, obviously paradox, everyone is kind of trying to do this. If they can do it and do it well, there's a market there for it. There's like, there, there are companies that will do it. And I think there's a huge amount of runway for growth. Chad (32:29.239) Mm-hmm. Joel (32:37.244) And to me, that is probably driving what is going on at this company. mean, Canada, large landmass, 30 some million people, like it's, California. So if you can get a little, little fuel to get this thing out into more of North America, the UK, I love the Latin America angle was really interesting as well. Like you can scale this thing up and make a real business. So I, although I don't claim to understand all the shit that goes on in these assessments and testing tools. I do appreciate the growth rate of what's going on and what these companies are doing. I say party on Wayne, party on Garth. This is good stuff, as far as I can tell. Chad (33:16.61) Sounds like a land and expand when they're doing the, or the talk about Latin America and those types of things where they actually have clients, obviously, that are either Canadian or US and they're expanding into different markets. So just again, for our friends at Hiring Branch, don't start getting salespeople into Latin America. Don't fucking do it. Just focus on Canadia and the Americas. Joel (33:23.253) Yeah. Chad (33:43.026) And then expand where those companies, those new clients take you. just for friendly advice. Joel (33:47.646) Yeah. Yeah, I do keep in touch with Stefan occasionally. I know he's in Asia a lot. mean, Asia is like a third of the population. So that's a huge opportunity. Chad (33:58.991) Bangkok? What's he doing over there? Joel (34:05.324) geez, speaking of Latin America. All right, let's go. Let's talk about, let's talk about Metta. One of your faves. Metta is exploring nuclear energy for its AI projects, targeting operational reactors by the early 2030s, aligning with Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. AI's rising energy needs and carbon-free goals drive this initiative despite nuclear safety concerns and historically bad PR. Chad (34:07.011) my god. Chad (34:14.638) Mmm. Joel (34:34.106) the inflation reduction act offers nuclear incentives, but these might change under Donald Trump states like Utah and Texas are backing nuclear for its carbon benefits. Chad, what are your thoughts on the growing need and adoption of nuclear energy? Chad (34:50.094) So I mean, a question to chat GPT takes about 10 to 30 times more energy than a traditional Google search, depending on its complexity. Training a large language model like OpenAI's chat GPT, for example, uses nearly 1,300 megawatts. hours of electricity that the annual consumption of 130 US homes and by 2026 it's estimated that collective generative AI models will use more energy than all of Japan. Now, Microsoft recently announced that CO2 emissions has risen nearly 30 % since 2020 due to data center expansion and Google's 2023 greenhouse gas emissions up 50 % higher than it was in 2019. So we want to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but the use of and development of AI isn't slowing down. So we need to have something done. Something has to be done fast. Well, I mean, unless you really like, you know, crazy weather patterns, flooding, cyclone bombs, atmospheric rivers, and know, shit like that. Which which I'm not a huge fan of. I'm not a huge fan. So what happens when Microsoft, Amazon, Google Meta and other massive corporations start pulling more and more and more energy from the grid? Well, neighborhoods have to use rolling blackouts because I mean, some of these guys are talking about creating their own. Joel (35:59.88) Mysterious drones in New Jersey, yeah, that kind of stuff. Chad (36:20.994) but you know they're gonna be tapping into the local grid as well. So I mean, would the demand be too much and drive energy prices higher? That's something that they've actually seen is that the demand's been too high just for nuclear and they've had to go back to fossil fuels as a secondary, which boosts the prices. So we're really going to have to be smart about how we do all of this this power plant, whether it's you know, whether it's wind, solar, it doesn't matter what it is. Is nuclear the answer? Fuck man, I don't know. But we're talking about single data centers that would require power of a major city and some companies like Google are planning to build, like, again, their very own their very own power plants. But to me, AI is not slowing down, it's consumed faster. We've got to feed it, but we're running out of data. We're running out of energy. What's next? I mean, this to me does nothing but bring more fucking questions about where are we going? And it's kind of scary. I think the drones is that's a a that's that's a fun, happy story compared to this shit. Joel (37:33.618) Aliens in the ocean Chad aliens in the ocean Chad (37:37.614) This feels like feels like the matrix. It does. Joel (37:39.572) Yeah. Weird times, weird times. So I a couple angles on this. you know, speaking of yacht rock and the seventies and early eighties, I mean, you, you and I remember a thing called three mile Island. we were at an age where we didn't understand it, but people were scared to death and there was a lot of news about it. there was a movie called silkwood, I think, that came out, to that a few years later, we had Chernobyl, which scared the shit out of everybody. there's a great. Chad (37:47.983) Hahahaha Chad (37:52.44) Yep. yeah. Chad (38:07.63) Ukraine. Joel (38:09.12) series on that as well, a movie that you should watch. And then Japan had one a few years ago. So the PR on nuclear is awful. But the thing is we were using technology from the 40s, 56s, really old shit to power these things. There's another documentary that you should watch. think it's called In Bill Gates Brain. It's about Bill Gates and some of the things that he invests in. And one of those things is nuclear energy. I mean, we've made incredible strides in making it safer. There's no meltdown, apparently meltdown risks now. So it's way safer. And if you look at the carbon emissions, zero, like you can't be a pro environmental person and not be open to nuclear. From what I can tell, and this isn't my expertise, but wind, solar, it's just not going to get us there by itself. And what you mentioned with AI and the amount of power that's taking, like you need something, you know, You need something on steroids and nuclear seems to do that by not, you know, and not kill the earth. in the, in the process, we haven't even talked about what crypto is doing, in terms of energy, the energy to mind shit again, not, my, not my expertise, but we're using a lot of energy and technology and we need something to do it. I'm, awful. I'm all in on nuclear. think it's, think the, fear, the fear is, is, is unnecessary. so I'm all in on that. The second, the second angle of this is. What does it mean for jobs? So I did a little research. Apparently each new reactor supports up to 7,000 jobs during the construction phase. And a single operating nuclear power plant employs between 500 and 800 people. So we can employ a lot of folks. And by the way, because of the PR factor, I don't see a lot of automation in power plants that are nuclear. I don't see a lot of people signing up for no humans at the power plant. Now they're going to be augmented. They'll be supported. They'll be supported with AI, but I don't, if something bad happens and we go, well, there's nobody there. Like it's all automated. there's going to be some, some splaining to do, when the public, yeah, Homer will be there with some, with some donuts. so, so I, I think there's going be a lot of jobs. think America can kind of lead, this area. know. Chad (40:06.067) just wait. just wait. just wait. Chad (40:19.138) Homer Simpson will be there, it'll be fine. Joel (40:31.37) parts of, parts of Europe and other parts of the world. think France has 80 % of their energy is nuclear. So a lot of, lot of the world is embracing this and we should as well, because frankly, lot of the big tech companies are here, using, using all that power. Tik TOK is also, in America, but maybe not for much longer, Chad, maybe not for much longer. when we come back, we'll talk about the future of tick tock in America. Joel (41:04.16) Maybe Jim Durbin just missed it by a few, a few years, Chad. you may not be able to doom scroll on TikTok much longer unless the social media company finds a way to stop a new law from going into effect in America. The rule, was signed into law in April requires TikTok to break ties with its Chinese parent company, ByteDance before January 19th of 2025 or It will be banned if it doesn't comply. Chad, what are your thoughts on the future of TikTok in America? Chad (41:38.508) Yeah, I mean, we've talked about this before and the answer has always been money, right? It's it's going to it's going to fix itself because of the money in it. And from the numbers that Tiktok shared, we would lose a billion dollars on day one. Just America, just America and influencers. People are making money day one, a billion dollars. Think of not having Taylor Swift around. mean, that just that that hurts my heart thinking about something like that. But just like thousands and thousands of many tailors. anyway, yeah, I mean, there are there are security risks. There's no question, right? There are security risks. We have to be able to take care of those. have to we have to be able to ensure that, you know, again, we don't have data that's being siphoned off, much like the American company Facebook had. Right. So this is not just a tick tock China problem. This is a social media problem. The reason why we focused on TikTok is because they are Chinese and because of of by dance. And what will will Trump do when it comes to this? Well, he'll he'll look, I'm sure, to try to make a deal. But he's not going to care about those influencers. He's not going to care about that money coming into the country. He's on his last term, OK, he's not vying to get that next term. Joel (42:35.84) Mm-hmm. Joel (42:57.364) Mm-hmm. Joel (43:03.539) Lame duck. Chad (43:03.726) So he's just going to do whatever the fuck he wants to do. And it doesn't matter if it impacts you or not. So at the end of the day, I think there's going to be a lot of work that needs to be done from individuals to be able to lock down the security side of the house. And once that's out of the way, if this means it's bought by another company or what have you, or at least, you know, the we have data centers in the US, then great. But it's going to have to get figured out. I don't think it's going to get figured out by Trump. Joel (43:40.906) So my prediction is there's still a TikTok. It will be divested and it'll suck and it'll slowly start being shit because China's not going to let the algorithm go. They're not going to like give the keys to that golden goose. So the brand TikTok will live. It'll be owned by some antiquated shitty company that probably gave a of money to Trump. Chad (43:58.594) Mm-hmm. Joel (44:06.376) And it will slowly just degrade to a point where everyone moves over to reels or wherever. so I do think it will survive, but it will not survive in the state that we currently know it. It will just sort of wither on, on the vine. you mentioned money and that's a huge part of it. think Trump doesn't want to piss off a lot of the investors and people that are behind tick tock that are frankly in the U S. but he also doesn't want to piss people off. A lot of his young, young influencers that, are backing him love tick tock. He's not going to piss them off, but if, if I'm Mark Zuckerberg, this is a opportune time to make friends. I think the market believes that if, if it doesn't get banned, it's going to be greatly, crippled. Meta stock is up over 80 % year to date and they, they are in the position to benefit if tick tock. Chad (44:39.15) It would just push them to a true social. Joel (44:59.806) gets kicked out of the company. And by the way, Chad, dropping in the, on the new sites today, we're recording on a Thursday, meta just donated $1 million, to Trump's inaugural fund. that $1 million may buy. Zuck and met us some nice, some nice, you know, some nice influence with, the new president. know, I know Zuck has met with him. So Zuck is jockeying, to get on Trump's good side. Chad (45:07.213) Mm. Chad (45:22.798) Imagine that. Joel (45:28.71) And a million dollars goes a long way in an inaugural celebration to get Trump on your side. So I think politics comes into this, money comes into this, but ultimately TikTok as we know it is going to, is going to fade into the ether. So, build up those followings on reels and Instagram kids, because that's where the future is in my opinion. Or blue sky. Is that the new one? What, what, what's the new one you're on? Is it blue sky? Chad (45:49.614) That would be sad. Chad (45:53.4) Blue, yeah, it's pretty much just a Twitter clone. It's a happier version of Twitter. It's a less Nazi version of Twitter. Joel (46:01.408) All right. Well, Jesus, it's been one interesting episode. think the only thing that can save it is a fantastic, fantastic dad joke. Chad, are you ready for this week's dad joke? It's inspired by, inspired by nuclear energy. So it's, it's gotta be, gotta be good. Chad, what, what did the nuclear physicist have for lunch? Chad (46:14.698) Okay. I have faith in this one. Chad (46:24.344) Good. It's gotta be good. Joel (46:28.84) What did the nuclear physicist have for lunch? Joel (46:35.648) Fish and chips, fish and chips, get it? Chad (46:36.92) vision. Chad (46:40.706) I was just saying fission, that goes with nothing. Yes. And chips, apparently chips. Okay. Yes. Joel (46:43.08) Yeah, Fission chips, Chad. That's right. That's right. drones and aliens in the ocean, kids. We out. Chad (46:49.966) We out.

Welcome back to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast,  where Chad and Joel serve up spicy takes and recruiting truths hotter than a Nashville summer. This week, they wrangle Courtney Dempsey, the tech-savvy maestro behind Southern Rock Restaurants’ hiring empire. With 160 restaurants and a hiring strategy sharper than a deli slicer, Courtney spills the secret sauce: targeting job seekers while the rest of us are dreaming about tacos at 3 AM. Hear how she uses LLMs like they’re her personal AI attack dogs, outsmarts bigger competitors with zero chill, and recruits AARP members because, frankly, Gen Z already got their fill of side hustles. If you’re not advertising your dishwashing gigs like prime-time Super Bowl spots, you’re doing it wrong. So, grab your headphones and brace yourself. By the end, you’ll either want to revolutionize your hiring strategy or question all your life choices... possibly both. And remember, in this game, speed kills.  But in HR? It also hires. Warning: Side effects of listening include spontaneous outbursts of laughter, strategic epiphanies, and reconsidering your entire recruitment budget. Proceed with caution. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Podcast Intro: 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, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast. [music] Joel: Thanks for hanging out with us today. Who are you and why are you here? Chad: That's helpful. That's helpful. Courtney Dempsey: That's a very... It's a loaded question. [laughter] I appreciate that. I'm like the token non-TA person here. And we're the largest licensed franchisee in McAlister's Deli. And we're located here in Nashville. Chad: Very nice, very nice. So, let's look forward real quick into 2025. What advice would you give your peers in the new year, moving into the new year? Courtney Dempsey: Embrace technology. Chad: Embrace technology. Do they have a choice? Joel: Say more. Courtney Dempsey: I think there are a lot of people still fighting it. Look for companies that have open API. I cold call a lot of open API companies. And I ask to beta test them and see if we can integrate their open API systems into the current system that we're utilizing, which is Paradox. I love LLMs. It's like my bestie. Chad: This is your time now. Courtney Dempsey: This is my time. Chad: Yeah. Podcast Intro: I'm a one-woman show. Joel: Did you love them when they weren't cool or before they were cool? Courtney Dempsey: I had to teach myself. So, I was Python back in the early days of that, as did Professor Chuck taught me how to follow data. And I just kind of rolled with it. And I listened to your podcast, and any company that talks ill of another company, I'm like, I'm absolutely 100% calling them. [laughter] Because they obviously don't like them for a reason, and I will become their best friends. So, we make sure we integrate that too. Joel: So, what are some tools technologically that you find invaluable in your everyday life or business? Courtney Dempsey: Speed is essential. In the QSR... [overlapping conversation] Joel: I said tech, not drugs. Courtney Dempsey: Tech? Joel: Okay. [laughter] Courtney Dempsey: Oh, you have to be... Chad: Or Keanu Reeves. [overlapping conversation] Courtney Dempsey: You have to be fast. Joel: Speed kills. Chad: Yeah. Courtney Dempsey: Yeah. You wanna be methodical in your approach, but I will run you off the road 'cause I have to. And we're a mom-and-pop shop. We have 160 restaurants. I can't compete with the larger organizations, but I sure try. We average between 2,900 and 4,000 applicants a week... Chad: Wow. Courtney Dempsey: With 20% spend. We save almost $2 million in ad spend, and 80% of that is organic. Chad: How do you do that? Joel: Yeah, how'd you get... Say more about how you're doing that. [laughter] Courtney Dempsey: I might have to come on your show the next time. Joel: 'Cause you can't open that box [laughter] without pouring a drink. Chad: Just give us a little bit. We'll do an extended version later. Courtney Dempsey: I think if you utilize LLMs, you're able to target the exact audience that you want at the exact time. So, I can tell you within 100% accuracy that Wednesdays at 8:00 AM today, for instance, was the perfect time for me to advertise for all of our restaurants in Missouri. What I don't advertise is more than one position. I coach down hiring is critical. So, if you're running or advertising for a shift lead, whether that person is qualified to be a shift lead or not, they're gonna apply for it because the money's better than an hourly. So, you lead with your best foot forward, and you trickle down from there. Chad: Wow. So, in 2024, what has surprised you the most? Courtney Dempsey: The Great Stay. Chad: The what? Courtney Dempsey: The Great Stay. Chad: "The Great Stay." Courtney Dempsey: Managers aren't leaving, and those that are lifers have already expired out in our side of the business. So, the influx of retail that I'm seeing right now is about 85% to our lack of 15% of actual people that work in the restaurant industry. That is extraordinary to me. Chad: Yes. Courtney Dempsey: So, we have to coach on how to read a resume from the bottom up now versus the top down. Joel: I love your attention to the strategic element of timing. I assume that speed to connect is very important to you. What are you finding is the most effective? Is it SMS text messaging? Is it iMessage? Is it WhatsApp? Is it phone? What mediums are the most effective for you to get that sale, get that lead quickly? Courtney Dempsey: So, for us, we utilize Paradox, obviously. So, the conversational aspect of that is critical, the constant engagement. And then we utilize Indeed. I do all my advertising with some exceptions for XML scrapes. I will say that 85%, and we just did a data poll on that 'cause I love data, I love analytics, that 85% of our applicants are between the hours of 12:00 AM and 5:00 AM. So, just the engagement process with that has been critical. The speed of posting those ads, knowing the attention span of our applicants are less than 72 hours is the fly time of our runs. I don't want to oversaturate the market with our ads. We only have 160 stores, so I wanna make sure there's no market fatigue. So, I'm very strategic on the days and times that I post and when they should expire out. And then I have our competition chasing us, trying to figure out how it is [laughter] that we're doing. And as long as it fits in on a device, so I don't do any garbage. You're a dishwasher; I don't need to list out the 75 plus pages. [overlapping conversation] Joel: Sounds like your totally automated. You got the right ads at the right time, and you have an automated 24/7 communication device to get them whenever they come into the door, which I think is impactful. Courtney Dempsey: But I also realize that unless it fits on the phone, then the applicant is not gonna go scroll through a job description. So, why would I have to advertise a job description? You should be leading with benefits, the culture, and then close out with the culture. I want you to work for us, so I'm selling you on our company. And then the reception, we've captured a higher rate for us now than most companies... Joel: Are you leveraging video? And if so, how? Courtney Dempsey: For our managers, we are. It's not mandatory. For our management applicants, we do encourage them to upload a video, a 30-second to a minute-long video on why you want to work for our company. And I will say the engagement on that, it's about 50/50. We just introduced that within the last 90 days. Chad: Nice. So, in 2025, what's your main priority? Courtney Dempsey: To maintain our 100% perfect record of fully staffing. I'm more open into more OpenAI. I just think that that's just the way of the future. The more layers you can add within your own platform. Because you're only as relevant today as you were yesterday. You can't become stale in this space. You have to be more creative, and you have to target more traditional markets that you want to. For us, we're not targeting Gen Z anymore. The Gen Z market, we've oversaturated, we've infiltrated. I'm intentionally targeting AARP members and veterans. Chad: Wow. Courtney Dempsey: We want an adult in the room, in our space. We need an adult in the room. Joel: Speed kills, baby. CREAM, Cash Rules Everything Around Me. [laughter] Thanks for hanging out with us today. For our listeners and viewers who want to connect with you, learn more about employment opportunities, where should they go? Courtney Dempsey: LinkedIn, Courtney Dempsey, and I'm with Southern Rock Restaurants. Chad: Thanks, Courtney. Courtney Dempsey: Thank you, guys. Joel: Enjoy the show. Podcast Outro: Wow, look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast-forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey, or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckleheads instead. Now, go take a shower and wash off all the guilt. But save some soap, because you'll be back. Like an awful train wreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.

John Graham, Shaker’s VP of Employer Brand Strategy, Humanity & Culture , hit RecFest USA with a mic drop on recruitment marketing and employer branding as we careen into 2025. His talk? A mix of AI hype, DEI drama, and a reality check for those clinging to the idea of "jobs for life" like it's still 1985. Graham’s big reveal: employer branding is less about forever  and more about for now , pivoting to a launchpad for career development instead of a golden handshake into retirement. He also dove into AI, calling it both the hero and potential villain of recruitment. Sure, it’s reshaping strategies faster than you can say "algorithmic bias," but Graham threw some shade on humanity, pointing out that we’re not exactly bias-free either. His advice? Play nice with AI but keep an eye on it—like a toddler with scissors. DEI got a spotlight too, but not without acknowledging the current rebrand it’s enduring thanks to political tug-of-wars and corporate-level ghosting. He tied it all up with a forecast for 2024 tech trends: automation, AI, and video storytelling are set to dominate, but the focus will still be on keeping things human-centered. (Spoiler: robots are cool, but people still like people.) And if that wasn’t enough, Graham’s closer was basically a call-to-action to stalk—er, network with —Shaker online. Updated website, LinkedIn, the works. Because nothing says "modern employer branding" like a shameless plug. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION (cometh) Intro: 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, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel: Who are you and why are you here? John Graham: I feel like you've asked everybody that question. Joel: We've been given some standardized questions. John Graham: I'm John Graham, vice president of Employer Brand Strategy Humanity and Culture at Shaker and I help our clients think about their employer brand strategy from end to end, not just the pieces and the parts. How does EVP connect to EB connect to RM and everything in between and how do we bring it to life in a way that makes sense for your organization and your culture? Joel: And you presented earlier today. Talk about that presentation. John Graham: I did. Yeah. We were talking about the predictions for 2025 as far as recruitment marketing and employer branding. So getting thought leaders from Visa and AutoZone to share their perspectives, things that they're working on now, what did they see as the challenges? Of course, AI was a conversation as it was in every conversation, but also the DEI landscape and how that's shifted significantly and how do you brand in the context of a company that might be rolling commitments back. How do you get leadership, the disconnect between leadership experience and the frontline experience, and how do you bridge that gap with employer branding? And I think we also spoke about not looking at bringing people in for lifetime careers but more so being a launchpad for the career that they need now. And if they go somewhere else, awesome, but take this goodwill of the brand with you and the values and the opportunities that you got to grow. Joel: You mentioned AI being a hot topic, and yes, it indeed has. John Graham: Yes. Joel: Are we as branding organizations, putting too much trust, faith in technology and not enough about the human part of our business, or there are companies bringing both together for two great tastes that taste great together? What's your take on that? John Graham: Yeah. Oh, I think you nailed it. I think we have to be cognizant of the balance between humanity and technology. You can't depend too much on technology because you're still dealing with real people and you can't give all of your agency away to an AI, Gen AI chatbot, any of that because it might not be right. So I think what we are reconciling now is which bias are we comfortable with. Obviously there's bias in AI because people made it but there's bias in people so we can't trade off one for the other. The question is which one are we gonna be more comfortable with and accept what comes with that. So yeah, I think we need to inject a bit more humanity in and leverage AI as a tool not as a surrogate. Joel: One of the more fascinating things that I've learned in the last few months particularly here at this show is we went from a period where the black hole is bad, having applicants apply and not hear from us is bad. John Graham: Sure. Joel: Now let's automate it where they do have a conversation. That's good. But now it's swinging to okay, that's bad because it's not authentic, it's not human, it's not real. It can be one or the other. Where do we go from here? Do we scale human beings? Does the AI get that much better that we don't know the difference between a human and a rope? You're nodding your head yes. John Graham: I think that's gonna be the move. Yeah. Joel: So tell me what does the future look like? John Graham: It's going to be indistinguishable at some point where you won't know if you're speaking to a human or not and that's good from an efficiency perspective but that's also meaning you're replacing human beings. So there's gonna be a balance of it. I think with every era of technology and technological advancement it's a reduction or an augmentation of the labor force. You saw it with the change, with the advent of automobiles, assembly lines. Every progressive advancement, it removes some of the manual tasks from it but then it creates a whole nother industry that didn't exist before. And I think people forget that. That yes, some things might go away but it's gonna create a whole bunch of opportunities in places that we don't even know yet. Joel: Give me your take on the current state of DEI. A few years ago it was like yes, that's a good thing, let's do it. It became politicized, weaponized. John Graham: Sure. Joel: Companies stepped back, didn't wanna touch it. What's the current state of that issue? John Graham: Yeah, so I think we're at a point where DEI is now going through its own rebranding and if you're a student of this space, you know that for the past 60 years there's been a series of progressions and regressions. It's just a natural ebb and flow. When you start making progress people will pull it back. But the key is you're incrementally moving forward. I think we're at a point right now where we're being honest about what can change, what people are willing to change, and then what can we do within that construct? What are we doing within the context of employer brand and recruitment marketing? How honest are we gonna be about our culture? What are we going to do as a company as far as what we're donating to them or not anymore? And some companies have made headlines for pulling their commitments back all the way, based on pressures from activist investors, perceived risk for their consumer bases, whatever the case may be. The challenge is that the issues for the people who were most marginalized didn't go away because a company rolled back its commitments so they're gonna have to contend with it in some way. Joel: Jumping back to technology real quickly, 2024, what were the tech trends that stood out to you? You do a lot of vendors so I'm sure your take on this is pretty interesting. 2024. John Graham: Yeah so this year it's been a lot of automation. AI has been the buzzword in everybody's tech platform but I think getting two candidates faster whether it be through your recruitment marketing efforts, getting higher quality candidates through automation, storytelling, and video. A lot of video platforms and ambassadorship for existing employees to be amplifiers of the brand. So I think we've seen a lot of that this year and it's really a circle back to maybe like 2016, '17 where that was sort of emerging. Now we're having a Renaissance. Technology's becoming better but interestingly enough I think we're gonna see more of that. We're gonna have to. Joel: Let's talk about that. We took a step back. Now let's look forward. A year from now what will the tech trends be that we talked about? John Graham: Well I think AI is going to get smarter. I think that there's going to be... While the advancement of the technology is inevitable I think you're also gonna start to see more of a double down on human-centered experience. So it's not just going to a conference and setting up a booth. It's what experience are you creating for specific demographics, different functions, different roles outside of the vendor floor and in a more intimate space so that people can start really building and establishing relationship. Joel: Okay. So you say AI will be smarter. I guess it'll be left to find out if humans get dumber in that process. John Graham: It's possible. Joel: But thanks for sitting down with us. For those listeners and viewers that wanna connect with you or learn more about Shaker where do you send them? John Graham: Shaker.com, first and foremost. We have a brand new site. It's gorgeous. A lot of good information and you can always find me on LinkedIn. Joel: Shaker.com. John Graham: That's it. Joel: Easy-Peasy Nacho Cheesy. John Graham: My god. Joel: Thanks man. Enjoy the rest of the show. John Graham: I appreciate it Joel. Outro: Wow. Look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favourite whiskey, or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuggle heads instead. Now go take a shower and wash off all the guilt but save some soap because you'll be back. Like an awful train wreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.

In this episode of The Chad and Cheese Podcast , Joel and Chad serve up a smorgasbord of topics, starting with their culinary misadventures at Chipotle and a deep dive into their latest tech crush. They don't miss the chance to bask in their own glory, flaunting Spotify's year-end wrap-up that confirms their podcast's meteoric rise—because who doesn't love a good pat on the back? The duo then tackles the TikTok-driven surge in social commerce, likening it to a modern-day QVC for the swipe-right generation. They brainstorm ways for LinkedIn to spice up job applications with video content, because nothing says "hire me" like a self-taped monologue. The conversation takes a somber turn as they discuss LinkedIn's recent layoffs and the slow decline of the ERE conference, reminiscing about the golden days of recruitment. They delve into the shifting landscape of sourcing, highlighting the fierce competition between Rippling and Deel in the global payroll arena. Rippling has been pulling what some might call "snake moves," aggressively targeting Deel with marketing campaigns. It's like watching two tech startups in a WWE match—who knew payroll could be so cutthroat? PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:31.672) two guys you wouldn't want to touch with a 39 and a half foot pole. Hi kids. It's the Chad and cheese podcast. I'm your cohost Joel presidential pardon cheeseman. Chad (00:42.164) And this is Chad, snakes on a plane, so watch. Joel (00:45.036) And on this episode, Rippling unleashes the snake. Is ERE adapting or dying? And Walmart bends over for newly elected president Trump. Let's do this. Chad (01:01.364) So how's the weather over there, huh? How's the weather? As you can see. 16, Freezing, baby, freezing. That's just, that's not nice. That's not nice. Joel (01:01.578) What's up, Chad? It's freaking cold. Let me check my app. 16 degrees, 16 degrees Fahrenheit here in central Indiana. It's good time. Yeah, you look much more comfortable. Do I dare ask what the temperature is in Portugal right now? Chad (01:18.58) Mmm. Yep, round 70, round 70. It's the skating around that, around there. It's nice, yeah. First part of December, first part of January, it's during the day. It'll drop at least 20 degrees at night, but it's wonderful. Joel (01:29.474) Yeah. Joel (01:34.684) huh. Yeah, these are the days where I need a warm barbacoa bowl to keep me keep me happy. Chad (01:41.707) Hahaha Joel (01:47.726) By the way, I have a Chipotle story that is relevant to our business. I went into Chipotle this week. I know that shocks you. And I go to check out, I'm wearing my paradox swag, my jacket, coat, windbreaker, if you will. And the guy at the register says, do you work for paradox? And I was like, well, that's weird. And I said, but I'm a friend of paradox. Chad (01:47.902) Grubhub. Imagine that. Imagine that. Chad (02:01.274) Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's very nice. Yeah. huh. Chad (02:11.385) Ha! Joel (02:15.206) And, the guy says, yeah, we just implemented paradox, as our hiring system. And I said, well, how's it going? He said, he said, well, we had a few bumps with the, the scheduling at first, but we've, we've, we've worked that out. and we really like it. And I said, do the job seekers like it? And he said, yeah, they seem to like it a lot better than filling out an application and submitting it. liked the chat. So that's my, that's my, that's my newly found friendship with my local Chipotle. I go in with my paradox and hope that I get a free. Chad (02:20.668) No shit. No shit. Chad (02:25.822) Mm. Chad (02:34.388) Black hole, yeah. Joel (02:45.228) burrito at some point, but other than that, not and no one. I don't think that's ever happened to me in 25 years in the industry. Like no one's ever said, do you work for ISEMS or do you work for some random, you know, vendor? that was, that was kind of exciting for me. Chad (02:46.674) Yeah, no shit, right? Chad (02:53.106) Yeah. Chad (02:59.89) Yeah, only fans. Yeah, so. So, yeah, it doesn't it doesn't surprise me that you were in Chipotle, but it does surprise me. And that's really cool that down at the store level, they actually know the product. I mean, that's that's really fucking cool. Yeah, I mean, that's awesome. And you're right. I mean, if you go through a lot of these older kind of like legacy applicant tracking systems like we've been talking about a lot of the franchise, they don't use them. Joel (03:14.69) The brand. Yeah. Joel (03:30.094) Mm-hmm. Chad (03:30.268) They just don't use them just because they weren't made for it. So that's really cool. out to Good Swag and Paradox. Okay, I'm gonna hit my first, I'm gonna hit shout outs. And shout out is going to be to Spotify year end wrap up. Kids, you see these all the time. You love these. You know you love them. This one's for the Chad and Cheese podcast. I just love how Spotify wraps up all of their staff. Joel (03:35.224) So exciting. Chad (03:58.99) and they make them look sexy. It's just great marketing mechanism for them. And here is some stats that they've wrapped up. Spotify is wrapped up for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Are you ready? Drum roll, baby. Give me drum roll. Got a drum roll? Joel (04:10.798) I'm ready. Hit me with those amazing, amazing, amazing numbers, I can't wait. Chad (04:16.106) Hahaha So we had great numbers last year, so I thought this year they wouldn't be as great. I was wrong. 121 % increase in listeners. 340 % increase in streams. So we're not just getting listeners, they're listening a lot. 31 % increase in followers. We're a top 10 show, a top 10 show for 3,000 plus fans. Joel (04:29.304) Wow. Joel (04:36.078) Damn. Joel (04:42.392) Mm-hmm. Joel (04:46.019) Yeah. Chad (04:48.498) We're a top five show for 2500, nearly 2500 fans. And we are the number one podcast for 832 of you beautiful people that are out there. You're make me cry. Gonna make me cry. I told myself I wouldn't do this. Joel (04:53.474) Mm-hmm. Joel (05:07.83) That's that's over 800 people that need therapy immediately if we are their their number one show, you know, you know, it was, it was the year of the podcast we saw in the presidential presidential race. And for whatever reason, podcasts are having a moment. I mean, if you break that down with our reach and you know, the conferences that we attend, the media properties that we, you know, have that we know well, like Chad (05:10.484) This is therapy. This is therapy. Yeah. Yep. huh. Chad (05:28.297) Yeah. Chad (05:31.7) Mm-hmm. Joel (05:36.78) We're as competitive in terms of attention as probably any of those entities. mean, if you stop to think about how many people come by our booth on a weekly basis to see us and hear us and listen to our sponsors, like that's, it's kind of a big deal. think that what really comes into play with podcasts is a level of trust and engagement that's so personal. Chad (05:44.476) yeah. Joel (06:04.078) because you're in people's ears. mean, now we're more in people's eyeballs, which I'm fearful of, but, it's, an amazing medium. mean, no one really blogs anymore. you know, they do, but it's, it's just not what it is. mean, tick tocks are kind of the next thing, that, that you'll see a lot of, engagement with, but yeah, it's, pretty amazing. This road that we've been on, we're like a eight year old overnight success, but it's, I'm, I'm impressed. And that's just Spotify. Chad (06:21.364) Mm-hmm. Joel (06:33.122) I mean, Apple music is our number one source of traffic. So if you take those Spotify numbers, multiplying by two, that's kind of where we're looking. And I think, did you read the demographic breakdown? Chad (06:33.64) Yeah, yeah. Chad (06:45.65) Yeah, demographic breakdown was generally on the higher age range side. So, I mean, we are getting don't get me wrong, we're going to have the entry level, the recruiters, we're going to have some of the you know, the ones who who want to get into leadership roles. But for the most part, they're on the older side. So they're going to be more the the leadership side of the house. And go figure decision makers. Joel (06:53.496) Yeah. Joel (07:00.046) Yeah. Joel (07:05.806) But we're also, I thought it was very, it was pretty even. I didn't feel like we skewed really old. I thought we had a good demographic connection. Maybe that Spotify has a piece of that, but. Chad (07:12.849) No. Chad (07:16.468) 35 to 54 is like, that is like the mage. Now that's two demographics, but they were, yeah, that was, was, that's our sweet spot. Joel (07:20.812) Yeah, that's the sweet spot. Yeah. Yeah. And if you're a, you if you're looking to get in front of an audience, that's the audience everyone wants to get in front of. So, so good. Good on us. Good on us. We're hiding checks. So speaking of winning, my, my shout out goes, goes to social commerce. I had a lot of time this holiday week and to surf, the socials and I was, I was just so impressed with social commerce. Chad (07:32.786) Write in checks, big boy. Those are the ones who are writing checks. Joel (07:55.18) I bought my first thing on tick tock mostly because I just wanted to see that how the experience would be. I mean, it's like, it's like QVC personalized for you. And the it's amazing. Like the algorithm, like what you watch the products that they present to you. What I'm sure as you buy more and more stuff, they give, they put more and more of that in front of you. and it's so easy. It's like, Chad (07:57.789) Okay. Chad (08:05.948) Really? Chad (08:15.07) Mm-hmm. Chad (08:18.642) Gets it tuned. Yeah, I bet. Easily. Joel (08:22.872) Click to pay, click pay done shipping. They send you updates. It's fantastic. And we talk Amazon, but I'm, I'm not searching. They just like present it to you and you go, that's pretty cool. Like, it's 50 % off today. Like, yeah. And there's a clock counting down of how long that deal lasts, which is total bullshit. And I know that, but I still fall for it, Chad. Chad (08:28.84) very Amazon-like, kind of like one click. Is that what you're talking about? Very Amazon-like. Yeah. Chad (08:39.27) You want this? You want this? Yeah, yeah. Chad (08:45.72) huh. Yeah, of course. It gets me every time. Joel (08:48.91) We talk a lot about the threats to Google and their market share and perplexity and AI, if more and more shopping goes to TikTok, and I looked up some numbers because I was interested, the influencer marketing hub predicts that by 2030, social commerce revenue is expected to reach $6.2 trillion. Chad (08:53.459) Mm. Chad (08:58.938) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Joel (09:14.412) dollars worldwide. It's a fracture that now so it's gonna grow immensely but if you do more and more of your shopping on social media and less on searching on Google that's gonna be a big hit to Big G. anyway, shout out to Social Commerce. I'm rarely impressed these days about something but they have nailed this. And I gotta think if you're linked in Chad (09:22.611) Mm-hmm. Chad (09:36.468) It's scary. Joel (09:39.638) And you're launching these shorts now and these videos, which I think is cool. Like I get, I get on these shorts on LinkedIn. I'm like, where the hell am I? I don't even know. And I, this is LinkedIn. They need to create a quit, like a one click apply with your LinkedIn profile. So companies can put on videos about like, if they know you're a manager of something, then they show you manager of a company locally to you. Like, here's my job. If you want to know more, apply now click here. Chad (09:47.444) Hahaha Chad (09:59.444) Yeah, yeah. Joel (10:04.898) Like LinkedIn better do this because this is the future. think this, the idea of searching is fine, but like showing people and targeted opportunities and just let them click and apply. Like that's, that could be huge for them. Chad (10:11.23) Yeah? Chad (10:19.378) All they have to do is buy job pixel and it's done. Joel (10:22.21) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Chad (10:24.016) Next question. mean, I mean, seriously, the the the I mean, we're both advisors. OK, so don't get me wrong, kids, we're just we're getting it out there. But seriously, if they bought a platform like JobPixel, it's already ready. It's ready already. All you have to do is go in there, have somebody, know, who's a nurse talk about the nursing job. Click below. Boom. You know, put in the requirements, do all that stuff. And obviously you can still do the normal text based stuff, but do the video stuff. I mean, what the hell? I mean, why not? Joel (10:52.386) Yeah. If you want to get in front of passive job seekers, the people that aren't searching jobs, give them a video, show them the company, show them the job, entice them and say like, Hey, apply now. What do you got? What do you got to lose? Chad (10:56.34) Mm-hmm. Right. Chad (11:04.83) Well, do that on LinkedIn and then also go to people like JT O'Donnell, who has over a million followers on TikTok and have her say, hey, my viewers, have her talk about the job and have influencers do it too. I mean, this is a new market that we really have to be focused on. Video, snackable content, it's just, it's so sexy. And again, from a relevance standpoint, as you had said, Joel (11:23.704) Sure, yeah. Chad (11:33.818) It's going to deliver up. when you have influencers who have the kind of weight that like a JT has, holy shit, man, that's an all day thing. Joel (11:41.73) Yeah, yeah, I'm sure Flockety, our friends at Flockety are thinking of something similar as well, integrating into LinkedIn. TP, TP, almost as good as free shit from Chad and Cheese. Chad (11:45.845) Tracy Parsons. yeah, she'd kill that, yeah. I tell you what. Nothing's good as free shit from Chad and Cheese. And here's why kids, because you all know that those sexy t-shirts that you see being worn that everybody talks about, they talk about because they feel like a hug from Chad and Cheese. Those are provided by our friends at Air and App. Bourbon barrel aged syrup. This is, and it's got to come from Canada because that's where the best stuff comes from. Kiora, that's right. Kiora. Joel (12:05.198) Hmm. Joel (12:20.347) the 51st state, Canada. You did see that right, Trump on Canada. Chad (12:27.378) No, no, I don't. I don't want to go down that road. Jesus Christ. Joel (12:30.318) Well, you know, know, Justin Trudeau went to visit Trump to kiss the ring. and apparently Trump, Trump joke that they, Canada should just be the 51st state and Trudeau could be governor. then, and then Trump posted a picture of himself on a mountain with a Canada flag, Canadian flag. It says, Canada. Anyway, sorry. Yes. Our friends at Canada, maybe the. Chiara. Yeah. The maple circle still tastes great. Chad (12:35.71) Yeah, go figure. Chad (12:49.352) Anyway, Kiora, yes. Yes. Also, also sponsors a shout outs. Beer, craft beer by Aspen Tech Labs. That's right. A whole box craft beer. You're love it. Aspen Tech Labs. Whiskey from our friends. Two bottles of whiskey from our friends at Tex Kernel by Bullhorn. And birthdays. If it's your birthday, Rum with plum. Win some high value rum from plum. Go to ChadCheese.com slash free. Joel (13:24.044) That's right, Chad. Some lucky listeners are celebrating another trip around the sun. By the way, December, think we're going to up the game a little bit on the giveaways this month. We're going to like crank it up a little bit on the niceties. So get, get ready kids. we'll up our game for that, but here, here are some of the birthdays being celebrated. we got Frank Wittenauer, Mary Kelly, Michael Cox, Nathan Budziak, Terry Kaler, Stephen branch, Andy Parker, Kyle Pollard, Joey Lee. Chad (13:24.231) In the Plums. Chad (13:35.752) Yeah? Huh? Joel (13:51.906) Michelle Sumrall, Jim D'Amico, Scott Williams, and Julie Loniman. Hope I said all those correctly. Celebrating another trip around the sun. Happy birthday, everybody. And that brings us to. Chad (14:03.902) Happy birthday. Fantasy football from the factory fix Joel (14:09.646) Fantasy football by factory fix. That's right. We're, we're heading into week 14. I believe we have two more weeks, I think, till the playoffs start. here's how your leaderboard shakes out. got Dean, the daddy Mac mackerel, the, man from down under showing us how to do it here in, here in the United States. Number two is your boy right here. Stick sticking, sticking with that number two spot. Number three, David Stifle for Chad sew wash clinging onto that final playoff spot for the. Chad (14:17.62) Mm. Chad (14:25.588) Killing it. Killing it. Chad (14:31.379) Mmm. Joel (14:38.68) for the championship. Keith, the commissioner's Keith, the commissioner's Sonderling kicked my ass. last week, shout out to him for that. Christie Lisbon, action Jackson, Dalquist, Laura Martinelli, Jennifer, Terry Tharp, Dina, Perot for Pyros, Sean Horton. Here's a who and bring it up, bringing up the caboose. That's right. Chad (14:40.328) Not there yet, not there yet. Joel (15:05.612) That's right. Adam Gordon, from Scotland at number 12 of 12 players. And that is the factory fixed leaderboard for fantasy football with Chad and cheese starting to wind down. If, if Adam loses, I'm thinking we need to have for the first time the loser gift we got. Can we buy a kilt that says loser on the front of it and have him wear that around Glasgow? Chad (15:12.423) Aw, poor guy, poor guy. Chad (15:21.169) yeah. Chad (15:27.65) Hahaha Chad (15:33.076) you know we wouldn't wear it. That wouldn't be cool. That wouldn't be cool. Joel (15:36.558) Stephen would wear it, but yeah, it's probably a little bit too. Chad (15:41.012) We still have to figure out the Steven tattoo thing. Okay. So let's focus here. Let's priorities. We got to get Steven a tattoo. That's what we got to do. Joel (15:45.56) Sorry, sorry, that's right. good time with the Scots. Good time with the Scots. Let's talk about some news, shall we? Chad (15:54.312) Yes. Topics. Joel (15:59.762) we got some, yeah, you know, some layoffs that we missed. Layoffs are a good time to have a press release during Thanksgiving. People kind of miss it, but we didn't miss this one. LinkedIn laid off 202 employees over the last two weeks, representing roughly 1 % of the company's 18,000 or so employees. LinkedIn spokesperson, Greg Snappy. Chad (16:01.972) Hmm Chad (16:07.913) Yeah. Joel (16:23.81) That's a cool name. Greg Snappi confirmed. The cuts occurred in engineering and customer support. He said to the information quote, we're among changes within teams to align our organizational structures and work to our strategic priorities and to support our customers. quote. Chad, any thoughts on the recent layoffs at LinkedIn? Chad (16:24.372) Heh. Chad (16:29.716) Hmm. Chad (16:46.516) Nope, just gonna have to keep an eye on this because it could be one of those that just continue to draw out. So you see 1%, 1%, 3%, 5%, you know what I mean? I have to take a look because alignment, yes kids, I'm using air quotes, alignment doesn't happen generally in one cut. Joel (16:54.819) Mm-hmm. Joel (17:04.396) Yeah. There are two schools of thought on, on layoffs. It's, one you do like a 30 % cut and you're done and you get on with your life. And then there's this slow drip, where you have, have different, I don't know, you drip out, you drip them out. And to me, this was sort of Latin for, we're automating and these are folks that we don't need, but we're not going to cut them all at once. And those are customer service and engineering. And when you hear Amazon talking about, need fewer engineers. Chad (17:10.772) You Hmm. Joel (17:34.03) And when you talk about Klarna eliminating customer service, I'm sure Microsoft got on the phone and said, Hey LinkedIn, let's eliminate some of these positions. Don't do enough to scare everybody, but just do enough to make us feel better about the future. So yeah, I'd say let's, let's keep an on this. was shocked. It wasn't more in terms of the percentage, but Hey, that's, that's easy for me to say the 202 people that lost their job. It's a pretty big deal to them. So if you need Chad (17:34.356) Mm-hmm. Chad (17:52.804) Mmm. Yeah. Yeah. Chad (17:59.932) It is. It is. Joel (18:01.166) If you need some good engineers and customer support people, LinkedIn, just put a few in the pond, everybody. Joel (18:13.098) All right, Chad, you got you got some gossip for us here. ERE, the OG of conferences, they've been around since 1998. You got word that they might be might be sunsetting SourceCon, one of their fabled conferences. What did you hear from the grapevine? Chad (18:17.908) Mm-hmm. Chad (18:24.169) Jeez. Chad (18:28.403) Mm-hmm. Chad (18:34.302) Well, let's say we'll get to that in a second. I want to get a little nostalgic first because remember when ERE was one of the must attend conferences in our space. mean, everyone used ERE networking tools. They read their articles, they commented on the articles, they shared the articles, attended. Everybody attended the webinars. mean, ERE was the place for TA professionals to attend events and get their daily dose of HR and recruiting news and gossip. Joel (18:38.254) Mm-hmm. Joel (18:43.47) Yeah. Chad (19:02.416) ERE was a central part of the recruitment industry. What happened? Before we get into the SourceCon stuff, what the hell happened? Joel (19:13.966) so full disclosure, I used to write for ERE as a contract, publisher. I've known Dave. mean, you and I both went to these early conferences. I mean, I started going in around 2005. The timing of it, was really good. mean, they were willing to embrace bloggers and video stuff. They, sort of like where Sherm said no, ERE said yes. And the, it, the it crowd came to ERE. They had a blogger. Chad (19:22.994) He's a guy. Yeah. Chad (19:31.582) Yeah. Joel (19:42.668) You know, reset or like area with beanbags and shit. So it was just, it was just the thing. I guess this would be like a fourth iteration of the conference. Dave left, didn't leave, but he, sort of passed the reins, handed the reins over to someone else and around the great recession time who turned it into sort of an executive, event where they said, Chad (19:46.046) Yeah. Joel (20:08.524) no more bloggers, no more part, like no more fun. Like we're going to be a real serious event and have executives and we're, we're going to make more money in the process. And maybe they did, maybe they didn't, Dave came back and then revived it sort of to it's, it's tried to get back to where it was. they bought source con, they bought TLNT, they bought, Chad (20:30.356) Mm-hmm. Joel (20:31.5) Not level 42. That's the band from the, from the eighties, but they bought, they, they acquired some folks, the candies they just acquired. So they've, they've been smart about, acquisitions. What happened? I don't know. I mean, they're working at so many things, right? Like their blogging plat, their articles primarily, and it's a world of podcasts and video and shorts. they've, they've sort of. Chad (20:33.684) Ha! Chad (20:58.504) That surprised me that they didn't go down that road faster. I mean, because it's content, right? mean, content's content. So it really surprised me they didn't go down that road faster. Joel (21:02.018) Yeah, I mean. Joel (21:07.554) Yeah, the content. mean, they've never really sort of re-engaged with the thought leaders or the people that are going to be doing videos from the shows and everything. They just kind of lost the mojo. The kids moved to Unleashed, they moved to RecFest, they've just sort of moved. And I think that ERE is kind of the cockroach of the recruiting conferences. And what I mean by that is like they survive. Chad (21:14.131) Mm-hmm. Chad (21:25.353) Mm. Joel (21:36.354) Dave I've known for a long time. He's a smart guy. He's, he's an old TMP guy, from the nineties and monster. mean, again, this thing launched in 98, he bootstrapped the whole thing, took it like zero one, you know, one to 15 employees. he's been able to adapt to this stuff and survive. I reached out to him to task what was going on. he said quote about some of the rumors you were hearing and particularly about source con, Chad (21:45.908) Mm-hmm. Chad (22:02.868) God. Joel (22:05.486) which I don't know if you want to get to now or cause you, you were asking what happened to ERE, but, so the rumor is SourceCon is going to be sunset. I said, Dave, what's up? He said, quote, those rumors are incorrect. And while we were making some big changes to SourceCon next year, it is an evolution that is necessary because the role of sourcing and TA is rapidly changing. I'm excited about where we are headed as a business. He also said, quote, we're going to be issuing a press release in a few days about what's going on. Chad (22:07.368) Go ahead, yeah, hit it. Yeah. Joel (22:34.518) with SourceCon. Look, sourcing is not what it was when he bought SourceCon. It's automated. I mean, it's just a different animal. And I've got to think that that conference, the numbers going to that conference have shrunk significantly in the last, since COVID. Okay. Chad (22:42.75) Yes. Chad (22:48.692) I have more on that. I have more on that. So first and foremost, the blog post October 6th, 2009 is when the acquisition, at least the announcement of the acquisition happened. That was 15 years ago. And we are now receiving reports that the last SourceCon event struggled to get 100 attendees, where in the past they got an upwards to 800. So is sourcing changing? Yes. Has it always changed? Yes. Sourcing was a different animal pre-internet. Resume databases change sourcing. Then search engines change sourcing. LinkedIn changed sourcing. Sourcing continued to evolve, but does this next evolution of sourcing involve humans? It feels like David Manster believes humans are going to be weeded out of the sourcing side of the house and you can't sell tickets to robots, right? So sourcing was a full-time job when you had to dig into file cabinets. It became even easier when you could access the goldmine of candidates on the internet, resume databases, niche communities, that kind of thing. But now tech is making that full-time job a split second task. Tech can source and match a database of millions of candidates in seconds. So instead of having to dig into that filing cabinet full of resumes or build a Boolean string for purple squirrels, the algos are prompt engineered. and perform that once full-time job in seconds. So is this an evolution? At first I was like, it is dying, but yeah, I mean, I think it is an evolution and you're seeing big numbers go to much smaller numbers. Again, something that used to be a product right now is turning into a feature. Joel (24:16.878) Mm-hmm. Joel (24:34.358) Yeah. And, and fewer companies that are selling it. Right. mean, in the, in hay day of source con, the exhibit hall was full of people that we have more profiles, we have better search, we have integrations as such. Like we've talked in Nausim about the companies like higher tool and higher, like that have either pivoted totally or gone out of business. And those are all sourcing tools. So the, the people that could carry the, know, that could fund these things. is down significantly in addition to people that would actually go to learn sourcing. Sourcing used to be, know, Shallie talking about how to use AltaVista to find people in a haystack or how to like, how to like scrape a company's about us page to get people that are executives there. And that's all gone. So, and, and by the way, like when someone like Adam Posner, the POScast that we know well, when, he goes on LinkedIn and says 80 % of recruiters are going to be gone in five years. Chad (25:12.02) Yeah. Joel (25:31.746) I don't know if he's right, but if it's half that, that's a big cut into attendees in these conferences and companies that are selling to them. So, I mean, I suspect all conferences either have a really great niche like rec fest has a, it's a party, right? It's just a good time. it's relatively, they don't, they don't want to be too huge. They're like a really good size, but yeah, if you're, if you're not intriguing, engaging, doing something different, people have limited budgets. have limited conferences that they can attend. They're going to go to the one that is the most fun, where the most heat is and where the most energy is. And right now that's, that's the challenge that Dave Dave has with his conference is how do you make it something that is a must go to event? Cause they haven't done that in a while. Yeah. Good luck. I'm a fan. like Dave, ERE you, you and I are old timers. Remember the glory days of all that. Yeah. Or Chad (26:06.504) Yep, where they learn the most. Chad (26:15.688) Good luck, buddy. Good luck. No, they have not. Chad (26:23.614) Been a long time since I've been to an ERE though. It's been a very long time. Joel (26:27.446) or invited. I've, I can't remember last time is like, we want you guys, we want who, who do we need to get? Who's, who's the list? Who's the list? So anyway, rippling and deal. Yes. This is where the heat is. so, next up a news. Don't buy snake oil, says a new landing page at rippling.com calling out competitor deal. It goes on to say, quote, Chad (26:29.874) Either way. Chad (26:36.69) Yeah. The list is rippling in deal. That's the list. Joel (26:55.874) deal often claims to be a one-stop solution for all your global payroll needs, but their customers pay the price for gaps beneath the surface. Play this game to find the differences between deals claims and the reality of their product, which leads you to a game where you create a snake. didn't even, I didn't totally understand it. but you create a snake and you point out lies or fabrications. so anyway, Rippling says, Hey, tired of playing games. Chad (27:05.406) Hmm. Chad (27:22.13) You eat the lies, yeah. Joel (27:25.198) get a demo of our product, Sea Rippling in action. Chad, the Trumpification of our business is happening. This used to be out of bounds calling out competitors like this. But what are your thoughts on the growing Rippling deal? I don't know. What are we gonna call it? Battle? Scuffle? Yeah, sure. Chad (27:44.344) scuffle. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's interesting because rippling has about 2 billion in funding and deal has 679 million. Yes, the difference rippling 2 billion but but with a B and deal 679 million that still a lot of money no matter what right. But reports and we actually have have heard reports, and Deal has said that they are at about 600 million ARR. And the estimate for Rippling is 350 ARR. So you've got a company who has maybe got about a quarter the amount of funding that you do. And they're outperforming you, right? You are a challenger brand when you should be, because you have a bigger war chest, you should be the big brand. So usually the challenger brand is the one who does this kind of stuff. And we've seen this in the past where not in our space, but Pepsi called out Coke for the Pepsi challenge, the taste test, right? And that's how you try to elevate your brand to that leader, that leader's brand, right? We're better than they are. Here, take a test. In this case, I mean, these guys, Rippling, the company with two billion in funding attacking deal, which should make everybody think obviously that deal is the Coca-Cola in this, in this conversation. mean, hell, Rippling's chief revenue officer posted the drama on LinkedIn. Again, wanting to make this stunt receive more awareness, more public awareness, but also by sharing the head of American sales from deals comments that they actually had in the chat that said, a dick. yes, it was unnecessary. was, it was, it was, it was stupid. It was stupid. And yes, the, the, when you're the number one on the top of the mountain, you don't, you know, you don't have to turn around and tell them to eat a Dick. They're already doing it because you're beating their ass. So just a little leadership and, and, and marketing, recommendations are kid, but let's be clear. I mean, both companies are doing incredibly well financially. Joel (29:36.844) It was an icon penis. It was an icon penis, by the way. Joel (29:50.03) Yeah. Chad (30:02.846) But from the outside looking in, if Rippling is pulling these kinds of stunts and expending resources, specifically attacking Deal, Deal looks like the big dog, the market leader, while Rippling is using their own brain power and tech resources to recreate a horrible 1980 style game. To me, it fell flat on the Rippling side and it just made Deal look better. Joel (30:27.179) huh. Chad (30:29.488) If the dude hadn't done the eat a dick comment, I think they would have definitely came out on top with nothing to talk about, but you know, things happen, humans happen. Joel (30:42.37) Yeah. So I reached out to Elizabeth Diana. That is her real name. Communications at deal. And she said, she said, quote, we're just focused on building for our customers and not on unnecessary noise. End quotes. think that was a pretty, pretty prescient comment. Yeah. No, there was not a. Chad (30:46.674) Okay. Chad (30:58.676) Under that was it eat a dick, Diana? Instead of sincerely Diana, was eat a dick, cheeseman, Diana. Joel (31:07.746) huh. Yeah. Yeah. No, I forget what my gift gift reply was, but I don't think it was, it was that like you say Coke and Pepsi. My, my analogy was, the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, while you had the Beatles making great records, not really talking shit. mean, John Lennon talks of shit, but like you had a band that was just creating great records. Then you had the stones, which is sort of dangerous. You know, the kids that were naughty, like they had a separate brand. And to me, this feels like. Chad (31:15.412) Ha Joel (31:37.858) You know, if you're, if you're the clean kid, it's deals may be your thing, but if you want to live a little faster, if you want to like come hang with the cool kids, we got the games and the funny stuff and that I like come, come over to rippling. you're right. mean, deal deal we've talked in like many times they're all cylinders. They make great acquisitions. They're, profits are, are doing very well. mean, both these companies will probably go public at some point. And then we'll really know exactly what's under the hood. but until then, Rippling has to make noise. They have to like make waves. They have to get attention. I mean, we're talking about it. that's what they need to do. But their founder, Conrad Parker or Parker Conrad, sorry, is a jackass. his, his LinkedIn profile literally says customer support. he's just, he's just a jackass. He's in sort of the mold of Elon and some of the other. Chad (32:22.014) Yeah. Yeah. Joel (32:34.528) CEOs that we talk about, but for some people that's hip and some people that's a buying decision. He fucked up Zenefits. Is this the early stages of him fucking up Rippling? I don't know. It's not a good look. It's a bad look from where I sit and I don't see corporate America embracing this stupidity. Chad (32:36.105) Mm-hmm. Chad (32:41.641) Yes. Chad (32:55.292) Know your audience, kids. Know your audience. Joel (32:59.214) know your audience. And speaking of audience, we're gonna take a quick break. Listen to the sponsors, kids, because there is no show. There is no show without the sponsors. Chad (33:14.206) Holy shit. Joel (33:14.222) All right, Chad, take two of these and call me in the morning. A new study published in the journal of the American medical association or JAMA as the cool kids call it demonstrates, first time we brought up the journal of the American medical association on the show, demonstrates the potential value of LLMs in clinical diagnoses from the study. The LLM alone demonstrated higher performance than both physician groups indicating Chad (33:26.494) Jam-o, baby. Joel (33:43.874) the need for technology and workforce development to realize the potential of physician, artificial intelligence, collaboration, and clinical practice. In short, the bots outperformed the humans. Chad, this one really caught your attention. What are your thoughts? Chad (33:53.086) Mm. Chad (34:00.754) It's not only that the bots outperform the humans, but the humans who were equipped with the bots didn't use the fucking bots. So control group number one was the LLM group. They were the they were the physicians who had the large language model. They scored a median of 60 or 76 percent, 76 percent. The conventional ones, the ones who just continue to do business like they always do. 74 percent. So it wasn't that big of a deal. The large language model by itself. scored 92%. So if group number one actually trusted the large language model, they would have scored significantly higher, but the humans didn't trust the tech. if an LLM has 92 % accuracy rate diagnosing patients, who out there still believes that an LLM can't source screen and schedule interviews for open recs? mean, how many times could companies, how much time could companies save? in the hiring process if you allow the tech to just do those three simple tasks, source, screen, schedule. Another Harvard working study entitled Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier showed that consultants using GPT-4 completed 12 % more tasks, 25 % faster, and produced outputs 40 % higher in quality compared to those not using the AI assistant. So If you're still out there in Chad and cheese podcast listening land and you are still in denial, this is when I got to ask you to do go to the sessions.ai. Okay. That's where we actually sat down with Eileen Kowalski from GM and she talks about how they are already doing this and it's working. Right. So we can't be in denial anymore. And the thing that really gets me here is these are physicians, healthcare. Joel (35:57.678) Mm-hmm. Chad (35:57.842) We could do so much with this. Imagine what we could do also on the recruiting side. You gotta trust it. You gotta trust it. Joel (36:07.746) Yeah, these guys went to these guys and gals went to school longer for longer periods than the most recruiters that I know and still get it wrong. Look, there's some there's some jobs that I can't imagine being fully automated. One is doctor. One is pilot and dentist like anything that like and maybe stripper that that shouldn't ever be automated. So you're right. If if we get to a point in humanity and society where we say, you know what? Chad (36:23.965) Nah. Yeah. Chad (36:28.68) Talk about OnlyFans later. Joel (36:35.276) I got a little ache. want the X-ray. Tell me what the robots say I have. And that's more trusted than what the doctor looking at it says. Certainly the doctors that augment, are going to be probably the most successful, but you gotta trust the debt. gotta trust the robots, right? It sounds like there's a, there's a God complex with doctors, which is not surprising where they say I'm smarter than a robot. and these, this, this data says, no, not, not exactly. so do doctors get to a point where they trust the data and then just, Chad (36:54.236) Of course. Yeah. Joel (37:04.952) follow suit with the, with the patient. don't know. But yes, if we can get to a point where that stuff, and I've been in a Waymo, I'm totally cool with no taxis, drivers, the actual people, like let me get in a car and go where I want to go. recruiting is screwed, long-term because back to the ERE thing and back to the positive, like if 80 % are gone because of this stuff, like that makes it really hard to have a conference. makes it really hard to have products and services beyond a few. Chad (37:21.492) Hahaha Joel (37:34.016) And it kind of makes it hard to do a podcast because robots don't listen to podcasts from what I know. But our listener numbers say people want to know what's going on. What is AI going to like, how do I adapt? How do I learn how to like survive in this world? Maybe that's part of the reason why we're getting a lot of increases in listenership, but you're right. If, if healthcare goes down the road of like, let, let the robots know, what we're doing in 60 minutes had a great story about people that are in. training robots and what cancer looks like and and a, you know, a, a picture and what like certain things. So like, this is where we're going. I think it's, it's for the best. If we can get healthcare quick and easy based on whatever, and the robots could tell us, the OMS can tell us like, I think that's a good world, but it's going to scare a lot of people for sure. Chad (38:23.112) It will, it will. Joel (38:26.25) It will scare a few people. Almost as scary as what Walmart did this week. Walmart has announced changes to its diversity, equity and inclusion policies, continuing a trend among US companies that we've talked about quite a bit on the show. This decision comes amidst legal victories against DEI programs by conservative groups. And a broader corporate retreat from DEI initiatives, including companies like Boeing, Ford, Harley Davidson, et cetera. Walmart shift includes moving away from the term DEI to quote belonging, reflecting a strategic adjustment in response to legal, political, and social dynamics. Chad, I'm guessing you have a few thoughts on this move by Walmart. Chad (39:14.772) I do, but I'm actually going to talk about an expert in this space and her thoughts, because she actually wrote about it last week, and that's my wife, Julie Sowell. She wrote an article called Walmart from Rooster to Chicken. And here's an excerpt. So quote, let's be real. Walmart isn't as clueless as their public statement would suggest. They aren't bowing to public pressure because they care about the public's opinion. If they did, Joel (39:23.907) Yep. Chad (39:42.816) They would then know that most Americans support DEI efforts and prefer to spend money with companies that promote diversity. No, Walmart's retreat isn't about responding to the public. It's about a business decision to scale back on DEI and in anticipation of less enforcement of affirmative action under the incoming administration. They've used the classic excuse of, quote unquote, responsiveness to backtrack on something that they never really believed in. It's all about cutting operational costs so they can fatten up their shareholders' pockets in the next quarter, as you can see in their Q3 earnings report. Classic, classic chicken move, end quote. And she's 100 % right. I I couldn't have written it any better. Whenever, wherever companies believe they can cut corners and throw money back into the bottom line, they're going to do it. And if companies believe they could not be held accountable for workplace fairness and equity, they're going to cut all control measures. And that's what's happening right now. So it's going to be interesting to see how companies actually rein in to ensure that there is fairness and there is equity, because that's how people stay longer without really putting a quote unquote program in a box called DEI. So will Walmart do it or will they just let everything flow to the wind? I guess we'll find out. Joel (41:10.092) Yeah. The answer to all your questions, my son is money. and Julie obviously hit, that one, that nail on the head. what really surprises me about this is Walmart's for everybody. I mean, I like if Harley Davidson says, fuck DI, I mean, it's, it's a tough machismo business. Like most of their buyers give a shit, but everyone shops at Walmart. like it's for everybody and why there isn't what I find interesting. Chad (41:18.355) Yeah. Chad (41:23.764) Yeah. Joel (41:39.982) is there's no voice, there's no voice or entity saying don't shop at Walmart because they don't embrace DI. However, there is a really loud voice, on the other side saying this company embraces DI don't shop there boycott this company service, cetera. And there's a guy named Robbie Starbuck. I don't know if this name rings a bell to you, but he has a huge social media presence and his sole existence is Chad (42:04.788) Uh-uh. Joel (42:09.72) calling out companies, ask, you know, tell talking about boycotts, et cetera. And, if, if you're not familiar with them, this is a Bloomberg story. a Bloomberg tech talk, a reporter that has covered this story and has some really cool insight. want to play that for the, for the audience and for you. Chad (42:15.273) Mm-hmm. Joel (44:20.206) Fear, fear. This is gonna be a 2025 narrative. Business is getting on Trump's good side and he's really good about striking fear, tariffs, merchandise more expensive. What scares Walmart to death is if they can no longer be the lowest cost provider for goods and services. And they wanna not be on. Chad (44:21.812) Yeah. Chad (44:33.748) 2025, 2026, 2027, yes. Joel (44:47.214) Trump's target list, tariff list. Like Apple did a great job of getting iPhones out of the China tariffs. Like they got a pass because Tim Cook played really nice with Donald Trump. And I think a lot of businesses that get stuff from China are going to bow down to Trump. And this is going to be a story for the next four years. Chad (45:09.502) Kiss the ring and fill the Bermuda bank accounts. Joel (45:13.71) It'd be nice if there was an opposite of Starbucks on the other side, but there really isn't, unfortunately. All right, let's take a quick break and OnlyFans, we haven't talked about that in a while. Joel (45:32.206) All right, Chad, it may be, it may be about time for us to announce our only fans page based on some of the numbers that are coming out on this stuff. Sophie rain, a top content creator on only fans has revealed her earnings for one year on the platform. You ready for this? one year, 43,477,695 and one cent. thought the one cent was fun. if she went to Hollywood. The only three actors who could currently boast having a bigger bank account increase than her would be Tom Cruise, Margot Robbie, and Adam Sandler. OnlyFans is getting out of control. Chad, what are your thoughts on Sophie Raine's $43 million year? Chad (46:19.054) I think she's just one of many that we've talked about already. Yes, there are porn stars that are making money on OnlyFans, but we've also talked about teachers and nurses leaving their jobs and making mad cash on OnlyFans. The growth of this platform is mind blowing. And according to Variety, OnlyFans has record revenues and profits in 2023 fiscal year with a total of 6.63 bub-bub-billion in payments. made during that time with a total of 4.12 million content creators. Over 4 million content creators and the average payout to OnlyFans creators is about $1,300 a year. yes, if you want to be a part of that crazy 4 million with some kind of fetish that you want to do, that's entirely up to you. But you keep me out of it, Cheeseman. You keep me out of it. Joel (46:57.87) Yeah. Joel (47:14.938) I want to highlight what you said there. The average income for a creator is $1,300 a year. So by and large, there's a million, about 1.4 million Americans on the platform. so it's not a sure thing that you're going to get rich off of being a creator and only fans, because if 1300 is the average, there are people making $2. I mean, there are like, there's like a really low end. Chad (47:24.777) Mm-hmm. Joel (47:45.326) You know, I guess that nose hair, fetish that knows our fetish isn't catching on. like I thought it would, it's funny. I dug into this a little bit. there are some other stars, porn stars, creators that are calling her like calling bullshit on some of this. apparently she says one fan tipped her $4 million. does that pass the sniff test? I don't know. $4 million for a tip, for being on video. they, they, There's also like a big uproar right now about how OnlyFans is fucking with the porn industry. The porn industry is in trouble because of OnlyFans. Sure. You know, as far as I can tell, Pornhub is doing just fine with views and money. Yeah. Chad (48:30.044) It shouldn't be a problem. can move. They can move over to another storefront. mean, it's yeah, it's just weird. It's you got, you got to go to where the people are at, right? We went to Google. Now we're going to tick tock and we're going to, you know, we're going to chat GPT. mean, things evolve. Joel (48:35.286) Yeah. Yeah. Joel (48:40.387) Yeah. Joel (48:47.342) Yeah, you know, to me, it's, it's just for people, for you and I in a generation who saw their first boob in a Playboy more than likely, like the world that we live in now is so surreal to me. And it's sort of, it's a little bit sad that there's so many, like you can get this stuff for free, but people are paying whatever to see this shit. Anyway, it's, it's a Chad (48:57.948) Mm, yeah. Chad (49:03.848) Rest. Chad (49:13.044) And that $4 million tip, who knows what other deliverables outside of just the OnlyFans stream, right? You never, I mean, you just never know. Joel (49:17.516) Well, yeah, I that's true. It could. Joel (49:23.146) It could be a backdoor to prostitution. I did. said back. Yeah. I, I, yeah. I said back door everybody. Chad (49:27.024) Or who knows? Who knows? Chad (49:32.66) Ha! Joel (49:35.38) All right, Chad, until we have the AI look like real people, I guess OnlyFans will continue to hit the ball out of the park. Which brings us to our dad joke of the week. Are you ready? Are you ready for the dad joke of the week? Chad (49:36.712) Yes. Chad (49:47.602) Hmm, as ready as I can be. Joel (49:55.798) What would the Terminator be called in retirement? What would the Terminator be called in retirement? I'll be back. would the Terminator be called in retirement, Chad? Chad (50:08.742) I don't know. Shit. The extra- Joel (50:09.548) The Exterminator. Get it? The Exterminator. Chad (50:15.188) That's bad. That one is bad. We out. Joel (50:15.839) We out.

Brace yourselves: The Chad & Cheese Podcast  is back, this time with retired Lieutenant General Russell L. Honoré—who proves you can train and lead half a million troops and  drop some epic truth bombs on HR, AI, and America’s obsession with cheap stuff. In this spicy episode, we cover: HR Meets Boot Camp: General Honoré schools us on why leading people isn’t about asking, “You’re good, right?” and walking off like a clueless middle manager. Robots Can’t Cook Gumbo: Automation might make life easier, but it’s not making you a killer bowl of Cajun deliciousness—or fixing that flat tire you’re whining about. Recruitment Woes: From the Army’s “12 teeth rule” (yes, you read that right) to recruiting Gen Z kids glued to their phones, the General doesn’t hold back on what needs fixing. Boomers vs. Gen Z: Growing up poor meant fixing TVs with tinfoil and watching The Lone Ranger  without a picture. Now? Kids need a new flat screen if the remote has dust on it. Mental Health Wake-Up Call: Spoiler alert: If your employee mentions seeing floating elephants, maybe don’t just tell them to get back to work. Sprinkled with Honoré’s signature wit, biting honesty, and a dose of “adapt-or-die” wisdom, this episode delivers laughs, snark, and some much-needed perspective on leadership in a rapidly changing world. Strap in, folks—it’s time to break things (figuratively) and rebuild smarter. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Podcast Intro: 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 & Cheese podcast. Joel: All right, let's do this. We are The Chad & Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheeseman. Joel: Joined as always, Chad Sowash is in the house, and we are privileged to be chatting with retired Lieutenant General Russell L. Honoré. General, welcome to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast. General Honoré: We'll see. [laughter] Joel: Yes, we will. It's a very low bar in HR for danger. Your level of danger is much different than ours. General Honoré: Y'all have grown up a level where you can associate HR with being dangerous and humorous. That's normally not associated with HR. Joel: They don't. Chad: Which is, yeah, which is why we stick out, which is why we stick out, yeah. So, being a general, US Army, there's a lot to do. You cover a lot of different bases. Today, you talked a lot about HR, 'cause obviously you're in an HR compliance kind of conference, but you felt at home in talking about all of those different things. In coming up through the military, how much did you actually have to deal with personnel, HR, those types of things? General Honoré: Because the Army is about people. Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: They get paid minimum wage, that swear and to defend and support and defend the Constitution. That work for about $12 an hour, get deployed all around the world, get their ass shot at. Chad: I know. General Honoré: I have to move frequently. So, the Army's about people. Chad: Yeah, and you moved 25 times, didn't you? General Honoré: It's about mission. Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: It's about being on a damn team. So, yeah, I mean, I'm comfortable in this space, not that I know what civilian HR do any more than what I picked up in my graduate courses, but it parallels, it deals with the issues of people, whereas a mission commander, it starts with the people, end with the people. Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: If you don't get a mission accomplished and the information that's coming to you from being with the troops, watching the troops, listening to your grapevine, you got your chaplain, you got your sergeant major, you got your NCOs, and then I've always practiced leading by walking around and asking the soldier, how's it going? Then shut your damn mouth and listen. General Honoré: Or how you doing? Whereas I saw a lot of my contemporaries, how you doing? You're doing good, right? Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: Well, they answer the old question. Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: They're not interested. They ask the question out of... Chad: They're leading it in the witness. General Honoré: Right. How's the child? Good, right? As opposed to, how's the food? Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: How's your room? And listening, and you get a pretty good feel for what's going on in your unit because if you're listening, the troops will tell you. Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: I mean, as I said, we asked a lot for them to raise their right hand and support and defend the Constitution of the United States and we're prepared to put them in jail if they don't do it. Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: But they do it willingly, at minimum wage, in the outdoors, all weather condition. So you better hell to know people if you're gonna be an effective leader in the Army and you better hell respect your people. Chad: So one thing real quick, when you were your highest command, how many soldiers were under you at that point? General Honoré: We were training and mobilizing a half million troops a year. Chad: Half million troops, okay, so... General Honoré: And over about four years. Chad: Okay. General Honoré: It was every National Guard and Reserve unit that got mobilized or went through sustainment training. We did it in First Army, that was our mission. Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: And my ultimate mission was to respond to disasters like Katrina. Chad: Right. General Honoré: But my day job as First Army Commander was preparing troops to mobilize and deploy. Chad: So as you say, going down to talk to the troops, I know, 'cause I was one of those little E2, E3s and the general come down and talk to us. General Honoré: Yeah. Chad: You think of it on the CEO side, 'cause you're the CEO of that company at that point, right? As a brigade, battalion, or battalion brigade. That's scary, right? You really don't wanna say anything that's gonna screw up your day, right? How did you get personable enough to get real with that soldier, knowing that you were the CEO and they are literally just entry-level maybe two, three years in? How did you make that personal connection? 'cause that's important. General Honoré: Remember you were young and inexperienced at one time. Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: And how can you connect with that soldier? One of the days I would say, where are you from? What would come out of your towel? Football players cowboys. Just a couple of leading questions. To get to the soldier, to talk about them. And you can see some that will stay away from that because they didn't wanna tell you. They may be embarrassed that they came from a very poor or very humble, but most of them will tell you. Mom, a single mom with four kids. I was the oldest one and I decided to come in the Army so I could help out. And that's okay. I mean, I was poor, came from a family of 12, but I think that gives you an attribute. And I see in a lot of kids compared to, when you're poor, you learn how to fix shit. Chad: Yes, you do. General Honoré: So you learn how to adapt. Like when I was growing up, we initially had two TVs, one with sound, one with a picture. And the youngest and the dumbest would hold the aluminum on the antenna so we could watch the Long Ranger. You adapt and overcome. You walk in the room now and the kid will say, hey, we need a new TV. General Honoré: There's no picture. Shit, we watch TV all the time with no picture 'cause you couldn't get a... You just listen. Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: It's not like you couldn't figure out Long Ranger's about to pop somebody in the ass, you know what I mean? You just listen. Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: You adapt 'cause the story is still there. Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: It's either that or listen to the crickets on the front porch. But we come from a generation... I come from the boomers raised by the greatest generation who were raised by the silent generation. The silent generation was some hard song bitches, boy. They were born in the pandemic in World War I, survived that, survived the depression and fought World War II. Chad: Obstacle, after obstacle, after obstacle. General Honoré: So you don't tell the silent generation like, well, I think I need two tires. I need a whole set of tires for my car to walk out. They say, boy, you need one goddamn tire. That's all you need I mean. Oh, you don't tell them, well I had a flat tire, I need a new set. No, they say, hey, let's fix this. Let's take that tire off, we're gonna fix it. Same thing with the greatest generation. Would you walk up to a Gen Z and say, what's the problem? I need new tires. Why? 'Cause I got a flat. Well, bullshit. I was raised by the greatest. Let's go fix the one tire. General Honoré: Then we'll go from there. But it's a different how each generation adapted and the impact it made on society. And as a boomer, the greatest generation, they didn't have much patience for you 'cause what the hell are you complaining about? Chad: Oh, it feels like the boomers, we were raised by boomers, so it feels like that's kind of like my dad didn't have much patience. General Honoré: No, we put a case of whoop-ass on you. We'd put you in the back of the station wagon with no seatbelt on and smoke a god damn cigar while we were driving down the road. We didn't give a shit. We drank too much, cursed too much. Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: We'll tell you to go take your ass outside and come back when it get dark. Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: Or when we turn the light on, you can come in. Go find something to do, drink out of a hose. Go find something. We ain't giving you no god damn cold drink, you know? Chad: You're clearly a fan of people and you made a comment about automation that you're not such a fan. I think it was something around a robot can't make a good bowl of gumbo. What are your thoughts on automation and where the world is going with more automated tools and AI? General Honoré: I think we gotta adapt. The first 10 years ago, everybody was pissy as hell about the robot, the robot taking the job. Well, the robot didn't take nobody's job. They made something, they made something better and they made some things quicker, but we're still standing. There's a lot of... I could take you back a generation and tell you what technology. When you look at the Ninth Ward that was all destroyed during Katrina, all those poor houses, every four houses empty. And one time the Ninth Ward was a middle-class neighborhood because it was a longshoreman. Chad: Okay. General Honoré: They got paid well, but it was all brick, bolt, freight then. Pallets, big bags. Then along came the container. When the container arrived, it destroyed the Ninth Ward. The guy lost his job. Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: That's a clear case where technology didn't bend and it broke it. Chad: Decimated the entire class. General Honoré: And by the time Katrina came, all those guys had aged out and the kids and grandkids owned their homes and they couldn't take care of them properly. Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: Multiple heirs to the property. But when I was 12 years old, it was a straight up middle-class neighborhood. People had cars, they had a grocery store in every corner, a barbershop and a deli and garage. It was a functional community. General Honoré: And by the time Katrina hit, it was one out of every four houses were abandoned because when that economy transitioned and left them in the city of New Orleans, when they transitioned the port, they tried to go to a tourist economy. That's how we ended up with the Superdome. That's how we ended up with the convention center and had the World City Fair thing here. General Honoré: When you go from a job, union job with benefits to their kids being in the entertainment field, either playing music or working in hospitality, putting them drinks out, cooking. Chad: More commercial. General Honoré: Those are minimum few benefits. Chad: Right. General Honoré: And it changed the community. So when you go from that as an example, when we modernize the ports, to go to containers where you do the same thing all with machines where you had 50 men, you might have two spotting the machine and the thing go about. We've done okay with that because it reduced the cost of ship and handling a product. And we like cheap shit. America like cheap shit. Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: We do. General Honoré: We don't care where the shit come from long as it's the cheapest stuff we can buy. We like it. And when the robot came up, there was a lot of discussion about how many people it was gonna take. General Honoré: Well, I've been in automobile assembly line still a lot of people out there working. But what they're doing now is they're doing all the sub-assembly breakdown 'cause that shit's arriving in America already made, but it got to be unpacked. So where you lost people at $25 an hour, you got five working at $18 an hour. General Honoré: Less skilled, but you got... And then you got to seal the packing and send it back because it's not cost effective if you don't use it again. So the robots doing the tap, tap, tap, but to get that robot to do that, all that stuff has got to be in place for multiple countries and multiple packaging. Some of it's plastic, some of it's cardboard, some of it's all kinds of stuff. General Honoré: And all that has to be put back in the container and sent back to make the business profitable. So we go now to AI, which is more of a knowledge based thing. And I don't pretend to be an expert on it, but basically it's just a collection of word salad of information. And it's a pretty damn good job. You went into CP Chat and said, tell me about this chat group, this HR chat box. It'll put some shit out about you. Chad: Easily, yeah. General Honoré: And all it's done is it's done a collection of adjective, verbs, and pronouns. Chad: And it's made contextual sense out of it. So you sit on boards, correct me if I'm wrong, boards of companies, and you obviously advise CEOs and boards and whatnot. So what are you seeing out there now with the landscape? Obviously the election's coming and a lot of people are waiting and they're kind of on pins and needles to see what the hell happens. But beyond that, what do you see in the landscape when it comes to business? Is it as robust as we're being told? General Honoré: I'm not quite sure I understand your question. Say it again. Chad: So the economy. General Honoré: The economy, okay. Chad: Right. And you're talking to these CEOs and whatnot and getting vibes from them on what's actually happening. Some are telling us that literally, we're waiting for all hell to break loose or the dam to burst. One or the other, depending on who get... General Honoré: Okay, let's start at the top of the food chain. Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: The stock market is just continuing to grow. Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: And value to investors. It's only done in a pretty secure environment where people feel pretty secure about investing in it and continue to bring value. I think some of our... During COVID, we went through this with all the essential workers and what happened when they did show up. Let's say a food chain. It was always screw them. We'll pay them $12. What happens when they don't show up, bro? Chad: And we saw what happened. Pie chain got busted. General Honoré: So you see all over town now, you see food chains that pay you $17 an hour to go flip burgers. I think what it is, it takes you 22 to break even in the economy. Chad: Yeah, depending on where you're at. General Honoré: And then that's even short, yeah. So you go... I went to Popeye's last night and bought a couple dirty rice, what they call ke six fucking dollars. General Honoré: And that's ridiculous. You can buy a whole chicken for $6. And this is just rice with chicken livers in it. Joel: Popeye's is good, but it's not that good. General Honoré: I'm I right? They are good. So they have said, well, we're gonna pay our workers more and we gonna pass the price on. And that's fair enough. But the price of fast food and it's starting to buy them, it don't make sense for people to pay $8 a night. There's people like me that remember... When the hamburger was 50 cents. Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: Now we paying $3 for a plain hamburger at McDonald's. Chad: You're lucky. General Honoré: Wait a minute. Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: It is not correlating. Chad: Yeah. That's what happens when we... General Honoré: People are starting to back off from them. Chad: Yeah. When we have a McDonald's on every show, on every corner, that's what happens. General Honoré: You look at the big wall or the big drug stores. They're closing them. Some of them are left and right. And you say, but when they were building all of 'em, did it make sense to put 'em a mile apart? Who the fuck was thinking about that? Chad: Right across the street from each other. Yeah. General Honoré: But you go back and you figure out them. Somebody was grabbing real estate. They were grabbing real estate. They bought out the competition, in some cases all they were doing was grabbing real estate and now they sat on prime corners. And every small, now I saw that they gonna close a thousand stores. They cash it out on real estate, moving that product to, they have four stores in the town. They'll go to two, sell the real estate. So as a part of the market, I don't understand, but back to AI, I'm not afraid of it. Wish I knew more about it. But as with all emerging technologies, humans adapt to 'em. It's like there's a story we told used to tell about change. The guy who made buggy whips made the best buggy whips and carriages in New York and England. And people would order them from all over the country. Then Henry Ford come out with the goddamn car and he see, so Charles, you need to adjust your prices on how many buggies and buggies you continue to make. He was a tycoon. They had to take up money to bury him. 'Cause he wouldn't change. He kept building them. He wouldn't change. They had to take up money in the family of the bury him. Chad: But we've always been taught, and I heard different today that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And we're in a different age, which is. General Honoré: Then they broke. You gotta fix it. You gotta break it. Chad: Yeah. You gotta break it, right? If it ain't broke, break it. General Honoré: Break it. Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: Because you gotta keep up with change... You can't act like people are not sensitive to what they get their paid and their benefits. And you got, some companies are real asshole. They're pushing people out in their 50s, 'cause that's when women get sick all of a sudden, hey, we are zeroing your position out. The fuckers know that she's subject to breast cancer or, and that's the kinda stuff that scare me when AI might pull up, is people that might have some co-mobilities 'cause they go after women like that. Now, did this eliminate their position because that drags out the cost that they gotta co-pay. Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: And them fuckers are doing that left in right now. And your non-union soft skill jobs like education, medical and that's the piece that scare me where they can use AI and screen out. By the time this employee gets 60, they need to be gone because of coming to co-mobilities. Or by the time they get 45. And the way we do it, we eliminate the job. Joel: I've always been fascinated, I'll let you out on this. Recruiting is hard. Recruiting for a job that you might die is particularly hard. Chad: Especially hard. Yeah. Joel: What is the military secret sauce to recruit young men to come work for them? General Honoré: The greatest story we had is connecting with a young person who, uncle, father, brother, mom was in the military. They're already sold by the time we get 'em, the majority of our recruits come from somebody was in the family, was in the military. Joel: This guy. Chad: So the thing though is that the army has been missing their recruiting targets, right? So that's how we used to do things, right? And we need to break it. How do we break it? That's the hard part. General Honoré: You know what the standard was for World War II to be in the Army? Chad: Probably not much of one. General Honoré: You had to have 12 fucking teeth. [laughter] General Honoré: And [0:17:14.9] ____ a World War. Joel: Are you serious? That that was it. 12 teeth. General Honoré: Yeah. Didn't have to read to be able to see, but your dental plan is you had to have at least 12 teeth. Chad: And today? General Honoré: It's like you gotta have high school diploma, pass the GT and no fat on your ass. You gotta be able to do run and do so many pushups. And I said for years the Army Bill Soldier. Chad: Yes. General Honoré: So you give me a kid that so weight, no problem. Chad: I'll knock 40 pounds off his ass on heartbeat. General Honoré: We'll deal with that. Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: But they weren't taking them because they were overweight or they couldn't do 50 pushups. That's so we teach. Chad: We're being too selective is what you're saying. There's no reason. General Honoré: A head up in the air. Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: The economy was bad. The COVID hit people, retracted kids graduate on Zoom and shit. They lost that connection. The recruiters lost some contact. They stopped listening to grandpa's story. All that kind of made a dip. All that made a dip. And I said, hey, we built soldiers. I don't give a fuck what kind of shape they in. If they got a willing mind, we'll take 'em. We'll work with 'em... General Honoré: What kind of kid gonna sign up to you and say, I'm gonna submit to you in pre-basic training with the promise. If I make it to it, I'm gonna allow you to put me in 22 more weeks of hell. Without a phone, without my girlfriend, without my wife, without my car. I want that some bitch. Chad: Oh. Yeah. And it is one I the best public service program we have in the United States today because we take a bunch of these kids. I was one of 'em. 18 years old, six days out of high school. I was at base training? General Honoré: We're still doing dumb shit. Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: Oh, you smoke marijuana. You shouldn't have come. Get the fuck outta here, man. General Honoré: We had to get to drink a quarter whisk every night and you gonna tell his kid if you smoke marijuana, he can't come in the fucking Army. Fuck you. Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: And they started that. Oh well, can we get the three urinalysis test to make sure stand still yet. Get the fuck past it. Half of the Congress smoke weed. Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: And still smoke it. Chad: Yeah, common sense approach. General Honoré: But you tell the kid, hey, oh, you admitted to smoking weed. Oh, we can't have you in the army. Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: It was another one. I felt good last week when I was division commander, I had a major in my aviation battalion. Who investigation had started before we left, but it was an administrative thing. So he came on the career doing a good job. Then the package catch up with him, his wife submitted to the CID and the MPS, a video of him doing a homosexual act. We had to discharge that fucking major. Chad: Why? General Honoré: 'Cause that was a rule at the time when that was a don't ask, don't tell. Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: Well, what'd he do last week? He said, Hey, fucked up. We fucked up. You can give me honorable discharge? You come back in, go apply for your veteran's benefit. But we knew what the law said. Chad: Yeah. General Honoré: You think I wanted to get rid of that agent? Chad: Oh, hell no. Yeah. Does he mean... General Honoré: I didn't know it I saw him. I'd flown with the guy I didn't fucking know. But the rule was since the shit came up with the tape and all that, because it was, but if you tell, you had to go. So, I mean, we've evolved as a nation, obviously. So that being said, when you talk about recruiting, you talking about retention, you talking about we gotta evolve in World War II. We took him in, we got em. We gotta take 'em as we got 'em. General Honoré: These kids have been through a lot. They survived COVID. They've been through, up and down the economy. They've seen their parents go through all that fentanyl shit. That shit is that shit. Fucking police depart, man. You got three or something died. They, you know how many widows and babies and moms and dads and 300 a day. General Honoré: And we were losing that many in a war. The country would be going crazy. We lose 20 a day of suicide and we still ain't solve that problem 'cause we don't recognize mental health as an illness. If you say, I got a 2D, okay, go ahead on Joe. Go get that two taken care of, boss. I ain't feeling good today. I'm seeing fucking little elephants floating around in the air. Well, fuck you, man. Go to your desk. Get to work. What the fuck are you talking about with elephants floating in the fucking air? General Honoré: Fuck you, get to work. You know, I said, my knee hurt my knee playing basketball last night. I need to go say, okay. He come in and sit. Chad: Go TMC. General Honoré: Man, I'm not feeling well. I feel like I wanna hurt myself. Oh man. Go see the chaplain. Go see the priest. We don't recognize. All we missed the nonverbal cry for help. Why is this guy yelling and screaming at everybody? This is not him or her? What's going on here? We don't pick up on it. We don't pick up on it. And we didn't act on it. Chad: We gotta care. And that's where, going all the way back to that first question is you're a people person. And that's where you are focused in on. So these things obviously make sense to somebody like you, but a lot of people who only care quarter to quarter profits to profits. They're not focusing on the people. They're just trying to focus on the profits. General Honoré: Well, that's still their own fault. That still their own shortness and organization that spend more time on process and on procedure in people will fall short. Joel: Well, general, it was a privilege to sit down with you today. Thank you for your service. That was retired Lieutenant General Russell Honoree, Chad. That's another one in the can. Chad: We out. Joel: We out. Chad: 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 shout outs to 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. Any who, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play or whatever. You listen to your podcasts. That way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.jetcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese is so weird. We out.

Forget the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade—this week, The Chad and Cheese Podcast  serves up a sizzling platter of Jive Turkeys! Join Joel "White Meat Cheeseman" and Chad "Pass the Stuffing Sowash" as they skewer the year's most cooked-up corporate blunders and baffling business missteps. From public companies stuck in reverse to CFOs selling shares faster than leftover pumpkin pie, no turkey is safe. Highlights include Art "The Dart" Zeile's impressive ability to keep a stock price as flat as a pumpkin pie crust, and ZipRecruiter's epic dive, complete with CFO fire sales and an AI "savior" named Phil (spoiler: Phil can't save this feast). But the real cranberry on top? Chad's fiery rant, while Joel carves into the corporate trend of quietly rebranding DEI while corporate support slips away faster than gravy on a dry turkey. Add a sprinkle of international flair with guest contributors from Emi in the UK, Lieven in Belgium, and Mo from Hawaii where they are dishing out their own "turkeys of the year," and you've got a buffet of biting humor, sharp insights, and (of course) dad jokes about cranberry sauce blushing. Enjoy! 🦃 PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:30.424) Gobble Gobble and pass the mashed potatoes. Hey boys and girls, it's the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel White Meat Cheeseman. Chad (00:39.569) This is Chad. Give me that stuff and so watch. Joel (00:43.31) And on this week's episode, forget the Macy's Day Thanksgiving Parade, we've got all the jive turkeys you need. Let's do this. Joel (01:03.862) Yeah. That obviously from trading places for the kids out there that don't know it. one of the few Thanksgiving era. go watch it. Jamie Lee Curtis is worth, worth the whole show. If nothing else, Jamie, curse and Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd are pretty good too. Yeah. So I woke up to 29 degrees here, Chad, in, in the Midwest. You look like you're a little more comfortable there in Portugal. Chad (01:03.995) So close to Thanksgiving. Chad (01:12.859) you don't know it, go watch it. Chad (01:21.989) Yeah, they're not, they're not. Chad (01:31.633) Yeah, it's a little sunny here. know, so, we're ready. It's, it's currently what we'd like to call 20 degrees. That's in Celsius, my friend. It's around 70, 70ish, but it's, it's pretty nice. a nice little walk out by the boardwalk today. Last night actually had kind of like a pseudo Thanksgiving with all my, my buddies who I play paddle with beer, burgers, just. Joel (01:46.509) Yeah. Chad (01:59.065) a bunch of food, but we have a real Thanksgiving coming up with a couple of Americans and then also just a variety of people from different countries happening on Thursday. Joel (02:07.32) Yeah. That sounds like a friends giving chat. Sounds like you had a friends giving. Now were those turkey burgers? No, no. Yeah. Chad (02:11.541) yes. Chad (02:15.011) No, no, we've got turkey coming, turkey coming. So yeah, we just had the burgers. Joel (02:21.496) So you know in the States, Turkey is all over the place. Every grocery store, it's easy to find. Is it tougher to find in Portugal? Yeah. Chad (02:24.796) yeah. God. yeah, and you're not going to get those big genetically altered like, Joel (02:31.63) Yeah, the steroid freak turkeys. Yeah. Chad (02:36.869) You're not getting those. You're not getting those. We don't have pardons over here. We don't need any of that shit, right? Because we're, you know, just, you know, turkeys on the menu, just not off. Joel (02:43.692) Yeah. so many turkeys, they have free turkeys places like spend a hundred bucks. We'll give you free Turkey. Like there's tons of free stuff. I'm almost thinking like we should give away free Turkey on the show, but I think the, the, shipping of that would be way too much of a headache. So we're sticking with the easy stuff. in case you guys don't know this, this, this is our drive Turkey episode. we'll explain exactly what that means later, but this is a little bit unconventional. We're going to skip shout outs. Chad (03:09.745) Please. Joel (03:14.33) and we're going to, guess, pimp our sponsors here real quick. So Chad, not free turkeys, but we've got free stuff. Tell them what they can win by signing up. Chad (03:21.051) free stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm thinking about maybe next year doing, because we can do Instacart, do free turkeys through Instacart. Anyway, we'll talk about that. Joel (03:31.136) If you'd like to sponsor that, please message us. Chad (03:34.595) Talk to us, talk to us. If you want to win free stuff, kids, you to get a chadcheese.com slash free. You can win t-shirts, those glorious chad & cheese t-shirts with ERIN App on the back, sponsored by ERIN app, bourbon barrel aged syrup from our buddies up north. That's right, Canada at Keeyora. Then we have beer from Aspen Tech Labs, craft beer delivered to your doorstep. That's right. Joel (03:36.046) Talk to us. Chad (04:03.247) Be careful, you might see Cheeseman dropping off beer. Whiskey, two bottles of whiskey, two bottles from TextKernel slash our friends at Bullhorn. And if it is your birthday, it is time for rum with Plum, but you can't win unless you play chatgeez.com slash free. Joel (04:09.654) yeah. Joel (04:15.326) yeah. Joel (04:26.094) That's right, Chad. Celebrating another trip around the sun listeners, Mason Wong, Nicole Adamson, Chris King, Neil Dunwoody, Deborah Schoggingarten. I probably mispronounced that. Frederick Patton, Thomas Toomey, Anan Natarajan, Dina Perrofer-Piro, Steve White, Claire Davis, Connell, Michael Goldberg, Susan Burns. Chad (04:36.465) Excuse me? What? Chad (04:49.349) Yes. Joel (04:49.354) And Alex Murphy, I'll celebrate another year around the sun. And by the way, Chad, we've been crushing the bourbon giveaways lately. We are crushing, like people are getting some good shit is all I'm saying. We've, we've upped our game on that bull horn and bull horn and text kernel. Thank you. Chad (04:54.182) Yes! Chad (05:03.345) It's all we do. mean, great craft beer, the best syrup, the best beer, the best whiskeys, the best t-shirts. I mean, come on kids. That's why you gotta go to ChadCheese.com slash free. It's pretty simple. And also the best football results. Unfortunately, last week just sucked ass because it was bi-week. But, but, but it obviously didn't hurt me as much as I thought it Joel (05:14.53) Yep, yep, and after, yep. Joel (05:22.198) It was my week. Yes. Joel (05:27.404) Yeah, I need some of the good bourbon, cause I, I took a little hit this week. I slipped from the number one spot again, factory fix, endorsing and sponsoring our unhealthy habits. this is your leaderboard heading into, I don't know. Was it week 13? We got three weeks left until the playoffs. your leaderboard looks like this Dean, the daddy Mac Mack roll. The man from down under is on top, ladies and gentlemen, showing us, showing us Americans how to. Chad (05:52.101) Killing it. Killing it! Joel (05:56.098) how to do this thing. I fall to the number two spot. Still pretty comfortable with my playoff chances. I was beaten by number three, David Stiefel, this week. Yeah, yeah. But the week is tough. This is a tough week to win. You got a lot of people off this week. You're in the number four spot, Chad, with a bullet. liked what you did this week. Kristy Lisbon, Jennifer Terry-Tharp. Chad (06:13.159) yeah. yeah. Joel (06:23.456) Laura Martinelli, Keith the Commish Sonderling. got him this week. Number nine, Action Jackson Dawquist. Number 10, Dena Pero for Pyros. Number 11, Sean Horton, here's a who. And my God, who is it again? And the. Chad (06:34.544) Ooh. Chad (06:40.523) not again. Joel (06:45.214) Adam, if you need help, go to YouTube. It's a new site search, search fantasy football help. And it'll tell you how to like take someone from a bench to the starting lineup. It's not, it's not rocket science. My friend here's, here's to you. It's an international sandwich. got Aussie on top. got Scotland on the bottom. Embarrassing, embarrassing the country, country greatly. Well, okay. So normally we would do news here. Chad (07:00.303) It's simple. Yeah. Chad (07:04.475) Click a button. Joel (07:14.498) But our jive turkey show, we're mixing it up this year. First of all, I want to say, what is a jive turkey? in the course of bringing on some guests this year, we've learned that maybe not everyone knows what jive turkey is. So AI, I went out to chat GPT and I said, define jive turkey for me. so it, so it's slang popularized in the seventies. and it means basically someone who's full of shit. I added the shit. It's more like full of it. Cause chat GPT is proper like that or. Chad (07:19.505) Yes. Chad (07:27.258) especially in Europe. Joel (07:43.136) not genuine, AKA someone or something that's just a sucker. That's just like, just bad. Okay. So, so this year, we're going to do two turkeys each, Chad and I, and we brought along, some of our, our friends in high places or low places, depending on who it is to, to chime in on their turkeys, their jive turkeys, from this year. we've got leaving. Chad (07:43.163) Yes. Chad (07:48.945) Ooh, I'm gonna get you sucker. Chad (07:55.345) Mm-hmm. Joel (08:08.344) From house of HR, if you hear, if you'll start your show, you definitely know Lieven. And he was on our weekly show a week back. got Emi Beredugo again, another, consistent guest on the show and, Mo Clough cloth. Did I say that correctly? Clock cloth. Clough. Yeah, just Mo. That's all I know. Mo Mo is what I know. Chad (08:23.534) Wiley Clough, just Mo. We're rebranding her as Mo. That's the rebrand. Joel (08:33.376) I like it. It's easy. I like easy, Chad. I like easy. I like easy. All right. And without further ado. Chad (08:34.565) Okay, that's good, Chad (08:44.411) Turkeys! Joel (08:47.214) All right. So I'm going here. my first jive turkey of 2024, the artful Dodger Art, The Dart, the modern art masterpiece Art Zeile CEO at DHI, more commonly known as dice or clearance and or clearance jobs. we'll focus mostly on dice here, cause that's the main property when art took the reins back in 2018, the stock traded at around a dollar 75 a share today, Chad. Joel (09:17.034) It trades, wait for it, at about a dollar 75 a share. in six short years, ART has been able to move the stock, not whatsoever. So way to go, way to go ART. Yeah, let's see. What's more, the CFO just left. The whole thing is riddled with incompetency. They've published in 2024, a total of, wait for it Chad, five. Chad (09:29.541) He's done nothing. Chad (09:37.105) Cheers. Joel (09:45.966) Press releases, they've done five press releases as a public company in 2024. And the last, the last PR that they dropped was in April. So I don't know if they've just took, took the year off or what. while every tech company on the planet is getting more efficient, DICE has increased its operations staff in the last year, almost a hundred percent operations, not development, not sales. Joel (10:12.584) operations. Yeah, that's, that's kind of a mystery to me too. in 2023, they had a market cap of $145 million today. That market cap is $84.5 million. And I'm not really good at math, but I know that 84 and a half is less than 145. yeah. So art art has had six years to turn this thing around. Chad (10:22.257) Mmm. Chad (10:37.371) Yeah, no, you'd be right, you'd be right. Joel (10:42.326) And it's still a pile of steaming dog shit sprinkled with cat turds. this, this jive turkey is totally cooked. Unfortunately, no one wants this job. So it looks like we're stuck with art for the foreseeable future, but this jive turkey is to you art. It's, fun watching the demise of a once great job. Chad (10:53.681) No. Chad (11:05.018) I wonder what his salary is because, I mean, they've done nothing, so he deserves nothing. I mean, seriously. Joel (11:18.252) Meanwhile, on the quarterly earnings report. Chad (11:24.24) Alright. Joel (11:24.494) You're still invited on the show art. If you want to come on the show and talk to us, you're more than welcome to, to defend yourself. Chad (11:31.631) Yeah, yeah. I want to know. I want to know about the first time he said he'd come on the show and then he ran out the back door at TA Tech. Anyway, anyway, OK, my first one done and this is might be a surprise to you, Joel, but my first jive turkey goes to zip recruiter. Yes, that's no surprise. No surprise whatsoever. Joel (11:48.661) Yeah. Chad (11:56.433) As you all remember, reported by the AIM group earlier this month, ZipRecurters revenues declined by 25% year over year with a net loss of $2.6 million compared to a net income of $24 million in the prior year quarter. Zip recorded its second net loss in three quarters, while competitors like Indeed are reporting gains. Then last week, you're going to love this, Timothy Yarbrough, Zip's EVP and Chief Financial Officer, we know them as the CFO, sold over 6012 shares of Zip Class A stock, which adds to the amount that he sold in October when Little Timmy sold 6013 shares. October, November, selling, selling, selling. So when the CFO starts selling off shares and tranches, like this, you got to wonder about the health of ZipRecruiter or maybe, or maybe he's just buying a super deluxe Joel Cheesman-like swimming pool for the backyard. Who knows? But remember kids, remember kids, we're not financial planners or experts here on The Chad and Cheese podcast, but the optics aren't great when Zip is poising for stock buybacks, revenues are experiencing a downward spiral. The CFO reportedly sold shares in October and November plus... There's no way in hell Zip's AI powered savior, Phil, can save ZipRecruiter from me giving them a jive turkey this year. Jive turkey goes to ZipRecruiter. Joel (13:36.75) Definitely jive to come on recruit holdings write a check write a check bring them in the fold zip recruiter glass door and indeed the trifecta for sure You failed to mention Chad and I had to check this because I knew this was on your list of jive turkeys You remember the talent all-stars podcast that that's a recruiter launched this year. Yeah, how could you forget? It's it's lighting up the the airwaves. It's lighting up the airwaves So so this thing launched in August Chad (13:39.739) Hahaha Chad (13:44.398) don't do it. don't do it. Chad (13:55.885) my god! my god! This is the president, right? Joel (14:06.11) August, this is a public company with about 1500 employees. As of August, they have 17 ratings on Apple. They have six ratings on Spotify, which means the kids love it. The kids are loving the podcast. And on their YouTube podcast channel, they're generating after 11 videos, I think, an average of a hundred views per show. And they did one with FedEx that was sort of the lion's share of views. Everything's in that. Chad (14:33.267) wow, yeah. Joel (14:34.446) Everything else is in that 35 to 50 kind of range, but they should be really proud with what they've put together. They must be emailing all their employers and all their job seekers to check out the show because they're getting such traction on this podcast. If you want to learn how to do a podcast, we're available. We'll take your money. We do advisories. We'll do some consulting. We'll help you out. We'll help you out. Don't worry. Don't worry. Chad (14:50.417) I just love how. You Chad (15:00.177) It just blows my mind. just like any, like anybody wants to listen to a CEO or a president or anybody in the C-suite, right? Talk about their stupid fucking company every month. I mean, they just don't, right? It's all bullshit. It's all fluff. Nobody cares. But you're right. For them not to be able to at least harness all of the marketing power that they have. Joel (15:10.2) president I think is, I don't know who's doing it. Mm-hmm. Joel (15:29.848) Mm-hmm. Chad (15:30.043) They look like total idiots. They look like total fucking idiots. So yes, that's just an additional on top of the jive turkey list. Joel (15:37.176) They look like total jive turkeys, Chad. And with that, we'll take a quick break and come back to our guests jive turkeys of 2024. Chad (15:40.121) Hahaha Chad (15:46.182) Yes. Chad (15:52.421) All right, I'm excited about this. Joel (15:54.338) I love the guests because it means we do less work. I love it. Yeah. The fact that we can get some other voices. I mean, what I meant to say was it's nice to have some diversity of thought and some new, new opinions on here. so. Chad (15:56.145) I love it. Chad (16:06.041) Except for Sergey and Trisha who do all the production work they've got more work to do now. We love you guys. We love you. We love you. Trisha deserves not a jive turkey but a nice big plump jive turkey and so does and so does Sergey they both they both deserve it. All the trimmings. Joel (16:11.062) Yeah, that's true. Yeah, they're listening. Happy Thanksgiving Trish. Joel (16:23.372) Yeah. Yeah. Celebrating Thanksgiving. I'm sure there and, yeah. So, Emi Beredugo, is up first. you know her from guesting on the show for a couple of years. She's out in the UK. So we wanted to get a little international flavor with our guests this year. So from the UK, this is Emi Beredugo. Chad (16:36.411) Love her. Chad (20:55.671) Amen, sister. That's what I'm talking about. Joel (20:58.158) Emi Beredugo everybody. Chad (21:00.689) She hit all the points. She did a really good job and hitting all the points. The thing that drives me crazy about this is that she was right with regard to managers needing to train up and to learn. mean, we've got to evolve not just as workers, but also as leaders. And they aren't. But it's also exposing all of these companies who are not focused on outcomes and completion of tasks. and projects because those can be done anywhere. Not to mention you can also see if it's happening or not anywhere. And I'll finish up with this. Spotify chief HR officer, CHRO, Katrina Berg stated, quote, you can't spend a lot of time hiring grownups and then treat them like children, end quote. Joel (21:34.734) Mm-hmm. Joel (21:47.214) I like that. And in light of Spotify, a few other companies that are tech companies are doing the remote only, Shopify, Airbnb, Deal in our space is also getting some, some highlights from that. So shout out to them for doing the right thing. And let's name some names. Emmy's way too polite. And by the way, our show sounds so much smarter in a British accent. I don't know. Maybe it's just me. Let's, let's talk about Amazon's Andy Jassy. Chad (22:12.017) Thank you, Ami. Thank you. Joel (22:16.462) let's talk about Disney's Bob Iger, JP Morgan's Jamie Diamond and your favorite the D to the JSAW Goldman Sachs, a few of the companies that are mandating back to the office. So we'll name a few names and don't forget Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, who is blaming Google's decline on work from home while some others tech companies are doing, are doing just fine with all that. So thanks to Emmy for, for chiming in. Chad (22:25.893) Not that guy. Chad (22:32.859) Mm-hmm. Chad (22:37.137) I'm an idiot. Yeah. Joel (22:44.632) I don't know who you want next. want Lieven? A little Lieven love? Let's do, or let's do, let's do Mo. Let's do ladies first. Maybe give me some Mo. All right. Mo is, Mo is in paradise apparently. she's in Hawaii. All right. Let's hear from Mo. Chad (22:48.731) Give me some Mo! Chad (22:56.955) She's in Hawaii. Joel (24:02.019) Mm-hmm. Joel (26:04.888) Why do you hate seniors, Chris Hyams? Why do you hate seniors is what I want to know. Yeah, he is one. He's way over the hill. What's funny about this is indeed try so hard to be like the Marvel heroes, the Avengers of diversity. And they end up looking like the destroyers of diversity. So come on, man. Come on, man. I love that she brought up, yeah, did they just get caught? Chad (26:10.417) He is one. Apparently he is one. Chad (26:26.257) Yeah, bullshit, saying the quiet part out loud. Joel (26:37.038) and they have a crisis comms team, why don't they call us? Like, why don't they, like, I don't get it. Why? We're not that bad. We're not that bad. Chad (26:43.045) They, yeah, they know better. They know better. Yeah, I think, well, it's that and thanks so much, Mo, for taking Indeed, so I didn't have to, but I definitely have to point out the failed programs that they had this year that they tried their ass off of PPA, PPSA. But kids, I want you to know, and this is what I tell my kids, when you start, stop learning, you're dead. I mean, you're done. Your brain atrophies, your body atrophies, everything, you got to. to keep learning. So don't listen to Indeed and their 18 to 25 year olds who are writing content over there who got caught with their pants down. Joel (27:21.718) And keep living large like Moe. Good Lord. How much I used to be, I used to want to be you. Now I want to be her for God's sakes. All right. Let's, let's get to our favorite, favorite Belgian, Lieven what's he got to say in regards to his Turkey. Chad (27:24.821) yeah. Way to go, Mo. Joel (33:06.254) All right, here we go. Chad (34:04.057) Way to go, Lieven. Joel (34:04.238) Stupid shit from a Europeans point of view. Gotta love that. Chad (34:07.633) Yeah, well, I mean, so it's interesting because just what Emmy was talking about, but this is at a different angle, right? So you have you have companies who are saying you got to get back to work. And that is for there are a variety of reasons why companies are doing that. But the Dutch government's doing it for a singular reason, and that's because they want more taxes. So why don't they change the tax scheme if that's the issue as a chart, as opposed to trying to force people back into the damn office? That's just weird. Joel (34:36.009) Or make it more appealing for people to immigrate and easier to immigrate to the Netherlands. That might be a solution that would work. think that may be on your agenda for a conversation after we come back from the road, but Europe's going through some shit like higher retirement age in France. England's not letting anybody in every, all the people are leaving because they don't want to be, they want to be in the EU and not in the UK. So all kinds of fun stuff that you are living from Portugal in the EU. Chad (34:40.867) Hmm, hmm. Who knows? Who knows? Chad (34:59.158) huh. Yep. Chad (35:03.261) in the EU. Joel (35:06.062) Well, thanks to our guests. appreciate that. it's a little bit of flavor on jive turkey episode here. Let's take a quick break and Chad and I will get to our final jive turkeys. Chad (35:11.787) Ha Joel (35:21.986) All right, Chad, hit him. Chad (35:22.201) All right. Save the best for last, kids. So this one is going to be very clinical. OK, so sharpen your pencils and listen up. My last jive turkey ghost is something that seems to be on the horizon with the next administration and will directly impact recruiting, retention and funding infrastructure just for starters. So my last jive turkey goes to mass deportation. What's the estimated cost? of deportation, mass deportation, a one time 315 billion estimated cost for mass deportation includes, includes arrests, detention, legal processing and deportation. Not talking about the fucking optics that are going to happen, kids in cages. The longer term plan will cost $1 trillion. What's the impact? This is the thing that really matters guys. According to the American Immigration Council, mass deportations could have significant economic impacts, potentially reducing annual GDP by 4.2 % to 6.8%, which means we'd be negative GDP. Negative GDP. How do we lose GDP? Another great question. Thanks, listener. Here's a quote from an employer that hits home. Quote, everything is the wild, wild west. Just watch and wait for a state wide mandate for e-verify. And then hiring is about to get very, very expensive. And a long-term recovery will be catastrophic if you, talking about employers, aren't stacking your bench and protecting home base, you're going to be doomed." End quote. So what's being said here? How are employers going to backfill positions when the people just aren't there? The aforementioned reference to hiring getting more expensive is really simple. the supply of talent is lower, there aren't enough people in America to do the job. You're going to have to start getting into bidding wars and cost is going to increase substantially. Also, California, Texas and Florida house 47 % of the undocumented workers. Only, almost 50 % are in three states. and guess what kids? Chad (37:43.131) California is ranked number one in GDP for the United States. Texas is ranked number two in GDP for the United States and Florida is ranked number four in GDP for the United States. Why is that? Well, fuck guys, immigrants are the US superpower. That's why we've made it so well so far and we were able to bounce back after the pandemic. Here's a great example though. This from the National Immigration Forum, the construction industry required over a half million new workers in 2024 alone to meet development goals. Construction is one of the key industries that cannot satisfy their labor needs with only native born workers. Roughly 30%, 30%, 30 % of workers in the US construction industry are immigrants. In states like, California and Texas, number one, and number two, the share of construction workers are 40%. Immigrants, 40%. So let's talk about tax base. This from the Institution of Taxation and Economic Policy, undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022. Nearly. $100 billion in taxes. $59.4 billion go to the feds. $37.3 go to state and local governments. So that money will be sucked out of your local communities. Meaning less funding for police departments, less funding for fire departments, less funding for schools, health services, and roads. Again, just to name a few. And as you always say, Mr. Cheeseman, Joel (39:32.088) So. Chad (39:32.429) Who will do the work and pay the necessary taxes when a big cohort like, I don't know, the boomers leave the workforce and start collecting social security? That's a double whammy. Leaving the workforce, we need people. Social security, that's money going out. We don't have revenues coming in. So who's going to do the work? Who's going to pay the taxes? We're pushing $100 billion in tax revenues out of the country and we will not not have enough workers. Joel (39:43.63) Mm-hmm. Chad (40:02.085) to cover those jobs and the loss in revenue. last but not least, remember when COVID hit and we didn't have enough workers to work the docs and the supply chain fell apart? What happens when we don't have enough workers to work the docs because we deported them? My Jive Turkey goes to mass deportation. You think it was scary having immigrants in the US? Well, it's about, it's fuck around and find out time kids. Joel (40:12.825) Essential workers. Joel (40:35.64) By the way, Chad didn't mention our interview with Zeke Hernandez. I'm showing the book here if you're watching us on YouTube, but if you haven't read The Truth About Immigration by Dr. Zeke Hernandez, we encourage you to read it and also listen to our interview that we did with him just a few months or weeks ago. Chad (40:37.841) Yes. Chad (40:51.739) Believe the numbers, don't believe the bullshit. Joel (40:56.302) Don't believe the hype. That is Chad's last and final jive turkey of 2024. So my last and final jive turkey of 2024. Chad, one of the more interesting stories that we've talked about on this show is the sort of journey from Black Lives Matter, Me Too, the movements, COVID, DEI, taking a front seat in the Chad (41:19.067) Mm-hmm. Joel (41:24.962) the dialogue that we've had on the show and with our, with our guests. And that started taking a turn for the worst, last year, but it kind of has hit a crescendo in 2024. we know that the, the Supreme court struck down affirmative action and we kind of predicted on this show that not only colleges, but corporations and other entities would start taking that as a, as a, as a. as an okay, a green light to trash DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion. to name names, and we've talked about a few of these on the show over the past year, Tesla, of course, Walgreens, Anheuser-Busch, Disney, Bumble, of all places, American Airlines, JP Morgan Chase, Boeing, Walmart, of all people announced today that they would be canceling Chad (42:01.211) Mm-hmm. Joel (42:17.07) their, budget for DI and some of their, staff along that. And like some of these, get for political reasons, like John Deere, it's just their customers don't want it. So they do it, but Walmart is for everybody. So for Walmart to like dis, disassociate themselves with diversity and inclusion, to me is just a really sad state of affairs. Obviously Donald Trump is back in the white house. So I suspect this will continue to be an issue in 2025. Part of the good news is, and we've talked to some folks on the show about how this is still going on. People still approve of it. It's just being rebranded by companies. They don't want to say DI. They want to say something else. Johnny Taylor, your boy at Shurm was in the headlines this year, I think is changing it from DI to D &I. Okay. Sure. So, so for me, like the big jive turkeys are all the companies that are abandoning DI. Chad (42:54.715) Mm-hmm. Joel (43:15.942) and promoting it and publishing it for political reasons. That's a sad state of affairs, but that is the state of affairs in America, everybody. We got a lot of jive turkeys. Joel (43:34.668) Which brings me to my Thanksgiving inspired dad joke, Chad. Are you ready? Why did the cranberry blush? Why did the cranberry blush? Chad (43:34.779) Good stuff, man. Jesus, yes. Chad (43:48.473) No clue. No clue. Joel (43:49.526) it's a good one. Why did the cranberry blush? It saw the turkey dressing. Happy Thanksgiving everybody, thanks to our guests for chiming in. We out. Chad (43:59.385) Gahhh! Chad (44:03.727) Yes, we out.

In this episode, Chad and Joel explore the multi-layered world of tech with a focus on Google’s recent “velvet hammer” message to employees. The Halloween-themed all-hands meeting at Google featured CEO Sundar Pichai in costume, discussing cost-saving measures, a slowdown in hiring. But Google isn’t the only tech giant making waves. The duo also covers LinkedIn’s money-printing success with its latest revenue growth and new AI-powered hiring tools, exploring how these moves may shake up the job market and add pressure on competitors like Indeed. They touch on LinkedIn’s expansion into India and Brazil and its efforts to monetize the job-seeker experience, which may signal the platform’s future direction as it solidifies its foothold globally. The episode also dives into broader tech trends, from the hybrid work debate to the latest study showing that hybrid schedules boost job satisfaction and retention. Chad and Joel discuss why some companies are still pushing to bring employees back on-site despite data showing the clear benefits of flexibility—and how these trends could affect the tech workforce’s morale and productivity. To wrap up, they touch on the unique responses by U.S. expatriates and the wealthy looking to relocate post-election, highlighting immigration attorneys who report a surge in wealthy Americans exploring citizenship options abroad. With immigration as America’s “superpower,” they discuss the broader implications of these shifts on the workforce. Whether it’s AI displacing tech roles, LinkedIn’s continuous growth, or the push for remote flexibility, this episode unpacks the layered changes shaping the tech industry. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:31.49) Ohhhhh yeah, two guys who would rather be at a dance party with Beyonce. Hey boys and girls, it's the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your cohost, Joel Grover, Cleveland Cheesman. Chad (00:35.766) Yes. Chad (00:42.337) And this is Chad Deja Vu, so watch. Joel (00:45.346) And on this episode, LinkedIn keeps printing money, Google takes ghosting to a whole new level. And wait a minute, let me check my notes. Was there an election? Was there an election recently? I don't, let's do this. Chad (00:54.423) Huh? What? Huh? Huh? Chad (01:03.959) Whew, man, that's deja vu all over again. Joel (01:06.516) It's the end of the world. Chad, you look fine. Good God, Living your best life. Living your best. Chad (01:13.197) yeah, look at where I'm at, I'm in Nazaré, Portugal, which is, for anybody who's watched the Netflix series, that's where the 100-foot waves, the biggest waves in the world, literally, if you're on YouTube, you can see me pointing. They're right there, literally, right there. Yeah, it's pretty freaking amazing. So we're here in Nazaré for a few days, going to Cachecaix. Joel (01:19.598) Mm-hmm. Chad (01:37.891) for a few days and then hopping over to Spain, Cadiz and Gibraltar, which it's funny because Portugal is about the size of Indiana, right? So it's kind of like, you know, I'm visiting Louisville and Cincinnati, but, know, it's, it's, it's, it's Cadiz. It's Joel (01:37.966) Mm-hmm. Joel (01:55.362) Yeah, Kish Kish, Bloomington, you know, what's the difference? What's the difference? You are, you are a poster child for the expat movement for sure. You are living your best life. Chad (02:05.584) man, just great timing. That's all it is. It's just great timing. Joel (02:09.218) Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's rainy and gloomy here in, the Midwest. I'm sure you'll appreciate that being in the sunshine of, of Portugal. So, election talk, we're gonna, we're gonna be inundated with, the Monday morning quarterbacks, the autopsy reports. but what, what, what's your take? What was it like watching from Portugal? the European vibe. what, what's your thought? What are your, Chad (02:19.307) Mm-hmm. Yeah? Chad (02:37.153) Mm-hmm. Joel (02:38.316) What's your take on the election and the results? Chad (02:41.387) I mean, the American people have spoken again. I mean, it is what it is. That's why we hold elections. But it's funny because I've received more messages this morning, probably because they're up earlier and I'm five hours ahead of you. But I received more messages from Europeans than I have from Americans. I don't know if that's because Americans are in the feudal position in the corner somewhere. I don't know what that's all about. But I have received Joel (02:54.606) Mm-hmm. Chad (03:11.187) many messages. about yourself? Joel (03:12.362) Is it, is it, are you okay? Is it, what are your thoughts? Are you super like, is it like for your mental health or is it just for like FYI, like information from an American about an American election when the Europeans contact you. Chad (03:25.759) Yeah, no, mean, at the end of the day, they were like, wow, you really saw that coming. I'm sure you're glad you have a place in Portugal. And it's like, I mean, yeah, I mean, that was going to be the transition no matter what, right? But you know, whether that hastens the transition or who knows, man, but you know, it's one of those things you luckily I have a wonderful wife who focuses on contingency planning. And so here we are. Joel (03:32.016) huh. Joel (03:52.366) You're so healthy. You're so healthy. Yeah. There's, there's a lot of meltdown going on here, in the U S as you can imagine my, my very, very liberal Canadian wife, isn't having her best day of the year for sure. that'll be an interesting thing to deal with. You know, was, I was reminded literally, 30 years ago, 1994, there was the Republican revolution. Do remember that the contract with America, Newt Gingrich and the Republicans taking over. Chad (03:54.199) haha Chad (03:58.027) I'm sure, I'm sure. Chad (04:03.868) Mm-hmm. I'm sure I'm sure yeah Chad (04:18.224) Mmm, yeah, Newt Gingrich, yeah. Mm-hmm. Joel (04:21.038) taking over Congress and everything. The world was going to end and change and this is a new morning in America. Well, guess what? Clinton stayed in for another term. The Republicans lost seats in the House and Senate. This is kind of what we do in America. If you don't like it, you got two years to try to make a change. But I remember sitting with my grandmother who was, who was an icon in Bartholomew County, politics back in the sixties and seventies and me thinking like, wow, this is a really big deal. And her saying things really don't change a whole lot. Don't get too excited about what just happened. And as I age, she's kind of right. Like this, the ups and downs happen. I mean, as far as the autopsy on the election, I first thought of it as sort of tactical. Chad (04:51.852) Mm-hmm. Joel (05:17.858) the errors that she made. You know, I said when she first picked a walls that she might regret not picking Shapiro if she loses Pennsylvania. I was shocked to see, it looks like Michigan's going to go red, even though the labor unions, the Sean Faines, those initiatives. so, and also I thought that she could have made a better effort to gain or gain the, or engage with Nikki Haley voters. think there's 20 % of Republicans of which I probably put myself in that bucket. of we don't really connect with the Trump MAGA stuff, we're like we're McCain, Cheney type Republicans. And I thought that there was an opportunity to win those people. And I felt like there wasn't much, like I received no direct mail about, Hey, if you're a Nikki Haley voter, consider, consider Kamala Harris. But I think it goes deeper than a tactical issue. Well, for money, they could ask for money. Chad (05:53.675) Mm-hmm. Chad (05:59.819) Dude, I know, I was one of those at one time. I was one of those at one time. Chad (06:13.152) Not in Indiana, yeah. Joel (06:17.31) our money spends just as good as anyone else's, but I like, I think it's just, it's just deeper than that. I said on last week's show with Emmy that this felt like angry men versus scared women and whoever was going to come out the most, the most was going to win. And clearly the angry men came out and I was surprised to see black men, Hispanic men come out in the numbers that they did. So I. I think ultimately it's going to be good for the Democrats. know, look, it's, it's the squeaky wheel that gets the grease. You don't, can't get the clothes clean unless you have an agitator and like your favorite, you know, the best disinfectant is, is sunlight. think that this is a good opportunity for the Democrats to reboot. They have a good bench. They have good young talent. Like let's throw them in the game and, see, and see what happens. So I think ultimately it's going to be good for the Democrats. But it's going to be painful if you're not a fan of Trump and Trumpism and the MAGA movement, because with the Senate swinging and the House and then SCOTUS, like Trump's going to get his way for the next two years. So buckle up and hope for the best, I guess. It'll be fun fodder for the podcast. Chad (07:19.833) yeah. Yeah? Yeah? Chad (07:28.471) Well, it's funny because to your comment, if you don't like it, well, CNBC, an article actually entitled, record numbers of wealthy Americans are making plans to leave the US after the election. Apparently, as Twisted Sister once said, we're not going to take it. And as immigration attorneys are seeing a growing number of wealthy Americans making plans to leave the country. Among the attorney cited in the article, David Lesbrance, managing partner of Les Brands and Associates, an international tax and immigration firm, said the number of Americans hiring his firm for possible move overseas have roughly tripled over the last year. Now here in Portugal, they have pretty much done away with the golden visa or the, I guess you can call it, buy your way to citizenship program. But if you're looking to invest, you may want to take a look into the citizenship programs in another country in the Caribbean Islands, which are a great place to check out. Demonica, the island of Demonica, if you invest only 200,000, you have an option to actually be a citizen. St. Lucia, you've heard of that one, 240,000. St. Kitts, 250,000. 235,000 for Grenada, 230,000 for Antigua. Or if you just want to spend a little bit more money and you want to try some other countries, Turkey, Malta, or Austria are also on the list, they're just a little bit more expensive. you know, we'll see. We have options, especially the people with money definitely have options. Joel (09:03.63) You got it. Joel (09:07.63) People with money always have options. So shout outs, as I think you've already started, are sponsored by our friends at Kiora Text Recruiting Made Simple. And by the way, those guys are from Canada. Chad (09:20.379) Yes. Chad (09:26.679) They're probably more scared than we are. Joel (09:27.134) And I, and I get to hear for four years about how we're moving to Canada. So, Canada is going to have a special place in my heart and the Trump administration. but my first shout out goes to draft board, draft board, Chad, a, former firing squad, interview. if you haven't checked that out, go to Chad cheese.com search for it. and you'll find it. I think I gave them the guns. don't remember exactly, what you did, but, I got a email. Chad (09:39.967) Okay. I remember those guys. Chad (09:53.259) Double guns, I think. Joel (09:54.73) I think double guns is probably right. got an email from them, but they are pivoting, out of the business. What they did was if you remember H three jobster refer.com Zubka yet wire Z karma one LinkedIn referrals, et cetera, et cetera. The idea of like, Hey, I'm going to, I'm going to shotgun my network and they're going to apply to jobs. I'm going to get rich on people applying to jobs that I market, for companies. The idea, although a good one, and I said it in firing squad, it never. Chad (10:05.366) Mm-hmm. Joel (10:24.168) fucking works. Stop it. Stop the business of affiliate programs for sharing jobs and getting paid. Draftboard is just the latest loser in this game. Don't do it folks. Don't do it. We're here to give you public service announcements and save you a lot of time and money. They raised $4 million and it's all probably down the tubes unless this pivot works out and we know how pivots pivots usually work. Chad (10:39.393) Don't, don't, don't. Chad (10:45.495) Mm-hmm. Joel (10:54.924) Yeah, they don't. They don't really work that often. Chad (10:57.377) was actually January of this year. So I mean, it hasn't been a full year since we actually talked to Josh. And yeah, I mean, I think what we're seeing from startups over and over and over is that they have founders coming outside of the industry into this industry. They don't have the experience. They don't have the knowledge. They don't have the connections network. They don't have any of those things, but they do have the money, right? Silicon Valley money in many cases. Joel (11:00.365) Mm-hmm. Chad (11:24.167) And they think that is going to make them bulletproof. And unfortunately, that's just not the case, which is one of the reasons why if you are not from this industry, you need to find people, advisors who are in this industry to be able to help and guide you through that kind of stuff. So unfortunately they had a pivot. Good luck. Yeah, possibly. Joel (11:34.296) Mm-hmm. Joel (11:41.71) Some old guys with historical perspective is always nice. Some old guys that remember 2003 are nice to bring into the mix if you can. Chad (11:52.107) Possibly. I wasn't pitching us, but yeah, possibly. Next shout out, I'm going to share this one. You're going to love this, is to Bradley Clark and Stephen McGrath for Chad and Cheese Listener Made Art. Here's Bradley Clark's version, which Bradley created after listening to our Immigration Myth Busting podcast with Professor Zeke Hernandez. Bradley said the episode with Professor Zeke was, Joel (12:13.688) Mm-hmm. Chad (12:19.507) One of the best podcasts he's heard in a while. Aw shucks, Bradley. That's sweet. Now, he is now. Now I gotta go back and I've gotta find the other one, cause this is fricking hilarious. Then we have, then after I posted Bradley's great art skills on the socials, not to be outdone by a Canadian, our favorite Scott. Joel (12:23.835) he's Canadian though, so you got to take it with a grain of salt. The nice comments. Joel (12:34.391) You Chad (12:45.321) Steven McGrath posted the following Chad and Cheese art, which is a great segue as Steven has agreed. I think you know this, to get a Chad and Cheese tattoo in 2025. So we're gonna need a promotion around this event and we might use this art. We might use this art for his tat. This might be the tattoo. This might be the tattoo. Joel (13:04.878) Are you saying this is the tattoo? Joel (13:11.0) Ahahaha! Joel (13:17.006) and that crazy motherfucker would do it too. Holy shit. God. Chad (13:20.701) he would do it. He's already got the go ahead from Natasha. Natasha said he can do it. So if she said he can do it, he can do it. Joel (13:27.896) That's almost as good as free shit. Almost. Almost as good as free shit, Chad. Chad (13:31.113) It's it but it's not because if you do want free shit and obviously you want to have The cool shit the Chad and cheese send right to your doorstep t-shirts from Erin app the nice I mean they feel like butter on your skin. They feel like a hug from Chad and cheese t-shirts from Erin app bourbon barrel aged syrup for our friends over at Kiara beer craft beer craft beer from Aspen tech labs love those guys Joel (13:58.318) Yes. Chad (14:00.639) whiskey from two bottles by the way two bottles of whiskey from Tex Colonel aka bullhorn and if it is your birthday there's an opportunity when rum from plum if you go to Chad cheese.com slash free and register if you don't register you can't win Joel (14:18.07) You can't win. got to be in it to win it. All right. Celebrating another trip around the sun. It's a short list this week. Dale Gran, Graham Ferguson, Lewis Gleishner, Jarvis Carell, David Roddy, David George, Eric Clemens, Kayla Campbell, Bill Glenn, Steven Grover, and Chris Campbell celebrating a birthday this week. Thanks for listening and have a few on us. Chad (14:30.871) guys. Chad (14:37.653) Ooh, nice. Joel (14:46.744) Traveling other than Chad's Hopscotch is around Bouncing all around the place. I don't know if he'll be able to get any football at games while he's while he's in Portugal I think he's got a nice nice connection there that he's circumventing the the authorities so he'll probably Uh-huh I don't even know what that is. What's a Jodgy stick? What is it? Chad (14:50.869) bouncing all over the place. Chad (15:01.481) yeah. yeah. Chad (15:05.953) I do. Dave Ralph is hooking me up with a dodgy stick. a dodgy stick. Yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah, yeah. You know that anything that's dodgy in Europe is, you know, that's kind of dodgy. It's not quite right. yeah, it's not quite right. So you get a fire stick and then you jailbreak it and then you get like all the programs on it and... Joel (15:21.582) in Ireland for sure. Chad (15:31.159) Every single at least I don't want to say European, but I do know that just about every single Brit I know Has one of these dodgy sticks and and you know a good good Irishman Dave Ralph. Thank you, sir. We'll we'll get that dodgy stick taken care of soon Joel (15:38.51) Mm-hmm. dodgy stick. Joel (15:48.65) so you do get to see football. So aside from seeing, Ohio States, fantastic went over number three ranked Penn state. you see your NFL game. let's get to our fantasy football leaderboard, fantasy football. course, you know, Chad is sponsored by our friends at factory fix. let's, let's, let's get to it in first place, second week in a row. Chad (15:51.41) Mm-hmm. Yes. Chad (15:58.069) Uh-huh. Chad (16:08.407) The Actory Fix. Joel (16:16.064) It's me motherfucker. It's me. Number one again. That's right. Followed by Dean, Dean, the daddy Mac mackerel, David Stiffle, Jennifer, Terry Tharp, Chad, so wash in the fifth spot. You're right there in the chunky middle, not getting too cocky, not falling behind. That's good. Followed by Keith Sonderling, Christie Lisbon, Laura Martinelli, Dina, Perot for Pyros, Axon Jackson, doll quest. Chad (16:18.731) Whoo! Rigged. It's rigged. Chad (16:29.611) Mm-hmm. Yep. Joel (16:42.474) Adam Gordon, as much as he wants to be at the bottom, Sean Horton, here's a who just loves that last place spot. Boy, I'll tell you, geez, he loves that. loves it. All right. Can I make it three weeks in a row? You got to tune in next week to find out that is factory fix sponsored. Chad (16:49.781) He does. He enjoys it. Chad (16:58.293) I just looked at who you were playing. I think you can make it. Yeah, I think you can make it. Yeah. It should be an easy week. It should be an easy week. Yeah. I think it's bottom third. It's bottom third. I can't remember, but it's bottom third. Yeah. No. No. Joel (17:03.63) Who is it? I haven't even looked. Who is it? No names. We're not mentioning names. But we do mention names in the... Chad (17:20.551) Topics! Joel (17:23.95) All right, let's talk a little hybrid, shall we? A six month experiment with over 1600 employees recently showed that hybrid work had no negative impact on productivity, performance, or promotion rates. Instead, it significantly improved job satisfaction and reduced quit rates by a third, particularly benefiting non-managers, women, and employees with long commutes. Managers initially skeptical about hybrid work. have revised their views. They're having some second thoughts, finding it actually increased productivity. Chad, Chad, they might've been listening to us. How do you feel about this news on hybrid work? Chad (18:06.263) Yeah, I think it just makes sense. I think it's a duh moment. I think it's a treat your employees like adults moment. And again, for more context, jump a little bit deeper into this. The study happened over six months, as you'd said, from August 2021 to January of 2022. The study participants were chosen randomly and divided into on-site work groups and a hybrid work group. They either went into the office every day or they went in on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. So this is a hybrid where you were able to work twice two days from home. Now, quote, once one of the things that you said, no differences in productivity, performance review grade or promotion. So a hybrid schedule led to measurable improvements and higher jobs. Obviously, they were happier at the end of the day. And then a third higher retention rates. What don't you want to do? I don't want to interview more people. I don't want to hire more people. don't want to replace the stud who literally just wants to work from home or she wants to work from home. I want them to be happy. then there was another article in Fortune that outlines a new study that reveals where jobs with work from home options have better stock returns. Again, productivity, retention, and happiness equals money. Right? to me, again, this just seems like a no brainer. I don't know why companies keep fighting it, but we're still watching companies fight this. Why? Joel (19:45.868) All right, so let's do some auditing for a second. Hybrid work, productivity, up. Employee satisfaction, up. Fears in the C-suite, unfounded. Cost efficiency, up. Work-life balance, improved. Health and wellbeing, improved. Inclusivity, improved. So... Chad (19:51.713) Mm. Chad (20:00.033) You Chad (20:09.867) Yes. Joel (20:12.046) Remind me exactly why we're being forced back into the office. yeah. It's Elon's morality question. we're being immoral by not coming back into the office. look, the data's out. the excuses are getting fewer and farther between, the, the bottom line is if, if you're a company not embracing work from home, hybrid work, then, I don't know, Jean, Jean Walter might have. Chad (20:18.908) yeah. Chad (20:30.369) Mm-hmm. Joel (20:41.424) message for you. Chad (20:48.075) The thing for me was that some of the contributors, the contributors that really helped success in this experiment was top management supported it, even the CEO, right? So they wanted to see what was going to work best, right? So they supported hybrid work. They supported work in the office, whatever they were doing at that point. So the company also... made its hybrid work days consistent across the team. Again, this is not a willy-nilly kind of thing. You come in when you want, come out when you want. There's gotta be some structure to it. And I think structure sets expectation for human beings, because that's what we like. We like structure, we like expectations, because we like to know when we're supposed to be in. So it gives some semblance of freedom. And thanks for, you know, treating us like adults half the time. So, you know, at the end of the day, I've said it before, we go from remote back to return to office. We try to take gas engines and go directly to electric, right? We try to do all of these things and this knee jerk reaction. Why don't we try hybrid? Why don't we try hybrid and try to maybe walk it into remote or try hybrid and try to walk it into electronic vehicles, right? I mean, that to me, As human beings, we just need to stop the knee-jerk bullshit. Joel (22:17.144) Yeah, I think, you when this, as this issue has unfolded, I've always thought that you're going to have companies that are full, full on office. You're going to have people that sort of hybrid will do the office three days a week at home, two days a week, and then you'll have your businesses that are full remote. And to me, what, what this is evolving to, if you're doing it right is all three. So based on what your employees want, you have an answer for that. Chad (22:29.409) Yeah. Joel (22:42.688) So if you have a 25 year old recent grad that wants to like engage with people, be in the office, then they can do that. If you, if you have people that, yeah, I want to go into work, but not every day, I want to have Friday to myself, or I want to have Monday to like recover from the weekend. They can do that. If you want to go live in Burlington, even though our offices in Boston, you can do that too. I think the most successful companies will have an answer for all three of those groups. and I think that we're slowly unfolding and evolving to that reality, which I think, is great. And these data points support, all of those, all of those trends. I, I'm happy and divert diversity, inclusion, helping women, people with disabilities older, like everyone wins in this and the technology is there that you can do it and not lose and you'll make more money and be more productive. So I. Chad (23:21.515) Yeah. More experiments. Chad (23:31.756) Mm-hmm. Chad (23:37.685) Yeah, Well, if you take a look at it, if we do crack down on immigration and we don't have as many people coming back or coming to be able to drive work and actually support work in the US, because immigration has been our superpower, every single other country, Joel (23:38.67) I got nothing man. Joel (23:46.722) Yeah. Chad (24:00.381) and or group of countries, their inflation's higher. They haven't been able to snap back as fast. We were able to snap back incredibly fast. And one of the biggest contributors is immigration because we had people to do those jobs and get right back into this job. So if we start to push that back, we're going to have to have something that fills those roles, right? Not all of those roles are hybrid and or remote roles, but there's going to be there's going to be some movement. of talent from here to there. And there's going to be a need to be able to look at some those hybrid roles more. Joel (24:34.072) You don't have to come to America. We'll employ you in whatever country you are is a powerful mass message. And it's something a lot of companies are going to have to come to grips with because yes, immigration will be a topic at least for the next two years. So, so get used to that. let's take a quick break. This is an abbreviated show cause Chad and I have been up most of the night, if not all night watching the election and getting drunk, hung over drinking too much coffee. So we will be right back after this message. Chad (24:38.251) Here I am. Chad (24:42.87) Yeah. Chad (24:47.263) Mm-hmm. Joel (25:06.134) All right, Chad, let's talk a little LinkedIn. They reported a 10 % increase in revenue for fiscal first quarter reaching $3.23 billion with growth across all business lines. Looking forward, LinkedIn anticipates a similar revenue growth rate in the next quarter. CEO Satya Nadella of Microsoft highlighted strong user growth in markets like India and Brazil. Chad (25:09.12) Mm-hmm. Joel (25:34.048) and introduced LinkedIn's AI powered hiring assistant that Emmy and I talked about last week. Chad, what are your thoughts about the money printing machine that they apparently have at LinkedIn? Chad (25:46.571) And by the way, I love me some Emmy. She did such a great job. I feel feel I feel so comfortable just not being on the show every now and again. You're going to have to take some time away so her and I can can spend some time, by the way. OK, so quick, quick quote from the actual article. Member growth continues to accelerate with markets like India and Brazil, both growing at double digits. That that's pretty amazing. Although there's got to be some more Joel (25:49.23) You Joel (25:52.717) Mm-hmm. Joel (26:10.296) Mm-hmm. Chad (26:15.527) long-term growth that that LinkedIn is looking at and they are they're looking at total addressable market expansion which means LinkedIn is rolling out a new coaching feature in LinkedIn learning that uses text and voice to enable users to practice skills such as delivering performance reviews having conversations and work-life balance right so so we've talked about this but the the most important thing about this is that we have the business revenue stream And then we have the individual revenue stream. And LinkedIn makes a good amount of money on both sides. And we don't really have many platforms that are out there today. Take a look at Indeed. Indeed does not monetize the job seeker, right? LinkedIn monetizes the job seeker. I'm not a big fan of it, but when you start to actually create these types of features and or products and services, I think it makes more sense, right? Just a resume, right? A resume writing thing. Big deal. Anybody can do that now with the chat GPT. But what about the coaching side of the house? I think for me, this is good for LinkedIn, at least from the standpoint of taking a long-term look. We see all these emerging markets, India, Brazil, growing double digits. And then we're also doubling down on something that we're doing well already. And we're increasing the TAM there. So good on LinkedIn. Joel (27:17.624) Mm-hmm. Joel (27:39.394) Yeah. You know, you and I talked pretty extensively a few years ago when they were, I don't know their, their monopoly plan, the monopoly plan to crush everything that's innovative around using, Hi Q obviously is a case that we talked quite a bit about. one of the, risks that we said was there is look, if, if, if LinkedIn crushes all innovation, all competition, Chad (27:49.801) yeah. Chad (27:53.739) Mm-hmm. Yep. Joel (28:09.538) they're going to be a sewer of non-innovation because they're going to have the field to themselves. Fortunately for them, they have an easy button called OpenAI and Microsoft's relationship with that technology. And I think that you're seeing the AI, the hiring assistant, anecdotally, everyone that I've talked to and recruiting that uses it, likes it. I know we've been on the ATAP. conversation where people are using it and liking it. And now they're taking that to another level. They're growing. they're growing into other countries. think India is a huge market. South America, think is going to blow up. Africa is next. So Africa is still there. you mentioned the learning piece, which is, think. Exciting, but ultimately I feel like in the bigger picture, LinkedIn feels. like a social network that hasn't lost its shit. I don't feel like they've gone off the deep end with political stuff. they've, they've implemented a tick talky type, video product, which is pretty good. I'll click on a video before I know it. I've gone through like 50 videos and it's about like recruiting and marketing and it's content that is not what I get on, on tick tock. So I'm, I'm more engaged than ever with LinkedIn. recruiters seem happier with LinkedIn than they have been in a while. So I, I think this is full steam ahead, for LinkedIn. I think indeed should be a little scared if they actually turn the spigot on job search and giving companies that, that power. yeah, we're going to continue to see profit tries it at LinkedIn. Things are good. and I don't see any reason why the train and the good times won't keep going. Chad (29:59.435) Yeah, so the learning side, upskilling, that's big right now. It's gonna continue to be big. again, I see them aligning on the upskilling side and there can be a couple of different things. You've got the enterprise license for your current employees or you have the individual license for somebody who just wants to do it themselves. But yeah, when it comes down to the TikTok side of the house, yeah, they're starting to... Joel (30:02.904) Mm-hmm. Chad (30:26.879) implement some of those things, which is great. I really would love to see them finally use the data that they have access to on the profiles to be able to understand, contextualize, and give me jobs that make a god—that don't make sense. That don't make sense. They send me—they send me crap all the time. So if they can utilize— any one of these parsing matching types of systems that are out there, the text kernels of the worlds, the dax, the dachshunds of the worlds, or maybe even create a large language model within open AI, then great. But Jesus, man, you gotta do better there. You gotta do better there. Indeed's not doing better. So you gotta, and you've got all the tools to do it. Joel (31:14.542) And by the way, if they happen to slip in the occasional big-booted Latina in their video feed, I won't complain. I won't complain. Chad (31:18.696) Ha ha ha! Chad (31:22.677) Yeah. Joel (31:26.402) We'll be right back. Joel (31:32.68) All let's have a little Halloween back to the future on this one. During a Halloween themed all hands meeting, Google executives, including CEO Sundar Pichai in costume, discussed cost saving measures and head count efficiency. So a little awkward for a Halloween themed hands on meeting. They addressed reduced hiring. Chad (31:37.249) There it is. There it is. Joel (31:56.92) due to economic conditions and a focus on AI. Chad, this is a whole new level of ghosting. What are your thoughts on Google's all hands, all Halloween, all the time, serious meeting with employees? Chad (32:12.872) So this article comes from our friends over at HR grapevine. If you're not subscribed or what have you, it's one of the, one of the sources that Joel and I actually tap to be able to do this show. but yeah, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, he, he called on Google Googlers to quote unquote, strive to do more in 2025 and beyond as a part of, as a part of the push for greater efficiency, which you said earlier, tell me that's not a thinly veiled threat, right? Then Brian Ong, VP of Google recruiting, spoke on changes to Google's hiring at a time when many tech employers are reallocating significant resources toward investment AI. His comment then, quote, there is a reality to it. We are hiring less than we did a couple of years ago, end quote. So that's interesting because We've known and worked with people at Google over the past couple of decades. And it's all about resources for them. So when Google deemed their talent acquisition products, Google Hire and Google for Jobs API, were less of a revenue driver than Google Cloud, they reallocated resources and shut down the TA products. That's what happened, kids. So for years, for years, There seems to have this constant reshuffling of talent and resources from product to product. So for me, Sundar's thinly veiled threat and Brian Ong's same as paraphrase, AI is here for your job and it's not safe. That to me is the velvet hammer. They're literally coming out and they're being nice and fluffy. saying, but you got to strive to do more. yeah. I don't know if I said or not, we have AI. It's the velvet hammer. Google's Velvet Hammer. Joel (34:10.136) So the CEO wore a t-shirt that said error 404 costume not found. How dorky was that? And the CFO wore a re no, I don't, I don't. And the CFO wore a Reggie Miller, Indiana Pacers, a Jersey, which I thought was, kind of funny. but yeah, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall, with the CEO, everyone, dressed up very, very awkward. Chad (34:19.944) You have that t-shirt, though, right? Chad (34:30.443) bad form. Joel (34:39.714) Look, techies are scared, man. I mean, these people aren't stupid. They hear the Amazon queue stuff. They hear the, the jassy stuff around how many, how much money in man hours they're saving with, with AI and coding and development. They hear the, they hear the quarterly earnings reports where they talk about 25 % of all new code at Google. is generated by an AI. If I'm a techie that says your job is in jeopardy and they kind of sugarcoated it like, no, we like find new product projects. You may not need 10 people, maybe you need eight, but it's not going to stifle, innovation and opportunity. But look, these people aren't stupid. mean, they kind of see the writing on the wall and they're concerned about it and they're scared. People at Google live a pretty good life, right? And they have for a long time. And once you start shuffling that deck and, and, know, the shuffle in the chairs on the Titanic, people get scared. And it came out in all places at an all hands meeting where the CEO was wearing an arrow error for a, for costume, not found t-shirt, like how, how Silicon Valley, if you love that show that's straight out of that, that fucking show. Yeah. It's good stuff. It's good stuff. Well, Chad, I'm Chad (35:46.487) Halloween. Yes. Chad (35:57.793) Jassy, again, the Iron Fist Sundar the Velvet Hammer. Joel (36:03.054) I don't have a good joke, Chad, but I'm gonna throw joke in since we're still on Halloween. What is a mummy's favorite kind of music? Chad (36:07.146) Okay. Chad (36:14.271) rap and roll? Rap? Joel (36:16.194) just rap. Yeah, rap, rap, rap. Rap and roll is not a thing, old white man. Enjoy Portugal, enjoy the waves. I'm gonna take a nap. We out. Chad (36:22.233) Okay, I thought it might be new. Chad (36:28.213) We out.

In this episode of the Chad & Cheese podcast, special guest Lieven van Nieuwenhuyze from House of HR joins the banter, dissecting Indeed’s so-called “monetization improvements” and ZipRecruiter's brutal third-quarter flop. The team dives deep into Indeed’s masterclass on squeezing every last penny out of click rates. As Indeed dials up revenue, ZipRecruiter’s performance just looks sad in comparison. Despite increased site traffic, Zip saw a dismal drop in revenue. The hosts wonder why CEO Ian Siegel still has a job, as traffic keeps climbing but the dollars don’t follow. Is it time for Recruit Holdings to grab ZipRecruiter and put it out of its misery. The boys also explore the latest findings from DrakeStar, revealing a surge of over deals and investment in the HR tech sector this year, with AI adoption driving the boom. While AI's rapid integration brings efficiency, it also fuels anxiety across the workforce, as employees worry about job security in a world where bots handle more tasks. Old world clicks meets new world tech - ENJOY! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:35.15) Yeah, welcome to the Bitcoin podcast because this employment crap just isn't paying the bills anymore. Hey boys and girls, I'm just kidding of course. It's the chat and cheese podcast. I'm your cohost Joel Hodl Cheeseman. Chad (00:50.317) This is Chad, be kind, rewind, Sowash. Lieven (00:54.481) And I'm Joel (01:00.014) That's right, baby. On this episode, we got layoffs, loneliness, loathing, and as you just heard, leaving is in the house, everybody. Why the hell not? Two Europeans and one American on the show. Let's do this. Lieven (01:09.199) Yeah, I am. Chad (01:09.291) Yes! Yes! Chad (01:20.849) You're outnumbered, Cheesman. Joel (01:21.282) What's up Europeans? Yeah, I am outnumbered. This is a bad, bad evolution of the show. All good. Lieven (01:31.645) I'm fine, I'm fine, but I'm in the wrong part of Europe where it's cold and rainy and where chat is sitting at sunny and dry so... it's not fair. Joel (01:38.892) Yeah, Chad's been flexing in the green room. He's showcasing the sun, the beer, the hot, there's a hot tub at your Airbnb. Yeah. It's, it's, it's. Chad (01:39.242) Mmm, and the beer is flowing. Ugh. Chad (01:50.065) And it overlooks the Cadiz Cathedral. So we're doing some very bad things right across from the cathedral. It's wonderful. It's wonderful. Lieven (01:53.693) Joel (01:58.868) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Can we can we get some hot tubs to the North Koreans because if we just we throw in some porn and Like did you guys see this story? Lieven (02:01.941) I'm sure... I'm sure... Chad (02:04.531) Ha Lieven (02:08.785) I think. Chad (02:09.703) They're having problems, aren't they? Joel (02:11.5) Well, they've never had the internet. mean, can you imagine, when you first had the internet, imagine it was high speed and like all the sites that weren't available in the nineties are now available. apparently the North Koreans serving in Russia, some 10,000 soldiers have all discovered porn hub shocker as they've gotten, as they've gotten internet. No, the, the, the, secret to democracy is not a McDonald's and a Starbucks on every corner. It's porn on every phone, apparently. Chad (02:14.841) Huh? No? Hmm. Yeah. Hmm. Joel (02:40.622) if we could just figure that out. Get on that Elon, get on that Elon. Chad (02:43.255) Yeah, well, apparently the North Koreans are having problems getting laid. other than that, mean, you know, now they have their phone. it's not? I wouldn't know that. Okay, carry on. Joel (02:49.294) That's not a problem exclusive to North Koreans, by the way, Chad. That's not just for North Koreans. No, no, no. And speaking of getting laid, leaving for our listeners that don't know you, I'm sure it's not very many, but give us a quick sort of who you are for those that have never heard our European podcast. Lieven (03:02.033) Yeah. Lieven (03:12.441) I shouldn't be talking about getting late, right? Just about me. Okay, okay. So I'm leaving Vannebeners. I'll give it back afterwards. I'm leaving Vannebeners, the chief digital at House of HR. I'm the European co-host and I'll try not to say anything too stupid and desiccation. Chad (03:14.455) Yes, exactly. Joel (03:15.628) The floor is yours, my friend. Chad (03:31.289) We're in charge of saying the stupid shit, Leaven, so you're the smart guy. So it's all good. Joel (03:31.544) There's no fear of that. Joel (03:38.208) And speaking of smart things to say, shall we get into, into shout outs by the way, our shout outs are sponsored. Chad (03:41.645) Yes! Joel (03:46.104) by fine Canadian company startup, Kiora. That's text recruiting done smart and price efficiently. Chad, what shout out do you have for this week? Chad (03:46.777) Chad (03:57.091) Well, I have a shout out to Alex Chukovsky who brings the death of prompt engineering as a job to our doorstep. That's right kids. AI has already progressed past the need for a prompt engineer job to even exist. And I'd like to also share if you're watching on YouTube, supporting comment by Oroz Alkubasi who shows the decline of prompt engineering jobs over the last 12 months. So shout out to the death of prompt engineering and tech moving so fucking fast. We're not sure what job is going to die or be created next. Joel (04:36.39) we're so doomed. We're so doomed everybody. Yeah. These, you know, like we talked to a startups, Chad, and the, the cycle of like start a company, grow it a little bit and then sell it is getting so much faster than it has before. Like these jobs are going to go the same way. Like a job that is in demand and you know, one month, six months from now, like it'll be over. So your, your, ability to adapt and move quickly is going to be very important. Chad (04:48.703) Mm-hmm. yeah. Joel (05:03.688) in the future and I'll go from that. Chad (05:05.111) Yeah, so the turn on that, I want to hear this from Leven because he looks at startups all the time. The turn from being an advisor, you had a little bit more time to be able to develop, to be able to prospectively partner and penetrate other organizations' portfolios from a partnership and alliance standpoint. That window is shrinking very quickly. At least that's what we're seeing in the US and I think what we're also seeing in Europe. What are you seeing? Joel (05:09.795) Mm-hmm. Chad (05:33.337) on the startup side of the house leaving. Lieven (05:38.087) That was very long question, could you say it shorter? Chad (05:39.969) Always is. Yeah. So what's changed? Tech is moving much faster. Startups have to be different than what they were two years ago. What kind of changes have you seen in startups today versus just a few years ago? Joel (05:40.076) You Lieven (05:56.623) Easy answer is of course, if you don't mention AI, you don't get any funding. And that's a big change. But actually I think now with the new technology all around, things are becoming very creative. People got used to the new way of thinking, using AI, cetera. And I constantly discover new tools, HR tech tools, which are actually amazing, great ideas. So for me, what is changing is the level of creativity again. Chad (05:59.609) Yes. Yes. Chad (06:05.913) Mm-hmm. Lieven (06:24.539) past 10 years from time to time you found something which was new. But now I get new tools monthly, think weekly maybe even. So I like the creativity which was created by technology. Chad (06:32.699) huh. Chad (06:36.835) Yeah, love it. Joel (06:38.99) I feel like there'll be more acquisitions, much less like lower price tags on some of these. There'll be a lot more bets taken by companies that can gobble up others. Chad (06:45.657) Yeah. Well, though, yeah, there'll be more funding happening too, but it'll be to a lesser degree and they won't get to C and D rounds as as, you know, others have. Joel (06:51.384) Mm-hmm. Joel (06:56.174) Yeah. And a lot of these things feel like features, like just add features. It's like buy it instead of build it, which we've talked about for a long time, but I guess it's going to be a lot more buying as companies get a lot less, more money. And speaking of lower prices, my shout out is. Lieven (06:56.475) Yeah, Chad (07:02.519) Yeah, yeah, smart. Chad (07:11.929) come on. Joel (07:13.336) From the land down under, that's right. Australia is taking a knife. That's not a knife. That's a knife and implementing a ban on social media for children under 16. As a parent of an 18 year old and a soon to be 16 year old, I can tell you that social media is the devil. Parents are in a no-win situation in the United States where Chad (07:19.897) to a gunfight. Joel (07:37.12) If they don't let their kids get on social media, their kids are lepers and, totally, totally disengaged with, with their community. But if they're on social media, well, they're on social media and between anxiety, depression, cyber bullying, negative body imaging, sleep deprivation, social media is bad for kids. We need like a federal ban in the United States. So shout out to Australia for taking that move. We need that in the United States. Social media is bad for kids, period. Chad (08:08.779) Aussies don't fuck around, dude. They had, I think, a couple of mass shootings and they're like, no, we're done. None of this shit. We're not going to have this gun problem anymore. And guess what? They don't have a gun problem anymore. Then they take a look at the social media aspect of this and they're like, this is going to be an issue. It already is an issue. It's going to be bad. We're just going to go ahead and cut the head off the fucking snake right now. The US, this is going to be one of the biggest issues that we have. Obviously gun violence is always, the rest of the world looks at us and our gun violence. And now when we talk about social media, the inability to actually go ahead and have a measured approach to it, it's ridiculous. We just, it's not gonna get done. Joel (08:55.47) And it also helps that in Australia, they throw a venomous animal in jail with you, to make sure that you don't fuck up or do wrong again. Got to look, got to love Australia. Chad (09:01.369) We can do that too. Lieven (09:03.783) Alright. Chad (09:08.633) Ha Joel (09:09.548) Leave and what you got. Lieven (09:12.409) My shout out goes to the ChatGPT search, which I mentioned in my middle name as well. So you might've read or saw that a few days ago, ChatGPT launched its new version, ChatGPT search only for the paid subscribers. And I gave it a try this afternoon. I asked that I need to come up with some entertaining ID for this boring podcast and I have to find something. It's called a shout out. Can you... Chad (09:17.805) Mm-hmm. Lieven (09:40.517) find me two entertaining topics which I could use as a shout out. And that was the only info I gave it. And it checked your websites. And it knew what kind of podcast you were. And then it came up with a list of very recent articles. And it gave me two topics. So you can choose whatever you want to know about. The first one is vampire recruitment. And the second one is final round AI. So. Chad (10:04.838) Vampires. mean, you always go vampire. Just as, yeah, vampires. As long as they're not sparkly vampires. I want to hear about the vampire. Joel (10:05.87) Vampire. Are we voting? I want to hear about the vampires. Lieven (10:09.083) Yeah, it's Lieven (10:13.051) Okay, I'll give you the short version. It was actually a pretty... Chad (10:15.789) Yeah, Twilight, they sparkled. Yeah. Joel (10:17.43) Sorry. Lieven (10:19.503) It was a pretty long article from HR News. Apparently that's a news site in the UK. Vampire recruitment drains top talent. HR leaders urge to modernize hiring practices. And then it goes on with lots of things you already know. So I'll cut the crap. And the other one was actually a very, very interesting tool. It's about what was it called? Let me check again. It's an article in the Times, also from the UK. Chad (10:22.328) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Chad (10:47.715) Mm-hmm. Lieven (10:48.345) And it's about a tool, it's a Silicon Valley startup. And you know the teleprompter, the thing you put in front of your lens so you can see text. Okay. So it's created a tool to help you in during the application process. It's listening to the interview and in real time, it's giving you with the prompt, the answers to the questions and even with code. let's say you're a coder and you need to do a text test, a coding exercise. It gives you the codes in real time. Chad (10:56.387) Yes. Yep. Chad (11:05.524) yes, yeah. Joel (11:12.387) Yeah. Lieven (11:17.327) And I'm, I've been looking into it. It works. It's amazing. I love it. So is it cheating of. Chad (11:18.169) It's an assistant. Yeah. Joel (11:22.126) Can we focus on the shade, the shade that leaving through at our show? Like he just sort of like, it was real, real quick. Lieven (11:26.415) Yeah, I should actually use this in the show and constantly come up with witty remarks whenever you say something. would be so less tiresome than doing it myself. Yeah, I'll give it a go for next. Chad (11:27.395) I love it. No, that's, Chad (11:33.141) You Joel (11:37.506) That would be interesting. That would be interesting. Transcribe what we're saying and then you come up with an AI response to everything. Yep. Chad (11:43.939) then you hook it into your avatar and then you don't even have to be on a damn show, Leaven. I mean, it's too easy. It's too easy. That's how you scale Leaven. There you go. You're welcome. Lieven (11:46.501) Yeah. No, no, like I, I consider it done. Joel (11:55.672) You just need to teach the AI to drink good beer while you're on the show, because that's a staple. Lieven (11:58.973) Hmm. Chad (11:59.661) You know what it won't do? It won't give away free stuff though. And that's what we do here at this show. If you go to ChadCheese.com slash free, you will get an opportunity to, if you register to possibly win a free t-shirts. Yes, that is sexy Chad and cheese guns and roses design t-shirts that feel all sexy on your body. They're good. They're nice. That's from Aaron app. Bourbon barrel aged syrup from our friends over at Keyura. That's right. Lieven (12:03.165) you Joel (12:03.886) Mmm. Joel (12:16.824) Beautiful. Lieven (12:20.709) Hmm. Joel (12:28.43) Mm-hmm. Chad (12:28.575) up north, the good stuff, beer, craft beer from Aspen Tech Labs, two bottles of whiskey from Tex Colonel, AKA, you know them as Bullhorn. And if it is your birthday, you might win some rum from Plum. Go to ChadCheese.com slash free and register to win. Because if you don't play, you can't win. Joel (12:41.282) Oof. Joel (12:52.686) I love when Chad's radio voice is on 11, like you can't win without. All right. Celebrating another, another trip around the sun. this week, Elizabeth Hill, Jennifer Revali, Jamie Carney, Jarvis Carell, Mike Vogel and Julie Callie all celebrating and leaving you celebrated a birthday pretty recently. What did you do to celebrate? Chad (12:57.337) Without! Chad (13:10.413) There we go. Lieven (13:16.921) I celebrate it too actually. November 11th is the birthday of my wife, which is pretty important and she won't let me forget, but it's also the birthday on the same day as Rika Coppens, our CEO. So the two most important women in my life constantly bossing me around are born on the same day. How do you call it in the US? Armistice or something? Armistice day, yes. yeah. Chad (13:23.128) More important, yes. Chad (13:28.833) Chad (13:37.571) Armistice Day, Veterans Day for us, although where would you be without those two lovely women telling you what to do with your life? In a gutter somewhere, Leaven. In a gutter, that's where you'd be. Joel (13:38.616) armistice day. Lieven (13:46.739) my god. That is the official answer but I can't think of so many better places. Joel (13:52.652) I mean, come on, leaving is the gift that keeps on giving for sure. Like that is the ultimate gift to have leaving. And you guys, you guys are traveling all over the place in Europe. Where is everybody? I'm here in Indiana. Yippee, yippee, kay-yay. Where are you guys at? Chad (13:56.823) He is, he is. yeah, I agree, I agree. Lieven (13:56.965) Nah, I know. Chad (14:03.513) Yeah? Chad (14:07.139) Talk about those ski trips, Levin. What do you got going on? You're doing some skiing. Lieven (14:12.971) it's the start of the season. We're going skiing with House of HR in January somewhere. We're going to Italy to Livigno for the people who actually love skiing. And then also I invited myself to join the people from Redmore Group. They also have a skiing holiday. It's one of our companies also. And then I take my son skiing and then I take my wife and my family skiing. So I've been skiing. I'm going to be skiing quite some. Chad (14:17.901) Mmm. Chad (14:23.158) Lovely. Chad (14:32.814) Nice. Lieven (14:42.801) time coming months. I love skiing. Chad (14:45.677) Got it. Got to love that. I'm going to be on the other side of that. I'm going to try to stay away from the snow. I'm currently in Cadiz later this week, going to Gibraltar and then heading back to Portugal. The only problem here, though, is I have a surprise trip. going to Amsterdam over the weekend. It's going to be a little chilly, a little chilly, but hopefully we'll be able to warm up, warm up while we're there, then come back to Portugal and Lieven (14:51.453) You Joel (15:11.458) Mm-hmm. Chad (15:14.359) and then I'm just gonna set and enjoy there. Joel (15:18.968) I'm going to be here watching football for the most part. Thanksgiving, like it's all all good stuff, which brings us to fantasy football sponsored by our friends at factory fix. gee, I wonder, I wonder, I wonder who's in the first spot again, week three, me motherfuckers, me. And I take on Chad this week. So. Got it. Got to have it this week. All right. Followed by Dean. Chad (15:21.378) Hahaha! Lieven (15:21.785) Chad (15:26.809) After Effects. Chad (15:32.045) Yes. Chad (15:37.529) yes. Chad (15:43.213) Yeah, not gonna be a good weekend. Joel (15:47.874) daddy Mackerel talk about the Australian contingency. That's right. get three, I get three plays on this and I'm done. All right. followed by David Stifle, Chad, you're in the four spot. Not too shabby. Jennifer Terry, Tharp, Keith, the commission Sonderling. He's moving his way up slowly, but surely Christie Lisbon, Lori Martinelli, Dean, perot for pyros action. Jackson, Dalquist. Chad (15:52.119) Hahaha Chad (16:00.366) Mm. Chad (16:10.519) Yes. Joel (16:12.742) Adam Gordon, a little crappy on his performance there for for someone who talks so much shit about wanting to play fantasy football. He he has totally dropped. He is totally embarrassed. The fellow the fellow Scots. Lieven (16:20.017) Ha Chad (16:20.441) He doesn't change his lineup. Chad (16:27.129) Scotland. Yes. Yes, it's sad. It's sad. Joel (16:31.694) Yeah, he really needs to come on in the second half of the season. And what would the bottom of the rankings be without Sean Horton? Here's a who I think it's his fifth week in a row of being at the bottom. But again, that is fantasy football sponsored by our friends at factory fix. And with that, Chad, are you ready? Chad (16:37.933) Horton? Is it Horton? geez. Sean. Sean. Lieven (16:56.271) Thank Chad (16:57.779) Topics! Joel (17:01.474) That's right. It's been a while since we've talked. That's right. Layoffs Upwork will lay off 21 % of its workforce, affecting at least 160 employees based on its previous head count of 800 folks. 67 vice presidents and several managers at the Palo Alto office will be laid off by December of this year. But wait. Chad (17:04.951) Layoffs? Layoffs? Mmm. Joel (17:26.498) That's not all. Germany's Personio announced a headcount reduction of 115 people representing 6 % of its workforce. The CEO highlighted a slowing economy and internal inefficiencies as a top reason. Chad, what are your thoughts on the layoffs that are going on in our industry right now? Chad (17:48.761) Yeah, Upwork saw up on the revenue side of the house, which was good. And then they turned around and they started cutting heads. And just to clarify, there are 67 layoffs in Palo Alto. Eight of them were VPs and a slew of directors. So you have less staff, you need less leadership, less management, makes sense. It'll be interesting to be able to see if this was a knee jerk reaction and... We shall see. When it comes to Personio, they've been due for a restructure. So I don't know if this is just the timing when it happens, but they've been due for a restructure, especially after all of the acquisitions they've had. That's the big key. You buy all these companies with all this staff, there's a lot of redundancy that's there. You start transitioning, you work through the redundancy, and this is what happens. You get kind of like a reallocation of resources. Joel (18:45.378) Mm-hmm. Chad (18:48.259) Hahaha Joel (18:48.824) So, so here we go, Chad, the year of the year of efficiency is in going on year three. Now, it started with Twitter. started with big tech. We talked about Amazon IQ recently and the millions that they were going to save on that end. talked about Google doing a quarter of their coding now, automatically with AI. And, and we talked about, this is going to start filtering down to smaller companies. The Upwork story, to me was a stock. shareholder efficiency story. And I think a lot of shareholders are going to put pressure on companies to do just what upwork or do do what Amazon and others have done. So he talked about a savings of $60 million a year with the headcount reduction. The stock is at 50 % in the last month. This is going to be a theme that carries over layoff people, replace them with AI, see your stock price go up. Everyone is skiing in the house with leaving like that is going to be. the story that we're talking about going into next year. Personio CEO actually mentioned inefficiencies as part of the reason why things were necessary to lay off people as well as the slowing economy. we'll talk, maybe Leven can talk a little bit about Europe and some of the challenges. that Germany and a lot of the continent is facing. Personia was a German company. lot of their initial clients were in Germany. They are trying to grow here in the U S which we've talked about. But yeah, I mean, ultimately this is, we're going to talk about this a lot. We're going to talk a lot about, especially public companies, headcount reduction, stock price goes up, boats and hoes, rinse and repeat. And it's going to be a theme that we talk about quite a bit on this show. Leven, what are your thoughts? Lieven (20:36.317) Hmm. The whole personial thing. If people are talking about efficiency, I always wonder how is indeed AI going to impact that? And he didn't mention people are being replaced by AI, but if you read between the lines, it's kind of something like that. British Telecom, they were very clear about it. They fired 5,000 people and they said we are going to replace those people by AI. Herokalite first line helped us people, et cetera. So this is going to be a constant in the near future, I think. Chad (20:49.891) Mm-hmm. Lieven (21:06.749) But if you are asking about the European economy, things don't look that good, to be honest. And with the whole American impact now, if Trump actually is going to go on with his universal import tax of between 10 and whatever percent, for Germany, for example, it would be a problem. We have plenty of Chad (21:15.789) No. Lieven (21:33.485) The car industry, for example, everything would be so much more expensive if you have an import tax. And for Belgium, Netherlands, France, Italy, we export a lot to the United States would be suddenly become problematic. But also the dollar is getting stronger compared to the euro. So importing will become more expensive to us as well. So we'll export less and we'll have problems importing. then you are in for a big shitshow I think so there are suddenly talks again about a recession and I hope it's not the case we'll see but it won't be easy to come in here I think Joel (22:11.128) Sounds like it's time to start finding some big tech companies more and more. Let's send some fines to Google and Facebook and LinkedIn. Lieven (22:15.997) Mm-hmm. Lieven (22:21.019) Well, my banker just said, no worries, we'll invest in American companies. And that was his answer. We just buy shares from their companies and everyone is happy. And I think from his little reality, he's probably right. His clients won't complain. mean, Trump was elected and the whole fund went up for, I don't know, so many percentages. Chad (22:21.944) start. Joel (22:27.384) There you go. There you go. Joel (22:36.856) Let's get Joel (22:43.64) Yeah. Chad (22:43.724) That's a short term blip. Give it some time. It all rounds back out. Just go ahead look at Berkshire Hathaway and go ahead and throw some money in that. Everybody relax. Lieven (22:47.846) Yeah. Joel (23:00.376) Just threatened to increase the price of wine, scotch, and cheese and watch the Americans, been to your, been to your well, been to your well. Well, speaking of some American companies and one Japanese company, let's talk, let's talk some revenue news this week. Zip recorder, zip recruiter reported a sharp 25 % year over year revenue drop ouch to 117 million in Q3 of this year with a net loss of $2.6 million. Chad (23:08.532) that's a call. Yes. Joel (23:27.362) This decline is attributed to a hiring slowdown, particularly among smaller businesses. Traffic to its site increased significantly, but the company forecast a 21 % revenue decrease for next quarter. But wait, there's more guys. There's more recruit holdings expects fewer U.S. job postings, but anticipates revenue growth in the HR tech division, including Indeed and Glassdoor. A 4.5 % revenue increase is projected for the latter half of the fiscal year, despite having fewer job ads due to strategies like urgent hiring labels and targeted candidate matching indeed has weathered the storm a little better than ZipRecruiter. Chad, what stood out to you on these two quarterly earnings reports? Chad (24:12.313) Well, I'm going to go ahead and take some time. Let's carve out some indeed time here, shall we? Here at the Chat and Cheese podcast, we like to dig through all the bullshit and actually tell listeners what's going on. This really good story came from the AIM group, Tariq Ahmed Saeedi, I believe it is. Now, recruits stated the upward revision stemmed from quote unquote, yes, I'm doing air quotes, monetization improvements. Joel (24:16.706) Yeah, let's carve it out. Chad (24:42.081) the average revenue per job ad exceeded the rate of decrease in the volume of jobs, right? So from 2025 onward, Recruit will discontinue the pay-per-post advertising model, that's duration-based, for its domestic job boards. So you might ask yourself, self, why get rid of duration-based job ads? Well, because it's much easier to screw partners and customers with the aforementioned Monetization improvements. So what does a monetization improvement really mean? Okay, simple. Raise the rates on PPC for the end customer and pay out a lower rate to your distribution partners, hence widening your margins. For example, hypothetically, let's say indeed paid a nursing website 50 cents per click to deliver traffic to a specific nursing job and then turns around and then charges the regional hospital customer $2 per click. That's a $1 50 cent margin. Okay on every single click. So how do you perform monetization improvements easy instead of paying 50 cents on the nursing for the nursing website cut that down to 20 cents per click for traffic and then turn around and charge the regional hospital that clients and increased to 25 per click that provides a 30 cent gain per click on the partner side and 25 cent gain on the other side. for the regional hospital, right? So that's 55 cents per click. Now, an additional 55 cents, which is added to the buck 50, that 55 cents doesn't seem like much until you understand the number of clicks indeed receives on a daily basis, which is very hard to not see that they're going to be getting mad cash out of this. So that's an example of monetization improvements, which is... very hard to perform in a transparent duration based model, which is one of the reasons why you want to get away from the paper, paper post, right? Indeed can move the goal posts on the traffic partner and the customer at the same time. Now here's the biggest issue. Indeed in itself, they are really the pretty much the, the, the, the mark, the watermark for the rest of the industry. If every of the other Joel (26:45.688) Mm-hmm. Chad (27:08.193) Every other company who does this arbitrage, let's say, starts following Indeed's example, they're going to start fucking their partners and there's going to be a lot less money to be able to be made. this is what, again, an example of monetization and how Indeed is actually making money. Any questions, comments, concerns on the Indeed side before we jump into ZipRecruiter? Joel (27:35.598) I mean, I think when you're, it's good to be the king, right? When you're, when you're basically a monopoly, LinkedIn and indeed do this shit. have these dials and they turn. We talked about indeed went way too far. They went to 11, last year and the whole market smacked them. So they turned it down and then they said, okay, instead of 11, let's go to six first. Then we'll, we'll do another dial to six and then we'll do this to eight. they. Chad (27:40.537) Yeah. Chad (27:45.709) Duopoly, yeah. Chad (27:54.925) Yep. Yeah. Joel (28:03.298) They slowly kind of turn the screws on these ways to make money. I know that everyone I talked to, that works there is really, they're really high in their sourcing tool. I've heard a few recruiters sort of talk well on that. So there, there is a little bit of like new stuff that people are trying out and paying for, but this is largely when you're the 800 pound gorilla, you can tweak the knobs. And like Chad said, a penny here, a penny there. Chad (28:06.435) Mm-hmm. Joel (28:31.382) It's like office space, right? When they, they, did the code on the computer for like half a cent. And by the end of the day, they had like $50 million. So this is what indeed can do. Zip recruiter cannot do that. And we'll talk about them in a second, but, but leaving, have any thoughts on indeed? Chad (28:38.733) Yeah. Lieven (28:48.709) I was kindly asked by the nice, indeed, people not to mention them anymore. It's a fact. But no, no, I agreed with my contact, that indeed, which I've got a good understanding that I'll... Lieven (29:08.701) I look at it from a different way. So I'm not going to say a lot about, about in this, but one thing, one thing, you know, I, with all these AI powered, applying tools, which are coming up now like lazy applied.com and one push on a button, you can apply 1000 times. I think if I was indeed, I would launch something like CPA right now. Now is the time to launch it because cost per applicant with one push on a button, get 1000 applications. The number of applicants is going to rise. Joel (29:10.487) Yeah. Chad (29:23.321) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Lieven (29:37.735) This is the moment. And as you said, the duration based is just too difficult to fraud with. Chad (29:45.111) Yeah, well, they tried CPA last year, they tried CPA, was it SA or whatever the fuck it was, and it all just imploded. Lieven (29:49.307) Yeah, I know. But now they should try it again. Joel (29:51.368) It was like engaged, engaged applicant or something. They should try it again. That's right. Chad (29:55.777) Yeah. Lieven (29:57.265) But had a meeting with the nice people from Vonk yesterday, you know Vonk? No, no, but he is really nice. Vonk! Chad (30:01.025) Yeah, I was going to say, what exactly are they doing now? They were a distribution tool and now they're doing all of this AI efficiency stuff. It's like, can you just do what you say you're going to do? mean, it seems like... Joel (30:02.25) Everyone's nice who's a partner at House of HR. Lieven (30:19.325) How about they do even more than that? Whatever. They explained me something about CPA plus, which I kind of liked. Instead of just paying per applicant, you just pay per applicant. They already checked and they import them in your ATS qualified as an app. But Diane thought, okay, maybe that has a future. CPA, probably not, but CPA plus. Chad (30:36.185) qualified at Apkin. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Lieven (30:45.607) Good work. they gave me 20 qualified applicants and I pay 40 euros per applicant, I might agree. Something like that. Chad (30:46.412) Sit. Chad (30:52.055) Yeah, yeah. CPQA makes sense. I don't think they're anywhere close to that. Let's go ahead and. Yes, and we don't have to talk nice if we don't want to. So ZipRecruiter's Demise, and this one actually Greg Spencer over at the AIM Group wrote about. Lieven (30:58.896) Yeah, we'll see. Joel (30:59.566) Two of us on this call are not executives at an industry player. Lieven (31:05.085) You You don't Chad (31:15.669) ZipRecruiter is the number two recruitment site in the US after Recruit Holdings Indeed slash Glassdoor. So let's make sure our audience knows that Zip is way distant number two. mean, hell, Indeed is so far ahead of ZipRecruiter. Zip's lost Indeed's trail, and they're aimlessly wandering the frozen tundra for God sakes. The most pathetic piece of this is that they're traffic went up and their revenues went down. Say that again. Their traffic went up and their revenues went down. To me, again, how they have not fired Ian out of that position as CEO, this is the time, guys. I mean, you take a look at number one that's out there, still driving revenue. Yes, they're playing these dial games, as Joel would talk about, but they're still creating revenue. And Ian can't get the basic shit together when they've got the traffic that is exploding. It's a 13 % above, rise above that of the other platforms that are out there. Well, if that's the case. Why aren't you making money? What the fuck? What the fuck? Joel (32:39.247) Here's a summary of the ZipRecruiter conference call. Chad (32:47.865) I don't get it. I don't get it. Joel (32:48.078) so yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's bad to be the surf, the joker, the non-king, you will zip recruiter. They're throwing, mean, yeah, Phil's Phil's been busy. Phil's been chatting up some job seekers on the site. Unfortunately, it hasn't resulted in any revenue. they're, they're, they're creating zip intro. that's exciting. Right. That's, that's got, that's got the industry. That's got the industry super fired up zip. Chad (33:03.34) Apparently. Chad (33:13.069) Talk about too late. Jesus. Joel (33:17.964) zip, zip, intro. so I'm going to call it now. I know it's not quite our prediction show, but it's time. Donnie's in the white house regulations like cut taxes cut. it's going to be cheaper to get money. It's time for recruit holdings to write a check and acquire zip recruiter so they can have the full American zip glass door. And indeed the whole package. Chad (33:25.571) Ha ha ha! Joel (33:47.468) Monster and career builder are now aligned. Like this is, this is the time zip recruiters floating out there, recruit holdings, their market, their, their, their worth less than their market cap is just below a billion dollars. That's couch cushion money for recruit holdings, write a check, end it, let, let, let Ian go off in the sunset. They're on the beach in LA, like let him go. And this, this whole zip recruiter thing can be done. And maybe, maybe because ZipRecruiter is already public, they can roll that into one big ZipRecruiter, indeed, whatever, and maybe spin off a different public IPO with all these three job boards. And that would be a fun thing to talk about on the podcast, but it's time. It's time for recruit to back up the Brinks truck and buy ZipRecruiter. Joel (34:41.313) And that's all I got. Lieven (34:42.173) That's all I got. Chad (34:42.891) Indy are leaving. Lieven (34:46.351) Nothing to add, I agree, let them buy Zepp Recruiter and we'll get rid of them. Chad (34:50.137) We'll be back after the break. Joel (34:52.054) And the odds are good that it'll all work out. Joel (34:59.438) Let's take a quick break, get refills, and we'll be right back after this message from our sponsor. Joel (35:11.137) and we wait for Chad. Lieven (35:13.917) Did you check? Joel (35:14.894) feel like the show's going pretty well. How about you? Lieven (35:18.973) It's okay. I should have been more prepared about the Hedicota and Zip revenue, but we don't have Zip I think in any of the countries we're active in. So I don't really know. Joel (35:20.878) It's okay. Joel (35:34.188) No, and it's easy for you to say like, is nothing. Lieven (35:41.765) And the people from Indeed, they contacted us actually and kindly asked for me to behave. Nice. Yeah, sort of. But otherwise, they won't take me skiing. But I do, I really do. Chad (35:48.121) That's a lot of beer. Joel (35:50.254) They asked you to be nice. Joel (36:00.366) Well, you love skiing, man. I get it. I get it. We got to play the game, man. We got to play the game. All right. So I'll bring us. Yes. 30, 35 minutes, edit shit out. Chad (36:08.045) Yep. It makes your Sergey cuts all that out. Chad (36:15.917) And then we'll come back after this ad. There we go. Joel (36:18.382) talking about. All right, humans, time to meet your replacements. Serve Robotics, an autonomous delivery company, is acquiring Veeboo, the maker of AutoCado, a machine that makes guacamole. Known for its connection to, you guessed it, one of my favorites, Chad. Chipotle is in the house. That's right. Okay. Chad (36:40.697) Nah. Joel (36:44.278) So we got our cooks taken care of. They're gone. Now let's go to salespeople. 11X, an AI sales automation platform has secured $50 million in series B funding to enhance its digital workers named Alice and Jordan who automate sales tasks. Time to buy some Nvidia stock maybe. CEO Jensen Wong recently said in an interview that he predicts that AI employees will work across areas, including marketing. and supply chain roles and will be able to complete work just as people do. The result Chad, that we're finding worker loneliness, anxiety and fear. What me worried? Chad, are you scared of our robot overlords and our demise? Chad (37:33.305) No, and we've talked about culture on podcast after podcast after podcast for a while now. And we recently recorded a podcast with our friends over at HR, vine about employee surveys, but the underpinning of that discussion and this one is employee engagement, which is the responsibility of leadership. So if loneliness is happening, why wasn't leadership doing something about it? Because they didn't know? because they never asked, maybe because they just didn't give a fuck, right? So who knows? But what we do is that this type of, this culture is created by companies and they have less than happy employees, right? Which means less productivity, higher attrition, more money spent on acquiring and training new talent and lost revenue due to everything I just mentioned before. So, We're still in the wild, wild west phase of AI and creating efficiencies. We're exactly at the point where leaders who engage their staff understand the needs of their people and delivering on the feedback for the future. This to me demonstrates where there was a 166 engineers at a biomedical company where they were feeling loneliness and they were dropping productivity. That is not their fault. That is the fault of old, traditional, lazy management and leadership. We need to actually evolve. We need to pivot and we need to understand that we don't need everybody in the fucking office doing work. And at the end of the day, it comes down to profits, which obviously it's the capitalist way to do things. If we're not keeping our employees happy, they're going to leave and it's going to cost us a shit ton of cash and revenue. Joel (39:32.398) I'm gonna start with Chipotle, big shocker, Chad. Chad (39:35.383) Yeah. That is my life! Joel (39:41.966) I've said it before, there's, there's not a company in America, at least probably Europe as well in the West that isn't having the discussion. How do we do more with less people? How do we continue the profit machine and have fewer people doing the job? And these companies are going to happen. Your guacamole is going to be made by a robot. Your burger is going to be flipped by a robot. You're Chad (39:49.421) Mm. Joel (40:08.972) Buffalo wings are going to be dropped in the fryer by a robot. There's going to be fewer people. However, there is a shortage of people. So it's either have a robot do it, or you got to wait a long time or not maybe get it all. And that maybe that store doesn't open at all. that's just going to happen. I mean, I go to my local McDonald's, I have a kiosk. I don't talk to a cashier anymore. I put a number on my table and my food comes out. So this is going to happen and companies are going to have this like whole stack of we'll come in, we'll do everything for you, cook your food and everything. And this is where that world is going. Now we need people with jobs to buy the food. So at some point, like there's a breaking point of, geez, we don't have any employees to buy the food. So what does that balance look like? Not quite sure, but it's robots don't eat burritos yet. So that's a problem on the, on the sales side and the, the, the AI employee. Chad (40:53.773) this. Joel (41:05.132) Like most particular startups, like sales is a hard thing to hire for. It's a hard job. You can go through a lot of time wasting on people to source leads. I mean, just a lot of time and money. Every startup in the world that does sales is going to have an AI component to sales. Like a voice is going to call, emails are going to go out, drip campaigns, whatever. And then the actual sale where they talk to a human being might actually be a human being. But that is going to happen. Customer service is going to get hit. Marketing is going to get hit. what that looks like. My fear is that the people who do an entry level jobs that get their feet wet in these sort of roles before they become a top tier salesperson. I don't know where they're going to come from. I don't know what the, what the entry level job looks like because I think AI is going to do a lot of it. Nvidia is going to be at the forefront of this. So, so for, for him, I don't want say he sugarcoated it, but in the interview that he had, said, he said something. Lieven (41:52.764) Yeah. Chad (42:03.529) Of course. yeah. Joel (42:05.088) It's unlikely to lead to layoffs. Okay, dude. maybe, but there's going to be a lot of people that, need Nvidia chips to service all this AI that's, that's basically selling companies. I mean, if you look at, leaving mentioned perplexity and chat GPT and what they're doing. But if you look at, you look at some of the co-pilot stuff that's going on, like it's equal parts, scary as shit. And it's equal parts, like cool as shit because AI is going to start knowing your, your Chad (42:09.239) it's gonna lead to layoffs. Joel (42:32.982) your activity on websites and apps and what you're doing. So when you say, when Chad says, book me a flight to, wherever he goes, Athens, will know that he likes this kind of, he likes Delta. He likes this kind of seat. He likes to leave this time in the morning. Like it's going to know everything about Chad so he can just put that off and have a, a robot make his reservations. That's coming to the workforce. Chad (42:43.054) Mm-hmm. Chad (42:47.095) Yeah, when I like to fly, Chad (42:56.057) But I'll own that, which is awesome. Right? I think that's, well, yeah, that's the big key. I think here in Europe, you will definitely own it. It'll be different in the States, or it's gonna be much different in the States, at least starting out. Joel (42:59.168) You hope. Joel (43:08.588) Yeah. Yeah. And we've talked about McDonald's having face recognition where you drive to the drive-through and it's like, it's Joel Joel, double, know, double quarter pounder meal, a medium diet Coke. Like, like, do you want the normal you want? You want your regular like, yep. And then like we're, we're on, good to go. Lieven (43:20.125) Thanks. Chad (43:21.496) Hello China. Lieven (43:27.663) Is that legal in the US? Okay, in Europe it's totally illegal. It's not possible, but I would have loved it. It's technically possible, of course. Chad (43:29.675) Not in the US, no. Joel (43:33.642) Okay. But it's possible. Anyway, my point is like, Nvidia is going to get really rich on all this automation. So it behooves him to like turn the volume down on fear and loathing and anxiety in the workforce because Nvidia is going to profit greatly from this. Where this whole thing shakes out. don't know. we can't go fully automated. Cause like I said, robots don't eat burritos, but companies are Chad (43:37.315) Hahaha Chad (43:42.905) Mm. Joel (44:01.794) doing everything they can for their shareholders, for the executive, whatever, do the, do the work that they do with fewer people. That's just a reality that we're living with. Chad (44:11.011) Profits over people, yes. Thoughts leaving? You're not going to see robots flipping burgers in Brussels in the fast food? Huh? Huh? Huh? They might. Joel (44:23.014) They might make waffles in Belgium. The waffle making robot, must have one. There you go. Lieven (44:28.541) The waffle flipping jobs, No, because I think people are less expensive than robots for doing these kinds of jobs, which is a hard reality. But I'm not anxious, not really, because hybrid teams are already existing. It's a reality. have a manager managing a team consisting of people and then some bots, which are doing also some kind of jobs. So this is Chad (44:44.632) Mm-hmm. Lieven (44:53.851) already happening, but it's not like we see them as a colleague. It's just a tool other people are using. And the moment that tool is replacing real people, it's becoming not a colleague, but it's replacing colleagues. So the loneliness might be a thing. But in many cases, I see a lot of advantages. If I compare AI tools to my current colleagues, I think AI is polite, AI is patient, it's far more intelligent and less artificial than my colleagues. Chad (45:19.641) Mm-hmm. Lieven (45:20.125) It does the work, I take the credit, AI doesn't complain. I mean, the list goes on. I like AI. But the problem is, of course, and that's something Joel also said, the moment that AI is going to replace starter jobs. So when someone is graduating now from, let's say, economics, not economics, information technology, coding, for the first time in 20 years or so, those people are not finding a job in Europe. Why? Because the basic coding jobs are done by AI and we still need very experienced people to become IT architects, et cetera, but you don't get the possibility to become experienced. And that's a problem I'm afraid of. The base layers of the jobs are disappearing and are replaced by tools and big tech companies like Microsoft and Google, they can still just hire starters and prepare them for a career within the company. But it's the... mid-sized companies, they're not going to invest in someone they don't really need. So they're not going to invest in and training people. And there I see a big problem with youth unemployment, et cetera. And this is something we have to fix. Chad (46:30.195) Yeah, I think so. If you take a look at like British Telecom, as you'd said earlier, they are looking at getting rid of 5,000 people. They still have hundreds of open positions on their website. There's a restructuring. There's a different way that they're going to start using people. Entry level is going to be different because those entry level individuals are going to be powered with assistance as well. So instead of them starting out as base level, now they're going to have that assistant to be able to help them. They're going to be able to get more, more things done and they're going to be more focused on QA, QC, right? So the way that we think of some of these layoffs, it's, it's literally going to be restructuring because they need different types of talent and skill sets. And then everybody's going to be bedwetting because it's like, my God, there's layoffs. Well, yeah, with this huge change. I mean, this is a tectonic shift in the actual landscape, but we're still going to need people to do that. So are we going to have entry level people? We will. They will be powered with AI, which means they're not going to be the entry level that we used to know. Right. So I think that's again, that's my opinion on how it's how it's going to actually evolve in the workforce. Chad (47:46.521) I try, man. I'm trying. I'm Euro Chad. I'm Euro Chad. Lieven (47:47.101) That's a positive way to look at it. No, no, I hope you're right. Joel (47:50.476) He's EuroChat, everything is good. Everything is awesome. Everything is cool when you're, we'll be right back. Joel (48:03.406) All right, Chad, we have a Drake star story just because Drake star is so fucking fun to say Drake star. All right. They, they released some interesting numbers this week. in 2024, the HR tech sector saw over 800 deals with $7.2 billion invested. they highlighted AI adoption in HR as the driving force. Chad, there was a lot of information on that report. What stood out to you? Chad (48:06.926) Yes. Drake Star. Chad (48:30.937) So 40 &A transactions in Q3 of 2024 in this sector alone, 37 % of which happened in Europe. That to me was pretty awesome. That was a very large chunk of &A happening in Europe. And one of the things that I think we've seen, Joel, is that we've seen tons of small startups come out of Europe. Joel (48:44.643) Yeah. Chad (48:58.657) that have been incredibly innovative. And that was different from 10 years ago, right? So we're starting to see much more innovation come out of Europe. And obviously we're seeing a lot of &A coming out there. And then the top AI use cases in recruiting around interviewing, handling admin tasks, recruitment-based tasks, personalized training. We talked to a ton of companies that were at the Paradox Client Board. And the first thing that they said, easy button right out of the gate, get rid of scheduling. Get rid of that fucking scheduling, dude. It's so much faster. You don't need people to do it. Not to mention it's a pain in the ass. So I think this report again, Euro Chad being positive. was all, it was all good. Joel (49:47.224) Yeah, it was. so what stood out to me a couple of things, the report said only 25 % of companies are employing, this for H H R functions. So to your point, this is going to compound significantly because what, when we talk to companies, it's like, well, we took one step and that one step led to how much in savings, how much in time saved. Chad (50:00.121) Mm. Chad (50:15.011) Huge. Yes. Joel (50:16.098) how much inefficiency. it's like, so we're going to spend a lot more on AI than we were because I felt like this past year and the year before was sort of like, we're going to baby step this thing and see what happens. The people who are baby stepping are like, fuck yeah, we're going knee deep into AI. That's going to lead more and more companies to do that little test run, dip our toe in, see how it's going. So this thing is just going to compound with companies spending money and more money on AI tools. if we're only at 25%. of that iceberg. Like I suspect we're to talk a lot about more AI tools and companies leveraging a lot more of the power of that, which I think also is going to give companies more gravitas to buy companies to invest in other companies. Like I see Workday and other companies that have incubators and invest in companies spend more money. Yeah, spend more. Chad (51:13.314) No reason to build. Joel (51:15.362) Put more chips on the table, like bet on more of these startups, because if one of them takes off, it's going to be a huge whirlwind of cash. So yeah, the fact that we talk about this every week and we think it's huge and we think that 99 % of companies are using this, that's not the case, man. We are just at the cusp, the cusp of this tsunami. And, there are a few things that could, guess, derail it, a global conflict, et cetera. But for the most part, like. Chad (51:34.657) Not yet. Yep. Joel (51:45.142) I'll be, I'll be a little Euro chat on this and say like, this was a great report and a lot of opportunity and money is going to be flowing into our space, which is good for everybody. Chad (51:54.585) which makes Leaven happy. I can see him smiling right there. So what do you think Leaven? Especially that big number in Europe, man. I mean, that's awesome. Lieven (51:57.369) Yeah, definitely. You're all leaving. Yeah, and I think it's only getting better because we're just at the start of a cycle which is going to be going on for quite some time. And I also think that this is a perfect moment to be young and enthusiastic and hardworking and creative and launch a little company. The big ones are eager to buy creativity now because they don't have it in them anymore. They're too big. So if I was... Chad (52:08.569) Mm-hmm. Chad (52:28.769) You mean if you were with a big company, house of HR. Yeah. Okay. Joel (52:30.985) Hahaha Lieven (52:32.623) No, no, no. If I was 20 years younger and we're back, back where I was 20 years ago, I definitely would launch something. But indeed we are, all companies are looking at startups and Chad (52:43.673) Well, it's good advice though from a big company, right? Who does acquisitions. That's right. Yeah. Joel (52:47.502) You're looking to buy, Lieven (52:49.617) Yeah, sure. But there's also the backside of it. For each 10 companies that start, one will make it and that one we're going to buy. But the other nine probably have learned a lot and might do better in the future, but they didn't succeed. So it's not all glory. But definitely it's easier than it was a few years ago now. Chad (52:52.833) huh. Joel (53:08.632) Yeah. And don't forget the Aqua hiring baby. The people that you can get when you buy those companies and two companies that are looking, looking for boats and hoes. it's time, Chad, we haven't played in a while time for who'd you rather in case you haven't played this with us. talk about two companies, startups that have recently gotten cash and the boys here decide which of the two they would rather, you know what I'm saying? So let's get to contestant number one in this corner. Lieven (53:13.831) Yeah, awesome. Chad (53:19.072) huh. Joel (53:38.456) Toothio, a Phoenix based digital staffing platform for the dental industry has raised $5 million. Funds will support scaling efforts, expansion into new U.S. markets and setting new standards in dental staffing flexibility and productivity in 2025. Founded in 2022, the company employs 46 people. That is Toothio. And in this corner, we have Social Crowd. The U S based company has secured $2.5 million in seed funding. The funds will be used to grow the company's team and broaden its market presence. Calling itself quote fit bit for work and quote social crowds platform helps in tracking employee goals, sending reminders and providing immediate rewards to boost productivity and focus founded in 2022. They employ eight associates. So Chad, the table is set. have toothy versus social crowd. Who'd rather? Chad (54:38.339) So I actually like both these startups for different reasons. But when I look at an industry that is ripe for disruption, Leaven knows this because they do it a lot. It's the staffing industry. In 2023, the revenue of the staffing industry worldwide totaled roughly 593 billion US dollars. The traditional staffing model will die and more scalable and Uber like models will definitely take its place. So I'd rather Tooth Yo, start niche, prove the model, and then expand into nursing, blue collar, tech, pick whatever lane you like. But major disruption in staffing will happen. As we've seen, none of the big players, the Ronstars, the Adeccos, they don't understand. I mean, they've pretty much, the way that I see it, they've become the blockbuster in... Joel (55:16.238) Hmm. Hmm. Chad (55:34.999) This is the point where we're gonna say, you know, I'm not gonna be kind and rewind. We're gonna find a streaming service, kids. Joel (55:45.846) All right, Toothio comes out on top if you know what I'm saying on that one. Chad (55:50.553) You Joel (55:53.166) Do want a big fish in a smaller pond or do you want a small fish in a big pond is to me the question on this. And I will, I will tell a little story here. I have an 80, almost 85 year old dad. and he doesn't listen to the show. So I'm not worried about embarrassing him, but he has, he has, he has roughly three of his original teeth still in his mouth. he recently had a few teeth pulled. He's got to get some wisdom or some false teeth anyway. Chad (56:08.185) Ha Lieven (56:08.445) Yeah. Joel (56:20.728) Teeth are a big deal in his life. And I don't know if you've heard, but there's a lot of baby boomers that are getting older and need medical attention and help, which means a flood of potential dental customers are ready to flood the offices of dental hygienist everywhere. They're only serving eight markets right now in eight markets in the United States. So there's a huge runway to open this thing up in American. cities as well as North America and head over to Europe at some point. the potential market is huge for them. Everyone has teeth. Last time I checked, or at least most of us have some form of teeth. There's no risk of automation in dental work. I don't see going to get my teeth clean and have a robot backup and like start messing around with my teeth and my gums and in my mouth. Like I don't need that kind of stress with my dental appointment. So we're going to need people. Chad (57:10.297) Boop, boop, boop. Lieven (57:14.054) You Joel (57:17.474) to do the job. We're going to have more people that need the job done. They've just scratched the surface. They already have 30,000 dental professionals that are on this site, ready to work. Toothio is the one definitely that I would pick, but Social Crowd, small fish in a big pond. There's so many companies trying to engage workers, mobile engagement. The examples they had were really strange. it was, you know, get a dollar for five specials that you sell is, the margins that tight that you can only offer a dollar for like five? This was a real life case study they had on the site. So I don't know if $10 is going to like really energize, your wait staff to like go the extra mile, and sell specials. So there's just too much competition. just, I just, they're, they're hopefully going to be bought, but toothy could be like a juggernaut in the dental realm. So for me, I'm doing four on the Down Unders, baby, because I'd rather two Theo. All right, leaving, the tire, join in. Lieven (58:32.759) I totally agree with both of you when I... No, it's your... Joel (58:34.424) Sorry, it's not break a tie. Chad's beer is osmosis-ing through the screen. There is water on this, I promise. Chad (58:36.419) Yeah, yeah. Join the club. Lieven (58:44.879) I agree with both of you. mean, I looked into Tofio and I asked Tofio, a stupid name is Tofio. I thought it reminds me of Tief and then I read the article. Okay. It's about Tief. So probably a good name after all. Tofio. Okay. Okay. And then I also believe in niches and you have to specialize and Tofio and I feel flexible staffing platforms are definitely the future in a niche like healthcare. And then within healthcare, teeth and the dentist business, you can't go wrong. And I'm not sure if it's the same in the US, but in Europe, if you want to go to a dental office, you have to plan your toothache six months in advance because you just can't enter. If they really like you and you've got an emergency, they might see you two days later. But most of the offices don't even accept new patients anymore. So there is really, really, really a shortage. So now... Chad (59:23.961) Yeah Lieven (59:39.471) They are hiring from Eastern European countries, but those degrees aren't the same. So those people aren't allowed to do actual, and they're called dentists and let's say Romania, but they aren't allowed to do anything in Belgium, for example. So that's the whole problem. So I think a platform like that definitely has reason to exist. And if they do it right, it can't go wrong. A social crowd, looked into it and I didn't like him and I'll end my story there. Joel (59:49.271) Mm-hmm. Chad (01:00:10.295) Nuff said. Lieven (01:00:11.837) Hmm. Joel (01:00:13.07) All right, sounds like you're picking, it's a hat trick for Toothio and it's gonna be another hat trick for my dad jokes, everybody. Leaving in recognition of your constant skiing trips, my dad joke is as follows. How do you find Will Smith in the snow? How do you find Will Smith in the snow? Lieven (01:00:15.847) Toothia. Toothia. Chad (01:00:15.993) Toothio It's yeah, it's clean. It's clean winter. Lieven (01:00:38.269) No, I didn't. Joel (01:00:40.024) Chad, any guesses? Chad (01:00:41.913) No, you got me. Lieven (01:00:43.012) Will Smith and the Snow. Joel (01:00:45.454) To find Will Smith in the snow, you just have to follow the fresh prints. Get it? Fresh prints. Chad (01:00:50.681) ha! Lieven (01:00:50.717) amazing, amazing, amazing. Joel (01:00:54.86) We out. Chad (01:00:55.339) Okay, my bad. We out! Lieven (01:00:56.67) Way out. Joel (01:00:58.336) I'd like that one.

The boys sit down with Chloé Rada , Senior Director of Talent Attraction at ZoomInfo. With over two decades of experience, Chloé’s here to school us on how to build an employer brand that doesn’t scream “we’re trying too hard.” Chloé talks about her mission to snag top-tier engineering talent while rolling out international internship programs—because apparently ZoomInfo doesn’t have enough geniuses yet. She champions trial-and-error innovation, which is HR speak for “we might mess up, but hey, it’ll be memorable.” From aligning employer branding with people ops to navigating the workplace vibes during global chaos, she’s got hot takes and strategies that actually work. Oh, and she’s planning to revamp the tech stack by 2025, proving that even in HR, you gotta stay one software update ahead of the competition. Chloé also drops pro tips like leveraging employee advocacy, video storytelling, and LinkedIn (yes, LinkedIn—again) to network like a boss. If you’re ready to rethink talent attraction or just want to hear someone blend HR insights with a healthy dose of wit, this episode’s for you. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Intro: 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, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast. [music] Joel: Thanks for sitting down with us today. Who are you and why are you here? Chloé Rada: Sure. I am Chloé Rada. I currently work for ZoomInfo. I manage our employer branding and our recruitment operations. And so I'm a first-time RecFest attendee. Joel: Okay. Chad: Ooh. Chloé Rada: I'm also hosting the Inspire Stage this afternoon with my lovely co-host, Allison Cruz. So, I'm pretty excited 'cause a lot of the folks I've known in the industry for a while. And we're gonna talk about what has been inspirational, why people are here. For me, it's all about the community and the connection. If I wouldn't be here in my role today, if it wasn't for the community, having grown up in the industry... I rely so heavily on the people surrounding me, like yourselves, who've known each other for a very long time; and especially when times get tough, those are the people that you need to lean on even more so. Chad: Yeah, yeah. So, moving into out of, pretty much into Q4, but looking toward 2025, what advice would you have for your peers moving into next year? Chloé Rada: Don't be afraid to build a plane as you fly it. I always like to think about things from a process standpoint. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, right? And it's okay to fail. And find a safe space where you can do some trial and error, and have some risks. I think find a place that you can feel comfortable being yourself and then also allowing yourself to fail fast. Joel: How many employees are at ZoomInfo? Chloé Rada: 3,500. Joel: 3,500. Chloé Rada: Whoo, yeah. Sorry. Joel: So, not huge... Chloé Rada: Yes. Joel: But not small. Talk about how you look at branding from that middle zone. And is there some gorilla mixed with, we got a little budget to spend? Talk about how you look at branding as a middle-tier-size company. Chloé Rada: Sure. We're an engineering forward organization, so the majority of our hires are coming up through engineering. We launched our international internship program this past year. We hosted 25 interns in the US. We're expanding to India and Israel. We're really focused around that experience for our interns and developing a pipeline of early talent, so that we have those available to work on the forward-thinking type of products that we have like CoPilot, for example. We're focused a lot around what is the give-and-the-get for individual personas, the engineering. Chad: Yeah. Chloé Rada: We basically have people who design our products, who sell our products, and then people who make sure the products are being leveraged, so your customer service folks. Those are the kind of our three verticals. So, I don't think it's any different from any other organization. I've worked at many complex organizations with variety of verticals and disciplines. And each of them have their different... The candidates have different motivations. They're at different stages within their career journey. And the reasons for joining and being attracted to a certain organization, whether it be tech or food service, are all very different. I think it's understanding that playing field, and then also match with what's happening in the marketplace with your competitors; looking at what do you have that's more advantageous than the other tech company down the road, for example. So we're diving in deep in that right now. We've done a lot of research and focus groups. We've done some pressure testing. We're about to launch a new employer brand across the globe, for some info. Joel: That's some work. That's some work. Chloé Rada: And doing a team of one right now with my early talent lead, who will be here later today. So, it takes a lot, I think, to manage that. But it's a repeatable process that I've used with the last several companies. And I wouldn't be able to do that if it wasn't for the partners that I bring on board like Shaker and some of the other folks behind the scenes that really help me deliver those career stories. Chad: Yeah. So, 2024, what has surprised you the most about this year this far? Chloé Rada: The emphasis on internal, activating your employer brand internally and the need to partner and be in lockstep with your people success teams and your people operations teams. I really am going at this from... And this is very different from past organizations... Chad: Yeah. Chloé Rada: Where we're developing our internal roadshow together. Not like, "Here is the brand, I want you to deliver it." Like, how can we activate this internally and making sure that it matches the employee experience? That to me is very different. So, it's like a little bit of internal comms I'm playing here, but then also really relying on the people success team to help us make sure that it's matching the promise. Joel: Yeah. You mentioned Israel. Obviously, there are some geopolitical challenges with that area. Do you view that as an opportunity, or is there a threat that you are planning for? Talk about companies that are growing into areas that there may be geopolitical risks. Chloé Rada: Yes. One of the things that we've done to alleviate that is really focus more on community, so bringing our employees back to the office. We actually just opened up a new office in Ra'anana. I may be saying that wrong, but... And having events and bringing and inviting family members of our employees, so they feel a sense of safety and feel a sense of community in a place that they can call home. This was built state of the art, sustainable materials, beautiful spaces that will allow for better collaborations among our sales and our engineering teams. And really I can see the employees thrive because they feel proud of a space that they can come to work, even though they were hybrid or they were working from home for a period of time. We're mimicking that same concept also in our India offices as well. We've opened up two new offices, one just being recently in the tech hub out there in Chennai and Bangalore. And the same thing, they've done family fest events. So, really creating this opportunity that the employee experience where they feel safe, and they feel a part of something bigger. Chad: Yeah. So, 2025, what's gonna be your major priority in 2025? Chloé Rada: Oh, gosh. I'm hoping I can really improve our tech stack. So, I'm looking for right now for efficiency. Chad: Yeah. Chloé Rada: Efficiency around a better candidate experience, being more conversational on our career sites; efficiency in terms of using AI to help source and find candidates within our CRM. Joel: Yeah. Chloé Rada: I think there's a lot of opportunity there that will increase the time to hire. Undertaking an RFP is a huge thing that's gonna be taking over my life for the next year. Chad: Wow. Chloé Rada: And sometimes it even means re-implementing the systems that you already have, and adding new features or doing more recruiter enablement to ensure that they're leveraging all the tools that they can. Chad: Yeah. Joel: You mentioned being a one-man army, if you will, and I think a lot of listeners and viewers will relate to that. You have an agency that's helping you and Shaker, but what are some tools technologically that are invaluable to you as a one-man band in your daily activities? Chloé Rada: There's two that are always have been very near and dear to my heart. Employee advocacy. So, looking for a tool that can help your employees share the content that you are creating to amplify what that culture is like, right? It's that employee experience. Joel: Yep. Chloé Rada: And also along those same lines, video capture platforms too... Chad: Yeah. Chloé Rada: To help tell those stories. 'Cause when you're activating a brand, people trust people before people trust brands, so you wanna leverage the voice of your own employee as much as you can. At scale, I think when I launched my... When I first launched this video capture platform, I think I got like... I think I have over 70 employee videos within the first eight months. And not every video is gonna be great, but the sentiment behind it also can be used in a variety of ways, whether it be employee quote cards or using that to build out your messaging for your different personas. So, those would be the two tools that I would recommend exploring. And a lot of times you'll "get to impact fast," that's actually our new employer brand, when you're using these tools versus being on the long list of priorities with your own internal communication team. And that can be a good route to go as well. But to me, I like to act... I like to be swift about things. And I wanna get those stories out as quick as possible. Chad: Well, Chloé, thanks for sitting down with us. If somebody wants to connect with you, where would you send them? Chloé Rada: Sure. LinkedIn, I think, will probably be a great place to find me. Send me a note, let me know your interest in connecting. Or you probably could just like Google me, user sourcing tactics here. But I'm not hard to find and I know a number of different people. So, ask around, right? Leverage that community and make those connections. Chad: Network, baby. Chloé Rada: Network. Yeah. Old school. Joel: Network, baby. Well, enjoy the show. Thanks. Thanks for hanging out with us. Chloé Rada: Thank you. Outro: Wow. Look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast-forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey, or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckleheads instead. Now go take a shower and wash off all the guilt. But save some soap, because you'll be back. Like an awful train wreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, "You can't quit them either." We out.

This week on The Chad and Cheese Podcast : It's a world of layoffs, aliens, and bad burgers as Chad brags about sunny Portugal while Joel freezes in the Midwest. From AI pimps hustling Instagram to job board dinosaurs facing extinction, the duo dives into an Acquisition Palooza that proves even startups can have a midlife crisis. Plus, they tackle the age-old question: How much Shake Shack can you eat at 30,000 feet? Spoiler: Not enough. Strap in for hot takes, cool beers, and the slow but inevitable collapse of humanity—now with a side of influencer drama! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:30.78) Awwww yeah, it's the podcast that's as hot as Bitcoin bombs and bad decisions in DC right about now. Hey kids, it's The Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your cohost Joel bomb cyclone Cheesman. Chad (00:43.714) And this is Chad Gravedigger Sowash. Joel (00:46.776) And on this week's episode, Pimp's Private Equity Pickles and Acquisition Palooza. Let's do this. Joel (01:00.902) Well, this is a tale of two locations. I woke up to snow and Chad is like basking in the sun, living his best life. I appreciate that. Chad. Yeah. Yeah. Can we, can we talk about the state of the world real quick? as if, as if we don't need more stress, like Trump's back. We're missiles deep into Russia. Chad (01:04.33) yeah, yeah, that sun coming in. Yeah. Chad (01:14.727) sun. Yes. Back home again in Portugal. Chad (01:22.798) Yeah. Joel (01:29.804) Aliens are apparently in our oceans. We got bomb cyclones, which I've never even heard of before. And we got Mike Tyson fighting Jake Paul. Like which of those is the most like, are you even paying attention to the travesties of the world? Are you just immune to it? They're in Portugal. Chad (01:48.298) No, mean, well, they I'm not paying attention. And after the election, we have gone away from news. Plus, I mean, we were bouncing all over Portugal, Spain, Gibraltar, drinking, eating wonderful food, seeing the sights. Then we capped it off. Julie surprised me with a quick trip to Amsterdam and Utrecht for a couple of days. It went to a couple of really cool place. I mean, few good places we've never been. Never been to Nazareth before. Joel (01:55.772) Mm-hmm. Joel (02:07.483) Mm-hmm. Chad (02:17.848) Kadis, Gibraltar, Utrecht. So we've been busy. We've been busy and we haven't been watching the news. So no, not doing that shit. Joel (02:26.204) I'm sorry. I'm a bit of a downer today. I apologize. Did you see the fight? Did you see the fight? Did you see Tyson's ass? Did you see? Did you see any of it? Chad (02:33.834) No, no, Because everything nowadays, especially with these guys like the Jake Pauls of the world, it all seems to have a script. It almost feels like, remember like WWF when we were growing up? Not that it's any better today, but I mean, like the, you know, it felt fake. just, the whole thing just felt fake. Joel (02:54.47) Sure. Chad (03:00.952) It's like the whole smack at the weigh-ins that it was like, come on, man. I mean, stop it. It is? It is. Well, yeah. Joel (03:04.122) Yeah. Just felt like a big grift, just like we were all taken. We're all taken, which is sad because you and I are of a certain age where boxing, we remember real boxing. Like I remember sitting with my dad watching Sugar Ray Leonard and Hagler and Ali and it's a show now. can fill up what 70,000 people showed up live. I don't know how many people watched on Netflix at global scale. Huge. Chad (03:15.438) yeah. Yeah. Yep. Chad (03:26.392) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Netflix? Yeah. Joel (03:33.5) I don't, maybe, maybe we like the grift. Maybe we just like the show. We just like the, we like the slap and tickle. I don't know. We did vote. Yeah, we voted for it. It's in the white house. It's on our TV. Yup. Chad (03:37.154) We must, we must. We voted for it. We voted for it. To be clear, I did not vote for it. But I mean, I remember watching a young Mike Tyson break Ferguson's nose. I mean, that kind of stuff, stuff that just wasn't fake. was true sport. And it just seems like we've gone off the rails a tad, all over the place. Joel (03:52.688) Mm-hmm. Joel (04:02.32) I will say the, the, the, the, the white before that with the women was pretty solid. Like that was a knockdown drag out fight. And the first fight was, was an Indian fighter. I thought, wow, this shit's global. Now I've, I've never remember seeing a boxer from India. Like if, if we can get countries all fighting each other, like I think that would be high entertainment value. Chad (04:08.005) okay. Chad (04:17.014) yeah. Chad (04:23.982) Have you never seen the Olympics before? That shit happens in the Olympics every four years. Joel (04:29.66) I've never seen a medal winner from India and, and boxing before. Maybe I, maybe I missed that. Maybe there you go. There you go. man. I don't know the world. Shit's falling apart, man. Let's get to, let's get to shout outs. As you know, Chad taken sponsored, sponsored by the great white North company. I feel, I feel like I'm in the great white North this morning. Kiara that's text recruiting. Chad (04:34.74) I didn't say a medal winner, just that they have boxers. Chad (04:50.807) Yes. Looks like it. Joel (04:56.06) made easy and affordable. Chad, what do you got for your first shout out this week? Chad (05:00.674) So my shout out goes to Indeed Flex. Chad (05:11.807) I know, I know, stick with me here kids. So you go on LinkedIn and you perform a search for flex jobs and the results are dominated by Indeed Flex on LinkedIn. Okay, then you go click on the job, watch the URL and see the job was actually distributed by talent.com. Yes. rival indeed and their indeed flex jobs are getting posted on LinkedIn, which that's not even the best part. The best part is that talent.com another indeed rival is posting them. So shout out to indeed flex for watching talent.com apparently dig their own goddamn graves. The stupidity and our space is utterly amazing. Joel (05:43.26) Mm-hmm. Joel (06:03.258) Yeah. All the inter love, if you will, all the incest that goes on in our industry. think job seekers are getting on. They're on to us. They're on to us. The employer's not so much, but think the job seekers are almost on to us. Well, here's one Chipotle missed in my shout outs, Chad. I know that. Chad (06:09.952) incestuous Chad (06:14.058) That's it. Chad (06:26.6) Joel (06:30.236) I know that you and you and Julie love you some Delta airlines, much like much like my wife. Well, they announced this week a partnership with Shake Shack. Yeah. Shake Shack the burger, the burger makers, that they will, they will start, offering Shake Shack on Delta flights. they'll start December of this year, Boston every it's flights over 900 miles. Chad (06:33.71) So yeah. Chad (06:40.866) What? yeah. Joel (06:56.86) That's the good news. They're, they're offering this. Now the bad news is like, you know, I'm, I'm kind of a downer today. Sorry, but you have to be on a, you have to be on a first-class flight to get your Shake Shack burger. and it has to be 900 miles. the, quick upgrade I get like going from New York to Indiana, like that's not going to qualify. Yeah. gotta, I gotta like pay up. I gotta pay a lot of money for my $20 Shake Shack. You get a brownie. Chad (06:57.102) Mm-hmm. Chad (07:15.992) Yeah, not happening. Joel (07:25.461) think fries and like little salad thing, but Hey, it's a start, man. It's a start. I've always thought these food companies are missing a huge opportunity to like get their brand and their food, in the mouths of a lot of people who have no other option, but to eat that food. So a shout out to our friends at Shake Shack. Chad (07:34.36) Yeah. Yeah. Chad (07:42.296) Dude. One of my favorite things that Alaska Airlines did, I actually flew to Alaska, the very first time flew Alaska Airlines, they had the Alaska Brewing Company beer on the airline. I was like, that is amazing. It's incredibly smart and I don't have to drink a Budweiser. Joel (07:49.19) Mm-hmm. Joel (07:58.732) Okay. Joel (08:04.922) Yeah, that's easy. You don't have to cook it. It doesn't have the same quality that you get in the restaurant. That's a no-brainer. However, Chad, you know you don't have to be first class to get free shit from Chad and Cheese. We give it to the dregs of society, to the CEO. Everybody gets free shit from Chad and Cheese. Tell them what they could win if they sign up. Chad (08:07.606) It's too easy. Yeah. Yeah, it's too easy. Chad (08:18.158) You Chad (08:28.95) Well, listener, just so you know, Chad thinks that you're not the drag of society. You got to sign up for free stuff at Chadcheese.com slash free where you could win. You will get sent a T-shirt, right? You're to get one of those sexy Chad and cheese T-shirts, Aaron app on the back. Aaron sponsoring that bourbon barrel aged syrup forum. Your boys up north, Kiora beer, craft beer. from our friends at Aspen Tech Labs, whiskey, two bottles of whiskey from your friends at TexKernel slash Bullhorn. And if it's your birthday, you're gonna want some rum from Plum. And you can only win if you play chadcheese.com slash free. Mm-hmm. Joel (09:18.3) That's right, Chad. Some listeners are celebrating another trip around the sun. List was kind of sparse last week. It's a little meatier this week. I'm happy to see Jeff. Jeff the caveman Herndon is celebrating another year. Michelle Meehan. Meehan so horny. That's right. Kyla Frazier. Quincy Valencia. Love Quincy Valencia. Jen Levine Riley. Tracy Harmon. Victoria Conley. Katrina Polanski. Jennifer Sheridan. David Phoebus. Christopher Mannion. Chad (09:26.254) But robust. Chad (09:32.504) love her! Chad (09:37.784) Thank Chad (09:44.332) There we go. Joel (09:47.504) Brad DiPaolo, Felix Bendals, Joe Antonio, Tom Putral, Jennifer Brooks, Kevin Wheeler, Tony Lee, and Matt Charney all celebrate another trip around the sun. Happy birthday to those listeners. Chad (09:55.181) Wow. Chad (10:03.286) And as you say trip, no, we're not traveling kids. Well, I am traveling. It's more personal. But when we do travel, it's all because of Shaker recruitment marketing. And to be able to be reminiscent of that travel, you can go to YouTube or you can go to ChadCheese.com and you can watch or listen or listen to the green room sessions that we recorded at RecFest. That's right. The Shaker green room sessions. They were fun. They were short, nice and snackable. Go check them out. Joel (10:37.124) Yep. Now where Chad was traveling last week was the loser column in fantasy football. That's right. He ran up against a brick wall called the number one ranked Joel Cheeseman, this week. So, you know, that's, that's where he was traveling. That's right. That's right, kids. It's football season, which means fantasy football, fat, fat sponsored by our friends at fact, that's a lot of Fs factory fix fantasy football, with Chad and cheese, Chad (10:42.071) Hahaha Chad (10:49.005) yeah, that's a good one. That's a good one. Joel (11:04.692) Our leaderboard looks like this. Four weeks running. I'm in the number one spot. this is the, the bi-week apocalypse, however. so I, if I'm going to lose, it's going to be this week. think, number two, Dean, the daddy Mac mackerel, man, he's, he's, he's solid. David Stifle. I got him this week. Then the number three spot. He's looking pretty, pretty scary. Chad, you're holding up, you're holding firm at number four and based on your point, your point. Chad (11:10.936) Damn it. Chad (11:23.296) Yeah. Chad (11:31.118) Tryin'. Joel (11:32.484) Your point production, get to get some things drop your way and it could, could be top tier for you. Jennifer, Jennifer, Terry, Tharp, Keith, the commission Sonderling. Dude, Keith has had two weeks, where if you totaled the combined points that he's lost is less than four. If he wins those he's in first place. sorry, Keith, that's how the ball bounces in fantasy football. Christie Lisbon, Laura Martinelli, Dina, Perot for pyros. Chad (11:38.849) Won't be this week though. Damn it. Chad (11:47.118) Mm-hmm. Chad (11:56.334) you Joel (12:01.452) action Jackson Dalquist. Sean Horton, here's a who he's like rat now he's out of the cellar. He's in the 11th spot, which leaves you guessed it, but never the number 12 spot goes to our second favorite Scott, Adam Gordon, he might want to call up his friend and get some help there at poetry because he is at the bottom of the leaderboard. Chad (12:06.656) Chad (12:12.622) No. Noooo Chad (12:28.928) You might want to watch it though. Keith Sonderling might send an auditor your way to audit all these points. Joel (12:36.496) Fortunately, I don't think he has any pull in the Scotland area for any of those any of those offerings. Geez, let's get to some news here, Chad (12:41.399) You Chad (12:47.675) Topics! Joel (12:50.844) Yeah. Well, let's start with a little bit of layoffs here. it's a rumor. Rumors are starting that, NAS recruitment advertising, or I think it's recruitment innovation now, again, with the, changes at this company, apparently they've cut some heads. Someone that I taught to describe that as quote brutal, including, vice presidents. The COO is rumored to be gone. it looks kind of ugly. They haven't been able to apparently get. Chad (12:54.294) Not layoffs. Joel (13:20.496) get new business, keep old business. Things are looking bad for this, for this agency. And I've known them for a long time. We were sister companies, the first job board I worked for job options. Like I've known them since they were going to, going to expose, going to sherm with a velvet booth with literally newspaper ads cut out and Velcroed on the booth. And they would show people the different ads that they did. Chad (13:22.123) Mm-hmm. Chad (13:29.25) Yeah, Chad (13:37.902) Mm-hmm. Chad (13:45.144) Yeah. Yeah. Joel (13:47.036) They've gone through different ownerships. They've gone through tons of leadership, like tons of volatility. It's kind of a tale of two agencies in our world. have like, what the hell's going on? Don't know who's in charge. What like what's going on? And then with NAS, and then you have like shaker, which is like three, three generations deep, like, like loyalty, acquisitions make like, so if you're a customer, if you're a prospect, who would you rather Chad (14:08.824) Constant, constant, constant. Yeah. Joel (14:16.922) you know, sign, sign a deal with a volatile mess of a mess, mess of a bomb cyclone. Yeah. The bomb cyclone, or are you going with a stable stable one? But anyway, maybe there'll be official news, but right now the rumor is that NAS is going through some, pretty bad times at the moment. Chad (14:20.878) ComCool collected shaker or an ass. Joel (14:40.198) Any comment about NAS chat? No, you're All right. Chad (14:42.806) No, no, they were a Goliath at one time. It's sad to see this decline and it hasn't been overnight. That's for damn sure. they were huge. mean, just huge. And now, I mean, they're obviously dwindling down to just about nothing. And again, as you said, know, Shaker has been very steady, incredibly steady, and it's been a steady climb. Joel (14:56.356) Mm-hmm. Joel (15:06.524) Mm-hmm. Chad (15:09.238) Right. It hasn't been, you know, steady across the board, but it's been a steady climb. you know, watching many of these companies, I mean, even the raiden sees the the old TMP worldwide at the time where they became tech companies instead of just being agencies and whatnot. Shaker stayed true to who they are. And again, for better, for worse, TMP becoming a tech company, they got acquired. Right. So, I mean, there are those times and timing means a lot as well. So. Joel (15:19.377) Mm-hmm. Joel (15:33.872) Mm-hmm. Chad (15:39.171) Sorry to hear that about NAS. Joel (15:40.848) Yeah. You know, there will be a book written one day about the impact of classifieds, the death of classifieds on more than just the news, all the agencies and people who service them. Like I'm sure you saw in the election, how the Washington Post didn't submit an endorsement for a candidate as well as the LA times. And that all goes back to classified ads. Like classified ads funded the newspapers, which funded the news. if you're, if you're unhappy about the state of news, like Chad (15:58.21) Mm. Chad (16:06.149) yeah. Yeah. Joel (16:09.86) We caused it by killing, killing the classifieds. Thanks, Craigslist. Thanks, Craigslist and everybody else that was, that was in there. all right. Well, let's get to, geez, talk about change. Acquisition Palooza this week. Holy crap. let's get to, Linkup first. Global data has acquired, Linkup, a company near and dear to our hearts. If you haven't listened to our data show, we've got those in the archives. Chad (16:14.494) Ha ha ha! Chad (16:21.164) Yes. Chad (16:24.621) Wow. Joel (16:36.688) But they've acquired Linkup, also known as JobDig, to enhance its intelligence offerings, adding Linkup's real-time indexing of numerous job listings. Shares rose 1.4 % after the announcement. Chad, all hail the Sasquatch of statistics and let us know what your thoughts are on this acquisition. Chad (16:58.732) Yeah, mean, Toby and the crew over at Linkup are just damn smart. They saw the need for better and faster workforce data because the BLS is looking 30 days backward on every report and Linkup can provide day by day numbers of job flows in specific sectors, specific companies, specific job categories, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So that's not even the smart bit though. Instead of trying to sell this tool to the government for their use or sell it to HR and TA leaders to better understand their damn market, Toby and the crew sold to financial markets. You know, the markets with mad cash. So this pivot made a vendor link up selling data to the government and or markets probably 50 times more. valuable by pivoting to financial markets. And here's a great example of what this actually means. And this is Toby's post earlier this week about Nvidia. Quote, Nvidia's job openings are up 35 % since July's hiring slump with a growing demand for software developers, sales reps. In fact, posting for sales jobs have tripled over the period supporting Quang's claim of insane demand for the new Blackwell chips." So Toby knew if LinkUp data could translate jobs into predicting company growth or loss in the financial markets, that LinkUp could easily surpass anything they could do, even dream of doing and selling products in the HR space. So this type of acquisition is a must for the company who bought global data because to be able to hit their revenue targets, which they're looking to target 500 million British pounds, which is about 630 million USD by 2026. You gotta make these bold moves. And it was a hell of a bold move by Linkup in my book. This is one of the biggest applause that I think we can give. And that's not just because he's a friend and they were a sponsor, but they did it right and smart. Joel (19:15.804) Not only an applause, but it's dead sexy. Chad (19:18.848) very much, very. Joel (19:21.584) Yeah. So I think we, we, kind of saw this coming. you and I knowing Toby as we do, he kind of went like, CEOs do this thing where they kind of like ignore you a little bit and you go like something's going on. there's negotiations. They don't want to fuck shit up. Like something's going on. So I don't think we were surprised by this. And I think that his, his, his activity on social media, which you outlined, which he's generally not, that's not a thing with him. So he started posting about Chad (19:27.279) Yeah. Chad (19:34.67) Yeah. Joel (19:48.784) companies and job. I'm like, so I'm like, something's going on. Something is, is, is a foot. And here we go. job dig, who I think you probably know was an early job board, back in the day. And then they, launched link up, I think in the mid 2000, maybe 2010 or 11. And it was, it was kind of a direct employers, competitor. They, they basically took jobs, direct employers, job search, kind of like indeed with, just, jobs or the old job central. Chad (20:10.284) Yeah. Job search engine. Joel (20:16.676) And then, I think that Toby being the, brilliant guy that he is saw the data, realize that data is the new oil. So if I can like sell this data, as opposed to just sell access to knucklehead job seekers, like I might make a little bit more money. and certainly I think that that has proven out. it's interesting to me how much job search or job posting data, is, is being embraced by other, Chad (20:21.666) Mm-hmm. Chad (20:26.35) . Chad (20:31.331) Yeah. Joel (20:45.838) industries. So it makes perfect sense to say, if someone is posting more jobs, then maybe they're doing pretty well as a business. Maybe it's a good company to invest in and those jobs are real time data. whereas quarterly reports, not so much. so that, that makes perfect sense. Or you see seeing someone like does profile data, how does that enhance other things that a company can learn about or what wall street can know about? The one thing I think that's interesting though is Chad (20:52.755) Mm-hmm. Chad (21:07.406) Mm-hmm. Joel (21:12.248) As we, as we go into a world of more automation, more AI, more headcount reduction, how important is the job posting data going to be if we're replacing so many people with, with robots? So no big deal. doesn't matter now the deal's done, but I think long-term, job posting data. I don't know if it's going to have the impact that it does, does today, but major kudos to Toby. we love those guys love him. How can you hate anyone from Minneapolis? mean, Minnesota, it's like, it's like beautiful. All right. We got a lot of, lot of these acquisitions to go through. Let's hit up. what's next? Let's talk about ad Zuna. the UK job search platform has acquired CESA, a French company specializing in social media recruitment, advertising the financial deals were not disclosed. it aims to position ad Zuna as a leader in full funnel recruitment advertising across North America and Europe. Chad (21:43.555) You Chad (21:52.43) Do it. Joel (22:11.184) Now, something new that Chad and I have done is we've reached out to the CEOs, in this case, Doug Monroe, to get his take on exactly what was going on. So we will play each of these videos. We asked why the acquisition, what's the immediate impact, what's your long-term vision and how much was the deal. This is Doug talking about why they did the acquisition. Joel (23:42.0) Yeah, okay, super excited, did his research, yada, yada, yada. Now let's hear about what the immediate impact will be on the deal. Chad (24:26.072) Full frontal? Did he say full frontal? Joel (24:27.452) full frontal, that would be better. Chad (24:50.508) Okay. Joel (24:51.324) Yeah, That's like the old days of SEO. like, we can get you in front of eight billion, whatever it was, everyone that was on search, we can get you in front of like, okay, all right. Yeah. Cause it makes us look huge that we can put our ads on Google, like make us make us look bad. All right. So what is, what is the long-term vision of this deal? Let's hear from Doug. Chad (24:57.518) Yeah, right. we get you in front of them. Okay, sure. Again. Hahaha Joel (26:16.814) Okay. let's, let's get your take on, the move by at Zuna to buy Sisa says, or whatever. Can we require all the British CEOs if we do this again, to have to say bottled water, if they're in Britain, I love, I love hearing British people say, okay. Chad (26:24.106) Caesar. Caesar. Chad (26:31.566) Yeah Chad (26:37.656) So I think it's interesting we hear that AppCast is putting resources into social distribution and now Adzuna buys a social distribution company. I understand the need to meet people where they are in a social standpoint. It's also interesting that we're not hearing this from Indeed. Now the mention of the focus on frontline workers, that is big. And one of the biggest reasons is because we're looking at the prospect of deportation, right? Whether it's self deportation, I mean, it's going to happen and we're going to need people to be able to fill roles that immigrants are currently filling. Whether we can do that or not, no fucking clue. You'd better have a deep bench people so you better start using platforms quick. So I think this is kind of like skating to where the puck is, unfortunately, because it's not a good situation. He says 79 % of job seekers have used social media in their job search. I went to, I did a little anecdotal thing, right? I went to TikTok to check on a friend of the show, JT O'Donnell's account, where she gives advice to job seekers. She has 1.2 million followers on TikTok and posts with over a million views. So I think this thing has got legs. The only problem is Joel (27:47.848) Yeah. Chad (28:02.712) How do you execute ads on Insta and TikTok? Users don't want to see clip art videos or traditional static ads. They want to listen to people like JT, influencers. So will Caesar use influencers? Right? This whole optimization with AI doesn't mean anything. Okay? If you don't have the right ads or the right people. So from that standpoint, I believe a platform like, I'm gonna give a big shout out to our friend, Joel (28:17.724) Caesar. Chad (28:32.312) Tracy Parsons over at Flockety, they have more traction since that whole platform is built as an influencer centric platform. So if Adzuna were smart, they'd look at acquiring a Flockety. If Adzuna's competition was smart, they'd look at acquiring a Flockety because if this is a thing, and it seems as it is, as it said early indications with AppCast really focusing on the social side of the house, Adzuna's Joel (28:34.598) Mm-hmm. Chad (29:01.026) focusing on the social side of the house. The social side of the house doesn't mean old style bullshit ads or job postings, okay? It has to do with influencers. So how are you going to engage influencers? The only thing I've seen out there thus far from a platform standpoint is flockety. Joel (29:07.782) Mm-hmm. Chad (29:22.766) You Joel (29:25.446) So I find this evolution of, first we saw it with job boards and we'll talk about a job board getting acquired here in a second. But the evolution of programmatic and sourcing and some of these tools that I guess you could say are getting commoditized or at best it's a race to the bottom. Whenever you're a middleman in these industries, it's like who can offer the cheapest price and you just keep going lower and lower. Chad (29:30.68) Mm-hmm. Joel (29:52.2) and you could talk more about this in your capacity as, the job board doctor. but I would have to think that programmatic click throughs are, are going down and it's just like, if I'm advertising, who's the lowest price. So they're in a position where like, geez guys, we're in this, we have cash right now, but we're slowly getting to like less than what we have now. We have to make some moves to, be a platform. or to be more than just post your jobs. And in Adzuna's case, we've talked about what Indeed has done with their sourcing stuff and ZipRecruiter with God knows what this week, trying to be more than just being jobs. And in Adzuna's case, it's like, let's be a platform for marketing. So it sounds very like much like hire easy or candidate hubs slash candidate ID, maybe even like an out hire. How do we become more, how do we become a place that people come? Chad (30:23.672) Mm-hmm. Joel (30:50.438) to market, to drive traffic, to be that full frontal funnel or whatever the hell it was that he's talking about. They're all coming to grips with this whole job posting thing is not going to be long-term successfully. It's not going to be appealing to our investors. have to do outside the stuff. I think you're going to see a lot of acquisitions. You mentioned Flockity, the companies I mentioned, think they're Chad (30:58.606) That's a better name, by the way. Joel (31:19.056) they're on the, they're on people's radars as well. If you're not looking at a marketing platform, an advertising platform, social media stuff, texting is part of what, CESA does as well. So they do kind of a whole, whole holistic thing and not just put your shit on social media. to me, it's smart. think it's going to be hard to take a culture that is kind of like, low margin, like high frequency, get like, go big and then like get really personal and get really sort of granular around what a customer needs. So I think they have their work cut out for them, but in the short term, I think it's the right move. You're in an industry that's going to the bottom. Don't be that company that wakes up one day and says, shit, we're done. We're done. Chad (31:48.067) Mm-hmm. Chad (32:02.638) Yeah, the beautiful thing about the acquisition of the job board doctor was that most of those job boards were doing exactly what the applicant tracking system companies were doing. They were setting it and forgetting it, right? Or at least the companies who bought the applicant tracking systems. So they were setting it and forgetting it because it was just a money machine, right? I mean, look at Craigslist. They were making a billion dollars and they had less than 50 employees. So it was set it and forget it. Well, we're not in those times anymore, right? Joel (32:15.857) Yeah. Chad (32:31.19) you have to do something different. Whatever that different might be, in this case, Adzuna wanted to do something different than Indeed. And again, taking a leading indicator from like an app cast, okay, great. The thing for me is don't tell me about AI. Don't tell me about matching. Don't tell... Joel (32:43.292) Mm-hmm. Chad (32:49.48) I want to hear specifics on how these things are actually going to help. I love hearing that there are business cases and there are percentages and obviously sounds like they've got RPA built into this thing. That's all great. Let's get into the details. Let's start talking through this so that we know again how the fucking sausage is made. Right. That's what we want to know. That's what we want to know. And I think Doug will get there. It's really early. Joel (33:10.032) Yeah. Yeah. Chad (33:16.583) I did give him a little shit on LinkedIn this week because I said, look, this is a bunch of fucking smoke. want to see, you know, I don't want to hear the sizzle. I want to eat the steak. Right. And I think he's going to start giving. I hope he's going to start giving us some steak. Joel (33:27.185) Yeah. Joel (33:31.12) Yeah. Yeah. In addition to downward pressure, I mean, it's, harder to drive traffic these days. Like email spam filters are better. SEO is harder. Paper click is more expensive. Like every, everything's compressing on these businesses and they're, they're, they're doing the smart thing in this case of, of, of getting out of, the old business, the old business ways. All right, let's get to, job get, they've acquired snag a job. Chad (33:43.021) Yeah. Chad (33:53.422) You Joel (33:59.174) merging their databases to reach over what they call 100 million hourly workers in the US. Both will operate independently, but share job seeker data. Financial details were not disclosed. We had Tony Liu, CEO and co-founder at JobGit talk to us. First question was, why would they make this move? Chad (34:01.304) Big. Joel (35:12.45) Okay, and what is the immediate impact that Tony sees? Chad (35:39.296) Easy and smart. Joel (35:39.484) All right, easy and smart. To the point, long term vision. Chad (36:15.51) He's teasing us. He's teasing us right now. He's teasing us. Joel (36:18.652) By the way, before we get to the last one, isn't Tim Hawk running marketing over there? Can we give him a better background than just some like target stock photo frame picture? Jesus, how about some greenery or some like real artsy fartsy shit? My God, it's the sea. Tim, come on, Tim, geez, Tim, come on now. All right, the amount. Chad (36:23.721) Hahaha Chad (36:28.952) big job get Tim should be holding a job get flag in the back. Chad (36:38.83) Yeah, I gotta get new stuff around here. I gotta get new stuff. Chad (36:52.622) come on. Tony. You had me at hello, Tony. Yes. No, no, no. He, he, no, he, he sent it. I just didn't send it to you because it was, it was like a minute of him telling us why he didn't couldn't tell us. It was like, okay, Doug, I don't need that. Joel (36:57.584) At least he sent a video. Doug didn't even send a video. He just like brushed right over it like a true, like a true Brit. Like I didn't see that. I didn't. What are you talking about? Acquisition amount. Joel (37:14.668) Hahaha Chad (37:14.99) Between the two CEOs, think Tony understood the assignment, right? He teased us a lot. So definitely got to get him back on the show. Not just to talk about this, but also to talk about future acquisitions, because I think I think they're are right. They're definitely right for that. Anyways, so we saw this fire sale happening. We had Snagajob's CEO at the time, Matt Chu Stevenson on the show back in July of 19... there are for God's sakes when they were focused on rebounding from the failed rebrand snag in app launch. I don't know if you remember that. It just never seemed like snag had the firepower to pull off what they had envisioned. And it reminds me of the Blackberry movie where the CEO says to Mike, one of the founders, quote, I thought you said we had the best engineers in the world. Joel (37:45.372) Yeah. Joel (37:51.546) Yeah. Yeah, I do. Chad (38:09.066) And quote, then Mike said, no, I said we had the best engineers in Canada. That's where I think snag hit their biggest snag. See what I did there? I don't believe they had the right resources to pull off the rebound that we talked about in that episode flash forward to today. Job get gets a big fucking name in the space. High volume space. Joel (38:14.331) Mm-hmm. Joel (38:19.74) Yeah, I did. That's good. Joel (38:27.964) Mm-hmm. Chad (38:36.834) that aligns perfectly with their own total addressable market. I think it's great timing. I think it's great deals. And if anybody can breathe life into this poor, poor, sad beast, I think JobGet has a chance. Joel (38:49.51) Hmm. Joel (38:55.868) So the kids won't appreciate that there was a time not that long ago, well, 20 years ago where snag was mentioned in the same breath with monster career builder. mean, it was a top five job board. and, it turns out the, asteroid that is indeed doesn't just kill, the carnivores, it kills the herbivores and everything else. And, and snag ultimately was a victim of indeed just like a monster and career builder. Now we've seen. Chad (39:00.14) Yeah. Chad (39:05.782) Easily, yeah. yeah. Joel (39:25.178) monster and career builder merge. whereas, whereas I look at that as sort of two dinosaurs snuggling to survive the winter, the nuclear winter. This feels a little bit more like the vulture snacking on the carcass. That is snag a job. Like you mentioned two years ago, we talked to these folks. The CEO was not from the space. Literally, I didn't come away with any confidence that they were going to turn this around. Chad (39:33.953) Easily, Chad (39:42.03) Mm-hmm. Joel (39:51.292) It was kind of like, I'm learning on the job. We'll figure it out. Yada, yada, they have a good brand. A lot of customers love us and good SEO, et cetera. And a lot of that I'm sure has been dwindling significantly. Snagajob had raised $65 million in its past. JobGet has raised $40 million, according to Crunchbase. So JobGet to me is basically getting something that at one time was valued quite significantly. I'm sure they still have a nice database of clients. Chad (40:18.883) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Joel (40:21.602) I'm sure they have a nice email database. but there's not a whole lot going forward. You think it's a strong brand. I don't, I'm not convinced of that anymore. it could be, again, I, I, I would say it's a better brand than job get. And if they, if job get changed their name to snag a job, I wouldn't be surprised and wouldn't criticize that at all. Sure. I get, I get, get job and job get confused all the time. And I'm a genius. Chad (40:41.4) Think of the trust, the trust on that domain. Joel (40:49.114) So imagine what the, the average person has a problem with now. Now job get is, is very app oriented native apps. and looking at their metrics there, it's a little challenged. I mean, it's, and Google play, have, 10,000 reviews, about a million downloads on Android. Now that sounds like a lot, but if you look at zip recruiter, Zip recruiter has 400,000 reviews versus 10 and they have a 10 million downloads versus a million. So job get has its work cut out for us. And by the way, zip recruiter doesn't really tout itself as an app. People just kind of download it because they know the name. so yeah, is it a good move? Sure. is job get now this juggernaut that's going to like take over the world. I don't, they got the work cut out for them. I still think job case has a strong, has a strong case pun intended. Chad (41:37.614) Not yet. Yeah. Joel (41:41.788) in that spot as well. So it'll be fun to watch. Easy acquisition, smart acquisition. I don't know if it's going to change the world, but yeah, good for them. Good for them. Good for them. All right, we're done with our videos. Did you think that was successful? I guess our listeners will tell us like that sucked or it wasn't. wasn't. So let's go to some more winning with the acquisitions. This time recruiter.com. Chad (41:53.038) Good for them. Breeze by bounty. Chad (42:00.92) We'll see. We shall see. Joel (42:09.552) has acquired Bountyjobs aiming to enhance its recruitment offerings, focusing on integrating Bountyjobs referral-based hiring into its services. No financial details were disclosed. Chad, your thoughts, recruiter.com and Bountyjobs. Chad (42:24.908) Yeah, I mean, this to me doesn't seem like much of anything. I mean, we you've got a lot of services that are being provided that I think will go away, to be quite frank. mean, a lot of these a lot of these services are their connections, right? And people are becoming connected so much faster and so much easier through technology that who is is putting in place? Joel (42:33.371) Mm-hmm. Joel (42:38.736) Mm-hmm. Chad (42:52.731) the companies, the actual companies are actually putting these things in place. We talked to companies at client board that I mean, shit, they're connecting the dots very quickly. So I think bounty. It's been a brand for a very long time, not a big brand, but it's been a brand. It's been a moneymaker. But maybe it was the perfect time to sell maybe it was a clearance clearance rack sale. Either way, I don't think it was going to last for too much longer anyway. Joel (43:23.736) Mm-hmm. Joel (43:27.836) So, I, you never hear in acquisitions who made the first call. it the seller hoping to get a buyer or was it the buyer looking to buy, you know, the company that eventually sold. that, that is a very telling story that we never get. And in this case, was this bounty jobs calling recruiter and saying, Hey guys, we're interested. Or was it the other way around? I remember when bounty jobs launched, 2006 at a conference. Chad (43:35.583) Yeah. Chad (43:43.406) Yeah. Chad (43:54.413) Mm-hmm. Joel (43:56.188) And they were kind of like this eBay for recruiters. So you would go on, put your job and then recruit or recruiters would like bid for it. And you'd pick the winning bid. And then they would do like, it was kind of a cool thing at the time, which obviously didn't, didn't have much legs long-term. kind of became a competitor to what recruiters are doing. So they came to came to the other side. what I have to think is prevalent in so many companies is looking at. big Goliaths doing stuff. And although it may not impact me today, it's probably going to kill me in the future or really, really hurt me in the future. And we've been talking about indeed getting into staffing for quite a while now. And they've talked about getting into staffing for quite a while now. If I'm like a bounty jobs, I'm looking at that writing on the wall and I'm thinking like, Hmm, is it maybe time to get out while the getting might still be good? And I think that that could be part of the challenge. Again, we go back to automation and, and that, that, that reality. Like things are in flux. They've been around since 2006, the founders and people that have been around are probably ready to get the hell out of Dodge. They've been at about a 53 person or so head count for a long time. They have long tenured people. It might simply just be like, guys, are we kind of bored with this shit? Like let's call recruiter.com or somebody and see if we can get a bar that may, that may be how this, this. Chad (45:09.196) Yeah. Joel (45:23.662) unfolded. As far as recruiter.com, this is a public company. I don't know what the hell they're doing. Like they're buying weird shit. Like Matt Charney mentioned, like they've changed their name to Nixie on the stock exchange. So they go from recruiter.com to Nixie and their stock symbols in IXX. It's a penny stock. I Chad (45:24.958) Mm-hmm. Joel (45:48.376) I just, I can't get excited about what they're doing. I can't get real excited about where bounty jobs is going. So yeah. Did you say nothing burger? I, if you didn't, then then I, I will go ahead and say nothing burger. I don't, I don't think the stock did much on the news shocker, although with the penny stock, if it goes up two cents, it's like a big day in the market. And that might've been, been what happens, but yeah, a lot of acquisitions. What do you make of all these, these, these sales? I mean, we we've been talking about, we're going to see consolidation and we're finally seeing it. Chad (45:58.826) Paraphrased, yeah. Chad (46:14.03) We called it. It takes time. takes time. It takes time for a founder or CEO to actually realize that, you know, look, we're not going to make this runway. We're just not going to make it. And with the way that, you know, money's coming out or not coming out, you got to start making those calls. yeah. And so it takes a minute. Joel (46:29.71) Mm-hmm. Yep. Joel (46:39.568) Yep. I, I suspect, I suspect we'll be talking about more acquisitions in 2025, but till then let's take a quick break and get to some more news. Chad (46:41.388) takes a minute so it's not surprising we knew it was gonna come. Chad (46:47.384) Yep. Yep. Chad (46:54.178) Let's do twine and then skip Georgios because we were running late. Joel (47:00.041) Okay, I'll skip George, yes. All right, Chad. Chad (47:04.195) Yep. Joel (47:09.468) All right, Chad, and the humans are not necessary anymore news. Twine has secured $12 million in a seed round established just this year. The startup addresses the cybersecurity talent shortage by developing AI driven digital employees, starting with their first named Alex, just another digital employee highlighting the fact that companies are working hard to replace the carbon based employees. Chad, what are your thoughts on Twine? Chad (47:37.922) So here's a quote from a CA tech, the article quote, the cybersecurity industry is facing a severe talent deficit with the world economic forum, citing a shortage of nearly 4 million cybersecurity professionals. 78 % of cybersecurity leaders acknowledge that their organization lacked the in-house skills necessary to fully meet their cybersecurity objectives. This shortage heightens organizational exposure for and forces chief information security officers to focus on firefighting instead of taking proactive approach to risk management." quote. Means we don't have enough people kids. So allow AI to do the firefighting for you. What could go wrong? I mean, seriously, but what happens when your AI gets hacked and then gets turned on you, right? think of this. We just saw, and again, this is more of a macro, China just unveiled their robotic infantry wolves. Okay. While the U S has unveiled the collaborative combat aircraft, AKA robots that could kill people without supervision. Welcome to a combination of black mirror and fucking Skynet, my friends. I mean, this, this shit is getting freaky and somewhat scared. Joel (48:55.718) Mm-hmm. Joel (49:00.421) Mm-hmm. Chad (49:05.76) Okay, very scary. Joel (49:08.188) Literally, I'm not sure I have anything to add. The numbers you quote are the ones that I wrote down. yes, look, security, warfare is happening under our noses that don't show up on news is the cyber attacks that are every day that the governments of the world work with to do. mean, corporations are at a disadvantage unless your name is Microsoft or Amazon. Chad (49:12.099) Fuck. Chad (49:21.142) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Chad (49:33.773) Mm-hmm. Joel (49:34.982) hacking is just the part of it getting shut down. We've seen, you know, water facilities we've seen like utilities like this. These are serious issues that no one wants to deal with. And we don't have enough people. I don't know if you mentioned the Biden administration launched an initiative, last year to encourage cyber, security careers, as buzz as businesses try to figure this stuff out. So our government is aware of it. We need it. An augmented cyber co-pilot is like a no brainer to me. Chad (49:52.856) Mm-mm. Joel (50:03.814) This company is, going to, it's, this is boats and hoes at this company. If they can pull this off, they'll probably get bought by CrowdStrike or Palo Alto networks, at some point and make a ton of money. But yeah, this is Janie. mean, we talk about digital employees for sales and marketing. Like this is one of those things that people need. I may not need a digital marketer, but I sure as hell need something else than what I have now, protecting my company. Chad (50:12.745) Yeah Chad (50:25.698) They do, but man, you're walking, you're walking a fine fucking line right there, my friend. I mean, the, the, the supervision has to be so, so close and for a human to supervise it, you're going to have to have another program supervise that program. I mean, it's just, it's, this is how scary it's getting. Right? So yes. Is it going to be necessary? Yeah. Because you've got to be able to, you don't have the people to be able to fight what's going on on the cyber war front. Joel (50:38.95) Mm-hmm. Joel (50:43.387) Yeah. Chad (50:55.158) So you gotta have AI fight what's going on in the cyber war front unless somebody finds a back door into your AI and starts fucking your shit up with your own AI. I mean, it's just like too much. Too much. Joel (50:58.928) Mm-hmm. Joel (51:06.48) No, when, when Sam, when Sam Altman of open AI goes in front of Congress and says, need a, you know, a national plan, a Marshall plan, if you will, around AI to combat what China and the evil doers or our adversaries are doing like that serious stuff. And I don't want to wake up one day and my utilities facility is down. my electricity is down. My like, everything is down. Chad (51:15.316) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Chad (51:25.624) Yeah. Joel (51:36.506) That's yeah, we live in a really scary time, and stuff that we don't even see. did I mention there are aliens in the oceans? Chad, did I mention, did you see, did you see the, the, testimony at the congressional hearings on aliens in the ocean people? It's the, it's the end. It's the end. can't, we can't, I'm sorry. Chad (51:44.889) God. Go to an advert. Jesus. Chad (51:52.738) No, no, no. Chad (51:58.217) As we know it. Joel (52:00.412) Thanksgiving can't come soon enough. Let's take a quick. Chad (52:07.384) Here come the AI pimps. Joel (52:08.124) Can I interest you in some AI pimps, Chad? This is from Wired. So Instagram is facing a surge of AI generated influencers who steal and monetize content from real creators using deep fake technology. Gee, did we see this coming or not? This practice has become widespread impacting genuine creators visibility and more importantly, their income. Chad (52:27.139) Yes. Joel (52:33.818) Despite some app removals, Instagram's response to this issue has been criticized as inadequate, possibly due to the traffic these accounts generate, aka the dollars, baby. It's all about the dollars. So Chad, your thoughts on AI pimps. Chad (52:54.072) Hmm inadequate aka Mark Zuckerberg. So here's a quote from the Wired article quote Instagram is unable or unwilling to stop the flood of AI generated content end quote so if the content on Instagram were deep fakes of politician or politicians or billionaires the platform would be fucking shut down or it'd be fixed right that being said We're still in the wild wild west of this technology, but it's maturing incredibly fast and way too fast for legislators to catch up. And to be quite frank, US legislators haven't and won't do anything meaningful anytime soon. So the best chance that these lovely ladies have, these sex workers have is that the EU create anti deep fake legislation because they're really the only mass that can do this and that will move on something like this because the US legislators are just going to continue to flounder. They still haven't done anything, right? So then the workers can focus on content for countries like the European Union. That's what's going to have to happen. And these individuals will have to start creating content for wherever they can get it to. And it can't be deep faked. Joel (54:17.788) So one of the things that I noticed in my feed was, like, I think it's one thing to deep fake Joe Biden or a major star. What I think is really dangerous is sort of this tier two, vertical celebrities. Some might call us vertical celebrities in the HR space. Like if somebody deep faked us, who would know? Like we're just sort of, a few people know us. like that looks like Joel, that's Chad. Chad (54:34.157) Mm-hmm. Chad (54:43.544) Yeah. Yeah. Joel (54:46.638) So, I get a lot of CNBC or like financial people in my feed and it's, it's, it's, it's really bad, but it goes beyond just like watching and clicking ads and stuff. So this was, so Josh Brown is sort of a financial guy. he's really pissed off about this. he wrote a post recently. and he said, quote, the entire financial industry. A services industry is experiencing an increased volume and type of sophisticated scams, which are becoming more challenging for consumers to identify. criminals are turning to phone numbers, spoofing, texting, and imposter social media tactics to gain unauthorized access to accounts. So you'll see someone that you've seen on CNBC that says, Hey, I've been trading stocks for forever. You know, join our community to know whatever, blah, blah, blah. And then you join this community. The next thing you know, They want your bank account info. They want you to join the site. They're spamming you crypto and it's your they're selling this at the face of someone that you know, and they're selling you and scamming you and shit. problem that he outlines is that Facebook doesn't give a shit. Like they will, they will contact Facebook. They'll, they'll take the ad off, but then another ad will show up very shortly. And he's like, look, we know that from, we know that from our research that this is coming from Russia. Chad (55:54.36) No. Chad (56:00.963) Yeah. Joel (56:07.488) Africa, et cetera. Like Facebook can say, you're getting scammed. if something comes in from Africa and you're a financial expert in America, maybe we'll check it to see if it's legit. And they're not, they're letting it go through. I think legislation, like you said, someone, I don't know if an orange jumpsuit is necessary, but legislation needs to happen where if Facebook keeps doing this or social media does, they need to get smacked around a little bit for doing it. Chad (56:32.632) Well, and real quick, it can happen because we had a SNL skit on one of our shows and YouTube automatically knew what it was. It flagged it and it wouldn't allow us to actually post it. Right. So we had to actually retool that. But YouTube knew that before it even went out to the masses. So don't give me it. And they put out a lot of fucking content, dude. Second best or second most trafficked search engine in the world. Joel (56:52.934) Mm-hmm. Chad (56:57.494) Right? So you can't tell me that Instagram or Facebook can't do this. It's bullshit. Joel (57:03.216) Yeah. So it can facial recognize the person, the personality and say, if someone tries to put them an ad that isn't us, that is this is me like flag it and don't let it go live. So definitely the tech is there, but the money, the money's just too good, Chad. The money is just too good. Almost as good as my dad jokes, Chad, but this week we're almost at Thanksgiving. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to save you from the dad jokes. You look like you're in a good mood and I'm kind of in a shitty mood, but Chad (57:12.952) Flag it. Chad (57:23.05) what? Yes. Joel (57:30.948) I came across a social media share this week that cracked my ass up and it's Thanksgiving related. So let me set the stage here real quick. This is a Detroit sort of daily news show, you know, sort of like good morning Detroit kind of show. I know you've seen these shows before. So it's, it's a white man, a black woman and a white woman talking about dark and white meat. And I think it'll be, it'll, it'll be, it'll be obvious as to who's saying what, but here, here's the scene. If you're not watching us. Chad (57:34.423) Okay. Chad (57:44.748) Yeah. yeah. Chad (57:53.816) Thanksgiving. Joel (57:59.736) on YouTube. Hopefully hearing it, you'll be able to make sense of this. I had a really good laugh. I hope you do too. Joel (58:47.292) dear. Chad (58:53.496) She's sending a message. Joel (59:02.844) We're still talking about Turkey, right? We're still talking about Turkey. yeah, Chad, next week is our Jive Turkey episode, by the way, one of my favorite episodes we're getting on our holiday episodes, but I had to share that because it got me a good laugh. We out. Chad (59:05.048) Yes. Chad (59:11.715) Yes. Chad (59:20.782) We out.

Recorded live from the SmartRecruiters booth at the HR Tech conference, this episode features an engaging conversation with Stefan Premdas , who made the unique leap from biomedical engineering to HR. Now at sweetgreen, Stefan is redefining "people experience" by managing the full employee lifecycle with a focus on integration, engagement, and retention. Stefan shares how sweetgreen leverages automation to enhance both customer and candidate experiences, streamlining recruitment while boosting employee satisfaction. He dives into retention strategies, emphasizing career growth opportunities and the importance of a robust Employee Value Proposition, with exciting initiatives on the horizon to strengthen sweetgreen's brand identity. Listeners will also get insights into sweetgreen’s naturally diverse workforce, the role of technology in HR—from their ATS to video interviewing tools—and the company’s plans for future expansion. Whether you're an HR pro or just curious about how tech is reshaping talent operations, this episode is packed with forward-thinking strategies and inspiration. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Podcast Intro: 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. Cheese: Let's do this. We are live. HR Tech, the SmartRecruiters booth. I'm Cheese, he's Chad, and we are here with Stefan Premdas. Stefan Premdas: Stefan... [chuckle] Cheese: Director of people experience at my favorite restaurant, Sweetgreen. Stefan Premdas: Lies. Cheese: I pass it every time I go to Taco Bell. Stefan Premdas: Lies. [laughter] Cheese: Stefan, welcome to HR's most dangerous podcast. Stefan Premdas: Absolutely. My pleasure to be here. Thank you so much. Cheese: Awesome. Awesome. So a lot of our listeners and viewers won't know who you are. Give us the quick elevator pitch. You've done a good stint at some brand name companies. So feel free to name drop. Stefan Premdas: Absolutely. So my story is actually kind of fun. I was a biomedical engineer. I ended up switching... Cheese: What? Stefan Premdas: Yeah. Cheese: Biomedical engineer. Stefan Premdas: Yeah. Cheese: Welcome to people experience. Stefan Premdas: Exactly. Direct correlation. Okay. Cheese: I get it. Yeah. Stefan Premdas: But I did that for about a year and a half, realized that it's not really the field that was going to be right for me after spending all that money on a degree that I'd probably never use again. From there, I ended up switching over to financial services, and doing more analytics. Cheese: Okay. Stefan Premdas: Realized that was fun, but I got tired of solving problems that... Sorry, reporting on problems that no one was solving. So I moved into process engineering. Ended up picking up a project, helping out our talent team and reengineer the entire recruitment process. And next thing you know, I was a recruiter. Switched out of... Cheese: Surprise. Stefan Premdas: Yeah. Cheese: Lucky you. Stefan Premdas: Switched out of there because I just enjoyed building my own tools. Ended up going to Twitter and doing a lot of work there, Twitter. Cheese: What year... What year was this? Stefan Premdas: Gosh, that was 2018. Chad: Not Elon. Stefan Premdas: Yeah. Pre-Elon. Chad: Pre-Elon. Yeah. Pre-Elon. Cheese: We call it pre-Elon. Yes, Pre-Elon. Stefan Premdas: Worked there for a couple of years and then moving over to Postmates, leading their talent operations team, left Postmates when Uber acquired them. And then I ended up going to a health tech company called Noom. Cheese: Oh, yeah. Stefan Premdas: Yeah. Great, awesome company, built their first talent operations and people analytics function there. And then most recently, I found myself over at Sweetgreen. Cheese: It won't surprise you, Chad, to know I don't know Noom. I don't know what they do. No clue. Sounds made up. Chad: Can't imagine. Cheese: Sounds made up. Chad: Can't imagine you don't, with all the ads they're running on TV for God's sake. Cheese: Yeah, and I'm not targeted apparently. [laughter] Chad: You would definitely be their target. Stefan Premdas: It's 'cause you're not going to Sweetgreen. That's our direct correlation. Cheese: Oh, okay. We're coming full circle on this one, Chad. Chad: Okay. So let's talk about people experience. What the hell does that mean? Stefan Premdas: Yeah. So I joke it's all the functions that no one else wanted to manage in HR. Chad: Okay. Well, that makes sense. Yeah. Stefan Premdas: No, but it's... Really, for me it's, I wanted to take a step back and build something that was a little bit more holistic. I think too often we've approached HR from a very like segment and silo perspective. And if we don't look at it as the full people experience, then we end up missing parts. So my function covers everything from the very beginning, where in talent acquisition, really kind of understanding who our candidates are, how do we target them? How do we get them into the door? I also manage people operations, total rewards, engagements, and analytics. Really allowing us to really kind of do that whole full 360 degrees. Chad: Wow, that's a lot. Stefan Premdas: Yeah, it's a lot. But, Sweetgreen, we really do believe that the more integrated you are and the more focused you can be on the employee, the better you can deliver, so. Chad: How big is your team? And what do you mean by integrated? Stefan Premdas: Oh, okay. My team is about 16 right now. Chad: Okay. Stefan Premdas: We have four recruiters and the rest kind of varied functions between support and operations. And then, sorry, what's the second question? Chad: How... You said integrated, right. Stefan Premdas: Oh, integrated. Chad: Everybody says they're integrated. What does that actually mean? Stefan Premdas: So the way I kind of divided up the team was I created a people lifecycle management function, and broke up the people lifecycle into three core parts, talent and attraction, onboarding and retention, and then development. And then there's kind of a tail end around that happy leaver alumni network, which we're trying to tie back into the talent cycle. I have three project managers focused on each one of those areas. What we're trying to do is basically we support in a similar way that you would have a talent operations team, a people operations team. Chad: Yeah. Stefan Premdas: Our entire focus is how do we re-innovate and re-deliver around Sweetgreen. So in the talent acquisition, talent op sections, we're really focused on how can we deliver experience that feels exciting and new, something that is very differentiating for our industry. Chad: Yeah. Stefan Premdas: On the onboarding and retention, we're taking a look at our engagement surveys and how we can drum up numbers when we're dealing with workforce that is pretty varied coming in at random hours... Not random hours, but coming in all over the schedule. And how can we start to gather information from them and deliver programs that are exciting and attractive, that really create something that's new. And then on development side is how can we build something that is... People want to stay, they want to feel like they have a voice here, but also feel like they have a career here. Stefan Premdas: And we've been really focused on succession planning as a whole and bringing that into our function, trying to deliver something that, one, if someone does decide to leave, we have a backfill. We don't run vacancies out in our stores, or any... For that long of a period of time. Cheese: Yeah. So Stefan's a big fan of the show. I don't know if... You might not have caught that. Chad: Really? What? Cheese: So Sweetgreen has been a point of conversation on the show. Chad: Oh, yeah. Cheese: And interestingly, on their quarterly earnings report they were very open about the automation process of making the bowls, augmenting the workers. And on one hand, I think a lot of people would be excited to work with machines, if you will, or robots. And I think a lot of people might be scared that they're going to robot me out of a job. How do you balance that in your position? And how does Sweetgreen as a whole sort of look at automation in the workforce? Stefan Premdas: Yeah, I mean, the reality is automation's here. There's not much we can do about that. But I think the reality is it's how you use it that it causes people to worry. Some people think automatically as like, "Oh, your full intention is really to just replace all the workforce." But that's not how we view it at Sweetgreen. Really, we want to bring in automation so we can deliver more for the customer. If we can take off the tasks that no one wants to do anyways, and give our employees an opportunity to engage more with the customer, to deliver that higher hospitality-focused experience, then that's going to be more engaging. Stefan Premdas: We're seeing an increase in our retention rates, a decrease in our attrition, in our IKs. We're really seeing a more excited workforce. And on top of that, it's people are going to have the opportunity to say like, "Oh, I'm working with the next frontier of restaurant industries." Chad: Yeah. Yeah. Stefan Premdas: So again, attrition in the rest of quick service industry is relatively higher compared to most industries. But people are leaving Sweetgreen. If they do leave, they're like, "Hey, I worked at a store that is the future." And that makes them a little more marketable when it comes down to finding the next job. Chad: Which is really cool because we talk about this in recruiting. And you're doing this on the front lines in restaurants. So we talk about taking away the administrivia of doing the recruiter, everyday pushing buttons, the things that we don't want them to do. We want them to actually be more human with other humans. Right? Stefan Premdas: Absolutely. Chad: And now you're talking about, well, now we don't have to have Joel in the back creating bowls, right? He can be up front actually pressing the flesh... Cheese: I need all the profits. Chad: There you are. Yeah. Stefan Premdas: Well, not there you wouldn't. Cheese: Well, maybe not there. No. Cheese: Not there, yeah, yeah, yeah. [chuckle] Chad: But at the end of the day, it's the same kind of scenario and narrative, is what I'm hearing. So, seeing that, what are you doing from a recruitment standpoint to be able to really embody the same thing that's happening, you know, the restaurants? Stefan Premdas: Yeah. So John Nieman, he really does push us to look at automation technology, AI first. A big focus of mine has really been, how can we continue to drive more value to our stores, without necessarily having to grow our support center, our Sweetgreen support center is what our corporate function is. And we've actually been able to... I mean, we have four recruiters working over at 230 stores and supporting that. When I first walked through the door, my team was about 12 deep and we brought that down. Stefan Premdas: We were able to redeploy some of that talent in other places. As a result of us looking at more automation, looking at our ATS, seeing if there's opportunities not only to simplify our workflows, but also increase our quality. And that's really the journey where we're on. Coming in post-pandemic, everyone wants like, talent, talent. There's a war for talent, everyone panic. But we got through that. And now we're at a place where, well, we are relatively staffed. I think almost 99% staffed across all our stores. So now it's about making sure that we have the right people that we're hiring there, especially as we start to look at more IKs across, the infinite kitchens, across our department. Chad: So, real quick, because you talked about the people who are working in the back of the kitchens and they feel, "Hey, I worked with automation." Is that also a great way to keep your recruiters, because the automation piece, not to mention draw in new recruiters and say, "Hey, you don't have to do this stupid administrative shit," right. "You get to actually do the thing." Is that how you're starting to lure them in? Is that a great way to market it? Stefan Premdas: Yeah. I haven't had to grow the team yet. So that's been a nice element. Chad: That's awesome. That's great. Stefan Premdas: But as far as retaining my team, I really do focus on... It's not about the job they're doing now. It's about the job in the future. We've actually taken our leadership recruiters who are just solely focused on hiring general managers. And we're able to, one, extend them to support team member hiring. So the people you would engage with in a Sweetgreen when you walk in there the next time. And then also, we've also been able to allow them to almost serve as a proxy for our people business partners. All because that we were able to take what they were doing administratively, cut that job down, and now we can actually create a true talent advisor role for the recruiters to sit in. So that's been the journey for this year, for the recruitment team, is how can we get them to a place where they're not just filling roles, but they're truly understanding the market in which they serve, from every single role that we have them accountable. But also understanding our internal talent and understanding who's ready next when we have a role that's coming up. Cheese: Yeah. Talk about the branding, employment branding perspective. How has the changes in the business changed the brand or has it? Are you all in on what you're doing now or are you steadfast on, "We're Sweetgreen?" It feels like a Patagonia type brand that you stay the course. What has the new technology meant to the brand? Stefan Premdas: It's actually an exercise that we're kicking off next year. We want to go through a full EVP. We realize that as a company, we're growing, we're maturing. We've just brought in a lot of new folks to the C-suite and the company's changing. The pace at which we want to grow is... We're really on that trajectory that we've always wanted to be in. I think our brand is, and I don't know where it's going to land, but I have a feeling that it's going to land in, we are kind of a future first company. Stefan Premdas: And if you want somewhere to grow, you can go from a team member to a general manager or a head coach, as we call it in Sweetgreen, in three years. But then what does that trajectory look like beyond that? And that's what we're starting to figure out now. Our investment into succession planning is really going to be the next future. We want to get to the 60, 70% internal growth, promotion growth. So I'm not exactly sure where it's going to land yet. We still have a lot of research. Chad: We want to differentiate. We don't want to be another Chipotle. We don't want to be another Raising Cane's. Cheese: I know. Watch it. Watch it. [chuckle] Chad: Yeah, they got to be their own. Cheese: That's going to score you no points on this show. Chad: They've got to be their own. Cheese: It's not gonna score you any points. Chad: It's so many points with me, Stefan. So many points. Stefan Premdas: I mean, let's say the Adacado, someone's following our lead now, so. Chad: Yeah. Well, you get... Cheese: How about diversity? Obviously, a plethora of diversity is probably working at your stores. Again, I've never been in. But how has the new technology impacted widening the net of who you're appealing to? Stefan Premdas: Yeah, we've been lucky enough to never really have any sort of disparity for diversity throughout our entire... So we haven't had to draw a lot of initiatives toward it because it just naturally kind of worked out. Even in our corporate function it's, we're very highly diverse. The IK hasn't really changed that. I think the opportunity, one of the things I do want to keep an eye on particularly is when we start to talk about age demographics because as you start to introduce new technologies, that can always be a concern. Stefan Premdas: But it really hasn't. I mean, the folks that want to join Sweetgreen and the folks that want to kind of start a career or build something new. It's not very highly for folks that are at the end of their journey or end of their... Where they want to take it. Cheese: Why'd you look at Chad when you talked about old people, not understanding what you're doing? [laughter] Stefan Premdas: Well, he's been in the Sweetgreen, so. Chad: Lies. Lies. Some of us know what's going on here. So with the automation, are all stores using it today? Stefan Premdas: No. Chad: Okay. Stefan Premdas: We just at... We only have three stores right now. Chad: Three stores. Stefan Premdas: Yeah. Chad: How many stores do you have in total? Stefan Premdas: We're about 230 plus. Chad: Okay, so what's the rollout plan for that, number one? And then number two, what's growth for 2025? 'Cause obviously, you guys are looking at growth, automation, I mean, everything seems to be really streamlined for growth throughout the United States. So talk a little bit about that, if you would. Stefan Premdas: Yeah, so on our last quarterly earnings, Jon, our CEO, mentioned that the idea is really tight, to get to like 50% of our IKs in the future... Or sorry, 50% of our restaurants are going to be IKs in the future. Really, 'cause it just doesn't make sense for the whole portfolio to be. We have a lot of smaller stores that it doesn't make sense to go back and retrofit with a relatively large machine. But we also see the value of being able to bring that kind of technology, especially in very urban areas where you have such high volume, lunch rushes and such like that. As far as the growth, I mean, we want to scale next year. That's really the focus for us. The hope is we can get to 10% about more of where we are in stores, which would put us somewhere around the 30, 40 mark, and then continue to 10, 20% every year on top of that. In this industry, every time you open up a new restaurant, that's more revenue flowing through the store. So that's really how we make our money. Cheese: Yeah. Chad: Yeah. Yeah. Cheese: Yeah. So we are at the HR Tech Conference. Your organization is clearly a forward-thinking business. What are some of the tools that you can't live without on the technology side? Stefan Premdas: Oh, gosh. Cheese: And we name names on this show, by the way, as you know. [laughter] Stefan Premdas: I mean, I have to say, even though I have committed to a few brands, I'm relatively technology agnostic. But we've been working with Fountain as our ATS. And it has been a bit of a game changer for us in the industry. I will say, and I told this to Fountain yesterday, when I first walked through the door and the contract was already signed, our CPO was committed, so excited, about this tool. I assessed it, I was like, "Are we sure this is the direction?" Yeah, I was like, "Are we sure this is the direction you want to go to?" But after really kind of sitting down with the team, we sat down and said, "Hey, I think this could be a next version of this tool." We built out something that's pretty amazing, co-collaborating, really delivering a tool that has set us apart. We are right now actually experimenting with one-way recorded video interviews. Chad: Oh, nice. Stefan Premdas: Which is not something that's really very common in our industry. And we're seeing two times attendance in our second round interview. There's about three and a half times more likely that a candidate that passed a one-way interview will be hired. We're seeing higher throughput across every almost dimension, and it's one of those things where we just said, "Hey, this would be a great opportunity, want you to build it?" They went ahead and took that on. So, again, really pretty agnostic. I would say, and ATS obviously is important. We're also exploring right now the opportunity to take a lot more of our data and see if we can be more predictive on who could be a good hire and also who's ready for promotions. So we're looking at a few companies to really kind of help us out, and that's actually part of the reason why I'm here. Chad: Nice, nice. Yeah, got to get that data. It's got to be a clean data. Stefan Premdas: Got to get data. Chad: You got to collect the data. The systems have to talk. Man, I... Your job's fun. Jesus. Stefan Premdas: I get to do all the fun things. I don't have to deal with the people issues or employee relations. I got a lot of fun stuff. Cheese: All you need now is a fried chicken bowl and I'll come visit. That is Stefan, everybody. For our listeners and viewers that want to know more about you or connect to Sweetgreen, where do you send them? Stefan Premdas: Check out my LinkedIn, Stefan Premdas. I don't have a Twitter handle even though I used to work there. I mean, I do, but I haven't looked at it in a while, so no one should look at it. Chad: Join the club. Join the club. Stefan Premdas: Or X handle, sorry. Whatever. We gotta adjust. We gotta adjust. Chad: But that's probably the best place to get me, is LinkedIn. Cheese: Outstanding. Chad, that is another one in the can. It's lunchtime. I'm a little hungry after talking to Sweetgreen. We out. Chad: We out. Podcast Outro: Wow, look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey, or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckleheads instead. Now go take a shower and wash off all the guilt. But save some soap because you'll be back. Like an awful train wreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.

From the Shaker Green Room at RecFest USA, Dean DeCosta joins Chad & Cheese to share fresh recruitment advice. He urges recruiters to challenge norms, verify AI-generated data, and focus on the human touch. DeCosta emphasizes personal branding, as candidates often research recruiters, and suggests exploring platforms beyond LinkedIn to reach diverse talent. He highlights the irreplaceable value of genuine interactions over automation and advocates for a supportive, knowledge-sharing recruiter community. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Podcast Intro: 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, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. [music] Joel: Good morning. Who are you and why are you here? Dean Da Costa: My name is Dean Da Costa and I'm here 'cause y'all told me to sit here. No, I'm joking. I'm here at RecFest 'cause myself and Steve Levy are running the Inspire Tent tomorrow and this is a great opportunity to come and give back to our community and help people out. Joel: I'm sorry, you two are running the Inspire Tent? Is that what you just said? Dean Da Costa: Yeah, I know it doesn't work together... Joel: Inspire. Okay. Chad: Okay. Dean Da Costa: Yeah. I mean, Steve and I and Inspire, yeah. It's like an oxymoron. Not as bad as military intelligence but close. Chad: What did he call you? Anyway, so if you... Dean Da Costa: I said oxymoron, not he's a moron. Chad: I know, I know. Well, I don't know. Dean Da Costa: Although, you never know. Chad: It could be. So, if you have advice for your peers out there in talent acquisition moving into 2025, what would that advice, that one point nugget of advice be? Dean Da Costa: Learn. Don't accept norms, break out of the boundaries, don't just do the simple and easy because guess what? Everybody's doing the simple and easy and you're looking for the same people. And why? Get out of it. And I can give an example. Somebody was looking for a bunch of people that have a particular certification, they went to LinkedIn or as Stevie Levy calls it the "Blue Devil", didn't work out so well, asked for help. So, I went out and found a website that has a listing of every CCIE certified person and sent it to her. And then I scraped and sent her the whole list. Don't do the norm, think out of the box. That's the only way you're gonna succeed. Great, there's AI. We'll get into that later. But you can't trust it totally. So, you have to use it, double-check it, triple-check it and then you're good. Now, in case you're wondering why I said that about AI, there's no C-3PO behind me, there's no such thing as AI except for the one where it's actually intelligent. Joel: All right, let's keep focused here, Dean. Dean Da Costa: Hey, he's opening the door. [laughter] Joel: You made your name on sourcing, I think that's fair to say and I don't think a lot of people connect sourcing with branding. Is there a connection? And talk about that in detail. Dean Da Costa: Yes, there is a connection. So, branding, marketing, a lot of it, in order to get good people, you've gotta get them interested. You've gotta have your brand or the brand of the company. You've gotta put it out there. An example is, if I go ahead and contact a job developer and they see, "Wow, you're working at this company and you've been doing it 30 years," my brand is good, they know who I am, they're more likely to get ahold of me than somebody who works at some company nobody knows and has only been recruiting or sourcing for a year or two. So, branding and sourcing is important because your name carries weight. If you brand yourself properly, you're likely to get many more people willing to talk to you than you would if you don't have branding. There are some recruiters and sourcers not even on LinkedIn and then they wonder why people don't wanna respond to their emails 'cause they don't know who you are. 90% of the people out there are gonna check your profile. If you're not branded properly and it doesn't show like you think you know what you're doing, they're not going to... They don't need to, there's too many out there that are. Joel: So, you're talking about more of a holistic brand and not an employer brand as being the focus for the sourcing community. Dean Da Costa: Yeah, 'cause we're talking sourcing in general rather than... Your own... Like I said, 90% of all people are gonna check out the sourcer or recruiter, whoever's contacting them and then once they talk to them, the next step is usually with a hiring manager. They're gonna check out the company more and they're gonna check out the hiring manager more, it's just a fact. Social media has made it to where people want to know more about who they're dealing with and part of it it's also because there are a lot of fake people. There's a lot of people from outside the country trying to communicate with them. So yeah, that all matters. I don't care who you work for. You work for Microsoft, that's great, Microsoft, cool but if your personal brand is not... If you don't have Microsoft on there, no, I'm not gonna talk to you and if your personal brand says, okay, I work for Microsoft but you have no other experience, you've been there a year, why? They're more likely, according to statistics, to find a different recruiter at Microsoft who's been there longer and has a better brand and then contact them about it. It's just a fact. Chad: So, let's pivot real quick. Let's pivot into 2024. Dean Da Costa: I'm over 60, I don't pivot very well. Chad: It's a slow pivot, I know. Dean Da Costa: Yeah, very. Chad: It's a slow pivot. So, 2024, what surprised you the most this year? What's happened this year? Dean Da Costa: What surprised me the most, I think, is the... What's the word... The false statement when AI started becoming big that some companies were like, "We got AI, we don't need as many recruiters, we don't need this, we need that," and then it took, what? I think just now they're starting to realize, "Yeah, that's not the truth." You still need... You might be able to make things quicker, a recruiter or a sourcer might be able to handle a few more recs but again, AI is not going to, at this point anyway, be able to replace it. And so, what amazed me is that the companies were thinking that given we've... It seemed like every seven years something comes out and they think, "Oh wow, we don't need as many recruiters and sourcers now," and then they find out they're wrong. I mean, it seems like every seven to 10 years that happens since I've been in the industry. Every seven to... "Oh, we got sourcing tools now, we don't need as many recruiters." Eh, wrong. "Oh, we got CRMs, we don't need as many recruiters." Eh, wrong. And that's what amazes me is that companies continue to make the same mistake over and over and over again. You would think they've learned by now. Joel: Do you really believe the future is the same amount or more recruiters and not less? Dean Da Costa: I think what they would do might change some, but I don't see there being... Those companies that want to be successful aren't gonna have a decrease, they can't and I'm gonna tell you exactly the reason why. Statistically speaking, 78% of all candidates, if they get a call or an email and they know it's not a human being, will not respond and will never respond. I don't and I get calls all the time. And if I say hello and I can tell it's a bot, I hang up and if I get an email and I can tell it's a bot, I reply back, "Okay. If you're really interested, try getting me in with a human being." Joel: So, the pushback on that would be, what if you can't tell the difference and is that where we're going as well? Dean Da Costa: Well, when we get to that point, I'll let you know. But so far, it's not. [laughter] Dean Da Costa: There are actually tools that can tell you if it is or not. People, I think, forget recruiting and sourcing falls under good or bad HR. What's the keyword in HR? Human, not robot, not AI, human. If you want me, I wanna know you want me and if you want me, then take five minutes out of your life to call me and let me know you want me, not have some robot do the job for you. This isn't... Chad: That was Cheap Trick, wasn't it? I want you to want me. Dean Da Costa: What? What did you say? Joel: Cheap Trick, yeah. Let's bring up old bands from the '70s and '80s. Chad: Cheap Trick, I want you to want me. Dean Da Costa: Yeah. Exactly. I know that band very well. Joel: So, we've talked about the black hole for a long time, resumes go in and nothing comes back out. And technology has at least changed the fact that something comes out, a conversation, automated replies which we've heard for a long time that that was favorable to hearing nothing. But what I'm hearing you say is that a robotic or automated response now is worse than maybe the black hole or am I reading that wrong? Dean Da Costa: Yes and no. Back then, correct, that was better than nothing. Times have changed, though. There's a specific... Back then, you could write an email, "Hey, I work for Microsoft. Come work for us." They'd be like, "Oh, yeah." Now, "No, no, no. Wait a minute, I don't care if you work for Microsoft. What can you do for me?" Well, what you can do for me isn't a robot calling. That tells me you don't really care, you don't wanna do anything for me and you don't really care because you're having a robot do it. If you care, people wanna be wanted. Robots, really? I don't wanna be wanted by a robot or an AI or whatever you wanna call it. Chad: So, moving into 2025, what do you think the focus is gonna be for you and the industry? Is it gonna change, same place, different time? Dean Da Costa: I think what's gonna happen is as companies, and I'm already starting to see it, realize that based on what they're doing now and the people they have now, they're hitting on the same group of people over and over and over and over and over again and meanwhile, that same group of people... I will give you an example, 700 million on the LinkedIn, 3.5 billion on Facebook. Hint and a half. Not everybody's on LinkedIn, time to get up but there's companies that swear by LinkedIn. I'm like, how many hires did you make last year? "Oh, we made 20. We did great." I go, okay, help you out. I made 20 in a month without LinkedIn. What's your point? I'm not looking for the people on LinkedIn and I think companies are gonna start realizing more and more all these tools are looking, including the AI tools, in the same places. There are other places to look, many other places to look. I mean, you know how many people don't even look at IEEE anymore? Electrical engineering group. Well, I do. I have the entire database. Scraped it. I got bored one day. Half of them aren't on LinkedIn. GitHub, 60% of people on GitHub are not on LinkedIn. So, what are we doing? People need to understand there are other places to look than just LinkedIn or wherever else they're looking 'cause most of them are... Joel: Speaking of where to look, Dean, if our listeners and viewers wanna connect with you, where should they find you? Dean Da Costa: Okay. If y'all can't find out how to contact me and you're a recruiter, sourcer or marketing, sales, you need a new job. [laughter] Chad: You don't deserve. Joel: Get off my lawn. [laughter] Dean Da Costa: Just type in Dean Da Costa, Search Authority. The first 10 pages are me and everyone has an email address and I'm more than willing to take time to talk to anybody, to help anybody about whatever you need. I put about 20 hours a week outside just to try to help people. Joel: Dean, thanks for hanging out. Chad: Thanks so much. Dean Da Costa: Oh, no problem. Joel: Have a fun show. Dean Da Costa: I still want my beer. [laughter] Podcast Outro: Wow. Look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese podcast or maybe you cheated and fast-forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back, valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckleheads instead. Now, go take a shower and wash off all the guilt but save some soap because you'll be back. Like an awful train wreck, you can't look away and like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.

At the HR Tech conference in Las Vegas, Patti Tabris, Senior Director of Talent Acquisition at ResultsCX, shared the success of their referral program, **ReferCX**, which generated over 400,000 referrals in two years. The program, accounting for 25-30% of hires, improves candidate quality, reduces costs, and strengthens company culture. Key features include tiered incentives tied to retention, leaderboards for engagement, and a mobile app for seamless onboarding. With plans to expand into external referrals and gamification, ReferCX demonstrates how innovation and employee engagement can transform referrals into a powerful recruitment tool. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Podcast Intro: 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, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel: All right, let's do this. We are live from the Smart Recruiters booth at HR Tech in lovely Las Vegas. He's Chad, I'm Cheese, and we are here with Patti Tabris, Senior Director of TA, talking about referrals. But Patti, before we get into that, give us a little elevator pitch about you. Patti Tabris: Okay, I've been in recruiting. Actually, I started my career as a finance person, worked for one of the big accounting firms for about five years, and then moved over into recruiting in a variety of different ways. All my jobs, I got through some sort of a referral, whether it was somebody referring me to the company or somebody telling me about the company. Joel: Rumor has it that's the most effective way to recruit, is that word of mouth referrals. Chad: Either number one or number two, yes, generally. Patti Tabris: It's definitely up there. Joel: So you've presented here at HR Tech about referrals. Set the table for what you talked about, and we can dig in. Patti Tabris: Okay, so I'm in charge of all our talent acquisition technology for a company that's... We're about 20,000 employees. We're a customer experience company. We're in nine countries, and we work with... Joel: Do you wanna name the company? Patti Tabris: It's called ResultsCX. Joel: Okay, yeah. Patti Tabris: And we also have a very high volume hiring because we have seasonal workers, we have ramp. Most of our positions are on the associate level, and so we're really hiring people. We have ramps that we have to hire hundreds of people in a week. So we're always looking at our sourcing and how we get those candidates in. So we're using a platform called ERIN for our employee referrals. We've been with them... We're in our third year with them, and I was invited here to talk about the fact that we have over 400,000 referrals from our employees in the last two years. Chad: How many employees do you have? Patti Tabris: About 20,000 employees. Chad: 20,000 and how many? Patti Tabris: 400,000. Chad: 20,000 to 400,000, okay, so how? We'll get into that in a minute. Most companies automatically see that one of their either number one or number two source of hire is employee referrals, and they literally, they don't think anything's broke, so don't fix it, so they don't even think or want or even think they need to spend money on a referral platform, but you did, why? Patti Tabris: Well, it wasn't just me, it was our TA leadership, and they... So we just were looking at how can we improve? How can we do better? My team is the Talent Acquisition Innovation Team. One thing I love about ResultsCX is the fact that they aren't afraid to look and say, "Let's make improvements." So many companies stagnate. I've been there six years, and that's why I'm still there, is because we can keep solving problems, and every company has things that need to be fixed, so. Chad: So the company is customer experience. Patti Tabris: Yes. Chad: Does that give you kind of like a superpower because it's like customer experience, the candidate experience, right? Patti Tabris: A hundred percent. Chad: So is that how you like sell into it and say, "Look, we can do better," because they're constantly telling their clients, your clients, we can do better. Patti Tabris: Exactly. And having that support really helps us constantly look for better ways... Chad: That's awesome. Patti Tabris: To support our candidates that are coming through the candidate journey, but also supporting our team members in TA, our talent scouts, the people that are in-charge of sourcing and interviewing these candidates. So what we did is a couple years ago, we weren't just looking at the employee referrals, we were looking at all of our sourcing and what the tools are that we were using and how we can improve them and where we could get the best ROI from the improvement. Patti Tabris: Employee referrals, when we started digging in and looking at it and researching, and talking to other companies, finding out what they've done, if you could scale your employee referral program, you can not only save cost, save time, you can also bring in better candidates, you can change your retention numbers. Our company, I find fascinating, we have people with us that have been there for 25 years. They've started as one of our associates working on some of our campaigns and have become directors in the company, VPs. It's really... We give candidates an ability to move throughout the company. So if we could get them to stay and get them onboarded, get them to stay, we have long-term employees. Joel: Okay, let's take the lid off of this thing. Let's look into the secret sauce. There are tons of referral programs. What did you do differently? What does your technology do differently? I'm sure you've used a variety of different technologies. What was it? Patti Tabris: I think it's important to know what your goals are. And people... Different companies might have different goals about their plan based on their type of hiring. We do hire corporate-type employees, but that's not the bulk of what we do. 90 to 95% of our hiring are our associates, so we have... Which tends to be a high turnover. So what we really wanted to look at was retaining employees. Some stats that we found were, if we could have an employee stay with us for 30 days, that means that they're gonna be at least 30% longer-term employee. And if we get them to stay for 90 days, that even makes it better for us to have a long-term employee. That's what every company wants. You want to keep your good employees. Joel: So what are you doing to keep them there? And how does that tie into the referral program? Patti Tabris: So I think the referral program, one of our pieces of it is that we wanted to build the company culture with it as well. Every company spends money on job boards, on all these different other things that bring in candidates. Why not give some of that back to your employees? And make them a part of it, make them an ambassador for your company. I think one of the things that made us incredibly successful with our program was we didn't keep it just with TA. We really got our marketing team involved. Patti Tabris: We did multi-tier marketing when we were rolling out the new plan. To be able to do all that, it's choosing the right vendor also, and the right partner. Because a lot of the... When you talk about employee referral vendors that are out there in the marketplace, people help you with the front end. But if you're gonna scale your employee referral plan, you really need to have a strong back end that does all those calculations of the bonuses. Because having 400,000 candidates come in... Chad: Geez. Patti Tabris: And then you go down a funnel because the candidates that come in have to accept the referral. And be interested in the job. Based on that, you have to... They go throughout the same application process, the same screening process that any other candidate would. But we know that they're stronger candidates, typically. It's been proven. So we wound up having 10, almost 11,000 hires from that 400,000 in the funnel. Which may not seem like a lot but that's... Chad: That's a lot of hires. Patti Tabris: That's a good percentage. Chad: So 400,000 referrals. Patti Tabris: We had about 300,000 that accepted the referral. Chad: Okay. Oh, wow. Patti Tabris: Yeah. And then now also sometimes they may not be the fit for that job. Chad: Sure. Sure. Patti Tabris: Or they may not be the fit for... Chad: Are you matching against other jobs or pool? Patti Tabris: Company at that time. We do match against our candidates. We always look for where they're the best fit in the company. Chad: Nice. Nice. Patti Tabris: Not just for that one job, but it also gives us a candidate pool that if they're not the right fit today, maybe they'll be the right fit in six months or a year. So we look at it from our TA standpoint as a holistic view of TA, not just immediate fill of a job. Chad: Yeah. Patti Tabris: And what we can do to build that pipeline. So your employee referral program gives you more than just that immediate influx of candidates. Chad: So with what we've heard over the years, especially on the compliance side of the house, is that referrals don't really drive into diversity because you're just hiring pretty much friends of Bob. Right? What does friends of Bob look like? It looks like another Bob. Right? Patti Tabris: Right. But if you have a diverse workforce. Chad: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Patti Tabris: And we have... We put a lot of effort into into having a diverse workforce. Chad: So it just amplifies it. That's awesome. Patti Tabris: It's amplifying your diversity, which is wonderful and that's what you want. Chad: Yeah. Patti Tabris: And so I think it's really a lot about the company culture as well that drives it, and not believe that that came through in our program. I think it's really important for anybody putting a program together to make sure they have clear goals of what they're doing, track those goals, and be able to show the ROI event. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Let's talk about incentives real quick. I'm guessing we're not talking Applebee's gift cards that you're given. [laughter] Patti Tabris: No, no. Joel: Is it escalated payouts? Talk about the incentives. Patti Tabris: So we did a four tier incentive plan, and so 30 days after some of referrals hired, the person that referred them receives a fourth of the payout. That is for their region. It's done by region. And then there's three more payouts the next 30, 60, 90 days. So what that does help, it not only incentivizes, it incentivizes both the referrer and the referral to stay with the company and give it that shot for that 90 days, 120 days, which is what we were looking for. Chad: And there's also that tie, right? Because you have that personal tie. Patti Tabris: Yeah. Chad: Which literally it helps from a retention standpoint. Patti Tabris: Yeah. Yep. Chad: Because again, so and so Joel brought me in, I don't wanna make Joel look bad. [laughter] Joel: Every time we push record you make me look bad. Chad: I do. My damnedest. Joel: Tell me about gamification is very hot right now, getting badges or I have some sort of a competition within the company of who's doing better. Is that part of your... Patti Tabris: We have a leaderboard. Joel: Okay. Leaderboard. Patti Tabris: Gamification is available to us, and that's something we're working on currently. But we do have a leaderboard. We post... And when we rolled out the program, we did a lot of those types of things, wanted to make sure that we got people involved in the program. Chad: Yeah. Patti Tabris: We recognize who's the highest referrer, who has the most people that were hired through them. So we do make announcements and some of it is just a recognition. It doesn't have to be prizes. They're getting their bonus, they're getting that in their paycheck, their referral bonus. So we focus more on the recognition, and I think that that's not a bad thing that really helps people feel good about what they're doing. Another big thing I think that's important for anybody that's looking to do a referral program is make sure that you make it part of your new hire orientation so that every new hire coming in the company knows all about it. Chad: Yeah. Patti Tabris: Give them the information, let them become your sourcing person from day one. And they could start earning cash and money while they're still in training. Like, it's really exciting. We did a lot of marketing. Marketing's key. Let everybody make sure everybody knows. Joel: Say more about that marketing. Patti Tabris: So we had a QR code. We did... Chad: Your favorite. Patti Tabris: A tickler campaign. Chad: That's my favorite. Patti Tabris: Pushing out. Something's coming. Chad: That's my favorite. Tickler. Patti Tabris: So we branded... [laughter] We branded our program as ReferCX, and it's a mobile app. Chad: Oh, that's awesome. Patti Tabris: They could go right on their phones. And that was part of what ERIN offered us. Chad: Okay. Patti Tabris: When we decided to go with Erin as our vendor. Chad: You're branding it yourself. Oh, that's awesome. That's great. Patti Tabris: Branding it for the company. Chad: Yeah. Patti Tabris: And Making them feel like they're a part of something companywide. It's on their phone, they could click in there and make a referral from anywhere. If they're standing in Starbucks and they're talking to somebody in line and they think they're a great fit for our company, send them a referral notice, talk them into applying. It's a great way to have people get excited about their job and their company. So something I'd love to throw out there that... Chad: Sure. Patti Tabris: Isn't everybody's looking for the muddy savings, the time savings, all of that. But what we found is the company culture and what it added to our company culture is really exciting as well. Since we set up our referral program with ERIN, we've won four Great Place to work, five great place to work badges this past year. Chad: Wow. Patti Tabris: And I think that has to have something to do with it. Joel: I imagine it does. Chad: Hell yeah. Joel: I Imagine it does. Patti Tabris: They feel rewarded, they feel excited about the company. Joel: So you got warm and fuzzy on us there for a second. Patti Tabris: Yeah. Joel: You mentioned money. I want to get cold and hard on you real quick. Chad: Oh don't that. Joel: You're using a lot. You're advertising jobs, you're... I mean, I don't know all the things that you're doing, but how does the dollars and cents add up versus all the other things that you're doing with referrals? Patti Tabris: So when you say add up, what do you mean? Joel: So you're posting jobs. Chad: Your focus is advertising. Joel: You're budgeting for all these different things. Patti Tabris: Yes. Joel: Where does referrals come in on a cost per applicant or cost per hire basis? Patti Tabris: I could tell you that it's between 25 and 30% of our hires are through referrals. Joel: Is your budget that same amount? Patti Tabris: Yes. Using a system like ERIN, we have the ability to stop the referral program in any time and in any country. So because we're in a variety of countries, that means the amount might be different because of the difference from US dollars to Philippine pesos. So we try to keep it equitable on a cost-of-living standing. But we can turn... If the Philippines fills up and is at their budget cap, we can turn them off, still run it in the US, Mexico, Honduras, Bulgaria, some of the other areas that we're in. So I think that's of an important factor of growing your plan is having the right technology behind it to be able to manage all those calculations. That was one of the reasons we looked for a program to run it on is because it was being done manually before that, like calculating all that. Joel: Oh stop it. Patti Tabris: Yeah. Joel: Don't say spreadsheet. Patti Tabris: Yeah, spreadsheet. Joel: God. Chad: Referrals around the world. Joel: I hear they're hot. Patti Tabris: That's typically how they're being done. Chad: Oh yeah. Joel: I mean taxes, we haven't even talked about taxes. Patti Tabris: Well, payroll handles that. Joel: Payroll manages all that. Chad: Yeah. It ain't broke so don't fix it. Joel: So we're headed into 2025, anything that you're going to be adding, looking to expand? Patti Tabris: We're looking at the gamification. They have another avenue that is external referrals, not just employee referrals. I've just started talking with them about that. And really for us, the program's running really well. We will analyze it, we'll look at... We do surveys of the employees to see what they think of it. We're in the process right now of doing employee surveys, our annual surveys. Joel: Is that a separate technology? Patti Tabris: Yeah. Joel: The survey. So talk about that, the constant engagement is surveys. Are you doing that now? Patti Tabris: No. Joel: Or are you looking to do that in the future? Patti Tabris: We do an annual employee survey globally through our HR team. I can't really talk that much to that because it's not mine. Joel: Is that enough? 'Cause I hear the kids need that constant engagement. Is that what you're looking to do going forward? Patti Tabris: What we do is we just do a temperature check, talk to them, talk to our employees, find out what they like about it. The platform comes with robust reporting so we can always see who our higher referrers are, talk to them about what they think of the program. And just looking at the data. I think that was key for us too, is getting all that data in one place, being able to report on it, being able to see it on an ongoing basis so you can make the best decisions and give your employees the best program. Chad: Well, Joel, you gotta check in with the kids. Patti Tabris: You do. Chad: You gotta check in with the kids. Joel: She's talking a lot of common sense to us right now. Patti Tabris: That's because I'm older than you guys probably. Chad: I doubt it. I doubt it. Joel: I don't know about that. Chad: Patti, if somebody wants to learn a little common sense from you, where would you actually send them or where can they link up with you? Patti Tabris: On LinkedIn. Patti Tabris at ResultsCX. I'm on LinkedIn. Chad: Beautiful. Patti Tabris: And I love to connect. I've learned so much from others. I'm always open to having a conversation and helping other people out. Chad: People are now learning from you. Patti Tabris: Oh, I hope so. Chad: Thank you so much for coming on the show. Patti Tabris: Thank you. Joel: All right Patti, thanks for hanging out. Full disclosure, ERIN is a sponsor of the Chad and Cheese podcast, providing our lovely shirts. Chad: Soft t-shirts. Joel: Which by the way, chadcheese.com forward/free if you haven't done that yet. Chad: Get a free t-shirt. Joel: That is another one in the book and I think our last HR Tech interview. Chad: Wow. Patti Tabris: Wow. Joel: Congratulations, Patti, for... Patti Tabris: Wow, I'm wrapping up the show. Joel: Ending right at the end of the URL. And With that, Chad, we out. Chad: We out. Podcast Outro: Thank you for listening to what's it called? The podcast with Chad, with 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.

Live from the Shaker Green Room, Mary Battle Broxton joined The Chad & Cheese at RecFest USA to talk AI, authenticity, algorithms, and hiring without the ‘lazy applicants.’ ‘Embrace the robots, or get left in the dust,’ as Mary urges talent leaders to dive headfirst into AI tools like Paradox. Forget the old-school ways; it's all about tech-fueled, authentic candidate experiences now, where people and bots get to know each other before onboarding. Oh, and by 2025, you better be ready to keep up, or, as Mary might say, enjoy life as a digital dinosaur. MORE SHAKER GREEN ROOM SESSIONS PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Intro: 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, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast. [music] Joel: So, good morning. Mary Battle Broxton: Good morning. Joel: Tell us who you are and what you're doing here. Mary Battle Broxton: So, I'm Mary Battle Broxton, and I lead employer brand and recruitment marketing for Tractor Supply Company. And I'm here at RecFest USA to talk about Generative AI and the success that we've seen with implementing Paradox. Chad: Wow, that's pretty big. And "Mary Battle Bro-" I mean, what a cool name. Joel: That's a mouthful. Yeah, totally. Chad: What a cool name. That is awesome. Joel: Are you a superhero in your spare time? Could be. Mary Battle Broxton: I like to think so. [laughter] Joel: Yeah, there you go. [laughter] Well, you're a mom we know, so yes, you are a superhero. Mary Battle Broxton: Yeah. Chad: That's a very good point, very good point. Okay, so, what piece of advice would you give to TA leaders after 2020... Especially, let's just talk about Gen AI 'cause it seems like everybody's afraid of it. What piece of advice would you give your fellow peers about Gen AI? Mary Battle Broxton: The first thing I would say is just embrace the disruption, right? We have no idea where this bullet train is headed. We know we're on a track, but we don't know the destination. Things are evolving so quickly. So, being open and agile is really important. I think having to upskill our teams to kind of mirror some of the digital and marketing teams that we work with is really important. We can't expect our counterparts in IT to know exactly what we need from technology from a candidate experience. And then leveraging technology, not just to make our jobs easier and to be more efficient for our teams, but to really place an emphasis on candidate experience. Joel: So, we've heard a lot of Paradox stories around efficiency, time saved, dollars saved. What's your story? Mary Battle Broxton: I think my story is... So, Tractor's in a lot of rural communities and places where we might think that people are afraid of technology. But when I get emails from people who have interacted with our career site assistance, or they come to some of our hiring events and they're like, "Hey, we spoke with Cory," it just makes that connection stronger with our brand for our candidates. So, they think that Cory is a real recruiter or TA professional that they're interacting with. Because the conversation is so natural, they don't feel like they're talking to a chatbot. Chad: Why did you pick "Cory?" 'Cause everybody names their chatbots for a certain reason. Why'd you pick "Cory?" Mary Battle Broxton: We wanted Cory to be as ambiguous and up to our candidate's imagination. So, Cory is either a male or a female name, and our avatar is pretty racially ambiguous. So, that was one of the things that we were looking for. People make their own stories about Cory, and not to come with it with a predisposed idea of who she is. Joel: Yep. Chad: So, we're coming into Q4. Mary Battle Broxton: Yes. Chad: Right? What has surprised you thus far about 2024? Mary Battle Broxton: 2024 has been very interesting. I think we've seen a lot of change within the traditional or more of the employer brand speak, right? Chad: Okay. Mary Battle Broxton: We've seen a lot of companies pivoting from things that we placed an emphasis on during the COVID timeframe. So, what's been surprising to me is how companies are starting to pivot and to be a little bit more authentic about who they are in their hiring experience with candidates. Joel: There's been some pitfalls recently with AI on the job seeker side and lazy applying, like applying to thousands and thousands of jobs. Have you seen that on your end? And what's been your experience with that? Mary Battle Broxton: We haven't seen that too much. Some of what we've seen has been... Of course we're trying to get quality over quantity. So, we've been really targeted with where we spend our dollars and who we're trying to engage. So, less of a mass appeal approach and more of that targeted persona approach. Joel: Yep. Chad: So, in that same vein, are you using Cory to do kinda like some pre-screening upfront, asking some pre-screening questions to make sure that those individuals who are applying for jobs, they actually meet the requirements for the job? Mary Battle Broxton: Nothing too crazy. A lot of our jobs that people apply for via Cory are more of our entry-level roles for like our distribution centers or our stores. So, there's not as much experience required, but things like schedule is really important and availability. So, those are some of the questions that we use Cory to kind of help us weed out people who might not be a fit for our schedules. Joel: What are some other Generative AI tools that you're either using or maybe looking to use, and how that may impact your branding? Mary Battle Broxton: Okay. So, I'm really excited about this one. Not just from a candidate experience, but once you get people in the door, how do you keep them engaged and comfortable with technology? And our IT department has been phenomenal in placing an emphasis on using Generative AI to help our store team members actually do their jobs. So, we have really rural specialized customers, oftentimes large acreage animals, and it's hard to be an expert in everything. Chad: Oh yeah. Mary Battle Broxton: So, we have a solution. It's available to look up, called "Hey GURA." And it's in the headset of our team members. So, they can ask GURA questions. GURA is one of our sales acronyms. It's our customer service credo. So, they're able to service each customer to the best of their ability. Chad: Oh, wow. Joel: So, like a cyber salesforce. Chad: Generative AI in your ear. Mary Battle Broxton: Yes. Chad: So, okay. That being said, and that sounds incredibly cool, looking forward to 2025, what are you most excited about with tech recruitings, whatever it is, what are you most excited about for 2025? Mary Battle Broxton: I'm excited about the challenge. How do we keep up? How do we keep evolving and being innovative? I don't think it's possible to keep up, to be honest. And it's not possible to use everything and to do everything. But getting a chance to really push our vendor partners, explore new things, I'm really... I love change. I love disruption. So, that's... That just that. Chad: It's coming. Mary Battle Broxton: That energy is really what I enjoy. Chad: Yeah. Mary Battle Broxton: Specifically though, I think that we have to be really authentic as TA professionals. And so we just continue to get challenged with our employer brand. What's the messaging that we're putting out? So, that evolution is something I'm really looking forward to. Candidates are sharing their stories. They're being transparent. And we need to do the same as leaders. Joel: So we're here at RecFest. Mary Battle Broxton: Yeah. Joel: We just started the day. What kind of things are you gonna be looking for? What kind of vendors are you gonna be shopping? Mary Battle Broxton: So, I'm here for all of my peeps. I love our vendor partners like Shaker, and I'm here to interact and to mingle. I work remotely, and there's a lot of people I haven't seen in a long time. Chad: Nice. Mary Battle Broxton: So, getting to network and to just... I'm a hugger, so getting to do that [chuckle] with the people who I work with on a daily or weekly basis, and I just haven't seen them in a long time. Joel: Well, we've definitely enjoyed meeting you. For our listeners and viewers that want to connect with you, where should they go? Mary Battle Broxton: LinkedIn. My inbox is always open. [laughter] Outro: Wow. Look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast forward it to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back, valuable time you could have used to buy in nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey, or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No? You hung out with these two chuckleheads instead. Now go take a shower and wash off all the guilt. But save some soap, because you'll be back like an awful train wreck you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite, Weston, "You can't quit them either." We out.

Broadcasting from the ever-glamorous Shaker Green Room at RecFest USA, Chad & Cheese sit down with the powerhouse of DEI herself, Novonda Lilly , Director of DEI Campus and Community Engagement at Vanderbilt Health . Novonda schools the guys on how to navigate the choppy waters of diversity in hiring, especially with 2025 looming large. Spoiler alert: it’s not as simple as slapping a rainbow on your LinkedIn banner. Novonda doesn’t hold back, calling out the so-called “shortage of diverse candidates” and challenging recruiters to step up their game and actually look beyond their usual suspects. She serves up practical advice on using social media to reach underrepresented talent, though she’s quick to throw a little shade at AI and its dicey role in hiring – because, let's be real, nobody wants a “smart” robot unintentionally screening out great people. And, if you're hoping for a warm fuzzy moment, sorry – Novonda’s here to make sure we all stay sharp and resilient. She dishes on the reality of adapting DEI strategies to market trends, and she’s already lined up LinkedIn requests from everyone who wants in on her best practices. Prepare for an episode packed with humor, hard truths, and a few digs at outdated recruiting “innovations.” Novonda reminds us that if you’re not actively building an inclusive culture, you’re setting yourself up for 2025 – and not in a good way. MORE SHAKER GREEN ROOM SESSIONS PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Intro: 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, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast. [music] Joel: So, good morning. Novonda Lilly: Good morning. Joel: Who are you and why are you here? Novonda Lilly: So, I am Novonda Lilly. I'm the director of DEI Campus and Community Engagement at Vanderbilt Health. I lead our campus recruitment team. Chad: Very nice, right out of the gate. What advice would you have for all of your talent acquisition recruiting peers out there looking into 2025? Novonda Lilly: I think in 2025, my advice would be to continue to focus on inclusive recruitment efforts. Chad: Yeah. Novonda Lilly: Also continue to focus on collaboration with your teams. Because if you're like me in healthcare recruitment, it is a challenging opportunity. And we don't always have candidates, a robust pipeline of candidates... Chad: Yeah. Novonda Lilly: And so you wanna make sure that you're setting a tone of encouragement for your team, but then you also have a strategic recruitment strategy that focuses on diversity inclusion. You wanna focus on ensuring that you are creating an inclusive culture for your company. And then also you wanna make sure that you focus and take time out for personal development. Because I think that you have to continue to grow and develop in your role as a leader in order to help your team and offer them opportunities for development. But also one of my things is listen to learn. Right? Listen to what your team is seeing in the market. Because oftentimes when we implement strategies, we have to adjust those strategies based off of what we're encountering in the market. Chad: Especially now, right? Novonda Lilly: Exactly. Chad: Everything's moving so fast. Novonda Lilly: It moves so fast and nobody's waiting on an offer. And if you take too long and you gotta track your metrics, understand your data so that you can improve your recruitment strategy, and you can monitor it throughout the year and you can make those critical adjustments when you need to. Joel: Yeah. DEI has been under fire for the last couple years. Companies are abandoning it and publicly doing so. It's been politicized. It's been weaponized. I'm curious, how do you keep that North Star? How do you keep that direction even though all this noise is going on around you? Novonda Lilly: As an organization, we've taken a position to continue to make that a priority of creating an inclusive environment. And so it should be embedded in the thread of what you do in recruitment. It doesn't have to necessarily be a carved-out strategy all the time... Chad: Yeah. Novonda Lilly: But if it is embedded in what you do from a daily basis and your focus is on an inclusive environment, then you can knock the noise the noise, the noise that you're hearing. Chad: Yeah. Novonda Lilly: Stay focused on what your goal is. It is to create an inclusive environment for your organization. So, it should be embedded in our recruitment practices. It doesn't always have to be a standalone. You don't always have to have, "Oh, we've gotta have a standalone DEI strategy." Joel: Yeah. Novonda Lilly: You have positions that are underrepresented and you know where you need to have that. But then there's also, 'cause there's this misperception, there's also a lack of candidate pool in some of the positions. So, you may not have a diverse candidate slate. Chad: Yeah. Novonda Lilly: But when you do have a diverse candidate slate, then you need to make sure that you're doing the things that you need to do to ensure that everyone feels like that they can come into an inclusive environment and be their selves every day. Chad: What surprised you the most about what's happened thus far in 2024? Novonda Lilly: I think that it's unfortunate, but I think that we live in a world that where there's just not a lot of surprises. You just have to figure out how do you adjust and be true to yourself. Chad: Yeah. Novonda Lilly: Because I think that a lot of things that happened in the media can impact the workplace and you have to be aware of that. Chad: Yeah. Novonda Lilly: And if COVID taught us nothing, it taught us that you've gotta be able to adjust to change quickly, and then how do you pivot from that? Chad: Yeah. Joel: How do you make sure that the net you're casting is as encompassing as possible? Do you use social media? What kind of job distribution are you leveraging? Novonda Lilly: So, we pretty much... In this day of recruitment, you've gotta leverage everything. You've gotta leverage your social media platforms. So, we have our different pages. We're on LinkedIn, we are on... We do Instagram. Some people are doing like their "follow a nurse for a day." You know, different things, because what we're learning is it's ever evolving. And what you did yesterday is not gonna work tomorrow. Joel: Yeah. Novonda Lilly: So, you have to stay abreast of the trends. And you have to embrace technology because we are in an environment to now technology is like leading everything. Whether it is something funny or something... If it's a picture. Recruitment is recruitment, and you want people to see your authentic selves when they come into the workplace. So, we're embracing all of the different techniques and technologies, and utilizing our internal systems as well, which can be challenging sometimes. But we do have a robust recruiting strategy that addresses... And it's not a one size fits all; that's the other thing. Because you've gotta have a different recruiting strategy that you will for a nurse. And then you've gotta have a different recruiting strategy for a pharmacist or a histotech. Or if it's someone that's in compensation or in an HR position. There's not a one-size-fits-all recruiting strategy. So, you have to adjust and you have to review that strategy each time you meet with a hiring manager and have an opening, and be able to identify what are your strengths, what are your weaknesses, and what are your challenges and opportunities so that you can find the ideal candidate to fill your vacancies. Chad: I think it's refreshing that I haven't heard AI once out of her mouth. Joel: You just jinxed it. Chad: Oh, I just did? Well, I have to, I have to. [laughter] Joel: That's the next thing out of her mouth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Chad: I had to. And so I've gotta push that on you. What do you think, especially moving forward in 2025, are you currently using AI? Are you looking to embrace it? 'Cause you're talking about the velocity of not just tech but the landscape in itself. What do you think about that moving forward into 2025? Novonda Lilly: So, we're utilizing AI to help our recruiters understand the capabilities that it can do for you. Like, when you have a brain freeze and you're trying to do a job description... Chad: Yeah. Novonda Lilly: You can go out there and you can give it. And what we're learning is that it is as much information as you can provide it, it can give you back accurate information for your pertinent situation. But when we talk about it from a recruitment and selection process, we do have some concerns. Because we wanna make sure the AI is not impacting, making an adverse impact in our candidate pool. Chad: Yeah, bias. Yeah. Novonda Lilly: And it has the opportunity to do that if not utilized appropriately. So, we've not embedded AI into our recruitment and selection process. We are looking at the opportunity, but we do have some reservations as it relates to AI in the recruitment and selection process. Joel: Yeah, you're definitely not alone in those concerns, for sure. So we're here at the the RecFest Conference. The day is just starting. What are some things you're hoping to get from the conference? What are you looking for? How are you hoping to engage today? Novonda Lilly: So, I'm actually looking forward to learning, because I do feel like that there's always some nuggets that you can take from someone else's path. Because when we think about recruitment, we all have challenges, right? And a lot of times we have the same challenges. Chad: Yeah. Novonda Lilly: But there's people that have implemented some things that may be helpful. We may have done some things that may be helpful to others. And I think that the more that we can share best practices or even our roadblocks, it can help us all grow in the field of recruitment. So, I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to share tomorrow on the unplugged stage. And I'm just looking to learn more from everybody that's presenting here, because I definitely feel like that there's gonna be some great nuggets that I'll be able to take back. I have a team of employees here with me today and they'll be here tomorrow. And they've been tasked with bringing back some nuggets to the team. Chad: Yeah. Novonda Lilly: So, our next team meeting will be lessons learned from breakfast. Chad: Well, if somebody wants to connect with you, maybe talk to you about how you are currently doing what you do, how you can be more flexible and looking toward 2025, where can they find you? Novonda Lilly: They can find me on LinkedIn. That would be the professional platform to connect with me. [laughter] Novonda Lilly: I do have an Instagram and a Facebook and all of that, but if you really... I get those type of questions all the time. I sit in the space of mentorship and coaching people all the time. So, anytime that someone reaches out to me, I'm always open to sit down, have a conversation with them and help them with their path. Because everybody's path is different. And if I can share something to help your career development, reach out to me on LinkedIn. I do post, I look at it, I respond. So, yes, definitely connect on LinkedIn. Chad: Excellent. Joel: Thanks for sitting down with us. Enjoy the show. Outro: Wow. Look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast-forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey, or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckleheads instead. Now go take a shower and wash off all the guilt. But save some soap because you'll be back. Like an awful train wreck you can't look away, and like Chad's favorite, Weston, "You can't quit them either." We out.

In this episode of Firing Squad, Josh Sklüt, co-founder and Chief People Officer of My Standard, explores his company’s pioneering approach as a Web3 alternative to traditional job platforms like LinkedIn. He shares how My Standard empowers users to take control of and monetize their professional data while tackling the limitations of current recruitment practices. The discussion dives into the app’s unique features, the challenges of candidate matching, and the evolving landscape of job searching in a decentralized world. Key topics include client success stories, the competitive environment, and a targeted go-to-market strategy with a focus on AI roles. Sklüt also addresses challenges and questions from the hosts around the complexities of blockchain technology and the critical need for effective education in the HR space. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:22.545) that intro never gets old. Let's do this. are the Chad and cheese podcast. I'm your cohost Joel Cheeseman. Everybody Chad. So wash is in the house and it's time for firing squad as we welcome Josh scoot, chief people officer and co-founder at my standard Josh. Welcome to firing squad. Chad (00:38.272) CLEWT! Josh Sklut (00:43.47) Thank you gentlemen and thank you sir for pronouncing the name properly on the first try. Love it. Chad (00:49.046) Das Gut! Joel (00:49.169) I know the umlaut. I know the umlaut. Very nice. Josh Sklut (00:51.438) The Umlau is my best friend. Absolutely. Joel (00:55.897) Boom loud is the boom loud. Thanks for dressing up for firing squad. By the way, you look very comfortable in your outfit. Aside from, aside from great taste and clothes. Let's introduce our audience to to Josh and what makes Josh tick. Give us your elevator pitch. Chad (01:00.044) appreciate that, Sexy. Josh Sklut (01:00.256) You're welcome. Josh Sklut (01:13.262) Thank you, sir. Yeah, my name is Josh Scloot. live in Maplewood, New Jersey, which is a suburb of Manhattan, about 15 miles outside the city. I have a wife, two boys, two teenage boys. And as you saw earlier, I couldn't make it work technically, but I have a large sneaker collection. It's very much a part of my life. I like to go to the gym and work out. I do a lot of stuff locally with my kids in the neighborhood. You know, I'm just suddenly a very suburban New Jersey dad in every way. Chad (01:45.536) with a gamer, with a gamer headset. Cause you can, you can hear that mic is like a gamer headset mic. So when you're, if you hear, if you've heard that voice after somebody just killed you during one of those first person shooters, was probably Josh. Josh Sklut (02:00.206) There you go. you see. Exactly. Joel (02:04.721) So you're a gamer, a sneaker head, and you hang out in your sweatsuit all day. You are living the dream, my man. You are living the dream. Josh Sklut (02:09.902) I'm yeah, living the dream, exactly. Joel (02:15.633) All right. Well, don't get too comfortable because you were on firing squad and Chad is going to let you know what you've won today. Chad (02:23.05) Mm-mm-mm. Well on this Halloween edition, Josh, welcome to Fire and Squad, and this is how it's gonna go. At the sound of the bell, you will have two minutes to pitch by standard. At the end of two minutes, we're gonna hit you up with about 20 minutes of Q &A. Be sure to be concise, you're gonna hear those. If you hear those crickets, that means you need to tighten it up, my friend. At the end of Q &A, you're going to receive either big applause, Josh Sklut (02:28.75) Thank you. Chad (02:50.174) Scary light shows, 10 foot skeletons and a full size chocolate bar in every kid's bag. My standard is definitely the neighborhood standard. Golf clap. Mini bags of candy corn and generic Twizzlers? I don't think so, my friend. Okay, I can see where you're trying here, but you're not quite on the right path. And the firing squad! shit, you're that neighbor giving away his apples. Okay, that's a no-go. Turn off the lights, close up shop, and try again next year. That's Firing Squad, my friend. Are you ready, Josh? Joel (03:28.315) That is a caramel covered apple with a razor blade in it, if you get the firing squad, my friend. Josh, are you ready? You ready to pitch this thing? Josh Sklut (03:28.525) Yes, sir. Chad (03:32.714) was not. Yeah, it was not. It was a healthy one. Organic. Josh Sklut (03:38.881) I am indeed. Thank you. Joel (03:40.261) Let's rock in three, two. Josh Sklut (03:44.462) So my standard is that Web3 alternative to LinkedIn, CareerBuilder, any one of the various job sites. What we do is you download the app, which are in both app stores right now. You put all your professional data, it goes behind a wall. It's protected. You have sovereignty control and you determine who you share your information with. Company X, IBM, who's on our board of directors needs a software engineer in New York who makes 150K. You're one of those people. You get a notification on your phone. It says, IBM would like to talk to you about this opportunity. They see nothing about you. It's completely and totally unbiased until you send them your information. If you say yes, you always have the option to say no. But if you say yes, you send your data over to IBM. IBM then pays you directly for access to that data so you get to monetize that data. So instead of giving away your data for free, which we've been doing with LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook for the last 20 years, you have control of your data. You own that data so you get to monetize that data. And what IBM receives is a vetted candidate who is very interested in the opportunity who they've actually paid directly for that data as opposed to paying that third party vendor where it's basically, you know, there's nothing at stake on either end. And the likelihood that this person is a better chance to have an unbiased more diverse hire goes up because you know nothing about them until after you've paid for their information. Joel (05:09.339) Are you done? Josh Sklut (05:11.053) I am indeed. Joel (05:12.289) All right. We'll close it up early, Chad. He's a man of few words. All right. Let's get to the name. Let's get to the name, Josh. My standard is pretty, pretty boring. pretty lame. it's a, it's a consumer brand. You're a consumer play. You're not a, you're not a SaaS business per se. So the IO, the IO is a little bit, weird. you should have the.com in my opinion, if you're a consumer company. Chad (05:16.95) Love it. Josh Sklut (05:25.208) Thank you. Chad (05:25.388) Standard oil. Josh Sklut (05:31.01) Hmm? Mm-hmm. Joel (05:38.563) Am I wrong in saying that you're a consumer company? You did say LinkedIn was a competitor. So what's up with the name? What was the Genesis? The dot com looks like it's parked. Did you try to buy it? Talk about the brand. Josh Sklut (05:51.342) Fair enough. We were originally, were my block, BLOK, obviously because it's a blockchain company, it's a Web3 company. So that was the original premise. What people are buying is data blocks, what the users are buying are data blocks, so we went with that. We decided it was a little bit of a larger play than that because we're talking about the standard. This should be the standard operating procedure for all data. You should be able to control all of your data. So we rolled it into my standard. So you should have standards for yourself, but it also is the standard operating procedure for all things data associated with your profile. Joel (06:29.573) And you were, looks like you launched in 21 according to the internets and you've raised around a million, a million three back in 21. Little more than that. Little less roughly. Okay. Josh Sklut (06:38.638) Yeah, correct we recently. We raised yeah, yeah, we raised a million three initially all in thus far We've raised about two point two million the second half of that is because we are a cryptocurrency We have a token we're actually selling and sold in private sales tokens as well And also since 21 we've added a couple of institutional investors that were not in the original that were not in the original What do you call it? Joel (06:48.528) Okay. Josh Sklut (07:07.668) in the in original seed rounds that were sort of secondary seed rounds investors. Joel (07:11.537) Okay. So what did you do with the money or what are you doing with the money or plan to do with it? Josh Sklut (07:17.486) We built the app and we built it in web 3. that was more expensive, more complicated, and took longer. But there's value proposition in doing that because we believe that with our app the way it is right now, it acts seamlessly as if it were a web 2 application. We've had zero crashes on the app in the last four months that we've had it launched. So we spent the money to do the engineering properly. And that's where the bulk of the money has gone, obviously. We have six employees, so we had salaries as well on top of that. But we've been pretty lean, to be perfectly frank. We didn't really spend, haven't raised an insane amount of money because we've been trying to make sure that the tech was really supported as well as we could. Joel (08:04.356) And what problem are you solving? Josh Sklut (08:07.502) Well, all of us are on LinkedIn, and know, especially in the last night, say, eight, 12 to 18 months, it's pretty apparent that LinkedIn, from my perspective, from our perspective, has become the Tinder ization of recruiting. Basically, recruiters spend between five and 10 seconds on every profile, and they disqualified candidates straight out of hand. They don't like their picture, they don't like their name, they don't like where they went to school, they don't like the companies they worked for. But they're not really doing the best job that they can to qualifying candidates. On top of that, when you're applying for a job on LinkedIn you're oftentimes competing against five thousand other people for the same job which we think is a giant mistake because A. you're never going to get no one's getting that job and what most companies are doing when they're putting these jobs up is just doing one form or another of data mining they're not actually looking to hire for those positions they're looking to build an applicant tracking system with candidates or they're just looking to get something and glean something you all know that like LinkedIn you have that toggle button where you have to toggle off of the AI projects that they're running. They're just using your data for their own purposes as well. what LinkedIn has become is much more of a social media site. boring. Okay. LinkedIn's become. Joel (09:16.945) No, we're good. We know there's problems with LinkedIn. would be here for a while if you listed all the problems with LinkedIn. So I got it. You're the anti-LinkedIn. OK. Josh Sklut (09:21.898) understand fair enough so that so that's it. The problem we're solving is let's find people jobs let's give our clients an opportunity to look at a qualified amount of candidates instead of 500 let's get that number down to 50 let's make sure that the candidates are qualified for the positions and what's reduced bias and higher. Chad (09:40.844) How do you upload the data into the system? Josh Sklut (09:43.468) Real simple, this is your server. There is no central location. It's a decentralized solution. you download the app. What the app is when you download it is actually a crypto wallet, but you're putting all of this vital information about yourself into that wallet. The reason it's a wallet is because now you can accept crypto transactions. But it runs so seamlessly that it acts like any other wallet. I mean, it acts like any other app on your phone that you're entering data into. Chad (09:54.539) Mm-hmm. Chad (10:10.073) You can have a blockchain app without including crypto, correct? Okay. Josh Sklut (10:14.552) That is correct. We've included it. We've made it so that you can't accept crypto-check transactions. That's part of the process. Chad (10:24.062) Okay. qualified individuals, how do you deem? Cause matching is not as easy as everybody thinks it is, especially when we're trying to match garbage data, which is a resume and the information that you could prospectively have in my standard against a job description, which is garbage. So how are you going to match garbage against garbage to ensure that you are giving them that, that 50 qualified candidates, not just 50, that kind of. Josh Sklut (10:32.224) It's very difficult. Chad (10:54.398) kind of meet the qualifications. Josh Sklut (10:56.75) Fair enough. You know that that technology is evolving in that respect. What we can do initially right now is offer them the opportunity to verify work email. So if they say they worked at Netflix, we know that they actually work in Netflix because they verified that. We also give them the opportunity to upload and connect to their any degrees or certifications that they have before the information is sent over. So initially, at very least, you know they work where they say they're going to work and they know they have the degree that they say they have. So. In a lot of ways, the credentialing piece takes out the background check concept. We're asking people to still put in all of their skills and experience. Down the road, what we're going to have is an opportunity for companies who are also on the platform that they formerly worked for to verify that that data was real completely anonymously. So we don't have that in our version 1.0, but in 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3, they'll be able to get verification from former employers. Chad (11:34.209) Mm-hmm. Josh Sklut (11:52.13) that they did the job they say they did and that gets minted to their profile. when company X, go ahead. Chad (11:57.765) And as an employer, what motivation do I have to do any of that? If I just get a shit ton of requests, why am I gonna take any of the time off of my currently daily date to do this? Josh Sklut (12:04.002) Right. Right. Because fair enough because what because we're dealing in cryptocurrency and you can deal in fractional transactions we make it worth the while of the company to verify data by giving them a piece of transactions that occur so if company X. Verifies all your data and then you end up getting paid for you know I. Data share we can actually. Chop off a piece of that transaction and send it back to the company that supplied the proof of data. So you can create a you can monetize it. Chad (12:36.588) So where are you monetizing mainly from? Sounds like you're actually charging users, being the candidates. Josh Sklut (12:44.366) not not not exactly what we do is company X. pays for X. amount of data searches. And when they make the transaction we actually. Cut off a piece of that transaction so we take a twenty percent. Fifth on every transaction that goes down. So if IBM again these numbers mean nothing but if IBM. Once spend ten dollars for someone's resume. The candidate received eight dollars my standard receives two dollars for every transaction. Chad (12:49.397) Okay. Chad (13:09.128) Okay, so the candidate can get paid, the company can get paid. It seems like there's a lot of payments that we're going to be flipping around. Josh Sklut (13:16.172) Absolutely, but it's it's it's cryptocurrency so it's easy to fractionalize and as long as company X has a wallet That those those transactions go right inside while it's automated. They don't have to do anything Chad (13:26.902) Joel can't wait to use his Doja coin. Go ahead, Joel. Joel (13:29.815) Yeah. so your crypto, symbol is NYST, correct? Okay. And its current price is around 25 cents USD. Josh Sklut (13:30.104) Yeah Josh Sklut (13:45.038) I'm no we haven't watched the token yet there is no token yet the token gets launched in the next it's going to be launched in the next two to three weeks actually Joel (13:48.42) Okay. Okay, well, I'm no crypto expert, but there is a crypto coin, Mysterium, MYST. So anyway, you're not them. Josh Sklut (13:58.848) there is in fact you are correct but we're not that but but but yeah no but there's no but there's multiple so there's and there's actually three coins that are considered missed but we're one of them so. Joel (14:09.809) Okay. So let's, you're talking to two guys that have talked about this with companies and sort of know a little bit about it and it's confusing. So talk to me about adoption. How is this playing with the world at large? mean, you know, Google play publishes their numbers. According to Google play, you have like less than a hundred downloads. Now I could be wrong and you have the numbers, but publicly available, no one is downloading this on Google. So unless you've got a ton of iPhone people. Chad (14:17.58) Mm. Josh Sklut (14:32.142) Mm-hmm. Joel (14:39.589) This does not seem to be taking off and you've been around since 2021. So help me understand where I'm wrong or where you're going to fix it. Josh Sklut (14:48.312) Sure, we've existed for that long, the app has only been live since late June. So it took three years to build. it's not like we've existed three years and bam, there was this app three years ago that no one's using. The app has only been in existence a couple of months. To your point, 97 % of our users happen to be iPhone users. So that is fair. Joel (15:11.131) So what are your iPhone downloads? In five months, by the way, not a couple months. Josh Sklut (15:15.118) Right. So all in, we've had about 350 downloads. of the 100 or so, people have actually gone through the whole process and filled out the entire form that it takes to fill. It takes about five minutes to fill. Most people, two thirds of the people who have downloaded it have not finished the complete application just yet. In the next iteration, we're going to have a resume parsing feature where you can upload your resume into the app. And you'll be able to go through it that way. But the point I'm making, is that this is a very new application. We've spent almost $0 marketing the thing. And the reason is because we're still, in a lot of ways, testing it, making sure it works properly, making sure that it's doing what it's supposed to be doing, and also trying to add some companies as clients. Right now, we have four clients, the largest of which is Wipro. I don't know if you're familiar with them, but obviously a large-scale consulting, India-based consulting company, but with offices all over the globe, when you have one of their divisions that we're working with directly. Joel (16:13.905) talk about the competition. I'll give you a pass in saying that you will start spending money in marketing this thing. But talk about, you mentioned a customer. Can you give me a real case where a customer is using the service, they found success exactly what they did and then how the transaction and payment happened? Like the whole idea of like job seekers getting paid. Josh Sklut (16:22.517) Absolutely. Joel (16:42.575) I know that it sounds great, but there was, you know, there was an Andreessen back company called 21.co back in the day, which we'll get to, we'll get to how everyone is pivoted out of this business in a second. But I want to understand how a use case where someone found success as a customer, what's Y pro or whoever. Okay. Josh Sklut (16:59.564) Right again we haven't We bro we haven't watched the token yet. So the answer is that we have no there has been no. The technology works we know that it works because we I demoed it at HR tech where I met you guys in Vegas and we've seen it actually work with our clients where we've actually done test transactions and the test transactions have been successful so we aren't we aren't revenue generating just yet. Joel (17:11.652) Okay. Josh Sklut (17:25.272) And that will change as soon as, again, in two or three weeks we launch the token, and we'll actually be able to do an actual transaction. The reason that companies are potentially interested in using us and the reason we're pro signed up is because they feel like their structure for recruiting right now doesn't work well for them. For all the reasons that we can get to that we all know is wrong with the market in general, they feel like this is an interesting opportunity to improve the quality of hires and also to get a more diverse workforce because of the blind aspect of the hiring process that we offer. Joel (17:52.753) Okay. Let's talk about the pivots real quick. So I can name three companies in this space that have had been crypto. They have a coin, some variation of that. The first one I mentioned was 21.co. The other one is Brain Trust, who was crypto, still has a coin pivoted to sort of an all like a platform. And then our friend, CV Wallet has pivoted recently out of sort of the blockchain. how, why is this, why is this one going to work where they didn't? Josh Sklut (18:22.926) Right, well, I listened to your podcast on the CV on Rid with Richard. Very fascinating, very interesting topic. He's just more of a job board. Again, our structure is completely different. We're making it so candidates don't apply for jobs, right? There isn't a listing of all the jobs and then they send their resume to company acts. Because ultimately that's the same structure as LinkedIn or any other job board. With ours, the company puts together the criteria that they need. And you only get a notification on your phone if you match up. So there's lots of people, based on the criteria you set up, that will never receive a notification. On top of that, candidate is not forced to reply. So if they are not interested in the job, they just say no. And IBM, for example, doesn't know that this person said no to them. They only know what they said yes to. So another aspect of the two other things that you mentioned before, I think Braintree is not talent acquisition focused. I think it's more of a data that data control type thing, they're not paying users the way we are paying users, which is you only receive tokens when you're right for a position and when you accept the transaction. So we've kind of simplified the whole process. Joel (19:22.737) brain trust. Joel (19:34.353) Maybe I asked, I think all of them had a problem getting the blockchain thing to be accepted. So what I'm saying like, how are you different? Not how is the business model different? How are you gonna get blockchain accepted in this space because it seems to be failing. Josh Sklut (19:43.384) Yeah, we don't have that. Josh Sklut (19:51.726) right I think the reason that I mean I don't necessarily agree that's failing but I think the technology moves so quickly that we have spent the time and the reasons taken us three years to build this thing is because we wanted to abstract all of blockchain from the app in other words when you download the app you don't under you don't realize you're downloading a blockchain or web 3 application you're downloading a web 2 application we've simplified it so that there's really no abstraction any longer I think the other. things have failed because A, they were way ahead of their time because the technology hadn't advanced to the level it's at now. And two, they weren't willing to spend the time or the investment of dollars to find the right developers to make a really good web three app that reacts and acts just like a web two app. When you download our app at the very beginning of the process, you create a Chad (20:37.484) Okay, enough, enough, enough. That's good, that's good, that's good. We get the simplicity of it, okay? Concise. Now, can you do in Web 2 what you're doing in Web 3? Josh Sklut (20:49.738) No, the decentralization, that's what separates it. Chad (20:53.356) You can't decentralize in Web2. Josh Sklut (20:56.855) Web 2 is everything's on a server, right? LinkedIn gets hacked seven times a year, blah, blah, right? All those issues. With Web 3, Web, Web, right. Web 3, this is your server. Chad (21:02.262) Okay. Well, that's the, that's the differentiation that we're really looking for, right? Okay. Is, yes. Right. So now let's go to a go to market strategy. What's your go to market strategy to be able to obviously, you know, marketing, that's an entirely different conversation, but from a sales go to market partnership alliances, what's the strategy? Josh Sklut (21:24.108) Right. So our first focus is we're going to be focusing on AI jobs and AI jobs only. So all of our clients, all they're going to be doing is giving us their AI positions. So Wipro, for example, will be able to say Wipro, we're only looking at a Wipro's AI jobs. We then reach out to the marketplace and we say, hey, if you're an AI engineer, AI developer, an AI designer, et cetera, come on our app and let's use that as a use case for both sides. We stay very focused on just that initially with the intent Chad (21:29.343) Okay. Chad (21:38.476) Mm-hmm. Josh Sklut (21:51.726) that the theory works and that these transactions work and that people are finding jobs. We can then go and broaden that and get into obviously other areas that are that that are viable for our for our business model. Chad (21:56.3) Mm-hmm. Chad (22:03.084) Okay, so how fast do you think you will be focused heavily on AI and then what's the expansion look like? How long do you think it'll take for you to expand? And then when you start to expand, where do you think you're gonna expand? Josh Sklut (22:15.33) Wait, wait. Great question. So I'd probably over the next three to six months, we'll have a decent amount of candidates that are in play that are AI candidates as well as jobs. So there'll be transactions available. Beyond that, we always anticipate that our audience is a crypto audience. That's probably our initial grouping. But I'll be honest with you, if we're thinking longer picture, I like the underserved jobs premise. What are underserved jobs? Fast food workers, retail workers, construction workers, truck drivers. Why? Chad (22:35.706) Mm-hmm. Josh Sklut (22:46.638) Those people don't necessarily have LinkedIn profiles, number one. Number two, finding a job at a fast food restaurant, how do you think you find that? You walk in and you get an application or you see them on the thing that says now hiring. But those people all move jobs and those people all have phones and all those people would love to monetize their data. So if I'm a ship supervisor at McDonald's and I'm looking for a new ship supervisor at a Burger King, out of one of my direct competitors, the easiest, quickest and most efficient way to do that would be to reach out to them on their phone, pay them a dollar or two for their information. Chad (22:49.61) Right. Yes. Josh Sklut (23:15.734) and bring them over and interview them there. So we see that as an extremely viable market. Another viable market for us is at the very, very, very high end. So we're talking about C level positions. Same premise, those people don't necessarily have LinkedIn profiles, or if they do, they've got all their notifications turned off because they're tired of being attacked by every recruiter in the world, right? But if you're a company and you're looking for a C cell, right, and you're willing to spend $500, let's just say, for access to someone's data, and you're that person, and you get a notification on your phone that company X is paying $500 to see your resume, you're going to take notice. You're going to stand up and say attention because you're like, hey, they're obviously super serious about hiring for this role because they're offering an insane amount of money. But the client wins in that transaction too because if you send out five notifications and you're spending $2,500 for access to five CISOs, wow, that's powerhouse because now you have five relationships that you can definitely use down the road instead of paying a corn ferry or a hard working struggles. Chad (23:48.652) Mm-hmm. Joel (23:57.841) you Josh Sklut (24:13.294) for retained search that's going to cost you 70, 80, 90, $100,000. Now you spent $2,500 for five people that are going to treat you completely differently because you just gave them $500. So the next time they call you for that job that's open in six months, they're going to say, yeah, I remember you gave me $500 for my resume. It completely flips the script on what we're currently doing in the marketplace. And it shows that you have some stake in the game. And you care about these candidates where that lacks so heavily now. Joel (24:43.025) Tell me about the team. Josh Sklut (24:45.454) it's myself my partner Adam Zack who worked for career builder for fifteen years. So he was more of a like corporate sales enterprise sales guy in you know for for large scale like all of his clients were the big you know companies that use career builder. My background is again more on the agency side of recruiting so I'm more of the headhunter type. We have a CMO who is launched several brands Zenni Eyewear worked in fashion high end retail. do we are we have an interim CTO but our technology is outsourced to a company called Wolfpack Digital. based in Romania. They've been killing it for us. They have eight developers that are on the team and they're just rock stars. We have a chief legal counsel internally named Andy Pierce. He has done all kinds of different IPO level stuff in the California area. He's very, very blockchain strong. And on top of that, we have several advisors. Carol Gordon, who's one of the heads of human resources IBM is on our board of directors a guy named Jonathan Kestenbaum I don't know if you know him it he's from a from AMS he was he from the beginning he's on our board of directors we have investment from Avalanche which is a large blockchain company level a layer one Winklevoss capital Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss so they invested obviously because of the blockchain premise and because we're also taking out Facebook and you know all the competition there Joel (26:04.165) Mm-hmm. Josh Sklut (26:10.666) A VC called Gangel's, I don't know if you've ever heard of them, they're the gay angels. They're very interesting. They invested in us because of the, they're all about equality and kind of making things more equal. And because we take the bias out of the hiring, because it's blind, they loved what we were doing. Another venture capital firm called Moon Boots Capital, and then several other angels and friends. Joel (26:27.567) Okay. Joel (26:34.115) Okay, good. What's the exit strategy and what does success look like for those investors? Josh Sklut (26:40.056) Great question. So multiple exit strategies. We're in conversations with another, I can't mention their name, large job board where we believe that they could possibly kind of corner the non-biased hiring market and really kind of separate themselves apart. So a good possible exit strategy is either getting a partnership with them and then having them buy the talent acquisition business from us with the technology, with the IP that we have. LinkedIn is another good possibility they could absolutely take advantage of the fact that we're taking the bias out of hiring and makes their sort of structure right now a little bit obsolete because instead of doing it the way they do it, they do it the way we do it. They could either buy us out, out our talent acquisition piece or just kind of continue to move forward and be the gold standard for having A, monetization of data, but B, for unbiased and much clearer data. Obviously there's other There's other places that we want to go with this company that can get into other things besides talent acquisition, because if you can do the math in your head, you can see that once we've got fidelity of data in talent acquisition, there's other things that can be monetized in your personal persona. But as it relates just to talent acquisition, we have multiple streams that we can go to. Most places we can go to that companies really want to buy us, partner with us, or give us an opportunity to kind of be their preferred partner for hire. Joel (28:04.963) All right, Josh, the Q and A is over and now it's time to face the firing squad. Are you ready? Josh Sklut (28:12.481) I am indeed. Joel (28:13.987) All right, here starts the firing squad. Chad, get them. Chad (28:18.668) All right, Josh. So having the control of sharing your data with only companies you trust puts the power back in the candidates hands because it's the candidates data, not the company's data. So I totally love that. The resume has been around for 500 years. So I love any idea that moves us away from the traditional horse and buggy approach, but we can't go straight from horse and buggy to living on Mars overnight. I love that, you know, you're going at AI first. Josh Sklut (28:31.32) Thank you. Chad (28:47.276) Here's some of the problems. The problem here is that trying to go too far too fast and you're not ready. And I mean this from the standpoint of if you take a look at crypto where it's estimated 40 % of American adults now have crypto, not a bad number. 62 % are Caucasian, 43 % are male, 18, 1, 8 % female. So number one. 40 % means you're turning off 60 % of the population. Number two, only 18 % of females and a low number of minorities. That's an easy hard stop for most companies wanting to diversify their ranks. And it's not great stats for your friends over at Gangel's. Number three, you paint yourself into the corner by talking about blockchain, but then going into crypto with tokenomics, right? Or, yeah. Josh Sklut (29:43.808) There's no joke. mean, I, please, sorry, it's interrupt. Chad (29:46.809) So I do, I, do I hate crypto? No, but crypto is new and it's less than 20 years old, which means you have to educate the population. We're talking about the HR population, which is 40 years behind for God's sakes. So educating the population take, takes loads of money, which you currently do not have. Call your buddy at Gaines, Gaines. my big thing is keep it simple, stupid. This is way too complex. Josh Sklut (30:02.22) Agreed. Chad (30:14.304) Way too many payments, way too many tokens, way too many this, way too many that, you have to keep it simple. I love that you're in this space because I actually advise for Richard and CV wallet. And the beautiful part about it is we need more guys like you out there educating the space so that the space actually changes. Right. My recommendation, my recommendation is you stay with AI in tech, because if you take a look at your demographics in the market, that's your best bet. Josh Sklut (30:34.36) agreed. Chad (30:43.684) talking to truck drivers and hourly positions, that's going to be incredibly hard. Yes. Every everybody's on the phone. totally get that, but not everybody is again, that demographic who understands tokens, right? So I'm a huge fan of what you're trying to do. I want you to do more about it, but you need to pivot and focus around AI. And until you do that, Josh, you're going to get, you're going to get the guns, my friend. Chad (31:09.792) Do it, Josh. Joel (31:10.201) Ooh, Chad, I didn't know where that was going. No, no, no, no, it's my turn. It's my turn now. It's my turn. Chad (31:14.398) Yeah Josh Sklut (31:14.968) Yeah, thought I was going to get at least golf clap, but apparently not. Joel (31:19.985) To me, it sounded like it was going to golf clap, it, he, he let last second, last second, he decided to drop the bomb. all right, my turn. when blockchain became a thing, I don't know, eight years ago, maybe a little more longer, maybe longer for you. thought everyone, you know, like people, people that I assume that I think are smarter than me talked, talked it up. This is really cool. The, the, Chad (31:20.842) You might. You might. Josh Sklut (31:23.96) I agree, Joel. That's where I thought so, too. Chad (31:37.462) Yeah. 2008. Joel (31:49.937) Potential is amazing. Yada, yada, yada. I didn't understand it by thought. Hey, I'm going to give it, you know, I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt. And these people are smarter than me and know what they're doing. fast forward to today. I understand it about the same as I did eight years ago. the education, not just you, but the whole space is awful. It needs a, it needs a chat GPT moment. It needs a like, I'm going to go in and see how it works and go, holy shit. That's amazing. I don't know if that'll ever happen, but until it does, I don't think you or any, anyone that's in this space is going to hit a home run. It's been around for a long time. We still don't have any like big banners to fly, like, you know, blockchain. And then you talk about crypto. If you're not Bitcoin or maybe Ethereum, like And you could, you could talk about salon and some others, but like by the most part, I think this stuff, I think it's toxic to most people. And Chad mentioned HR. You start talking about crypto to HR and blockchain and like, whoop, you know, I mean, seriously, they are. Behaviorally against change and they're even more so against risk and. You talk, I mean, you talk about tokenomics on your site, blockchain, crypto, dude, everything about your business to an HR person or a recruiter, unless they are really in need of people and you will get people to pay you money to access your database. Most people are going to be really scared about your business. And then you go into like, okay, do you have people? And you can tell me like, yes, dude, we're going to market. It's going to be huge. LinkedIn has a lot of users. that's, that's a big 800 pound gorilla that you're trying to dethrone. That is one hell of a competitor that you're taking on. So you don't have the money like Chad mentioned. You don't have like the big pockets, deep pockets, maybe call up the Winklevi, whoever, write a check. Cause it's going to take education. It's going to take awareness. It's going to take just a, like a solid trusted brand. And those like, none of that is going in your favor. So Joel (34:04.283) There should be no question as far as where I'm going with this, where there might've been some question around Chad, but I just, all I see is pivots. All I see is failure. All I see is just blank faces when the conversation about blockchain comes up. So for me, like there's gotta be a major pivot in your business. It sounds like you have some smart people that are advising you or they've given you resources. But if you're telling me you're gonna take on LinkedIn, with not much resources, with a technology that I don't think is very trusted, scaring a lot of your customers, base customers. I have no other grade to give this than to follow Chad's lead and give this the guns. I hope you proved me wrong. I hope blockchain saves the world, but until then, I can't buy it. I can't buy it. How you feel? Josh Sklut (34:57.09) Understood. All good. Joel (34:59.547) You have, your CMO has his work cut out for him. I'll say that. I'll say that. Josh Sklut (35:04.576) I again I've been doing this for quite some time so it's the day I am I mean it's obviously I would have loved if you guys showed it showed it some love but you know it's okay I'm totally over it just a couple points to your points Chad (35:12.054) Thick skin. Josh Sklut (35:21.484) Nice. Joel (35:21.489) I'm totally over it. 30 seconds later. You guys are dead to me. I'm good. We're good. Josh, Josh, let's end this. Let's end this on a good note. Where can the listeners find out more about my standard? Josh Sklut (35:33.792) MyStandard.io is the website. The apps are in both the iPhone and Android app stores. Feel free to download the app. We have 95,000 followers on X, so feel free to jump on X. I do a Lunch and Learn every Thursday with HR leaders. We do Twitter spaces. We did a Mario Nafal Twitter space. He's a crypto guy. We got like 60,000 views. So we're out there. We're very much in public eye right now. So definitely you can find us. hit me up on LinkedIn Josh glue with you and loud so we know where love your comments love your questions love your thoughts and you know again. We're doing this for almost four years I'm not planning on slowing down because you guys give me the firing squad so. Joel (36:18.619) So strange to have that many followers on X and only 336 on LinkedIn. Chad, that is another one in the can. We out. Josh Sklut (36:26.296) Yeah. Chad (36:26.422) way out.

In this episode of *The Chad and Cheese Podcast*, Tracey Parsons, CEO of Flockity, joins the hosts in HR's most irreverent, snark-filled exploration of the recruitment industry's latest fiascos. From absurd three-interview car wash applications to Amazon's unsustainable churn rate, Tracey calls out the recruitment sector's refusal to evolve and introduces Flockity’s mission to “give them the bird” (literally and figuratively). Expect rants, laughter, and brutal truths as they navigate the world of recruiting, HR, and why everyone’s loyalty might just be up for review. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Podcast Intro: 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! [music] Joel: Let's do this. We are live from the SmartRecruiters booth at HR Tech in beautiful Las Vegas. Yes. And we are chatting with Tracey Parsons, longtime fan and friend of the show. She is CEO of Flockity. Welcome to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad: Give me the bird baby. Tracey Parsons: Give you jobs the bird people. Joel: Do you wanna tell the bird story real quick? Tracey Parsons: That yesterday at Pitch Fest, I got swooped by a bird as I was closing. Joel: Yeah, you got Hitchcocked by some birds. Chad: You meant to do that. Tracey Parsons: And then somebody literally asked me if I did that. I was like, I don't have a flock of trained birds following me around. Joel: Like you have a bird seed on your head. Chad: You know what? Maybe you should. Maybe you should. Joel: Flockity birds on the head. Tracey Parsons: I'm gonna tell my kid that it landed on my shoulder. [laughter] Joel: Some of our listeners don't know who you are. Give them a quick elevator pitch. Tracey Parsons: Yeah, so I've been doing recruitment marketing and employer brand work since the late 1900s. [laughter] Chad: Never say that again, please. Tracey Parsons: No, it's fantastic. Joel: It's better than back in the 20th century. Tracey Parsons: Yeah, yeah, yeah, since the late 1900s. You know, working with a variety of the world's biggest brands throughout my 20-plus year career, helping them be better at recruitment marketing and employer brand, right? So helping them demystify a lot of the work that is obviously mysterious to people. Chad: That's gotta be hard. Tracey Parsons: It is. You can't see it on my forehead, but there is an enormous bruise there. It's huge. Chad: Smacked all the time? Joel: Quick. The YouTube viewers will only see this, but we have beers in front of us. Yes. And Chad put a coaster down. Tracey Parsons: He did. [laughter] Joel: That personifies who Chad is. Tracey Parsons: He mummed your ass right there. Joel: That he was so bothered by that, it's not his table. Chad: No 'Cause I care. Joel: It's not his house. Chad: It doesn't have to be my table. Joel: 'Cause you care, you cares. I do, I care. You're so anal and you care so much. Chad: No I do care. Tracey Parsons: Do not leave a bottle ring on there. Joel: I'll let you judge what that was. Tracey Parsons: Yeah, don't do that. Joel: But I had to mention that 'cause it was so Chad. Tracey Parsons: Just slammed that right down. He's like... It' so Chad. Chad: It was nice and smooth too. Tracey Parsons: It was. I mean, it was elegant. Chad: I try. I don't generally get the elegance. But... Joel: I will mention, that he comes to my hotel room in the mornings and throws a quarter on my bed to make sure I made my bed tight enough. Tracey Parsons: Really? Chad: Well, make sure the corners are all right. Yeah, you gotta get those right. You gotta get the hospital corner. Tracey Parsons: You know, you should make your bed every day. Chad: No, that's the first thing you should do. Tracey Parsons: That's the first thing you should do. Joel: Anyway. Back to business. Sorry. Chad: What we were talking about. Tracey Parsons: So, yeah, Late 1900s, so this is something that I feel like, you know, a lot of the industry has been pushed forward, but I'm tired of how not forward it's going, right? Like there's, we've been talking about the same 10 things for the last 10 years. It doesn't make sense to me. Chad: Are humans just dumb? I mean, this isn't rocket science, right? Joel: Are we just creatures of habit? Tracey Parsons: Yes. Chad: It's not rocket science. Tracey Parsons: Maybe both. I think there's a distinct lack of will to change, and change is hard and scary. And when you have as many stakeholders in recruiting as we do. Yeah. It's hard to make somebody the hero, right? Because somebody's gonna feel like, well, no, I'm the hero, right? And the candidate is the hero. Without them, we don't hire anybody. Yeah. Joel: Sounds like a customer. Candidates and customers. Should we start thinking of them that way? Tracey Parsons: Exactly. Yeah. And that's one of the reasons why we've launched into this research around voice of the candidate. Because we don't listen. Like you mentioned, right? Like, are we dumb? Are we creatures of habit? I think it's just that we don't listen. We're so interested in hearing... Joel: Why? Tracey Parsons: Why? Because if we did listen, we would hear how they really think about us and what we do. Chad: Which means we could change for the better. Tracey Parsons: Yes, I know. Joel: I have a different opinion... Tracey Parsons: I wanna hear that. Joel: You tell me if I'm wrong. If everyone wanted to be with, you would eventually get in your head like, I'm hot shit. Tracey Parsons: 100%. Joel: And I can pick and choose and treat you like shit because you want to be on this side of the line. And I think employers are too high on their horse or whatever metaphor you wanna use. And we end up treating candidates like dirt because they need us more than we need them. Now that changes every now and then, but I think we treat them horribly. Customers where I give you money and I get paid a salary because you give me money and the more money I make, maybe I make more salary or commission, like there's an incentive there to be nice to people. The incentive to be nice to candidates isn't there. I don't know how we change that, but I think that's my theory as to why... That's insane. We're so bad to candidates. Tracey Parsons: It's not, I don't disagree with the assertion, but what I would add is that that thought process is in a fucking unsustainable model. Chad: Yes. Tracey Parsons: That is an unsustainable model. I remember doing some research for a customer and I also run a consultancy. We have software products but in the consultancy people hire us to like, oh why can't we find talent in this market? I'm like 'cause you built a factory where there's no humans 'cause it was cheap and now you're like, Well crap, where do we find the humans? I was like, I don't know, 'cause you built a factory where there are no humans. Like you're gonna have to come up with something. So while I hear, I agree with what you're saying, they think they're hot shit. There were reports a couple years ago that Amazon's like, we've burned through entire markets of warehouse talent because we treat them like shit. Chad: Yes. Joel: Well that goes beyond candidate to the employee. We're just, we're not even at that point yet in the conversation. Chad: That in itself though, that's the reputation that now Amazon has. So to get candidates, even if they hadn't worked for them before. Joel: I would argue that Amazon treats the candidates better than they do with their employees and that's a real issue as well. Chad: Oh, yeah. Joel: I don't know if I have more respect for they treat us like dirt on the front end and dirt on the back end. Chad: If it could just be consistent dirt. Tracey Parsons: At least it's consistent I guess. Chad: We need consistent dirt. Joel: They think they're walking through the pearly gates. And they're going straight to hell when they walk in on their first day. Tracey Parsons: Again, warehouse staff turns over, right? And so you... There's... Joel: At least they're paid $22 an hour to be in hell. Tracey Parsons: That's true. Chad: Amazon Prime. Joel: And Amazon Prime. Tracey Parsons: And they got great benefits and a lot of TV ads. Joel: Well, let me throw this out there because I think they're on the one yard line and they drop it. Case in point, my 18 year old son, who's interviewing... This is baseline stuff, right? He's interviewing from fast food to washing cars. Goes through the third interview, gets to the third interview. Tracey Parsons: A third interview? Joel: Yeah Yes. For car wash I'm thinking I'm like dude you got it like they want background check, they want all the thing... Chad: Why three interviews. Three? Joel: Yes, so... That's not even the bad part. Tracey Parsons: I'm so sorry but... Wait I just need to go first get the fuck out of here with that okay so now proceed. Joel: Okay it's crew car wash in case anyone wants to know so he goes through three interviews as a car wash yes he's saying he's got it I'm like you've got it. They're doing background checks. He doesn't, they're like, you'll know by Monday. Monday comes, he doesn't hear. Tuesday comes, he doesn't hear. Chad: Oh my God. Joel: I'm like, okay, by end of day, Wednesday, Thursday morning, like you can call them and just check in on what's going on. He gets an email Wednesday morning after three interviews with the car wash that is just a thanks for playing, we're moving on, we chose another candidate. Not a call, not a thanks for playing, da da da. So his experience was... Oh, this is great. She's laughing at my jokes. She's telling her friends about us. And then they ghost him, basically, at the end. That's a shitty experience. Tracey Parsons: That is a shitty experience. And I love when I see industry articles about, like, candidates are ghosting us now. Chad: We taught them. Tracey Parsons: They learned it from you, Dad. Chad: We taught them. Joel: [laughter] Yeah. 80s joke. Tracey Parsons: They learned it from you, Dad. I learned it from you, Dad. Right, so, and then they get pissed at candidates who are using AI now. They learned it from you, dad. It's like you can't have it both ways. Chad: No. Tracey Parsons: This is why I come back to the fact that we have to start listening to how they feel about the experience. And we just pulled the data from H124. And when you isolate, this is what's fascinating to me, 'cause you can isolate the actual candidate conversation and filter out all of our bullshit, right? So the content that we are creating as an industry. And then that sentiment for job seekers in job search right now is 14. It's the lowest I've ever seen it. Joel: What's the universe of that? Is it just all across the board? Is it certain kinds of jobs, like all across the board? Tracey Parsons: It is all across the board. So anybody who is talking about on the public internet, looking for a job, searching for a job, I need a new job, all of those conversations are indexed in the tool that we use. And then we look at the sentiment and we kind of filter through. One of the funniest things was that if you isolate pay in the candidate conversation, that's 8% of the conversation, which is a little lower than I've seen it. It's usually 10% because when we were doing it before, it was a candidate's market, right? So they were more talking about pay, like pay me. But when you un-isolate it and get the whole industry take on the job search and the job search experience, it drops down to 3.5% 'cause we do not want them talking about pay. We do not want, we want them to think that this is a noble purpose to come to my place of employment. Joel: We've got a great culture here. Chad: That's how we grow profit margins. We don't pay our people shit. That's how it works. Tracey Parsons: That's the whole thing. Chad: Yes. Tracey Parsons: Right? And we don't want them to talk about it. So we drown out that conversation. But it's something that really matters to them. Chad: I've never gotten the whole idea of we have, through the application process, just the front end, we like it to be long because of the friction. We like the friction because if somebody makes it through, then they have the stick-to-it-iveness... Tracey Parsons: That's such bullshit. Chad: Is it bullshit or do they really believe that? Tracey Parsons: Okay, A, both things can be true at the same time. They actually really believe that and it is bullshit. It is a bullshit thought process. Chad: No, it is. Tracey Parsons: And what I've been advocating for for probably a decade is that we have to figure out how to redistribute the friction in the candidate experience, right? Because right now we are overselling. Joel: What's the incentive though? Tracey Parsons: What's the incentive? Joel: Again, I go back to they want me more than I want them. They're going to jump through hoops and hurdles and... Tracey Parsons: They aren't. Chad: But they've been proved that that's not how it works and you lose great... Joel: Has it been proved? Chad: Yeah, you lose great talent, which is one of the reasons why. And I'll go to the attrition side now, where again, Amazon, another wonderful Amazon story, where they, AWS, they had actually noted that they were losing $8 billion through attrition. Right? So now they care about oh, we gotta keep our fucking people, right? So they start to understand that, but yet they're still not making the changes they need to, right? They're doing all these warm and fuzzy things like giving them free Amazon Prime. Fuck you, right? I mean, I can pay for that. Tracey Parsons: Right, I remember talking to an employer once and it was Tesla, right? And Tesla was like, man, we have a candidate quality problem. Chad: I wonder why. Tracey Parsons: And I said, have you seen your website? And they're like, what do you mean? I'm like, everywhere on your website, it says you can come here and change the world. And I'm like, you know what, I would love to change the world. This shithole's a fixer-upper, right? I would like to see some things change. And I asked her, I dug in, I was like, what does that actually mean in practice? What does that look like? What does changing the world look like if you're a Tesla employee? She's like, well, I mean, it really means being on your A game at three in the morning if Elon calls you from the Gigafactory floor. Joel: And was that really her answer... That wasn't her answer. Tracey Parsons: That was her answer. And I was like... Joel: 'cause the answer should be, we're making EVs to reduce planet climate change. Tracey Parsons: And then I would have asked her a follow-up question again, what does that look like in the context of actually working there? And you have to spend a lot more time screening people out in that front end so you will not create disappointment. One of the things that we've done wrong since I've started doing this in the late 1900s is we continue to tell people that this is gonna be amazing. That's you know sunshine and roses and we're a family. Oh my god that's the biggest red flag. Joel: Just look at these stock photos on our career page. Tracey Parsons: Right, look at these stock photos. [laughter] Look at our diversity, like all of this, right? So there's nothing in there that's telling somebody that there's somebody that doesn't work for them here. And I told her, I was like, you don't have a quality problem, you have a branding problem. Like you're telling people things that is not real. Like, and while it is real, but you're not giving them a layer beneath that to say, wait a second, I don't think I'm gonna be on my A game at three o'clock in the morning. Chad: Well, and here's the thing, we don't have to have friction, or a lot of friction. Right. And here's what I mean by that is we have the technology and the systems in place where we can screen them up front very easily. Tracey Parsons: Yes. Chad: Right? You can parse the data. You can ask them, hey, do you meet these requirements? Yes blah, blah, blah. And then off you go. Tracey Parsons: Yes. Chad: You don't have to wait for a human being to schedule you for an interview if you do, right? Nope. I mean, all these things, there's so much, and the funniest thing is, I remember back in the day with Union Pacific Railroad, they built their own goddamn applicant tracking system so that all of the candidates could see where they were in the process. Revolutionary. Tracey Parsons: Right. Chad: Revolutionary. Joel: Was this the 1900s? Chad: No, no it wasn't. It was early 2000s, early 2000s. But still... Tracey Parsons: In the year 2000. Chad: Fucking railroad. Tracey Parsons: Yes. Chad: Right? Tracey Parsons: Yes. Chad: And here we are in 2024. Tracey Parsons: That is so far from that. Chad: How many systems automatically just tell you where you're at and give you that nice little ping. Or if you're not qualified, I don't know, we might have the technology to go ahead and divert you to something that you are qualified for. And then you can apply it, I mean, if you want to. But again, the experience. Tracey Parsons: And hear me out. Chad: And that's just good business. Tracey Parsons: If somebody is not qualified today, and you have their data and information, and you don't look at them two years from now, what are you doing? Chad: Oh, don't get me started on that. Tracey Parsons: What are you doing? I had this conversation with somebody this week. Chad: Don't get me started on that. Tracey Parsons: I'm gonna get you started on that, because I had a conversation this week. I've been advocating for an advertised last model, and I run an advertising company, okay? I do not believe that every job should be advertised. Chad: No. Tracey Parsons: I believe... And I don't understand why... Just hear me out a second. Chad: They have to for compliance reasons, but yes. Tracey Parsons: No, but hear me out. You open a requisition. Chad: Yeah. Tracey Parsons: You press a button to post it, okay? Instead of pressing a button to post it first, you could post it internally if that's your compliance, whatever compliance measure you have. But before you make this a public advertising moment, create a slate of people in-house that already fit this criteria, create a slate of people who applied two years ago. Chad: In your applicant tracking system. Tracey Parsons: In the system. Go source all of these channels that you have before you ever put that out on the public internet, on Indeed or LinkedIn or Flockity. Chad: How long do you think a CMO would have their job if they created all these leads and then they just buried the leads? Tracey Parsons: A day? Chad: That's what they're doing. Tracey Parsons: I know. Chad: Hundreds of millions of... I know. Billions of dollars that are being spent every year to be able to throw shit in the applicant tracking system and never go back to it again and for the same damn job that they need to post again maybe a month later, guess what they do? They put it on fucking Indeed. Tracey Parsons: And they already paid to attract the person that they hired. Yes. They've paid to attract that same person 67 different times. It is the biggest waste of money. It drives me fucking crazy. Yes. Joel: But they're stale after a month. They're not fresh anymore. After a month. Tracey Parsons: I don't get it. I've had a lot of I don't get it moments this week. [laughter] Tracey Parsons: Yeah, and why aren't they fresh? Joel: I gotta restart it. Tracey Parsons: And why aren't they fresh? Chad: Oh my God. Tracey Parsons: Because you've done nothing to reach out to them. You've done nothing to cultivate that relationship... Chad: See, now you've got her started. Tracey Parsons: Yeah, you've done nothing. You've done nothing. So the data sits there and they're like, oh, it's not fresh. Well, bitch, what did you do to freshen it? Chad: Yeah, freshen that shit up. Tracey Parsons: Freshen that lead. Zsuzsit. Chad: And again, we have, I'm thinking the six million dollar man, we have the technology. Joel: We keep going back to the 1900s. I don't know what's going on. Tracey Parsons: We have the technology. Chad: We can do this. We have the ability. But... And I see your friend Matt Lavery over at UPS there. The guy's been in this business for 27 years. And he's built systems that actually are doing what we're talking about. I mean, seriously. Apply, the job is posted. They have to for compliance reasons. But it goes to the database. It's the database. Goes internal, right? I mean, it's one of those things where don't fucking tell me it can't be done. People are doing it. Tracey Parsons: Right, we just, again, there's this complacency sometimes in the industry that makes me wanna just run screaming through the hills. Chad: Throw birds at people's heads. [laughter] Tracey Parsons: I mean, being a new bird launcher. Chad: Oh yes. Tracey Parsons: Right, there's no such thing as empty nesters. I'm just letting you know. Chad: Give them the bird. Joel: Upskilling is huge. Tracey Parsons: Yes. Joel: All the kids are talking about upskilling. Is that gonna save us? Tracey Parsons: All the kids are talking about it. [laughter] Joel: Say more. Tracey Parsons: I mean, is that gonna fix it? No. We have to fundamentally rethink how this whole shit works, right? And is re-skilling and up-skilling important? Hell yes, it's important. Like it's incredibly important. Chad: Oh we don't even know what that means. Tracey Parsons: We haven't defined it. Chad: No. Tracey Parsons: It is a buzzword and nobody can say oh, I can upskill, how do you know? And then we would probably say, we're gonna launch this upskilling program whether you want to or not, right? We're gonna upskill you. And we never ask the employees, we never listen to the candidates. Chad: Well, we don't show them what it actually means. Tracey Parsons: 100% Chad: 'cause we're not transparent with regard to career path. Tracey Parsons: 100%. Chad: Being able to go up the current career path or even go laterally. Tracey Parsons: 100% Or down, let's say you've got a situation where you're like, I need to work less because I have a parent I'm caring for, or a young child. Chad: Or I'd just like to work. Tracey Parsons: Right, I actually was in a cab last night. Okay. I love cab drivers, right? They're so much fun. I always chat up the cab drivers because they always have great stories. Joel: Sure, they love it. Tracey Parsons: So... The ones that I get do. [laughter] I don't know what you're doing. Joel: Is this a tipping system like Uber that you're in? Tracey Parsons: No, no. Joel: Okay. Tracey Parsons: But he was telling me a story. So this man was 78 years old. And he was ready to retire at COVID. And then COVID happened right before his retirement. Vegas shut down. They furloughed everybody. And Drivers here are required to have a 12 hour shift. I don't know about you guys, but I can't... Chad: Required? Tracey Parsons: That is their shift. It is a 12 hour shift, deal with it. Chad: Did it go to Uber? I mean. Tracey Parsons: I don't know. So the point of the story was, is that he and a bunch of his other peers who were just close to retirement. They said, you know what, what if we, when we start getting back opened up, if we had like a flex system, so like if I wanted to work five hours or only on Tuesdays or if I wanna do this, why couldn't I do that? And this group of cab drivers took it to HR. And do you know what HR said? Nah, we're not doing that. Joel: So did they unionize and have a happy ending? Tracey Parsons: No. Joel: No. Okay, damn it. Joel: But the happy ending was. Chad: I'm always a fan of happy endings. Tracey Parsons: They went HR and went to the CEO and presented, made their case to the CEO and the CEO went back to HR. He's like, yeah, we're totally doing this. And now he's like, I'm driving four hours today and that works for me. Chad: See, and this is one of the fundamental problems that we have with HR today. Tracey Parsons: Listening. Chad: Is that we are not thinking about business and how we're actually impacting the bottom line in making people happy enough to come back to work, right? To be able to be flexible enough, not to mention how many more people would want to come drive, but they don't want to do 12 hours. Tracey Parsons: I don't want anybody driving me in the 11th hour of their shift. I'm gonna be honest with you, I was like, dude, that sounds like the most unsafe thing. He's like, I am 78 years old. It is the most unsafe thing in the world. Joel: I'm amazed with Uber that they even have to question this because the number of people could just be like, I'm gonna go drive when I wanna drive. Go pound salts. Tracey Parsons: But they were loyal to this company. And that's the other thing. Chad: That says something. Tracey Parsons: We take advantage of people's loyalty. Chad: Oh dude. Tracey Parsons: So deeply. Chad: We've been doing it for so long. Tracey Parsons: Since way before the late 1900s. Chad: And we're so good. Oh yeah, so good. Joel: Younger generations aren't into that. [laughter] Tracey Parsons: Oh, they are not. Joel: Only 78 year old people. They're not. Tracey Parsons: They're not. Chad: Which I love. I love. Tracey Parsons: Same. Chad: We were sold a bill of bullshit, right? And you know Rugged individualism and all that. And then, you know, my oldest, she is a fucking A player, right? She's not taking that shit. She, which most females do not do, she negotiates the shit out of everything, right? Why? Because we taught her, we got fucked. Tracey Parsons: Yes. Chad: You need to do this. Tracey Parsons: I'm gonna tell you like personal story, but I am a... My grandfather was an immigrant from the Czech Republic. He worked in the coal mines in West Virginia. My dad, right? Chad: That's rough. Tracey Parsons: I know. My grandmother also worked in the mines for a period of time. Chad: Oh, come on. Tracey Parsons: I shit you not. Joel: That's another Flockity kind of connection by the way. Tracey Parsons: Right? And then my dad was a rubber worker at Goodyear for 30 years. And I get to do this. Joel: So it's no surprise to me that in the green room you told us before we hit record that you look in the mirror and go rally bitch. Tracey Parsons: You rally bitch. Joel: Because you have generational rally bitches that are like doing jobs that would love to be in your shoes. Tracey Parsons: Yes, and my mom, my dad passed away in '18, but my mom always reminds me, she's like, do you have any idea what your, your dad would shit himself if he saw you today. Like he would legitimately lose his shit. And he would tell, he would go up to tell people, he's like, my daughter is the CEO of a company, can you believe that? What does she do? I have no idea. [laughter] Joel: Sounds important. Chad: First and foremost, I just said she was a CEO. It doesn't matter what she does. Tracey Parsons: Right, does it matter? But I think that seeing their trajectory and how they were treated and how their work makes me, that's what drives me to do what I do. Like I've said this a thousand times, the relationship between candidates and work and employees and work is 100% egalitarian. We need each other. They need us to do the work and make profits. We need them to provide lives for our families. Like this is a symbiosis that is never recognized or acknowledged and we absolutely shit on it all the time. Joel: I gotta ask, headed '25, predictions, get your crystal ball out, what are we gonna be talking about? Tracey Parsons: The same shit we've been talking about for the last 10 years! [laughter] Joel: Goddammit. Chad: Have you not been listening? Jeez, man! Joel: Can't you come out of the 1900s for at least a few sound bites? Tracey Parsons: I'm gonna be honest with you, I'm gonna be honest with you, and this is personal, but I do think we are gonna be talking about how we change the distribution of jobs, how the current model of job distribution does not work because people don't trust those entities anymore and they actually trust people, which is why Flockity is doing such a remarkable thing because... Joel: So say more about that. They don't trust the jobs. Tracey Parsons: They don't trust the job works. Joel: Because I click on the job, it takes me to another site and then I have to go to another site after that. Tracey Parsons: Yes. Chad: Click, click, click. Joel: And now I gotta like take out the pop-up. Chad: Register. Joel: And register somewhere else. That's broken as hell. Tracey Parsons: That's bullshit, right? The piece of feedback we get from our influencers and their community is it's like I... I don't go to Indeed, I don't go to LinkedIn, I don't use those tools because I don't believe those jobs are real and I don't ever hear anything from them, like it's just this black hole. But when they see somebody talking about the job like they're talking about, like I'm a nurse and this is what I do to be a good nurse and then the nurse is like I've got some jobs. Joel: Flockity real quick, give us the elevator. Tracey Parsons: Oh yeah, Flockity is influencer marketing for jobs so essentially companies send us their job feed, they buy a click bank because we're a pay per click model. Once we have their feed and their money, we release their jobs out to our influencer network, influencer goes and picks up a job, copies the short link, puts it on their public social profile, anybody that clicks on that job. Joel: So it's not a nurse at their hospital. Tracey Parsons: No, it's a random nurse. Joel: It's a random nurse promoting the job. Tracey Parsons: Yes. Joel: But nurses are following them. Tracey Parsons: Correct. Correct. Joel: Okay. I'm glad I cleared that up. Tracey Parsons: So people believe people and I think that we're gonna have to start to acknowledge that our current model is not trusted. Candidates do not enjoy anything that we're doing. They only participate 'cause they have to. Joel: That's a paid model, right? I mean you're in the same... Someone's getting paid to promote a job. Chad: It doesn't look the same. Joel: Definitely the experience is different. But isn't that the same trap? You're only saying it's great to work here because... Tracey Parsons: They don't say it's great to work there. Okay. So 'cause they don't work there, right? The content that they're creating is about being good at this job. And then every couple weeks or every week or every other day. Joel: So why I love nursing versus why I love this company. Tracey Parsons: Why I love nursing at XYZ company. Joel: Got it. Tracey Parsons: And then they very rarely mention the brands that we're working with because they don't want comments, 'cause they're not dumb, right? So they just will like every now and then make a video and say, hey, I've come across some great jobs I'd like to share with you, they're in my LinkedIn bio. Chad: That's right, kids. You're gonna give your company the bird with Flockity. Tracey Parsons, CEO of Flockity. Tracey Parsons: Thanks Chad. Joel: That's their tagline, by the way. Give them the bird, Flockity. Chad: Dad would be proud. He is proud. Tracey Parsons: Dad would be so... John would be freaking out. Chad: So if people wanna learn more about Flockity or even connect with you. Where would you send them? Tracey Parsons: Flockity.com, F-L-O-C-K-I-T-Y.com. Chad: I love it. Tracey Parsons: And then you can always find me on LinkedIn. I am the Bringer of Sunshine. Joel: Tracey, thanks for hanging out with us. Enjoy the rest of your time in Vegas. Tracey Parsons: Thanks for having me. Joel: Chad, that was fun. And... We out. Chad: We out. Podcast Outro: Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, with 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. There's so many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo, 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!

In this episode of the Chad and Cheese Podcast, hosts Joel Cheesman and Emi Beredugo discuss Halloween festivities, share a humorous story about a naked neighbor incident, and delve into the upcoming US elections from a British perspective. They also touch on the cultural impact of Taylor Swift's concerts, highlight innovative recruiting platforms, and provide updates on their fantasy football league. Then they discuss the implications of AI in recruitment, focusing on LinkedIn's new Hiring Assistant tool and its potential to streamline recruitment tasks. They explore the impact of AI on coding jobs, the evolving role of recruiters, and the challenges of integrating AI while maintaining human connection. The discussion also touches on hiring trends for 2025, emphasizing the importance of adapting to new technologies and the need for recruiters to upskill in a changing job market. Emi and Joel discuss the evolving landscape of hiring practices, particularly the shift towards skills-based hiring. They explore the mindset of Gen Z, who prioritize mental health and work-life balance over traditional hustle culture. The discussion also highlights the alarming trend of prime-age men leaving the workforce, attributing it to economic shifts and societal pressures. Finally, they delve into the implications of influencer culture on society, questioning its long-term effects on individual identity and societal values. Joel (00:43.214) Yeah, here's Johnny, who are you gonna call and the power of podcasting compels you. Hey boys and girls, it's the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Garbage Truck Cheeseman. Emi B (00:55.921) And this is Emi Kroba-Numulayo Beredugo. She's back again. Joel (01:00.504) And on this episode, LinkedIn is here to assist. No, really. Google proves we're in year two of the year of efficiency, and Gen Z is feeling nothing but tricks from employers this Halloween. Let's do this. Emi B (01:18.111) Topics! Joel (01:26.894) She's back. She's back. Happy Halloween. Happy Halloween. Emi B (01:32.129) Happy Halloween to you as well! Joel (01:34.894) One of my favorite holidays, as you can tell. If you're watching on YouTube, you can see the outfit I've got on. I think the mullet suits me. I don't know about you, but I think this might be my new look. Not the jail part. Emi B (01:46.379) Jo, I think you look wonderful. I mean, honestly, I think you need to wear this all the time. know, honestly, it takes years off for you. Joel (01:52.396) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. The, the prison outfit, man. That's yeah, it's kind of a Willy Wonka, British 19th century kind of, kind of gig. like it. I like it. Are you, are you going to any parties tonight? You're to go trick or treating what what's, what's London like on Halloween? Emi B (01:57.089) What are you thinking of my hat? It's not quite Halloween. Emi B (02:04.553) Yeah. Emi B (02:09.245) Yeah, it's good. Emi B (02:16.449) Well, we do actually do quite a lot of trick or treating. So if I'm judging by last year, lots of the kids come round. I've actually got sweets in the kitchen for when the kids come and knock on the door. So it's cool, but I'm not going out tonight because I'm playing netball. So yeah, I'll be celebrating Halloween at the weekend. Joel (02:34.488) So if kids come to the door, they got nothing. Are you going to have like a little bowl of food, a little bowl of sweets, as you said? Emi B (02:41.801) Yeah, we've got sweets and we've got &Ms and we've got Skittles. Are those things in the US? &Ms? Yeah. yeah, of course. Joel (02:44.331) Okay. they were made in America. Come on. Most of the candies you eat are American productions for sure. Creations. Emi B (02:53.621) Yeah, that's actually true. Yeah, I'm actually just adopting it. I've got twix for them as well. So I went to the supermarket and I bought lots of little treats for them. So I'm looking forward to it. Joel (03:02.56) Yeah. So I got, I got a seven year old, so I'm full on Halloween. my wife and I, are the cheesy like combo, costume people and we're doing chips and salsa. So I'm like a thing of salsa. She's going to be a chip. so anyway, that's, that's really cheesy American suburb shit that we're doing, tonight, but I have a, I have a little bit of story that I want to tell you. I think it's funny. So we have, do you have these ring ring, cameras in, London? Emi B (03:13.185) Ooh. Emi B (03:18.569) I love that. Emi B (03:25.302) Go for it. Emi B (03:30.601) Yeah, the ring doorbells, yeah. Joel (03:31.03) A lot of people have these. Okay. So, my wife wanted one last Christmas and she got it and it records people to come to the door. It plays a little sound. when someone comes to the door, kind of annoying, but she's, she's kind of a paranoid wants to know everything that's going on at all times. So anyway, I'm, I'm, I'm dead asleep. She's an early morning person. I'm dead asleep. Five 40 probably in the morning. She comes in, shakes me and she says, Joel. I just called nine one one. There's a naked guy at our door. Okay. so all I hear first I hear is first I hear is I called nine one one and I'm thinking, Holy shit. The kid, like one of the kids is in trouble. Somebody's like somebody is in trouble. And then after that it's followed with there's a naked guy at the front at the front door. So I'm like, my God. I thought someone's on meth. Someone's high on some shit walking around the neighborhood, naked. Emi B (04:08.619) What? Emi B (04:15.187) Yeah. Joel (04:30.678) So anyway, I go out, I look out the door, I open the door. She's like, don't open the door. There's no one there. So she, she brings up the ring, the ring camera and it tapes tapes, what it records and puts on your phone. So she shows it to me, but I don't have my glasses on. So I go, okay. It just, it looks like a shadowy figure at the door. And then I go upstairs. We calm down a little bit. No, no, you know, no one's really at the door. So I put my glasses on and look at it I go. Emi B (04:40.351) Yeah. Emi B (04:51.745) Okay. Joel (04:59.758) That's our neighbor, Andrea. So, so I'm like, okay, well, why was she at our door? So then she was not naked. I don't know why. No, she was, I guess in pajamas, but she was not naked. She was at our door, didn't ring the doorbell, but kind of looked inside, came to the door. And then my wife goes, where's the dog? shit. So Emi B (05:07.211) Why was she naked? okay. Emi B (05:13.825) Okay. Joel (05:23.352) We're looking for the dog. The dog shows up at the back door. But then as we looked at our phones, she had gotten a message from Andrea on Facebook with a picture of our dog saying, is this your dog? got out. he growled at me and ran away. So what happened was our dog got out, showed up at her door. She took a picture, tried to get the dog back. She came, she was probably going to ring the doorbell if we were awake or like knock on the door, but she didn't see anybody. So it was totally nothing. Emi B (05:38.689) Okay. Emi B (05:45.379) Yeah. Joel (05:52.014) But for me to be awakened at 5 40 a.m. with I call 911, there's a naked person at our door was very, very unnerving, almost unnerving as the election that's coming on. But yeah, I don't know if you have any funny stories like that, but. Emi B (05:56.317) Make it Emi B (06:01.877) So. Emi B (06:09.045) I don't have any stories about naked people being at my front door or imagine me naked people. Joel (06:13.72) I'm glad you added at the front door. Cause I know everyone, everybody's got a good naked person story. Everybody's got my good, my good naked, my good naked person story. The first time went to San Francisco, my friend drove me around the around town and took me to hate and Asbury. don't know if you've been to San Francisco, but hate and Asbury is sort of the hippie gay center of San Francisco. And there's a naked guy, totally naked, just walk like crosswalk across the street. And I'm like, Emi B (06:18.675) Wow! Emi B (06:25.056) Yeah. Emi B (06:30.975) Yes, I have. Emi B (06:34.889) Yeah. Joel (06:42.168) That's a fucking naked dude just like out in public and they're like, yeah, it's legal. Like, okay, this is San Francisco. All right. Naked person story. It was then I think it still is. I mean, San Fran is a freaky deaky place, man. They, they do all kinds of like anything kind of goes in San Francisco. Emi B (06:42.729) Interesting Emi B (06:46.783) Yeah, standard. Sorry, did you say it's legal to walk around naked in San Francisco? Emi B (07:00.255) Yeah, okay, so I went two years ago, but I didn't see any naked people. I feel like I'm missing out. I don't know where I went. Yeah. okay. Yeah, I don't think. Joel (07:04.814) Yeah, this, would have been like 25 years ago, straight up my first time in San Francisco. Maybe they passed some laws or things have changed. did you go to hate and Asbury? Emi B (07:15.873) I can't, do you know what, where did I go? I don't think I went there. I went to wherever the dolphins were. No, the sea lions. Yeah. On the pier. That's the one. I did that. And I did the cable cars and I went to, I did go to the hippie district, but I didn't, yeah, like I said, I feel like I missed out. I wanted to see some naked people, you know? I did. Joel (07:22.958) Okay, Pier 39 or whatever the pier, yeah, okay. Okay. Joel (07:36.718) Sounds like you did a lot of touristy shit. You got to go into the underbelly of San Francisco to really feel what San Francisco's got going on. Emi B (07:44.019) See, I was on a work trip, so I had to stay safe. It was my first week in my new job. So was like, I'm in San Francisco, yay. They flew me out. Yeah, so it's cool. It is. Yeah. Joel (07:46.787) Yeah. Joel (07:50.894) It's a cool town. It is not what it used to be, but it's a cool town. So we covered Halloween. I don't know if you heard there's an election coming up here in the US. Yeah, there is. Yeah, yeah. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. From a British point of view, is it just nuts? Who cares? What's the vibe over in Britain? Emi B (08:01.117) Is that? No, I didn't hear about that. Yeah! Emi B (08:12.167) you know what is everywhere. Yeah, I'm finding it fascinating, especially because we've actually just gone through our own election. So where the kind of Labour government finally got in after years of not being in power. So now everything is focused on the US elections. you know, I listen to podcasts on it, I listen to YouTube's on it. Like I'm constantly trying to consume information. And I'm just like, wow, which which way is it going? I honestly have no idea. I honestly have no idea. Joel (08:18.286) Mm-hmm. Joel (08:23.724) Mm-hmm. Joel (08:36.803) Yeah. Emi B (08:39.969) I talked to one group of people that say, yeah, Trump is definitely in 100%. They love him because he's not like your typical politician. He's like your person on the street. I'm like, is he? Because he was born with a silver spoon. It doesn't matter how he talks, no matter how many incorrect facts that he spouts out, they still think that he's going to be in power. I'm a Kamala girl. So I'm hoping that she gets in. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. But I think it's scary. I think it's going to be tight. Joel (08:44.536) Mm-hmm. Joel (08:57.485) Yep. Joel (09:04.205) Yeah. Joel (09:10.602) It feels like angry men versus scared women and who who's gonna, who's gonna, who's gonna come out. And, I don't know. It's, the, the, the, electoral college, I don't know if Brits understand that all that well, but the, the electoral map favors her. and I would say if you're watching in Europe, if, Pennsylvania gets called for either one, that's Emi B (09:15.817) Yeah. Emi B (09:24.948) Yeah. Emi B (09:30.069) Yeah. Joel (09:39.288) Probably your winner. That's probably where it's going to go. mean, Pennsylvania is so important in the, in the math that, but yeah, it's, I I'm excited for it to be done. I'm excited for, text spam, hitting my phone multiple times an hour, not even a day. It's just out of control. I'm ha I'm, I'm excited for that. What Europe does right is they do elections really quickly. It's like they call it. Yeah. The U S. Emi B (09:41.204) Really? Yeah. Emi B (10:04.479) Yeah, over and done with. I feel like this has been going on forever, you know, with a whole Biden and then bringing in Kamala and this is like, okay, when it, it, but we've got seven days now, it's seven days, isn't it? Yeah, seven days until we know who comes out on top. Joel (10:10.072) Yes. Joel (10:16.564) Even less than that by the time this airs, it'll be like four days. Yeah. Four days to go. anyway, yeah. The next week show should be interesting. Yeah. We should have some stuff to talk about next week. and we got Taylor Swift in Indianapolis. she's a huge deal. She's going to bring more money to this city than the super bowl. we had about 15 or so years ago. So she is a, she's a phenomenon. She's she is. Emi B (10:20.393) Woo! I think I'm going to stay up and watch it. Yeah. Emi B (10:30.024) Love, love Taylor. Emi B (10:38.881) She's brilliant. I had no idea that she was so good. I went to Taylor Swift concert this year and I wasn't a Swiftie, but at end of that three hour concert, I was a Swiftie. was like, yes. You know, singing all my songs. I was like, I get it. I get it. I totally get it. Swapping my bracelets with people. I'm like, I'm there. I'm never too old to be a Swiftie. Yeah. Joel (10:56.666) She's, she's, she's something else that everyone's up in arms because, there the, the stadium, has said there's no tailgating outside or like within the, the area of the, stadium. And apparently if you're a Swifty, the tailgating is a big part of it. So if you don't have a ticket, you can't get into the, the parking lot to tailgate. So all the Midwestern, people are really, really upset about that. Up in arms, up in arms. Let's get to some. Emi B (11:12.308) Yeah. Emi B (11:18.601) Yeah. up in arms. Joel (11:25.282) Some shout outs, shall we? And as you know, our shout outs. Joel (11:31.534) are sponsored by Kiara, that's text recruiting made simple. You got a shout out, Emmy? Emi B (11:38.655) I do have a shout out actually. My shout outs for a company called Poetry. So for people who haven't heard of them, you need to go check this company out. I think they are brilliant. I think they're ahead of their time. So basically they are a recruiting enablement platform. it's for people like, know, obviously we all know that recruiters are busy. They're trying to do a hundred things at once. There's never enough time in your day. This platform actually allows... Joel (11:54.798) Mm-hmm. Emi B (12:05.181) It consolidates all that kind of like research information, all the tools that you need to make your life faster, whether it's like creating interview questions, helping you to create a job description, trying to find out about different competitors in the market so you can effectively sell your role against other companies. You know, that's just just the tip of the iceberg with all the things that this platform can do. And they're really at initial stages at the moment. But I genuinely think they, you know, they're going to go far. Joel (12:28.91) Mm-hmm. Emi B (12:32.065) And like I said, they're ahead of their time. So they are my shout out for this week. Joel (12:37.838) And I hear they're from Scotland. Is that, is that true? Emi B (12:40.161) They are. I'm not even going to attempt to do the Scottish. Does that sound Scottish? Does that sound Scottish? Scottish? Scottish? Scottish? Joel (12:44.696) somehow Scottish, Scottish. Yeah. you know, no one gets more airtime than Adam Gordon and Steven and poetry without paying, without paying for any of it. The, those, then those cats. So, yeah, the Scottish, it is that we've the seduction of the Scots just makes you talk about them. And next thing you know, they're selling their companies for millions of dollars. So good. Good on them. Good on them. Emi B (12:56.011) He's everywhere. Yeah. Emi B (13:10.257) it's the accent, it is. No one can be the sexy squad accent. Yeah. Joel (13:14.582) Yeah. And speaking of selling, I got a shout out to Roberto Angulo. Roberto was previously the CEO of recruitology, which was acquired by Job Case a few years ago. And you never know when someone sells a company. Roberto has been in the industry for a long time. He started after college back in the early 2000s. And you never know, are they going to do it again? Are they going to like retire to Fiji? Like what are they going to do? Emi B (13:20.225) Emi B (13:24.587) Okay. Emi B (13:42.998) Yeah. Joel (13:43.98) Roberto is back. He's now the CEO of a company called Fonda. Fonda helps Latino owned restaurants in, marketing online and their online presence. So just shout out to Roberto. Really a great guy, just a nice guy. And it's good to see him back, back, back in the fold. And I have another shout out and this just passed this just care. So do know what, do know Jimmy John's? Okay. Emi B (13:48.385) Okay. Emi B (14:10.249) No. Is that a US thing? Joel (14:11.99) It's it's a restaurant. It's a US restaurant. So Jimmy John's is like deli sandwiches, of like hoagies, like cold meat, toppings. It's a sandwich. It's like a sub. if you know Subway, if you know Subway, okay. If you know Subway, you know, Jimmy John's anyway, Jimmy John's launch, get this. They call it the pickle, which. And it's a, it's a big pickle and they cut it in half and then they kind of gut it. And then they put the toppings in the pickle. Emi B (14:13.855) Okay. Emi B (14:22.219) Was a hoagie? Emi B (14:26.561) Okay, yeah, no subway, yeah. Joel (14:41.1) So it's a pickle sandwich called the pickle witch. it's, it's apparently great. If you like pickles, it's like an amazing experience. So I'm going to go to Jimmy John's this weekend. I'm going to try the pickle, which, I'll, I'll, I'll report back on what my thoughts thoughts on it were. Emi B (14:43.439) You Emi B (14:51.521) Okay? Emi B (14:56.573) Yeah, I'll be listening out for that one because that sounds horrendous to me. I'm not going to lie. And I like pickles, but a whole massive... Joel (15:01.09) Ha Joel (15:05.87) It is creative and it is is some great marketing. Now, you know, at Chad and Cheese, we send a lot of free stuff to our listeners. And I think that if the pickle would keep in a mailing situation, I guess we could put it in a refrigeration. But I would I would say the pickle, which would be a nice giveaway, but we don't do that. However, if you like free stuff, we're giving away beer from our friends at Aspen Tech Labs. mentioned the the syrup that's aged in pappy. Emi B (15:15.871) Yeah. Emi B (15:32.065) Woop woop. Joel (15:34.808) bourbon barrels. It's delicious. We send that that's from our friends at Kiora. We have a bourbon selection from Chad and myself that's sponsored by Tex Colonel slash bullhorn. And if it's your birthday, Emmy, if it's your birthday, we might send you a bottle of rum from our friends at plum. Emi B (15:53.601) Emi B (15:57.803) That sounds amazing. Joel (15:59.022) Now we did birthdays a couple of weeks ago, so we're all, we're all good on, on, birthdays, but we'll be giving out a whole new bottle as we head into, November. Good God. The, the year is going fast. Emi B (16:13.675) Can I pretend it's my birthday? you Joel (16:19.672) But November means we're still in football season and we got to go real quickly. the leaderboard in fantasy football sponsored by our friends at factory fix number one in the number one spot, Emmy. Emi B (16:34.421) Who is it? Joel (16:38.284) It's me motherfucker. I'm in first place. I'm in first place. So everyone can at least for a week suck it. I'm in first place followed by, Jennifer Terry, Tharp, Dean Mackerel, David Stifle, Chad. So wash right there in the middle, Keith Sonderling, the commission, Laura Martinelli, Jackson, Dawkwist, Christie Lisbon, Dina, Perot for pyros. Your man, Adam Gordon is he's, he's ready to hug the bottom. He's ready for the, for the basement. but Emi B (16:42.901) Ciao! Joel (17:07.47) For now, that is occupied by our friend, Sean Horton, and that is. Emi B (17:07.471) I'm rooting for him. Joel (17:18.136) Can I find it? And that is fantasy football's leaderboard for week eight in football, which leads us to. Emi B (17:30.379) Topics! Joel (17:33.784) Very nice, very nice. All right, LinkedIn has introduced Hiring Assistant, an AI tool designed to automate various recruitment tasks from job description drafting to candidate sourcing and initial engagement. Initially available to select large enterprises, it's poised for wider adoption heading into 2025. Emmy, big deal, little deal or no deal from LinkedIn. Emi B (17:56.83) It is. Emi B (18:00.477) I think it's a big deal. I am applauding LinkedIn for this one. So for people who don't know, bring on the sound effects. So basically it's an AI feature. like, you know, like a lot of companies, everybody's obviously, that's all everyone talks about now, AI, AI, you know, how's it going to make our lives more easier? How's it going to speed up our hiring process? How's it going to increase productivity? So, know, LinkedIn obviously like every other company has jumped on a bandwagon. Joel (18:08.078) You Emi B (18:29.483) But what I really love about this is that it's really focusing on the recruiter and helping us to make our lives easier. it's got, know, for anyone who's not a part of the trial at the moment, you know, when it does come out, yeah, get on board because it's designed to kind of take on a whole load of kind of recruitment tasks. So you can do things from, you know, like let's say you go to a job intake meeting with your hiring manager, you're writing your notes down on a piece of paper. It's not, it's not new real notes. You might be helping your hiring manager to develop a job description that takes time. And then after that, obviously you've to go and source candidates and engage with them. All of that takes time. As I said, with LinkedIn hiring assistant, it actually automates all that for you. So you can put in your kind of like your scrappy notes that you've got on pieces of paper. You can just put that into there and then it actually changes it. Takes what you put down into full job descriptions, which is amazing. That's going to save you, like I said, a whole bunch of time. It then takes that job description and turns it into a list of qualifications. So, and then helps you to identify a pipeline of candidates. Then you could just intermittently, you know, so it automatically interacts with. So all of that, which normally takes you, you know, it could take you a day, two days. And when you've got a number of roles to recruit that all, you know, that's actually eating into the valuable time that you have to speak to candidates. This does it all for you. So. Joel (19:28.739) Mm-hmm. Joel (19:53.207) Mm-hmm. Emi B (19:56.421) I'm a big fan of this, know, I'm looking forward to kind of using it properly myself. Joel (20:01.674) Okay, okay. Well, so my initial thought was... That's right. thought, I'm not falling for it. LinkedIn, I'm not falling for it every so often. Hold on. said, this is my initial thought. Just relax a little bit. I know you're, I know you're hyped up. so every, every so often LinkedIn drops something and everyone freaks out about it. a few years ago they had, they launched their ATS and everyone said, my God, work day, ISEMS smart. Everyone's in trouble. Like Emi B (20:11.877) Emi B (20:15.329) Okay, okay. I know I am. Emi B (20:30.495) Yeah. Joel (20:36.056) They're going to kill all the ATSs. And then about a year after, no one's talking about it. Everyone has kind of forgotten. They, they haven't done it effectively and it just goes by the wayside. You'll remember they had stories for a while, kind of the Snapchat, Tik Toks. They're kind of, I think, kind of get back to that, which is a good, a good thing, but they do stuff. the, execution sucks, which is kind of their Achilles heel. They can do stuff, but for whatever reason, the execution just falls flat. Emi B (20:36.342) Yeah Emi B (20:48.788) Yeah. Joel (21:03.372) So when I heard about this, my initial thought was here we go again, another LinkedIn bomb, which everyone is going to forget about in about a year or so. However, however, I had, had, I, we have some cameras, hidden cameras in some of the vendors, out there and we have a, we have a hidden, hidden microphone and seek outs office. And this is what we, what we heard. Emi B (21:14.721) Mm. Joel (21:32.886) Yeah. So I do think that anecdotally I'm hearing more and more recruiters say, yes, I'm totally using LinkedIn's current AI tools, whether it's writing letters or correspondence or like they're totally digging it, totally digging it. And they like it, which you don't hear a lot of recruiters say, I'm liking what LinkedIn is given us. Emi B (21:42.271) Yeah. Yeah. outreach emails, yeah, yeah. Emi B (21:54.014) Exactly. Joel (21:55.606) So that's a really good sign. know that they're owned by Microsoft. know that open AI and Microsoft are in bed together. So it makes sense that they can cheat and start putting some of these cool ass AI tools, directly into their, into their services. So it makes perfect sense. Plug in all these automated tools that, that services like, I don't know, hire easy seek out, anyone who's doing automated stuff like that should be a little concerned about where this goes and watch it carefully. I also think you look at the data. No one has more profiles than LinkedIn. have like all this and they're doing a better job at like engaging people and getting them back to the side and keeping them on the site. They're doing better stuff with video. So long story short, I mean, I'm, I'm cautiously optimistic that LinkedIn is going to get this right. and that a lot of vendors are going to be sort of concerned that are doing this for, people now. Emi B (22:30.581) that links in. Emi B (22:51.627) So you have more faith in them now. Yeah. Yeah. Joel (22:53.728) I do because it is so important. AI is clearly the future. And if you're not doing it, you're in trouble and LinkedIn has a pipeline into AI central, which is open AI and Microsoft. So my, my concern would be, if you, if, if you have so many tasks like that done by recruiters in LinkedIn, do you need fewer recruiters to do the job? If this augments recruiters to being much more efficient and effective, does, companies need less or fewer recruiters and that's Emi B (23:04.341) Exactly. Yeah. Joel (23:23.16) For our industry, would be the fear that I would have. Any thoughts around, is this going to replace or kick out some of the recruiters on teams? Emi B (23:27.231) Yeah! And I think it's a valid concern because AI is still pretty new. People still kind of get their heads around it. So I get that people think, AI is going to automate all of our jobs so they don't need us anymore. But what I say that the role of a recruiter is not predominantly admin. That's not where recruiters add the most value. It's not a case of like scheduling interviews, for example. It's not sending outreach emails. All of those tasks are important, but where recruiters add the most value is when they're interacting with the hiring manager, interacting with interviewers, advising them on the marketplace, advising them on the prevalence of skills in the marketplace. It's talking to candidates, it's selling the employer's proposition, it's positioning them as a company, a destination that people want to work for. That is where recruiters add the most value. Yes, you need all this other admin. Yes, you need to... Joel (24:22.712) Mm-hmm. Emi B (24:27.433) you know, pull together job description. But those tasks now with things like, you know, this LinkedIn new feature, like other AI technology, it automates it for you. It frees you up to actually concentrate on a more value added task. And so this is where I think AI is fantastic, but AI is never going to replace a human. It's not, you know, you don't use AI to, or you shouldn't use AI if you're using it responsibly to make decisions. Joel (24:37.24) Mm-hmm. Joel (24:49.784) Mm-hmm. Emi B (24:56.265) It's not a decision-making tool because technology doesn't understand the nuances of people. It's a robot. So you're always going to have to need a human. So do I think that recruiters will replace? No, not necessarily, but it'll turn into more strategic HR recruiting professionals. Joel (25:01.389) Mm-hmm. Joel (25:08.258) Mm-hmm. Joel (25:18.318) Do you think that AI and automation makes recruiting more enjoyable as a profession? Yeah, okay. Emi B (25:23.209) I, to be honest, yes. You know, when I was back in the day, when I was recruiting all the time, I, you know, I hate admin. I've always hated admin. I'm the worst person at admin, you know? So the parts that I enjoyed was interacting with people. I enjoyed that side. That's why I perceived a career in the recruitment field. didn't, I didn't perceive a career in administration because I'm crap at it, you know? So if I've got a tool that's going to do it for me, amazing. Save me the time, save me the hassle of doing it myself. So yeah. Joel (25:31.373) Mm-hmm. Joel (25:44.278) Mm-hmm. Joel (25:51.576) Well, no question that you are, you are a people person. can, I can vouch, vouch for that. Well, from one, from one scary enterprise to another. Emi B (25:52.373) I think, yeah. You Joel (26:03.17) Let's talk about some news out of Google. Google CEO revealed this week that AI systems now generate more than a quarter. That's 25 % for those of you at home that don't know what a quarter is of new code for its products with human programmers overseeing the computer generated contributions. Does that mean current AI models are capable of generating flawless high quality code that developers can just insert and forget? Likely not. But does it mean fewer employees needed? for said coding, what say you, Emmy? Quarter, 25 % of all new code out of Google now is automated. Should programmers be worried? Emi B (26:45.153) should they be worried? I would still say no, going back to the fact that it helps to increase productivity. It helps to speed up the process, but it won't replace a human. I don't think, you know, I don't think tech people need to be necessarily worried in the terms of like their roles going, but I do think that there will be an increasing need for people, for those, you know, people within the tech world to upskill themselves. Joel (26:49.87) Hmm. Emi B (27:14.729) You know, they're going to have to develop new skills to stay competitive in the marketplace. Roles are changing. So whether you're on product management, UX design, you know, even customer education, all of those roles are still going to have to need a higher level of understanding of AI functionalities, particularly because their clients and customers are becoming more savvy around AI as well. Joel (27:32.248) Mm-hmm. Joel (27:44.044) I'm less optimistic. know, Elon, well, it's how it's Halloween. I'm doom and gloom today. Sorry about that. Everybody. if so we, Elon started this whole trend, the year of efficiency. And so we had in the pandemic, money was free. people were getting STEMI checks and like the party was on and companies, particularly big tech companies over hired. Emi B (27:45.889) Are you okay today? You're not very optimistic today. You Joel (28:13.856) If nothing else to keep them out of their competitors, you know, payrolls. And when things went south, it was like, okay, well we can't afford, or we don't need all these tech people. So we over hired, let's, let's lay them off. And then we had Elon by Twitter and said, Hey, we don't need all these programmers. They laid off 80%. Now they probably overdid it. They tried to get some people back, but I mean, Twitter is still Twitter. I mean, it's X, but it's still kind of works. It's, mean, it's. Emi B (28:18.506) Yeah. Emi B (28:37.014) Mm-hmm. Joel (28:42.894) It's fine. Right. I, I, well, advertisers, yes, but as a, as a technology, you don't hear about the fail. Well, you don't hear a lot about it crashing. and they are adding services. anyway, the point is investors, shareholders, businesses starting realizing like, we, if, if we can, if Elon can lay 80, 80 % of the work stuff off and they're still in business, they haven't closed the doors. Emi B (28:42.955) Does it though? Look how many customers they've lost. Yeah, no, I don't think it does work. Yeah. Joel (29:09.218) Like maybe we should look at doing that. like Facebook followed suit, some others, and then fast forward to a few months ago, the summer Amazon comes out and kind of says the quiet part out loud saying that they've saved $260 million in programming time with their new solution called Amazon queue. So Amazon queue, the homemade Amazon solution is doing a lot of the coding, doing a lot of the heavy lifting and saving a ton of money. So companies see this again, like, Look at how much money we can save on the bottom line. And I believe Amazon will eventually productize Amazon queue and resell it to smaller companies and businesses kind of like they do with kind of like they do with AWS. So now you have Google come out and their earnings and Google's been challenged, right? They've been getting their ass kicked by open AI. People are saying is Google done? How are they going to make money on advertising, et cetera? And they come out and say, Hey, we've, we've saved a lot of money by programming 25 % of our code being generated by AI. That means less programmers, right? I don't know how it can't. don't. It's. Emi B (30:14.517) I think roles would change. certain roles, yeah, I'm not going to lie yet. AI and what these companies are doing, it's going to eliminate some roles, but it's going to create a demand for other types of roles. this happens all the time. We look back 10, 15 years ago, roles that they used to have, we don't have anymore. But it doesn't mean that other roles haven't been generated in the long term. Joel (30:23.854) Mm-hmm. Joel (30:36.386) Yeah. Yeah. I think historically you're right. And I think, you know, when, when the, when the car came along and the horse and buggy went away and, it, but that, that took, that took decades to happen. Right. But with AI, we're seeing change so quickly. Government like, are we prepared for this? And I'm not sure that we are, but I, but I do know like in the short term, these big companies are saying, Hey, we can use technology to do a lot of the work that we're doing, which means fewer people. Emi B (30:44.596) Exactly. Emi B (30:50.646) It's speed. Yeah. Joel (31:04.224) And as big companies go, little companies and mid tier companies start following suit. If these companies start productizing like Amazon queue, and you can plug it into your organization and have less programmers and developers. And by the way, they're, they're going to be fewer customer service people. People are going after salespeople. Now marketers are going to be automated and recruiting as we see in our business, being automated. I, I think this should scare a lot of recruiters because we're not talking about LinkedIn. Emi B (31:04.651) Yeah. Joel (31:33.624) doing recruiting, we can both agree like, yeah, if you take away scheduling and job posting and like the little menial stuff, like we can actually get down to the work of recruiting. But if there are fewer people in a company, there's fewer people to recruit. So you need fewer recruiters because you have fewer people, right? So ultimately, I don't know how this ends optimistically or positively in the near future. You seem to disagree. Emi B (31:53.697) Well, think it also, yeah, I agree with some points and I disagree with other points. I think you need to think about the role of a modern day recruiter. A modern day recruiter isn't just someone who posts a job on a job board and wait for CVs to come in. They do a lot more now. The role has evolved over the years. recruiters are getting involved with workforce planning, which is maybe not something they did before. Recruiters are getting involved in anticipating the hiring needs. from the workforce planning, understanding the marketplace to build pipelines for maybe those niche new roles that will come, that will merge as a result of, know, companies automating. Recruiters are getting involved in employee branding and employer marketing. That wasn't the case before. So all of those things are now under the umbrella of a modern day, you know, TA professional. So do they need to be worried about the fact that, okay, my Joel (32:31.8) Mm-hmm. Emi B (32:53.119) you know, perhaps technology is actually taking over, you know, identifying candidates. No, because their time, as I said before, is more focused on selling that company brand, building the company brand, helping to retain people with the organization. And maybe what will happen is that that title of talent acquisition that we have now, maybe the acquisition part would actually disappear, you know, in the next five years, and they're just going to be talent. Joel (32:56.77) Mm-hmm. Joel (33:17.08) Mm-hmm. Emi B (33:20.459) professionals looking after acquisition and the management side. So that's our kind of example. say that roles will evolve. New roles will emerge because of the way the world is moving now because of the emergence of AI. Joel (33:32.91) I love it. love it. You're you're ray of sunshine on a Halloween day. And by the way, I will say maybe you can get done in 35, 40 hours as opposed to 45, 50, 55 hours, which is what I hear a lot of recruiters saying that they're so in gray shaded and busy work, maybe a little less time, more strategic thinking. Maybe that's a good thing for everybody. All right. I love it. I love it. Emi B (33:36.8) Hahaha! Emi B (33:48.169) Exactly. Yeah. Emi B (33:57.961) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that's only going to benefit organizations in the long run. Joel (34:03.958) I love it. That's so money. I love it. All right. Let's take a quick break and we'll talk about hiring trends for 2025. Emi B (34:11.553) Cool. Joel (34:16.333) All right, Amy, let's talk about some trends from a new analysis of 400 TA professionals done by Korn Ferry in 2025. Talent acquisition will face the challenge of integrating AI while preserving human connection with 67 % seeing AI's role in talent strategies, but concerns about depersonalization and bias. Hybrid work models are pervasive, yet finding office going candidates is tough while skills based hiring is valued. It's full adoption is currently lagging culture and employer value propositions are critical emphasizing authenticity and employer promises also very important. Emmy, what in the corn fairy report caught your attention the most? Emi B (35:01.983) Well, obviously AI, like I said before, everyone's talking about AI. Everyone's like kind of optimistic about AI, how it's going to increase their productivity, but they're still concerned because it's still very new that people can't get their head around it. And I suppose one of the things that caught my eye in this particular area, they said that in the report that the AI technology that we have at the moment can't handle all. of the talent acquisition strategy needs, particularly the high level ones. So I'll give you an example. Can AI help us to accurately identify talent gaps? Maybe not yet. Can AI interpret verbal cues when interviewing candidates? No, definitely not. You definitely shouldn't rely on technology for that side of things. that stood out to me. And I get why people should be worried and they should be worried because you do need to... use AI responsibly, you know, and as you, as long as you use it responsibly, absolutely fine. No issues at all. But like I said, it means that people are going to have to upskill themselves. It means that the people are going to have to understand the potential implications of AI if they don't use it responsibly, you know, because it will lead to things like bias if they, if they're not careful. So that's my opinion from the kind of the AI side of things. Joel (36:18.84) Yep. Yep. Joel (36:24.16) Okay. Okay. Understood. All right. So, so my takeaways, I'll give you three things, three highlights from, the survey that, that stood out to me. Number one, we're very concerned about AI, compromising the human touch in recruiting. and I will say, you reap what you sow, for, for decades since the internet came about, the black hole has been pervasive. Emi B (36:30.805) Mm-hmm. Emi B (36:41.013) Mm-hmm. Joel (36:53.368) candidates have applied with no response. and automation actually makes the communication more human. A lot of people don't know they're talking to a chat bot. They don't know it's a, they really think it is Olivia or whoever they're talking to. And they like that better than hearing nothing. So when we were superhuman, when we were only human, nobody heard shit. We went automation and Emi B (37:03.647) Exactly. Emi B (37:10.368) Yeah. Emi B (37:14.442) Yeah. Joel (37:21.55) candidates started hearing stuff. had conversations and updates and like scheduling, like they like that better than nothing. And now, and now we're like, wait a minute. Don't take the human out of it. Like you took out the human when it was all human. So now you want to be human now. Okay. So, so to me, it's like, you have no one to blame, about, about the fear of this when you could have been human all along, but you aren't now, hopefully there'll be deeper conversations, but initially like Emi B (37:29.088) Yeah. Emi B (37:42.017) Face off. Emi B (37:46.058) Yeah. Joel (37:50.734) Candidates like just hearing shit. They just like engagement. They don't necessarily know that it's a robot or a computer program that they're talking to. So if you're scared about, yeah, if you're scared about losing the human thing, like you only have yourself to blame for that because for years and years, you ignored candidates and now it's coming to bite shit in the ass. number two thing that stood out to me, people really, really don't want to go back to the office. 64 % are like six, like 64, they can't convince. Emi B (37:58.059) And that's the beauty of it now, yeah. Emi B (38:15.305) Nah, absolutely not. Joel (38:19.65) people to come. Even hybrid is like, nah, not into that. So if the best of the best candidates are saying, I don't want to come to work. If you're not adjusting, adapting to that, you're, you're screwed. You're at a competitive disadvantage. And I know like hybrid to me feels like half pregnant. Like you, you're either, you're either remote or you're not like remote remote is We're, we're, we're headquartered in Chicago, but I live in Burlington, Vermont, and I, that's that, and I can do my job from there. Hybrid means you're still where you are just a few amount of times. So I have a hard time with the hybrid thing. And I feel like that's just sort of back to the office light, you know, it's not quite office enough, but you're still in the office. So clearly, but the, the, writing on the wall is people don't want to come back to work. They don't want, they don't even want to, Emi B (38:50.645) Yeah. Joel (39:15.958) interview with a company that doesn't have remote work. The solutions need to get better. engaging people when they're at home, like if you're in that technology, if you're in that space, get really good at what you do because the future is at home, like work from home and how to best do that. So that stood out to me. the third thing that stood out to me really, was that skills based hiring may be in trouble. Emi B (39:37.12) Yeah. Joel (39:45.39) We've talked a lot about skills-based, well, because only 17 % of employers plan to switch to skills-based hiring. So we've heard a lot about skills-based. Emi B (39:46.849) Really? What do to that? Emi B (39:57.345) Do you think people understand it though? Joel (40:01.558) Yes. Kind of like they understand nuclear fission. Like I understand it, but I'm not going to do it. I, keep, most people are lazy. Most people like shorthand. They like, they like making decisions where I'm not going to get fired. Right. I bank it chase or wealth, like, cause I know it's not going to go out of business. I, I buy indeed because well, I'm not going to get fired for Emi B (40:09.694) Yeah. Joel (40:31.15) spending money with Indeed or LinkedIn, or I buy Microsoft because I'm not going to get fired for that decision. With recruiting, I'm not going to get fired for hiring someone who went to Penn or Northwestern or Oxford in your case, whatever, plug in Cambridge, whatever those schools are. So like, it sounds really good to say. Emi B (40:54.913) But you will get fired. See, this is why I challenge you. You can get fired for hiring someone who might have the great educational background, but they can't apply it in a real world. All that education in the world means nothing. Joel (41:06.83) Are my risks greater hiring a Northwestern grad that can't do the job or someone that has no experience or no credential, whatever that credential is, and they can't do the job? Which one is worse for me as a recruiter? Emi B (41:27.273) It's better to look, go for the skills. Yeah. Yeah. Joel (41:27.872) No skit are like no credential and doesn't do the job. So at least I'm, managing my risk in a short, like we're just a shorthand world. We, we go to that LinkedIn profile. Where did you work? Where did you go to school? We don't want to do the hard work of like, what did you actually do? We just want like a quick, I know that brand. I've heard of that. Like that gives them some status to me. So, so I think, I think that the human nature of this is creeping in. Emi B (41:53.567) Yeah! Joel (41:58.13) and skills-based hiring, it feels like it's in trouble. I mean, that's less than 20 % of employers plan to switch to it. Emi B (42:06.145) I see, I would challenge that because although, okay, skills-based hiring, I suppose the terminology has been more and more into conversations in the last couple of years, but it's what recruiters do day in, day out. Their job is to educate hiring managers and interviewers to see beyond the biases of a great university or a great company. don't get me wrong, going to a great university, I went to a great university myself, I'm so glad. Joel (42:12.27) Mm-hmm. Joel (42:30.446) Mm-hmm. Emi B (42:35.147) that went to that university, but that what I learned after three years didn't actually help me to be successful in my role. know, it's this actual practical skills that's actually helped me to succeed in my role. And I think recruiters, like I said, despite not having a terminology skills-based recruiting, recruiters have been doing that. Recruiters interview people, they check people's competencies. They're asking the questions, they're asking questions which... Joel (42:42.414) Mm-hmm. Emi B (43:01.377) unveil whether or not people have the skills, the knowledge, abilities to actually succeed in a particular role. And they have been advising hiring managers on look beyond the job title, look beyond the university, look beyond the company they work at and look at what they've achieved in that role. That is skills-based hiring. So I think it's just the fact that people are understanding what that means now, now it has an actual name. Joel (43:20.471) Mm-hmm. Joel (43:28.77) Yeah. Emi B (43:29.118) And it's going to be more more important in an environment where there may not be as many candidates around because people are worried about staying in their jobs because of how uncertain some job markets are. So you're going to have to think more creatively. You're going to have to look at those transferable skills. Joel (43:46.348) Yeah. You have way more faith in human beings than I do. just, and, and you, you've already done some sugar. Obviously I need to catch up here. the, the time zone is, is messing with me on this one, but yeah, I just, you know, my S my son is 18 and getting ready to go to college. And I sort of gave him my two cents. And I said, look, unless you know exactly what you want to do, Emi B (43:49.537) I do! I'm in a good mood today. Yeah, yeah, honestly, Halloween is good for me. Emi B (44:07.606) Yeah. Joel (44:15.342) get the largest brand name in a state because it's a lot cheaper in state than you possibly can because like it or not, that credential, that brand is going to follow you for the rest of your life. And if it's some obscure liberal arts, small college in Indiana that no one knows, that's not going to do you much good in the big scheme of things. Go to somewhere. Emi B (44:18.859) Yeah. Yeah. Emi B (44:38.515) in the long run, no? Like in 10 years time when they've been working. Yeah. Okay. Perhaps in the short term, yes. Yeah. Joel (44:41.326) Well, he, he, he, he, he's 18. He can't think about the long-term. His, his goal should be, his goal should, his goal should be put as many big brands on your LinkedIn profile as you possibly can. So my next bit of advice would be try to intern at the biggest brand you can possibly get into because the next decision will be who hires you. And at that entry level job, it's like, okay, who has the credentials that I can feel safe about hiring this person, but. I appreciate your optimism. appreciate your optimism. mean, by yeah, I mean, and all of it is just, it's necessity. If we don't have enough people, we have to hire for skill, and not, know, credential or where they went to school or where they've worked before. So this is a, a lot of this is a pendulum where the economy is really tight. Like we're to hire skills when there are plenty of job seekers, we're not going to hire for skills so much. And I think that pendulum. Emi B (45:12.609) I will challenge you in this one. Emi B (45:26.273) I want to know that you can actually do the job. Joel (45:36.75) will continue to swing, but very, very interesting. love it. All right. Let's talk about young people. Get off my lawn. Young people were in the news this week. A UKG survey said 83 % report feeling burned out. and 36 % of Gen Z say that they would also quit a job that negatively affects their physical or mental wellbeing. And this is in the backdrop of an OnlyFans model announcing this week that she's retiring at 28 after earning $67 million after being on OnlyFans for three years. Emmy, you're young or younger than me. Help me out here. What's going on with the Utes? Emi B (46:15.371) so jealous. Emi B (46:22.101) I am. Emi B (46:27.553) I'm only joking. Thank you for saying that I'm young. If I'm looking at Gen Z, Gen Z is 18 to 27 year olds. Hopefully for anyone watching online, do look like an 18 to 27 year old. But what is happening? think if I compare the Gen Z generation to my generation, I think there is a clear difference in mindset. When I was growing up and I still have this mindset of myself, it's a hustle culture. you want to get ahead. So what do do? You work hard, you put in hours, you, you know, you, if you have to work evenings, you work evenings. If you have to wake up early, you work, you know, wake up early. That is, that is our generation. You know, this is what we grew up with because we were told if you work hard, if you put in hours, you will succeed. You will go move up the career ladder. But I was watching TikTok, you know, kind of not, not so long ago and I was seeing this thing about soft life and I was like, know, what's soft life? know, the younger generation, that's not, that's not their priority. Their priority is not to work themselves into the ground. Yeah, yeah, they want to have a great job, but not at the expense of their health, not at the expense of their mental wellbeing. That's just not what's, you know, in the main, that's not what concerns them, you know? So organizations need to recognize this. Joel (47:41.72) Mm-hmm. Emi B (47:48.526) and start appealing to that, you know, that alternative mindset that we have now. Joel (47:53.07) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Joel (47:59.384) So a few things here. is kids, young people today have more options than have ever been available. When my parents went to school, was like, you can be a teacher, a doctor, a lawyer, you can be in the military. Like there might've been five things that you can do. And so your worldview is shrunken in that I have to do. Emi B (48:14.505) lawyer, accountant. Joel (48:25.646) this job and I'm going do it for a long time. And at the time companies maybe took care of you. And then when we came up, middle-aged people now, more things became available. Like the internet created a whole new array of opportunities, technology, globalization, you know, more, the world opened up more to us as we went through and young people today. Emi B (48:47.925) Yeah. Joel (48:49.954) You talk about options, man. Holy shit. Like if you just want to drive an Uber and deliver food and hang out at a, in your studio apartment, like you can do that. and I think a lot more, a lot more people are like, look, it's if you like, I can go down the street and take this and get a new job. Like they're just so much more. And then, and then in the backdrop of that, you've had young people, if they don't remember the Emi B (49:00.309) You could be an influencer. Joel (49:15.554) The great recession, they, they hear stories about it. They remember their parents. They have stories of people that lost their home, have homes for closed, for closed on. And then you had the pandemic when it was like the world's ending. I'm so scared. I'm like scared shitless. the, the worldview has been like, okay, there's more to work more to life than work. My parents got screwed by it. They're like their parents and I don't, that's not going to happen to me. So a combination of. Emi B (49:18.998) Yeah. Emi B (49:30.389) Yeah. Emi B (49:39.478) Yeah. Joel (49:45.312) I have a lot more in the options category than any other generation before it. And I have the experience of, and the storytelling of like work, like companies will fuck you. Like companies don't give a shit. They don't, they're not loyal to you. should I be loyal, loyal to them? And I think this, this is all coming to roost with, with young people. I mean, I see surveys that the number of young people who want to be influencers as a job is astounding. Emi B (50:01.579) I don't think that's true. Joel (50:14.083) like it is a career goal. I think there's yeah, go ahead. Emi B (50:14.849) Joel, yeah, I mean, I'll tell you a story. I think when was this last year? I think it was. did, I went to a local school with my friend who also works in HR and what we were doing, it was like a careers day. So we'll speak into teenagers. So, you know, 13 to 18 year olds about different professions. So, you know, we'll there talk about HR. Hey, you know, you can get into recruitment or can just as generally HR and then we'll, you know, you know, not surprisingly, a lot of them weren't really interested. It wasn't a life passion until I have a job in HR. So, you know, kind of switched it up a bit and said, look, tell me what do you want to do? What interests you? What careers? And I'm not going to lie, we were there for six hours. The majority of the kids were telling us they wanted to be an influencer, which was shocking for us because I just thought this is, yeah, I just thought it's something I read it like that was in the news. I said, no, no, no, people are telling us firsthand. Joel (50:46.062) Mm-hmm. Emi B (51:10.431) That is what they want to do. Why work nine hours, 10 hours, 12 hours a day when you can go online like this OnlyFans girl, you know, have lots of people like kind of admiring your photos, paying money for your photos, working a couple of hours a day. What, she's, what's she, she's finishing at 28, retiring, a millionaire. I've been working for donkey's years. Yeah, you know, why wouldn't I take that life? Joel (51:21.262) Mm-hmm. Joel (51:29.166) $67 million. Yeah. Joel (51:35.694) But you got to agree this isn't good for the future of humanity, right? The desire to be an influencer as a career, that can't be good, can it? And as a woman, let's say, let's look, the people making money in OnlyFans by and large are women. Do you think that's, that's good for women? Are we going to look back and go, man, OnlyFans was empowering and women got rich and like, yes. Or are we going to go back and go, yeah, we made some money, but that was a bad choice. Like, where are you on, on that longterm? Emi B (51:45.919) Depends what, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. Emi B (51:57.93) Yeah. Emi B (52:02.785) I think there's pros and cons. think you need to understand, people need to understand what they mean by an influencer. You can be an influencer like this OnlyFans girl, take your clothes off, have people pay money for you, but you can also be an influencer within the professional world. People who talk... Joel (52:17.878) I'm just talking about getting naked. I'm talking about OnlyFans, sexual stuff. Do you think that's a long-term positive for society? Emi B (52:21.524) Yeah. Emi B (52:26.209) For me personally, no, because I think that it's going to create problems down the line. I think people are going to be more conscious about their bodies rather than who they are as an individual. I think it opens up the door for hate online and people to start criticizing people online. So I think those are the things that obviously you need to be wary of. Joel (52:38.659) Mm-hmm. Joel (52:44.398) Mm-hmm. Emi B (52:51.393) But then on the flip side, and like I said, would I take off my clothes in public? No, absolutely not. For one, my mom will absolutely kill me. Even at my age, I'm still scared of my mom. So definitely not. But on the other hand, you've got a woman who is young, who understands what she's doing, who's taking control of her life, who's an entrepreneur, and she's retiring at 28. She's doing a lot more than maybe other people do. Maybe she's savvy. Maybe she understands exactly what's going on. So it's a balance. Joel (53:09.602) Mm-hmm. Emi B (53:20.779) For me personally, no, but I understand the long-term implications of doing something like that. Joel (53:27.47) Let's take a quick break and talk about men. Let's give them some attention. Emi B (53:32.426) Yay! Joel (53:35.822) All right. More doom and gloom, Emmy. I'm sorry. I got to do it. prime age men, those are guys 25 to 54 are increasingly leaving the workforce with 10.5 % or 6.8 million men in the U S not working or job seeking as of August of this year compared with just 2.5 % in 1954. So 2.5 % to 10.5%. Emi B (53:56.885) Hmm. Joel (54:03.054) This trend linked to lower educational attainment reflects economic shifts like job losses and manufacturing due to technology and globalization. Emmy, what's your take on what's going on with med? Emi B (54:16.277) What is going on with men? think, you know, I think again, it goes back to the shift in what people are now looking for. You know, it's not the, they're not necessarily looking for that, you know, I'm going to join a company, I'm going to be there for the next 25 years of my life. That is not the mindset of people now. And I think, like I said before, companies need to understand this and they need to understand it quickly because otherwise they're going to find it hard to retain. you know, or attract people within certain industries. And particularly if you're talking about people who don't have, you know, college, you know, college degrees, for example, college qualifications, industries like, you know, construction, manufacturing, for example, with, you know, which in the main hire people with vocational backgrounds, they are, they are going to struggle. So they have to, they have to look at other ways to retain people, they have to. think of how they're gonna upskill people. They're gonna have to think of non-traditional pathways to attract people within the organization in order to survive, basically. Joel (55:21.358) Yeah, this issue really upsets me, really scares me a little bit. Emi B (55:26.721) Mm. Joel (55:28.842) Okay, I'm going to go primitive on you. I got, I got, think I'm going this journey with me. Emi B (55:31.969) Okay. Emi B (55:35.859) You Joel (55:38.038) human beings used to live about 30 years. obviously we live longer now, but lot of the, makeup of what that person was, that human being is still in us. And as I can speak, I can speak to this cause I was a young man once, sex, sex and having sex was the number one driver as a young man. And I'm not, I'm not unique. Emi B (55:56.075) See you Emi B (56:07.099) Yeah Joel (56:07.47) Any, any guy who's honest when they were, when they were 17, that was, trust me, in, in on that was on the front burner. Okay. And we looked around really early and we figured out, okay, who are most likely to get girls? And it was the athlete. so a lot of boys, me included, maybe I enjoyed it, but you know, part of it was like, well, girls like, Emi B (56:16.257) Number one priority. Joel (56:36.428) sport, like guys who play sports. I can remember specifically, I was in band and I played basketball. I liked both fairly equally. liked basketball more, but my music teacher said, like, you need to decide band or basketball. my, at 13 years old, it was like, which is going to get a girlfriend basketball or saxophone. now can. Emi B (56:42.367) Yeah? Okay. Emi B (57:01.451) Oscar vote. Yeah. Joel (57:04.6) Kenny G wasn't around yet. might've changed my mind, but, but it was, I picked the thing that I thought would be more amenable or more, more attractive to a female, female. So when boys are in high school, they start thinking about, well, what's going to get a girl. And part of it is like, well, you need a good job. You need to make money. You got to have these things. If you want to like be marketable. Emi B (57:27.094) Yeah. Joel (57:33.902) As an adult and find a woman and a wife like this, this is my brain at 18. Okay. In the eighties. And so a lot, think a lot of men back then went to school because well, if I want to have sex, like their sex at college, that's a good thing. And then you get a job and their sex after that. So, it's all about procreating and keeping the human species. Like I'm not, I don't think I'm breaking any, any barriers here with this, but, but so, so now if you, if you fast forward to the world today, Emi B (57:56.289) That is so different to women, aren't they? Joel (58:03.83) And by the way, they're talking about education. Like there's been dumb people forever and there hasn't been this like there hasn't been these issues. I, like, I look at this as okay, if I'm right now, we have spent the last five decades telling people that if you're a plumber, construction worker, drive a truck, whatever, like you're a loser. So there's like, Emi B (58:11.413) Yeah. Joel (58:29.422) College isn't for everybody. A lot of people can't even get into college. we've basically said we've created this stigma where if you're not a knowledge worker, you're driving a truck, like you're a loser. So, okay, if I'm a loser, there's no sex. So like if I'm in high school, I'm like, why would I want to be that when everyone thinks it's a loser? And then I'm in a dating environment now where Tinder and studies have come out that 20 % of the men are getting 80 % of the attention. from the women on Tinder. So if I'm an attractive dude, something I don't know anything about, but what I've read, if you're attractive dude, you're getting a lot more action on Tinder and other dating apps than 80 % of the other men. So if I'm on these dating apps and no one's paying attention to me, okay, so I'm in a position where the job I would get, I'm a loser, I'm on dating apps, no one's swiping right, I'm a loser. Emi B (59:14.784) Okay. Joel (59:28.342) Why, why, why work? If there's no, if there's no promise of a life and a mate and attraction and that whole journey that men and women take with each other and I don't want to alleviate homosexuals, I'm being very general here. But if I'm a man and I can't, you know, I'm not gonna, I'm not a PHP program or I'm not like the high level guy. Okay. So this, this thing is a loser. Women don't like me. Why give a shit? Emi B (59:41.579) Yeah. Joel (59:56.514) I'll drive an Uber, I'll do some odd jobs. So I think, I think it goes, it all goes back to like these things have happened and we shouldn't be surprised that men are saying, fuck it, fuck it. Because I can't do the thing that genetically and like evolutionarily I can do easily. And I think that is coming to roost with people just dudes just checking out of the workforce. And by the way, Internet porn. Why go through a three hour date and spend a bunch of money on food when I can just, you know, get a bottle of Jurgens and go to Pornhub and have a good time and then go back to go back to Xbox. Like, so these choices and as we get VR and robo girlfriends and by the way, women are getting much more attention on social media. So they're getting that dopamine hit somewhere else where it's just the sexes are dividing. And I think men as a reaction are saying like, I'm just, I'm fucking out. done. Emi B (01:00:33.075) Yeah. Emi B (01:00:52.865) I think it's an interesting take. Yeah, no, yeah, massively. I think it's an interesting take. And to be honest, I was wondering where you were going with that. And obviously I'm not a male. I'll never profess to truly understand what goes on in a man's mind. I wish I did, because if not, my love life would be a lot better. no, no, no, no, no, definitely not. What would I say? Is a male attitude Joel (01:00:53.088) Off my soapbox. Joel (01:01:10.798) Young men wanting sex is not a revelation for you, right? Okay. Emi B (01:01:22.209) changing? Yes. I mean, if you look at the things like, you know, the people who've come into the world like Andrew Tate, you know, if I look at the amount of people who follow Andrew Tate, believe that what this the rubbish that comes out of his mouth is actually something to believe. His misogynist, you know, sexist views are something to be admired. There are surprisingly, and it very surprising for me, more and more people who actually believe it and adopt that kind of attitude. So Is that translating into the workplace? Possibly. Is it also because of the younger generation thinking that, they don't like, you know, like we said before, they don't necessarily want to be in the workplace working nine hours a day. They want to find an alternative way to find income that probably has a, you know, has an impact as well. So I think there's a number of different factors. I don't think it's kind of you can boil it down to one as to why young males are dropping out of the workplace. Joel (01:01:59.534) Mm-hmm. Emi B (01:02:19.765) But I think it's something that as a society, it is really important to address now because it's becoming more and more of a problem. More and more males are feeling disengaged and it's resulting in things like this. It's resulting in them dropping out of the workplace. It's resulting in them not feeling part of society. It's resulting in male suicide rates, for example, increasing because, like I said, it's a sad situation. Joel (01:02:45.176) Mm-hmm. Joel (01:02:50.286) Yeah. And I don't have all the answers and this isn't necessarily my lane. And, but I do think my, my take on it has some relevance. You know, the, the, Andrew Tate and look, men are angry. I mean, at the top of the show, I said, this is largely like, who's going to go out and vote the angry men or the scared women. And that's kind of what, at least in America we've divided into. And when you're, when you're an angry male, Emi B (01:03:01.739) Yeah. Joel (01:03:13.966) you listen to people who sort of justify your feelings and, blaming women or women are the reason or women's like, that's a reaction that we're seeing. people like Tater are, are, you know, running with that. by the way, by the way, the world is not a better place with a lot of lonely angry men. so like, Emi B (01:03:29.174) yeah. And people are listening, unfortunately. Joel (01:03:37.878) Not to get too dark, but those are the people that strap bombs to their chest. And those are the people that like pick up a gun and do stupid shit. like to your point, like it would, it would be hoover us to try to figure some of this shit out or make it better. I don't have the answers, but, but yeah, shit's shit's kind of fucked up. let's get to some, dad jokes, shall we? Well, that lighten the mood a little bit before we, before we. Emi B (01:03:39.488) Yeah. Emi B (01:03:51.135) Yeah. Emi B (01:03:59.745) Okay, I've heard your dad jokes. I'm not, okay, go for it. Joel (01:04:07.798) these are good. are Halloween inspired. Ready? Okay. How do you know if a vampire is sick? Emi B (01:04:11.273) Okay, okay, okay, hit me with it. Yeah. Emi B (01:04:19.735) No idea. Joel (01:04:20.63) He's, he's coffin. He's coffin. Get it? Coffin. All right. Why, why, why won't, why won't monsters eat ghosts? Why won't monsters eat ghosts? Emi B (01:04:24.11) God, God, no, no, no, no. Emi B (01:04:32.033) Is there Guli? Goulash? No, I don't know. Joel (01:04:37.356) because they always taste like sheet. Get it? Sheet. Go shit. All right. We're, we're going to end it on a good one. Here we go. what, what do, what do witches cook for dinner for on Halloween? What do witches cook on dinner for Halloween? Ooh, that's, that's not too bad, but, no, it's, it's, it's POS pasta, a Fredo pasta, a Fredo. Emi B (01:04:41.439) That is rubbish. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay, come on, come on. Third time lucky. Emi B (01:04:53.675) Goulash. Goulash? Yeah, yeah, no. Emi B (01:05:03.379) No, that's that's shit. Where did you get the... No, no. Is this a track GPT joke? It's like... Joel (01:05:12.234) you can Google all kinds of dad jokes and I know because I do it all the time. Emmy, thanks for joining the show. For anyone who wants to connect with you, where would you send them? Emi B (01:05:16.619) Yeah Emi B (01:05:20.848) You can go onto LinkedIn, that's where you'll find me. So M-E-E-M-I, Beredigo. So B-E-R-E-D-U-G-O. Not my full government name. Yeah. Joel (01:05:32.028) There you go, there you go. Happy Halloween and I wanna hear a good we out from you. We out! Emi B (01:05:38.387) Did I miss my key? Can we do it again? we out. Yes Joel (01:05:39.618) No, do it now! Emi B (01:05:44.735) Why do I never get this right? Emi B (01:05:53.921) Honestly, one day, how many times do I listen and get it wrong? Joel (01:05:54.092) One of these days you will get the intro and the outro right until then. Joel (01:06:02.862) See ya, Amy.

In this lively episode, Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman sit down with Quincy Valencia, SVP of Innovation at Harri, at the HR Tech conference. Known for her no-nonsense approach, Quincy offers her candid insights on the overhyped AI trend, emphasizing that companies should focus on the outcomes AI can deliver rather than getting lost in technical jargon. She highlights how AI has evolved since ChatGPT’s launch, moving beyond basic functionalities to transformative real-time data applications in industries like hospitality. As she discusses the future of HR technology, Quincy predicts continued shifts toward integrated ecosystems and strategic partnerships, suggesting that adaptability and innovation are critical for survival. The conversation wraps up with her advice for cautious companies exploring AI: prioritize business results over the technology’s novelty. PODACAST TRANSCRIPTION Podcast Intro: 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, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. [music] Chad: Here we go. Joel: Let's do this. We are live at HR Tech from the SmartRecruiters booth. This is the Chad and Cheese podcast and we are talking to Quincy Valencia. Quincy Valencia: That's right. Joel: Friend of the show for a long time. Quincy Valencia: Friend. Chad: Oh, god. Yeah. How many times has she been on? Joel: Two? Chad: 10? Joel: No. Chad: She's co-hosted. Joel: Have you done a prediction show with us? Quincy Valencia: No. Joel: Oh, I thought you did. Quincy Valencia: Did I? Yes, I did. I did the turkey show. Chad: Turkey show. Joel: Turkey show. Quincy Valencia: I've done the turkey show. Chad: Oh, yeah. Where you drove her crazy with that fucking turkey... Quincy Valencia: Like three years in a row. Joel: Gobble. The gobble still haunts you every night, doesn't it? Quincy Valencia: Oh, that gobble. It really... It hadn't. I'd forgotten about it. Thanks, Chad, for bringing that back. Chad: You're welcome. Joel: This is what we do. Quincy Valencia: It's now in my head. Joel: Bring back the nightmares. Quincy Valencia: I know. Chad: That's why you love me. Joel: So, you're fancily called, titled the SVP of Innovation at Harri. Quincy Valencia: It's a very fancy title. That's right, yes. Chad: It is very fancy. Joel: Does that play pretty well in bars and concerts and places? Quincy Valencia: It does. That's how I picked up my husband. [laughter] Joel: Boom. Boom. Quincy Valencia: Worked. Joel: I could go down a deep rabbit hole on that... Chad: Very nice. Quincy Valencia: I like this guy. Joel: But I will not. I won't do it. No. Chad: We're cutting that one right off. Quincy Valencia: How'd you like to marry an SVP of Innovation, I said, and we're together. I mean, there you go. Chad: Well, there you go. There you go. That just makes sense. Quincy Valencia: No, it's a fun title. It's actually fun what I can do with it. It's the practice that makes it more fun. Joel: Let's see how... No, I'm not gonna do it. I'm not gonna go there. Chad: Don't do it. Don't do it. Quincy Valencia: Don't go there. I won't go there. Joel: Not gonna do it. Chad: So, as SVP of Innovation, do you talk about AI much? Quincy Valencia: I specifically said that I'm not talking about AI because nobody should be talking about AI, and everyone here is talking about AI and I don't understand that. Joel: Okay, say more about that. Why shouldn't they? Quincy Valencia: Two years ago, November, we all know what happened, November 29, 2022 when ChatGPT launched and it was a revolution. And everyone predicted, including analysts, 'cause that's what I did at the time that it would actually revolutionize the way that work was done and the way that technologists created solutions that support the businesses and they were right. It actually has in many ways and will continue to do so, but everyone dove in headfirst very quickly. It's not... I'm saying this and have to take it with a grain of salt, it's a "easy transition." The first transition that people did, it's let's do what we're already doing but drive it with a different engine which means that you get the ability to take more data and analyze it in different ways and marry data to make it more useful in the outcomes. And everybody has jumped on that at some point in time over the past two years and is doing it fairly well. The leading with AI thing is bizarre to me at this point in time. It's the, "Ooh, look at this shiny thing we have." It's like so everybody's got that. I've got it on my laptop, for God's sake. What it is doing, though... Chad: It's on my phone. Quincy Valencia: And what is innovative are the ways that I'm seeing people use that engine because it is so much more powerful. You have so much more computing power in the back and the backend to produce better outcomes and results for their clients, and that's super cool. It's the leading with AI messaging that's bizarre to me. Joel: Have we overhyped AI? Quincy Valencia: No. Joel: No. Are we downplaying what AI is gonna mean to business? Quincy Valencia: It depends who you're talking to. I actually think we're in the right spot. I love that I've seen vendors leap on it but with guardrails, and we have to. My natural inclination is to be, let's get in the lab and see what the crazy mad scientist can do and that's great until you're dealing with real people's lives and data and you're purporting that this tool can make decisions for you or help you make decisions. You have to make sure it's accurate and real. So, everybody has gone straight in for it which is great. People have done it with some proper guardrails in place which is even better. So, no, I don't think that we're overhyping it at all, and I don't think we're under-hyping. I think people saw really quickly, wow, this is pretty cool. Joel: It's Goldilocks. We've Goldilocksed AI. Quincy Valencia: It's the baby bear. Joel: Okay. Chad: Talk to me about, okay, so we take a look at ChatGPT and they've got $20 a month for users like us and then obviously you can do more as a business, but then you have Amazon Q where they're actually doing these AI developers that actually go back and fix your tech debt and do your upgrades and all this shit that, to be quite frank, developers just don't wanna do. They wanna be fashion-forward. Those are two entirely different business models which could garner a hell of a lot of money. I think Amazon Q is even, is bigger, just because if you implant that into AWS, it could explode. In our space, what have you seen that is really... For you, has been, yeah, no, that is innovative. Quincy Valencia: So, I'll talk about our space, and I'll talk about my space specifically, not MySpace. That was like 2007. Chad: Friendster? Can we talk about Friendster? Quincy Valencia: Napster. Joel: Who was in your top ten friends, Chad or me? Quincy Valencia: Neither. I'm sorry. Joel: Neither, okay. Chad: Goddamn. Quincy Valencia: I'm sorry. Well, I've known Chad longer, so it may... No, neither of you. No. And you don't like me. Joel: The answer is you don't remember 'cause it was too... Quincy Valencia: Chad said you don't like me, so. Chad: Yeah, she doesn't have a T-shirt. Quincy Valencia: I don't have a T-shirt. Joel: Chad lies. I know you listen to the show. Quincy Valencia: I know, I know, I know it is true. What was the question? Oh, what have people done? Chad: Yes, innovative. Quincy Valencia: So, what I've seen, I've seen such cool stuff. So, we talked about this before. So, the initial entree into this space were some things that vendors were already doing, but now they're doing it in a different way. And we saw this even a year ago at this very event where it's the assisted authoring and how can I help you out your performance review and how can I make you as a frontline manager more effective in your conversations that you have with your employees? And that is so impactful, and it was a great way to enter. But now we're seeing even more data come in and how are you bringing that in and we're marrying that with operational data. So, if you can take... For example, in the people space, I'll talk about hospitality because that's what Harri does. Nowhere is your labor data having that real-time more important than it is in the hospitality space because if your sales projections are off by $1000 in the course of a day, then your labor is eating up more of your profit than it should and you need to know and so having that at a weekly report is not helpful or useful. Quincy Valencia: Now, you can get that in real-time. You're pulling from different databases, you're crunching it there and you can push those notifications to a McDonald's operator that says, you're operating at a much higher percentage of what your labor projection was. You may want to cut someone or your sales are trending higher. We expect it'll do that for the remainder of the week. You may wanna adjust your labor schedule. And then you... It's actually being done for you in an automated way, but you're informing, not HR necessarily... I mean, they still need to know. Chad: The business. Quincy Valencia: You're informing the business, you're informing the people that need the information at a level that they need it. So, businesses are operating here, they're not operating from here and they're much more nimble and they can be much more responsive. And we're already seeing extremely positive impacts on top and bottom lines in businesses. Chad: That's so smart. Quincy Valencia: And that's the power of AI. Chad: That's so smart because that is business impact... Quincy Valencia: That's right. Chad: And that ties the business impact to talent, and we don't do that enough in our space. Quincy Valencia: That's right. And we've been talking about this forever of how is it that we can actually make an impact if all the years that HR wanted that seat at the table that we all talked about and then HR got the seat at the table and didn't know what to do with it, in general, some people did but it wasn't necessarily their fault. It's very difficult to see the business impact when your people data is siloed from your operational data. And now, there's absolute systems in place that can do that without extreme complexity and making sure that it's done so that those operators can actually make an impact on their business. Joel: Quincy, you say a lot of things that scare me and I'm sure I'm not alone in that. A lot of our listeners, viewers... Chad: She does that intentionally, by the way. Joel: A lot of our listeners and viewers are new to this AI thing. It's a little scary, a little much. What advice would you give a company just dipping their toe into AI? They've been afraid of it, intimidated, what advice would you give them to jump in? Quincy Valencia: My advice would be don't ask about it. You're talking about buyers, right? Joel: Yes. Quincy Valencia: It's not the relevant conversation. The conversation is not, do you have any of that AI stuff that I've been hearing all about? It's irrelevant. The conversation is when they're evaluating vendors is what outcomes are being produced from whatever it is your tech stack is. If your vendor starts talking about, yes, we're using Gen AI to do this and this and this, then there are some questions when you're going through the process about the guardrails and about security and how are you guarding against hallucinations and all of those things there... Chad: Auditing, yeah. Quincy Valencia: And auditing. But the question is, it should never be, what do I do with this AI thing? My answer, and this is going to sound strange, but it's don't worry about how they're doing it. It's up to them, let the technologist do the tech thing. You need to know if they're gonna be able to provide you with the outcomes that you want for your business, and those are the questions that you ask. If you go down the path, then you have those security conversations and other things there. And where are they going with it? What are they doing that's different than the other vendors are doing, is also actually a really important thing too. And by different, it's not different just to be different. Again, it's that, how is this going to impact my business, not just my people model. And that's where I think all the focus needs to be, not the, ooh, AI. Chad: So, on the hairy side of the house, actually, we were talking to Rebecca Carr earlier and she was talking about how really most of the older platforms, they're more of the Titanic and they can't handle high volume and that's kinda like their weak spot where a lot of the newer platforms, that's where they were really they were built to start with high volume. And that's where you guys really... I mean, that's where you guys... Quincy Valencia: That's what we do... Chad: Yeah, that's what you do. Quincy Valencia: We focus on... It's hospitality, we're a hospitality space. Chad: So, if you take a look forward and you have a lot of these platforms, these older platforms are really having problems adapting, do you just see a lot of M&A or do you see just a lot of loss in the market for some of those bigger platforms? Quincy Valencia: I think it's gonna be a combination of... Well, there's three. I think some will not adapt quickly enough and if they haven't already gotten on that train, they're late, I fear. Some. There will be... We are still seeing now... Last year at this very event and in the analyst room, we were talking about seeing the swing back away from point solutions and toward that full platform solution. So, the importance of integrations is really, really important. So, whether your platform provider is really truly a full platform or whether they're integrating seamlessly with some of those others, it doesn't really matter. It's still a single source of truth. As long as the vendor has the ability to do that, I think they're gonna be okay. Those who are insisting on we have to build everything ourselves in the old way are gonna be done for and those who aren't migrating to the cloud or even multi-cloud solution, they're gonna have difficulty because it's hard to pull that data from the different places as we know and they simply can't compute it quickly enough to compete with everybody else in the market who is. Quincy Valencia: So, there will continue to be... I predict that M&A is gonna pick up again. I think it's slowed some. We're gonna start seeing that again. People are ripe, they're at that stage... Joel: Shit's on sale. Quincy Valencia: Three years in. Shit's on sale. It's a flash sale, man. We're gonna see it. Chad: A flash sale. Quincy Valencia: Yeah. And then some have done really, really well. Some of your big platform providers have done quite well with coming very quickly at that, but those who haven't are gonna have a problem. Joel: By the way, we have a Groupon for eightfold if you're in the market for buying someone at a discount. [laughter] Joel: One of the more popular stories recently is... Quincy Valencia: That's my favorite line, by the way, of this entire show. So, I can leave now. We have a Groupon for eightfold. Joel: I could drop the mic, that's good? Okay. Quincy Valencia: I'm done. Joel: Thank you very much, everybody. Chad: He's been waiting all day to use that one. Perfect. Very nice. Joel: No, she set me up perfectly. Chad: Very nice. Joel: One of the more popular stories in the news now is Klarna talking about being able to dump Salesforce, Workday. Some people are obviously skeptical of that but from your perspective, you've been around a while... Quincy Valencia: Thanks a lot. Is that a way of saying I'm old? Joel: You're experienced. You're a woman of a certain age and as you walk through the halls here... Quincy Valencia: Chad's older. Joel: Or you look at startups coming up and companies that are established, who do you say, oh, they're fucked because of the innovation that's happening? Quincy Valencia: I can't say that. Joel: Give me some categories if not companies like job writing services, maybe. [laughter] Joel: Not to lead the witness, but just giving you an example without naming a company but a category. Quincy Valencia: I mean, that's sort of true, exactly what you just said. It's any of those categories that have been doing any of those, we'll write your... We'll create your job descriptions for you, we'll write your resume for you because I took a certification course and I know how to do that now. It's any of those... It's those things that people don't want to do or don't have the time to do or it's not as much of a value-add that now you don't need it anymore. You just don't. If that's your business, you might wanna think about pivoting or selling while somebody might... Joel might have a Groupon for you, I don't really know. Joel: Thus the discount flash sale that we've been talking about. Quincy Valencia: Yeah. I mean, that's really hard, it's that sort of thing because, and Chad said it before, developers, there's stuff that even developers they don't wanna do it and if that's how you're using your developers, you're wasting your money. Put them where they can add the most value and that's for delivering results for your clients and really ChatGPT on your laptop can write your job description for you. It's just... Yeah. I'll leave it there. Chad: Predictions, predictions. What does 2025 look like for you and the landscape of our industry? Quincy Valencia: So, I think we've touched on what it's gonna look like. So, it's more... The focus is gonna be less on... Please, dear God, okay, so this is a hope and a prediction but stop focusing on how you're doing things. I don't wanna hear... I don't wanna come to this event next year and hear about AI anymore so that's the first. Chad: Investors love those two letters. Quincy Valencia: I understand, but investors... Chad: They do. Quincy Valencia: Investors need to because they need to know how you're powering that engine, your buyers don't. So, the focus is gonna be very much on... Chad: Not the same narrative is what you're saying. Quincy Valencia: Correct. So, it's looking at how you're delivering business results for your clients. We're gonna start hearing more and more of that narrative which I already am hearing more of which is great and I'm also seeing it from... It's strange going from the analyst chair back to the vendor chair, but I'm still very much looking at what my fellow... Former fellow analysts you're are looking in, they're all seeing it too which is very, very good because they're in the backend, in the back room. That sounds really bad. [laughter] Quincy Valencia: Not with Diddy but with the vendors hearing what their goals, where they're headed with their products. So, I think we're gonna hear a lot of that. I think we're gonna continue to see an expansion of the skills-based workforce narrative which we've been hearing which I'm also sick of hearing about, but we're actually seeing results from it now, so it's not just talk and that's gonna expand. So, in the arena that we work in in hospitality, the traditional narrative has been you just need people who can breathe and no longer is that. They're becoming more sophisticated and they see that there, but the skills are different and you can't use those same models for a frontline just as workforce that you use somewhere else. So, continuing to find those gaps in that white space because that's not going away either. And particularly as... Oh God, I'm gonna talk about AI but as AI is rendering some jobs obsolete. So, people need to reskill. Joel: Spoiler alert, I'm going to call you old again. I hope you're okay with that. You've been to a few of these HR tech conferences... Quincy Valencia: One or two. Joel: What stands out to you at this one? What are you sort of excited to explore and learn more about? And maybe just what is your take on the industry as a whole as we head into 2025? Quincy Valencia: I can't say what's standing out for me yet because I just got here this morning. I haven't come around yet, so I can't tell you what I'm seeing yet. Joel: Okay, I'll rephrase it. Who are you looking to check out or what sort of new technologies or businesses are you on the hunt for while you're here? Quincy Valencia: That's a good question. So, I'm checking out everyone because I wanna see how the market is addressing those same issues that we as an organization are addressing. We're building a lot of software, but we also are looking at strategic partnerships. So, if there are things that we can deliver that we can get to market and realize revenue from more quickly, maybe we should. So, that's what I was talking about. We are a platform provider, no question, and we build things very, very well but there are so many things that we wanna take to market. There are some things that maybe we shouldn't build, maybe we should partner with someone to do that. So, specifically, I'm looking at... Well, I can't say that out loud 'cause I can't tell you what I'm looking at. Joel: She also really wants to say acquisition but she won't. Quincy Valencia: I didn't say that. Joel: I said you want to say it but you're not saying it. Quincy Valencia: I didn't say that I wanted to say it. I'm saying that it's very smart. The market is moving very quickly and I'm saying that sometimes it's really important to build things yourself... Joel: Build or buy. Quincy Valencia: And sometimes it's important to partner with people who already have that. So, just really looking to see... And how others are. So, as I'm walking around, I'm looking at... Even at our booth, we're Harri but we have an ADP flag in our booth because that's really important. And I'm seeing a whole lot of that around here too. You're looking at a whole lot of marrying of technologies... Chad: Ecosystems. Quincy Valencia: That's... The ecosystem which is really, really smart. And everybody's talked about ecosystem, it's like, oh, we're in the Workday ecosystem. So? Workday doesn't even know who you are, it doesn't mean a thing. If you're not actually working together to make sure that your products are marrying with yours, then you're not helping each other in either way. Sitting in someone's ecosystem is irrelevant to me. Joel: Yeah. Billy Idol has a better connection with Workday than you do. Quincy Valencia: Exactly. Chad: That's Quincy Valencia, SVP of Innovation over at Harri. Quincy, if somebody wants to connect with you, where would you send them? Quincy Valencia: Well, certainly you can go to harri.com and look what we have to offer. My personal email is quincy.valencia@harri.com and certainly you can find me on LinkedIn as well and MySpace. I think I still have a profile. [laughter] Joel: She deleted the Friendster account a week ago. Chad, that is another one in the can live from the SmartRecruiters booth at HR Tech. We out. Chad: We out. Podcast Outro: Wow, look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese podcast or maybe you cheated and fast forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckleheads instead. Now, go take a shower and wash off all the guilt but save some soap because you'll be back. Like an awful train wreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.

In this episode of the Chad and Cheese Podcast, hosts Joel and Chad discuss a variety of topics including Snoop Dogg's decision to turn down a $100 million offer from OnlyFans, the ongoing legal challenges faced by Indeed , and Upwork's launch of a new AI feature named Uma. They also share personal updates, travel plans, and insights into the fantasy football league, while providing shoutouts to industry figures and discussing market trends. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:33.08) Two guys who can check in whenever they like, but they can never leave. Hey boys and girls, it's the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your cohost, Joel, vote early cheeseman. Chad (00:45.036) This is Chad. Boom boom boom, Sowash. Joel (00:48.536) And on this episode, indeed get served. Snoop says no to $100 million. And who'd you rather? Let's do this. Chad (01:01.624) Nolence. So have you had enough Nolence? Have you had enough Cajun food? That's probably a big no, right? Joel (01:07.85) I can never have enough Cajun food, but I I would I'd have some weight issues if I lived down here. I am. It's too much rice, cornbread, gumbo, etouffee, catfish, spicy food. Yeah, it's it's it would be rough on me to live down here, but it's nice to visit every so often, every so often. And we got it fantastic weather. Usually you're melting in, you know. Chad (01:17.838) It's still good. It's still good. Yeah. Chad (01:31.598) It is, it is, it Joel (01:36.136) sauna-like humidity and it's just beautiful. It's beautiful. Chad (01:37.134) Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, none. Yeah, thanks to Outsaw for that. I heard they actually ordered low humidity. That's awesome. We're going to find ourselves at the World War II Museum tonight, which I'm really excited about because you haven't been there yet and you're a history buff. You're I mean, you're going to have to bring another pair of underwear with you. That's all I got to say. Joel (01:58.146) The outside is enough to get excited. mean, the statues, Roosevelt, just, yeah, I'm pretty pumped. They say the three hours that were there will not be enough time to soak it all in. Yeah, a little tease for, if I had to pick one theater, which should I pick, Europe or the Pacific? Chad (02:02.017) yeah. Chad (02:12.494) It'll be a tease. It'll be a tease. Yeah. Chad (02:19.053) I lean toward Europe first. Yeah. And then, you know, kind of give that tease for coming back for the Pacific. So kind of like band of brothers and then the Pacific later, you know? Joel (02:22.914) Yeah, okay. Joel (02:30.914) Fair enough, fair enough. I'm going to focus on Europe tonight, tonight. And let's focus on some shout outs, shout out. As you know, our sponsor by our friends up North, Kiora, that's text recruiting made simple chat. Who you got on shout outs this week? Chad (02:38.765) Yes. Chad (02:49.004) My shout out is to Jeff Taylor. Yes, the original founder of the Monster Board and CEO of what was later created and y'all know it as Monster.com. Jeff wrote an announcement on Facebook and here it is, quote, hello to all. I'm amazed at how little has changed in quote unquote, our space. Do you agree? Somehow the process program we've pioneered 30 years ago is still the way it was. Paid a post and resumes behind a paywall with keyword sort to identify greatness. To identify greatness, that's funny. It was the way but no longer works well enough, especially with the large language model overlays. It's been, insert your adjective here, shitty is my adjective, to watch Monster navigate the changing landscape. The recent move to merge the two once titans of our industry makes sense on one hand, but on the other hand, two lukewarm glasses of water combined can't logically make a hot glass of water, even if you rename it tea. Man, Jeff, you gotta work on these. Should have thrown this in the chat GPT. So, he's decided, I'm just gonna cut to the chase here, kids. He's decided to start a new company and I'm gonna... Joel (04:09.432) to use this. Chad (04:14.54) say that there's only six people in this company thus far, which is gonna be called Boom Band. And so I don't know if you remember or not, but Boom Band and Boom Boom Boom from Eons, you remember that? Boom Boom Boom, he's bringing it back. He's bringing it back. So shout out to Jeff Taylor and Boom Band. Good luck, buddy. There are so, so many startups in this space. Joel (04:29.442) do. I do. Chad (04:41.742) Good luck. We'll see what you got. Maybe you'll come on to firing squad Joel (04:46.178) So in that long-winded description, I still don't know what the hell it is. it doesn't say anything. Okay. Chad (04:49.956) it doesn't say anything about what it is. He says large language models and that kind of stuff, but there's no indication of what it is. And I looked for boom band and it's literally like a waterproof watch. mean, it's like, okay. Well, so monster, there were a bunch of, a bunch of different monsters. was monster cable, monster drink. So I guess he doesn't care about the actual name itself. He'll just make it the way he makes it. Good for you, Jeff. Good for you, Jeff. Joel (05:14.12) huh. Yeah. Well, yeah. And we'll get into patents, patents and trademarks later. so my shout out, although it may sound like a big downer, goes to posters. Chad, I've been in this business for 25 plus years and I'm still amazed at how surprised I am at the businesses that money can be made in such bizarre places. Chad (05:25.367) yeah, yeah. Chad (05:35.434) huh. Chad (05:40.174) Big money. Joel (05:40.312) But we're here at the OutSolve conference. They just made an acquisition of a company called Labor Law Center, which sounds like a lot of important nothing, but they make posters. Posters, the posters that are in break rooms with the legalists, the different laws, all the things that the government says you have to do. And this company is incredibly profitable and successful. you don't appreciate Chad (05:51.49) Yes they do. Chad (06:04.846) killing it. Joel (06:07.244) When California changes their minimum wage laws, well, shit, every company of any significant size in California has to get a new poster. And who do they call? Not Ghostbusters, they call it the Labor Law Center and they get a new poster. These guys are shipping out posters in a warehouse. It's just amazing how much money and businesses and compliance companies that make tons of money on making sure the companies stay out of Chad (06:34.146) Mm-hmm. Joel (06:37.112) court and stay out of the long arm of the law doesn't touch these companies. hey, shout out to Jesus Posters and Labor Law Center who's making bank on making some fucking posters. Good for them. Chad (06:38.978) water. Chad (06:48.654) Yeah, yeah. One thing we haven't done, we might want to do a Chad and Cheese movie poster once a year, who knows. But where would you get that? You would get it at chascheese.com slash free where you can register to win t-shirts, the sexy t-shirts provided by Ayr and App. Bourbon barrel aged syrup, yes, by our friends at Keyura. Beer from our friends at. Joel (06:58.338) Come on Chad (07:16.128) Aspen Tech Labs, that is a bunch of craft beer delivered to your front door. Whiskey from Tex Colonel and Bullhorn, buh-buh-buh-buh, Bullhorn, we'll hear about them later. Two bottles of whiskey. And if it's your birthday, you could win rum from our friends over at Blum. you know I can. Joel (07:39.81) Well, Chad, we went over all the birthdays from last week through the end of the month. So, yeah, so the rum still needs to go out. It's going to be a little Halloween treat for someone out there who's celebrating a birthday in October. But yeah, we've done the birthdays for the month. And what else is done? Travel for the year. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Chad (07:43.682) That was a long list, yeah. Chad (08:00.238) Well, yeah, I mean, not travel, but events. You're going to travel to your backyard and watch your new pool get winterized from what I understand. What else you got going on? since you won't be on the road again with the Chad and cheese. Joel (08:14.754) So this was a crazy travel year for us, crazy event year for us. with the magic of technology, with my watch and tracking my sleep, like it's incredible how bad travel is for your body. Sleeping, everything is awful. So I'm gonna take time to like recoup, get back to some normalcy, spend time with family, enjoy the holidays. Yeah, I'm gonna do a lot of nothing for the most part. How about you? Chad (08:17.442) Yeah, isn't fun. Chad (08:29.09) Yeah. Chad (08:43.352) So again, we're on the other side of the coin on this one. So Julie and I voted on Monday. So we're headed back to our place in Europe, although we have renders there until November 15th. So we're going to be hopping around Portugal and Spain for two weeks, going to Sintra, which is a beautiful place just right outside of Lisbon, then headed to Nazaré, which is, you've probably seen the Netflix series. Those are the biggest waves in the world, over 100. 100 feet waves. We're go check those out. Then we're gonna go to Caixcaix, Cadiz in Spain, and then visit some friends in Gibraltar, and then go back to Cabanes when we're gonna get into Joel Cheeseman mode and do a good amount of nothing. Joel (09:22.434) Mm-hmm. Joel (09:26.146) There you go. There you go. Now the election, you'll be in Europe when that goes down. you have a celebration, a watch party? You're just gonna ignore it? Like what's your sort of US election strategy? Chad (09:41.218) We're gonna be in Nazaré, and Kennedy's actually gonna fly down from the UK. So she's gonna come in. It'll be an all night thing. So it's not gonna be, we're gonna go to bed at two o'clock in the morning. It's gonna be an all night kind of thing, at least for the girls, because they love it. This is Julie Super Bowl. She loves her some politics, yeah. Joel (09:42.701) Joel (10:02.624) Yeah. Now, next question, will you be watching it from a European news point of view or will you be logging into CNN, MSNBC or whatever US news outlet of choice? Chad (10:13.506) I think for our brain space, it'd probably be better if it's from Europe because we don't get as much as the propaganda and bullshit that we see from the left and the right and all over the place. It's like more straight news. There's still obviously the propaganda ring. yeah. Yep. Joel (10:26.69) Little BBC, yeah, a little bit of a news. Well, while you're there, Chad, don't forget that there's football, and there's football, and there's fantasy football with the Chad and Cheese podcast. Week seven is in the books. Thanks to our friends at Factory Fix for supporting our unhealthy addictions. Here's your leaderboard heading into week eight. Number one, the Matt Ozzie. Chad (10:33.826) Yes! Chad (10:39.502) Mm-hmm. Joel (10:53.08) Dean the Mac Daddy mackerel is in the number one spot. David Stifle knocked him off the top spot. Your boy Joel right here, Cheese. Cheese is in the number three spot. Hanging tough like new kids on the block. Number four we got Jennifer Terry Tharp. You are moving up to the fifth spot, which was a nice, nice week for you. And the commish, Keith Sonderling is right on your tail. Action Jackson, Dalquis is number seven. Chad (10:53.717) He's back. Chad (11:03.352) Too bad. Bronze, young bronze. Chad (11:12.739) Yeah. Joel (11:21.56) Followed by Laura Martinelli, Dina Perro for Pyros last year's winners number nine like a Led Zeppelin Adam Gordon, that's right. Some things from Scotland are crap apparently that is Adams Adams fantasy football strategy. He is at number ten like a brick in the ocean number 11 Christie Lisbon and Sean Sean Horton just loves loves the basement. just loves the cellar. He loves the caboose. Like Sean, I don't know. I don't know. He allegedly, he told me he's getting help from his neighbor. I'm thinking his neighbor's not doing him any favors. He might need to go to another source. Maybe something. Yeah. Chad (11:51.789) He does. Chad (11:56.152) Is he only playing his bi players at this point? Chad (12:07.473) Ciao! Go to Adam Gordon. Adam Gordon can help. Joel (12:14.794) Adam's got some trade bait he'd like to float by you. And by the way, Adam probably knows none of his players, so he'll trade anybody at this point. do that. But that is our week seven Fantasy Football Roundup, sponsored by our friends at Factory Fix. And let's waste no time. Right? Chad (12:34.584) The Jopics! Joel (12:37.878) Right into the news and what better company to talk about than Indeed, our faves. Flexi World Technologies, that's right, say it with me. Flexi World Technologies is suing Indeed for patent infringement related to data mining technologies used in Indeed's products like Indeed Ads and Resume Project. The lawsuit claims direct and indirect infringement by Indeed and its customers with Indeed being served. Chad (12:45.078) Mm-hmm. Flexy. Joel (13:06.122) on October 21st of this year. Chad, your take on all this legal-ess at Indeed. Chad (13:13.038) Yeah, so apparently, you know, they say this is willful infringement because our friends over at FlexiWorld, and we don't know who FlexiWorld is. I mean, this is the first time I think we've ever heard of them. But anyway, our friends over at FlexiWorld, they let Indeed know December 29th, 2021 through a letter, a notice letter that, hey, stop this patent infringement. And again, you said Indeed ads, Indeed resume project, Indeed instant match. And these features are allegedly accessible through both web-based platforms and mobile applications. These are all important things for Flexi. It's incredible because they're also citing that the clients are infringing on the patents, right? And there's indirect infringement. What's the indirect infringement? Well, Flexiwork claims indeed Joel (13:46.04) Mm-hmm. Chad (14:09.812) induced infringement, induced as in pulled people in to infringe their customers on how to use Indeed products that were already infringing, right? So it's like, there's this bigger conspiracy that looking for first and foremost, Indeed knew what they were doing. Second, they were pulling accomplices in to do what they were already doing. Number three, this is gonna go badly. I don't know, I'm not sure. Joel (14:18.061) Mm-hmm. Chad (14:39.672) We've seen these patents over the years. We've talked about Grasses Greener having the scraping technology patent, those types of things. Nobody's ever enforced them before. So this to me is going to be an interesting precedent. So FlexiWorld, let's see what you got, man. Let's see what you got. Joel (15:00.733) I'm going get out my crystal ball and see what the judge's final say is on this case. Chad (15:11.278) If you go to FlexiWorld, man, all they have on their site is patents. The button up top, like you go to ours and it says, watch, you know, watch the AI sessions or something like that. Theirs is, check out our patents. Joel (15:15.201) Yeah. Joel (15:24.182) Yes, this from what I can tell is a one man show. This is not a company. There's no profile page on LinkedIn. It's from what I can tell one dude in Asia, which seems to be Taiwan slash China. His name's William Chang. creates patents and then hopes to like literally he has country by country patents that he has. Now he has an illustrious work. Chad (15:47.5) Yeah, yeah, mostly in the US. Joel (15:51.32) career, he's worked at Sharp and some other companies, but this seems to be like a just patent troll looking to get paid by a lot of companies. mean, recruit there in Japan, it's right in his backyard, like that seems pretty juicy probably. The news section on this site hasn't been updated since 2019 and it jumps from a 2019 news release to 2002. So there's a 17 year gap between Chad (15:53.986) Mm-hmm. Joel (16:20.086) whenever, when these guys, yeah, when these guys thought it was important to, to, yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, he better have some deep pockets on this to fight indeed and try to get some money from this and their clients. I, I don't know. Maybe they'll pay them off. Maybe this is how this guy does business. Look, historically this is, we have an interesting space. grass is greener from the nineties, created a technology that would do vertical search. It would scrape jobs. Chad (16:20.248) He was busy. He was building stuff so that he could patent it. Yeah. Joel (16:48.312) A guy named Chris Amato, which became OptiJob and Get the Job. There's one, there's a blast from the past. Bought this in part to enforce this patent on simply hired, indeed, et cetera. I remember talking to Paul Forrester about this when I was writing, she said, he was commenting about prior art, whatever the hell that means. In other words, it's been done before. There's some malevolence that they got this patent and it's already been done. Chad (16:55.437) Yup. Chad (16:59.778) And he didn't. And he didn't. Joel (17:17.814) I don't have a lot of hope in this. The Monster Cable you mentioned, which is another blast from the past. Forever, Monster.com had this little thing at the footer that said, not associated with Monster Cable, which had a link back to Monster Cable, which was probably great for their SEO, but they had a lot of other links around. I think they were getting paid by Monster to use the Monster trademark. I don't know. This dude better have some money. He better be in it for the long haul. Indeed, maybe they'll just write a check. Chad (17:30.522) huh. Joel (17:47.384) But this just seems like a stereotypical troll, patent troll case that we'll probably never hear anything from again. They'll pay him, they'll write a check, get some coins from the cash cushion, and Mr. William Chang will be gone and on to his next patent case. Chad (18:05.346) and little bit richer and a little bit richer. Joel (18:07.724) Little bit richer. Yeah, there's nothing nothing wrong with that throw that it's being a little bit richer Let's take a quick break and we'll get to to up work Chad (18:09.774) Predictions kids, predictions kids. Joel (18:22.218) All right, Chad, Upwork is back in the news. They've launched Uma. No word if it's named after Uma Thurman, one of Gen X's favorite, you know, daughters, sisters. Upwork has launched Uma, its first mindful artificial intelligence, that's in quotes, designed to enhance the work experience on its platform for both freelancers and businesses. Chad (18:33.838) Kill Bill, baby. Kill Bill. Joel (18:48.232) Uma assists in creating job posts, matching freelancers with jobs through best match insights, and aims to reduce the time and effort required for job postings. your thoughts on Uma, not Thurman. Or give us your thoughts on Uma Thurman. Who cares? It's our show. Chad (19:03.692) Yeah. mean, yeah, yeah. Well, Kill Bill, not Kill Bill 2. That's my thoughts. For freelancers, I mean, it's AI tailored proposals. I mean, they're literally just infusing chat GPT with frameworks and templates, which is smart. But I mean, this is something that we're going to see from every organization, and they're going to be able to pump features out like every other day for things like. And then on the business side, it's just better matching for giggers. So they're going to start using their language, large language models, much smarter, where they're kicking out better content for the freelancers so that they can actually use and engage the businesses in a more business-like way, looking more professional. And the businesses will be able to target the types of individuals that they want. And I mean, everybody is probably saying, well, I mean, this isn't really big. It's not, but the thing is, what's going to happen is it's going to snowball and it's going to be feature after feature after feature after feature, and it's going to be laid into these platforms. And that's not going to be the old feature-ridden platforms that we were used to where you had to go and click and go down and go over and so on. It's all going to be a part of the process methodology. So if I'm actually going to try to pitch a business for a project, It's going to be a flow. It's going to be a total workflow that is going to... It's going to be very easy compared to what it was before. So these features are going to start rolling like a snowball and it's going to make the experience much better for everybody. Yes, this seems like nothing, but again, get ready. It's going to continue. Joel (20:47.298) the way, Uma Thurman, Dangerous Liaisons is topless in that one. just, my memory serves, if my 19 year old memory serves correctly, Uma does make a topless appearance in that movie. So Upwork, and I've been using Upwork for a long time. I was using it with Elance to find people and it's generally a really good source of contract workers. mean, most recently when we are at HR Tech, we had an Upwork. Chad (20:53.71) What was it? I don't remember seeing much of that though, cause I mean, Joel (21:15.864) contractor come in and shoot our videos from HR tech. traditionally great service. Now what has been an issue for a long time is on the freelancer side, you put a job out there and then you get like what are horrible responses, horrible cover letters, like just bad and you try to weed through it and make sense of it. What this will do is help Chad (21:19.15) Mm-hmm. Chad (21:37.912) Yeah. Yeah. Joel (21:45.762) Freelancers particularly in countries that aren't maybe English first speakers Create cover letters that are much more let readable much friendlier To the to the company so this will take a lot of the grunt work out of their life and Quite frankly most of them feel like copy and paste It's the same cover letter for every single job that goes out there Hopefully they'll be able to customize a little bit. It'll be more personable Chad (21:49.912) Mm-hmm, right. Joel (22:14.252) From the business side, posting a job used to be pretty painful. It took a while. What they have now is kick ass. It's like, what do you need? Some basic choose categories and then it will write the job for you. You can then customize it from there. So from an employer looking for contractor perspective, much easier. This is a really clean, easy way to look to post jobs. And from a freelancer side, I think it's going to be much easier to interact and engage with employers, which will make it a friendlier environment for everybody. And I think make it much more fun to use. To your point, tip of the iceberg. Yes. They partnered with open AI about a year ago. And I think you're going to start seeing more of these things roll out better matching. I do notice that I'm starting to see emails around, here's some other matches that just came online, which Chad (22:46.872) Mm-hmm. Chad (23:08.046) Mm-hmm. Joel (23:10.22) you know, weren't there when I first posted the job. So there going be things that they roll out that are much better to help match companies and employers. So I applaud this. And I also think that if you're in this space and you're not providing these kinds of really cool, easy to use tools, you're going to suffer. So this is going to, I don't want to say commodity, but this is going to be something that we just expect when we use these services. you know, applaud, applause for, applause for Upwork for being, you know, one of the early. Chad (23:25.71) Mm-hmm. Joel (23:38.597) early companies to integrate some of these open AI tools. Chad (23:40.462) Get the boo ready. just, I literally just got a text that Upwork, are having a cross the organization cut of 20%. Yeah, so 800 employees, which means 160 cut. Again, this is a rumor, just came over with my text. Very, very solid, solid person who sent it. So I would say, Joel (23:55.064) There you go. Joel (24:02.936) Mm-hmm. Chad (24:10.2) This is probably true, but again, just rumor, we've got to go ahead and check some other sources on this. So yes, interesting. Joel (24:16.728) Well, look, we know that as companies build this stuff in, they don't need as many developers as they used to. I don't know who's getting laid off at Upwork. The company's been, yeah, so the company's been stressed as we know in terms of earnings. So it doesn't surprise me. And a little bit of good news, a little sugar to make the medicine go down a little better, I guess, is maybe part of the strategy there on that one. Chad (24:25.624) Set across the board. Chad (24:29.528) Mm-hmm. Chad (24:35.868) You Chad (24:39.886) In that being said, I've got to give a shout out to my wife, Julie, who scooped us, or that's what she wants to do, that she scooped us on the Indeed stuff. So she actually found the court case, which nobody else had been talking about. It was on Bloomberg Law or something like that. Out of nowhere, she found this thing. So big shout out to the job board doctor. If you want to see the entire case, It's actually, it's out there on jobboarddoctor.com. Go take a look at it. I hate the legalese stuff. I put that bad boy into chat GPT. Got a good summary out of it. Check the summary just to make sure. But yeah, shout out to Julie. Shout out to our sources. Thank you so much. We would not have this great news if it weren't for all of you wonderful people. Joel (25:29.292) I was gonna say your marriage has achieved a different level of freakiness. If you guys are sitting around reading Bloomberg law as part of your getting hot and heavy, a little hot and heavy over Bloomberg legal documents, geez, good for you, good for you. Can I interest you in some, who'd you rather? Who'd you rather, Chad? one of. Chad (25:39.031) yeah. You don't know what gets her hot. That's all I got to say. Chad (25:52.512) yes, lovely smooth giraffe. Joel (25:56.38) favorite games. All right, here's how this traditionally works. We read two companies. Generally, they get money, make an acquisition, and then Chad and I will decide who we'd rather of the two companies. Now, this time we're going to read some established companies, some news, and then we're going to pick whose future would you rather buy in this case. Let's start with Ronstadt. Now, we all know Ronstadt is headquartered in the Netherlands. Just wanted to point that out to everybody in case they forgot. Chad (26:16.951) Mm-hmm. Chad (26:24.098) Not Germany, everybody, you know? Okay, okay. Joel (26:24.918) So not Germany, not Deutschland, although I have heard that Holland is Germany's Canada, or whatever that's with. So Rundstadt reported better than expected quarterly profits, boosting its shares by over 4%, despite some economic challenges. The company also acquired Zorgwerk, I'm probably not saying that correctly, it's probably Zorgwerk, for healthcare expansion, and anticipates Zorgwerk. Chad (26:31.328) that's a call. Yeah. Chad (26:49.148) Why did you say in a German? Joel (26:52.644) We will ask the questions. Their healthcare, to expand their healthcare, they anticipate clear business conditions post the US elections, which is kind of becoming a trend. A lot of companies are saying, well, until the election is figured out, things are gonna be a little bit rocky. Now from Ronstadt to Bullhorn, another established company, Bullhorn Ventures has invested in staffing referrals Chad (27:07.694) Yes. Joel (27:21.334) an automated referral management platform aiming to enhance staffing firms ability to source higher quality talent through digitized referral programs. As you will know, Chad Bullhorn just acquired our friends at Tex Colonel, who's also a sponsor of the show. So Chad Bullhorn or Ron Stott, whose future would you rather? Chad (27:35.939) Mm-hmm. Chad (27:45.016) Well, Ronstadt has the upper hand with the money. Bullhorn has the upper hand with the tech. The futures technology. Ronstadt has already demonstrated to me after the acquisition and failed management of Monster.com that they don't have a high enough priority on owning and building their own tech, which means they're going to have to continue to partner, which means they're going to have to hope and pray. that the best of the best are gonna wanna continue to partner with them. Bullhorn's acquisition, as you just said, of TexKernel is doubling down on better technology, opening up total addressable markets, which is exactly what we wanna see. This is outside the staffing market, right? And making smart business slash technical moves. So, RonSide isn't going anywhere. Don't get me wrong, right? They are big, they are a Goliath, they're pretty safe as a business. But as a growing business, a technology business in the age of GPUs, AI, who knows what's next? I'd rather bullhorn. Joel (28:52.376) So I struggled with this one at first because it's a little bit like saying would you rather buy the Indiana Pacers or the Indiana Fever? One is way more profitable, been around a lot longer, has a reliable fan base. But the other one has Caitlin Clark and a lot of tailwinds, a lot of momentum in tailwinds. So although on the service, it seems like a really silly comparison. Chad (29:09.87) Uh-huh. Chad (29:14.914) Momentum, momentum. Yeah, yeah. Chad (29:22.434) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Joel (29:22.476) and you've worked at Ronstadt. for you not to choose them, having been on the inside a little bit is interesting. So the news was good, stock was up 4%. A lot of employees, yeah. And Bullhorn's not a public company, so we don't know exactly what's going on there. But what really, Ronstadt buying Monster was really stupid. So like. Chad (29:36.056) Down year over year, but yeah. Chad (29:42.659) Mm-hmm. Chad (29:48.984) Yeah. Joel (29:49.888) The judgment there isn't great. And of course they were able to back out of that. Bullhorn has had a really interesting acquisition strategy, particularly here as of late. And they seem to really have a vision and what pieces are going to fit that vision. Sort of like when we talk about deal making acquisitions that really makes sense to what the business is. And I thought about like, okay, brand is important. I'm a brand guy. I like brand, but we look at our own industry. Chad (30:10.082) Yeah. Yes. Joel (30:17.432) CareerBuilder and Monster are not what they used to be. And even in the S &P, so in the year 2000, the top 10 companies by market cap were names like General Electric, Exxon, Nokia, and Cisco. The only company that's still in the top 10 from 2000 is Microsoft. Chad (30:35.742) huh. Chad (30:42.86) Wow. Wow. Joel (30:43.352) So even though you're a big brand, have a lot of history and money, is reasonably that history does not smile on you just because of those reasons. So I as well, Chad, would rather bullhorn than Ronstadt. You know what I'm saying? Chad (30:48.142) Mm-hmm. Chad (31:01.502) Here's a beautiful quote that I literally just heard from one of my, a legend, General Honore. We've been in a landscape where it is, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? That's the 1930s, 19, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? The new way of thinking, if it ain't broke, break it. We are moving too fast. You can't stay in still. You have to, if it ain't broke, break it. Joel (31:30.04) break shit and move fast. wait, that didn't work out real great for Facebook, that is who'd you rather everybody. And we're gonna take a quick break and talk about Snoop Dogg. Chad (31:32.026) huh. That's still working. It's still working. Chad (31:46.241) Love me some Snoop, man. Joel (31:47.832) Snoop Dogg, whoever would thought in 1993 that Snoop would be a national treasure and quite a tastemaker and such a friend to the establishment. Chad (31:59.47) bolstered the Olympics, mean him and Martha, who would have saw that shit coming together? I mean, just brilliant, brilliant. Joel (32:07.512) Yeah, it's pretty fascinating that Snoop has become what he has become. anyway, Snoop Dogg confirmed on Watch What Happens Live, I've never seen that, I don't know if you have, that he turned down $100 million. That's right, Chad, $100 million from OnlyFans, one of our favorites, humorously noting his regret came from a personal place saying, quote, the only part Chad (32:11.918) Mm. Chad (32:18.284) I haven't either. Chad (32:25.582) Whoo! Whoo! Joel (32:36.952) that regrets it is my friend down there. I'll let you figure out who his friend down there is. That's a quote. Yeah, he declined the offer to respect his wife's feelings despite the lucrative proposal to share adult content. Chad, your thoughts on Snoop's decision and could you turn down $100 million to be on OnlyFans? Chad (32:43.33) his penis. Chad (32:48.654) Hmm. Chad (33:00.59) Well, first off, love Snoop the Death. I mean, he understands he is a brand. He understands that that $100 million could actually possibly hurt him a billion dollars later, right? So this is an optics play, incredibly smart. The question that I would have for OnlyFans is did he have to do adult content on there? Because he could literally just have live streams of him talking about how he came up with certain songs. Joel (33:12.6) Mm-hmm. Chad (33:28.396) his relationships with Dre and how they got started, all those things. I know there are movies out there, but having those like almost like personal connections that people have on OnlyFans with the masses, I think would be just amazing. And doing like, being able to, again, spread your total addressable market to not just porn and sex, not saying, because there is more than that on TikTok, but being able to spread it out and say, look, we don't want you on here doing that. We want you talking about. Joel (33:36.28) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Joel (33:51.277) Mm-hmm. Chad (33:57.266) X, Y, and Z, we want to be something new, we want to be something different. So I think this is a huge loss for TikTok and $100 million. I'd be a hundred million dollar, you know, air for like 5.2 seconds because my wife would fucking kill me. So no, I would not take the money. and it's only 5.2 seconds because I can run faster than her but she can throw a shoe man I'm telling you it's deadly Joel (34:24.716) She could throw a shoe. So this, yeah, to your point, this shows how rich Snoop is. And the Snoop of 1994 probably would not have said no to $100 million in doing this. So look, this is a family show, our podcast, and my kids might actually listen to this stuff one day. So I won't go into everything that I would do for $100 million. But let's just say it's a whole lot of stuff that I would do for a hundred. million dollars but for free Chad I will give you a dad joke for this week Chad (34:55.522) Yes. When did this turn into a family show? Joel (35:04.086) I got nothing. Okay, so I mentioned last week that I was gonna spend some time with my dad, hoping that he might give me a dad joke. So he did, he's gonna come through. Hopefully you like this one. How do astronomers organize a party? How do astronomers organize a party? Chad (35:09.091) Yeah. Chad (35:24.536) Hopefully has nothing to do with Uranus. Joel (35:28.184) They plan it. Get it? They plan it. Very good. All right. Let's go get some Cajun food. Everybody, we out. Chad (35:39.746) We out!

"Live from the Shaker Recruitment Marketing Green Room at RecFest in Nashville—where the caffeine is strong, and the opinions are stronger! On today’s episode of *The Chad & Cheese Podcast*, Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman throw down with Joel Lalgee, the brains behind The Realist Recruiter, and a guy who decided that if COVID could go viral, so could he. Once a regular agency recruiter, Lalgee took to the interwebs during lockdown, building his own brand and adding a dash of ‘human’ to the recruiting grind. Spoiler alert: he’s on a mission to teach recruiters that acting like actual people could maybe, just maybe, get them better results. (Imagine that!) The trio digs into how recruitment is morphing into a social media game, where *#RelatableContent* and influencer swagger are now on the menu, catering to a workforce that would rather swipe right on a company’s values than read a job listing. Oh, and if you're tired of corporate HR drama, the future Lalgee paints for recruitment might just be your jam. We’re talking more independent recruiters, slick Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) models, and enough tech tools to make your head spin. Lalgee’s 2025 plans? A content empire and an RPO model of his own—because why just recruit when you can *influence* the world to recruit your way? Tune in to catch all this plus some spicy content strategies to keep those LinkedIn feeds nice and thirsty." PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

In this episode of the Chad and Cheese podcast, Chad and Cheese chat with Maria Colacurcio, CEO at Syndio, Alim Dhanji, CHRO, TD SYNNEX, and Ana White, EVP and Chief People Officer at Lumen  to discuss the critical issues surrounding workplace equity, the importance of data-driven approaches, and the impact of recent legal changes on DEI initiatives. The conversation highlights the need for transparency, the role of AI in reducing bias, and real stories of how pay equity adjustments have positively affected employees' lives. Achieving equity is an ongoing journey that requires commitment from leadership and a culture of inclusion. ENJOY! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION (updated 10/23/24) Joel (00:28.839) That's your two favorite average white guys aka the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host Joel Cheeseman joined as always by Chad Sowash and boy do we have a lineup today. We're talking to Maria Colacurcio CEO at Syndio, Ana White, EVP and Chief People Officer at Lumen Technologies and Alim Dhanji CHRO at TD SYNNEX. Everyone welcome to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad (00:37.832) Hello Chad (00:54.827) That's a lineup. That's a lineup, kids. Wow. Joel (01:00.135) They are shocked and awed with no comment whatsoever. So let's get to some Twitter bios. know Maria, Maria's got something to say. Give us a little bit about you and then we'll go around the horn here. Maria Colacurcio. Maria Colacurcio (01:14.518) Thank you, sounds great. Thanks for having us today. So Maria Colacurcio, as was said, I'm the CEO of Syndio. We help companies figure out how to value their human capital. I'm a mom of seven and I would argue I make the best homemade meatballs on the West Coast. Chad (01:30.677) I wanna try them. I wanna try them. Maria Colacurcio (01:34.69) So come at me with that. Joel (01:37.063) I'll be over by seven. I'll be over by seven. All right, Alim, let's roll over to you. What's your signature dish, Alim? Maria Colacurcio (01:40.744) Only on Sundays. Only on Sundays. Alim Dhanji (01:46.3) Mine has to be jerk chicken. So I think we're good with the protein side. Need a starch next. Yes, Alim Dhanji, 25 years in HR. I've gone in and out of HR. I've led Adidas Canada as president. So I've got a little bit of commercial perspective and kind of scared, but also excited to be on this podcast. Let's go. Chad (01:48.965) Ooh, nice. Chad (02:09.045) You're welcome. Joel (02:10.215) Did you say Adidas Canada? Alim Dhanji (02:13.648) That's right. Joel (02:14.599) Very nice. Joel (02:19.089) All right, Ann, it's your turn. Ana White (02:21.396) Thank you so much, Joel and Chad, for having us. I'm the CHRO, our Chief People Officer at Lumen Technologies. Before that, I was the head of HR at F5, a cybersecurity company in Seattle. And before that, almost 20 years at Microsoft. So I'm really happy to be here. And I don't have very many signature dishes because my husband is the cook, but I do love to make lasagna. Chad (02:48.287) Very nice. Yeah. All of those are winning by the way. Yes, that is, that's awesome. So I guess you're all wondering why we called you today for this meeting. no, literally reached out to Maria and we started, obviously it's hard not to see these days. The news is consistently saying, we're pulling out of DEI. We're pulling out of equity. Hell, SHRM, the Society of Human Resources Management. They actually took. Joel (02:52.167) Yes, they are. Maria Colacurcio (02:58.125) Okay. Chad (03:15.869) Equity out of now they're just I&D. They even switch things around, right? So at the end of the day, why is equity in itself? We're going to focus on equity right now. Why is it taking a hit? The OCCP, the Office of Contract Compliance Programs have some states like Louisiana that are averaging female pay at 69 cents on the dollar for every man. And on a national scale, black people are earning 76 cents on the dollar. Hispanic people, 73 cents on the dollar. Why? When we do need equity so badly, why is it taking a hit? Why is this lessening in priority? Maria Colacurcio (03:50.882) All right, so I can start. Thanks again for having us today. I think the really exciting thing that you're going to hear from Alim and Ana today is that when there's leadership backing and true commitment to equity, it's not waning. It's actually coming in full force from companies that are staying true to that commitment. Chad (04:02.005) Mm-hmm. Maria Colacurcio (04:17.14) I honestly think the old way of addressing things like pay inequity just weren't incredibly effective. Companies were focusing on symptoms, not necessarily the causes. And so I think if you look at, in particular, the DEI industry over the course of the past maybe one or two decades, they were doing things like training that weren't incredibly effective. There was some unlawful behavior in terms of favoring and disfavoring certain groups, which got them into trouble. Looking at symptoms, not root causes, identifying things that were... Chad (04:22.603) Mm-hmm. Maria Colacurcio (04:46.782) Not pushing the ball forward in terms of having lawful goals versus unlawful quotas, things like that. So I think that pendulum has started to swing and unfortunately it's swung really, really far. Chad (04:58.379) So as we dig into like Pew research, women's pay relative to men's pay drops most sharply around 35 to 44. You talk about the root causes versus the symptoms. What are they? Mean, we can see where it's happening and I would assume why it's happening or otherwise. I mean, why up front and how long does it actually take? mean, obviously, 35 to 44, that demographic for females get hit hardest. Maria Colacurcio (05:30.11) Yeah, from a gender perspective, there's research on the motherhood penalty that's pretty substantial. But I want to let Alim speak to this, because I think he has a good point of view. Alim Dhanji (05:42.564) Yeah, as a new parent, I've got a kid now that's nine and one that's seven, and I'm in a same sex relationship. So I've had to understand that process from just being a parent, not necessarily a woman, but it is a tremendous feat having a child and then raising them and having that support. When you don't have that support, it does detract you and potentially pull you out of work. Chad (06:01.739) Mm-hmm. Alim Dhanji (06:10.648) Actually, another topic that I've gotten right into the last couple of years is menopause. And that kind of, you know, always raises eyebrows when a guy starts talking about menopause. But as I started to learn a little bit more about it and realized that the impact that women have, particularly in that demographic and when there's not enough support in the workplace, it really creates an inequitable situation because men arguably have a better chance of succeeding at careers because they're not dealing with the same issues as someone who has menopause. And so I think that if you equal the playing field there and have workplace practices that are more fair and have less stigma around it, then you have a better chance of having a fair situation out of both genders. So I think that could be a factor. It's probably not the only factor. Chad (07:03.349) So Ana, what are your thoughts on root causes? Ana White (07:05.723) Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I think the 35 to 44 is a really good point. And that's something we watch for closely in our demographics and overall, not only age, but gender, race, ethnicity, et cetera. And I think there's a wide variety of things that go into it. What we care about the most though is the equity itself and what we do about it. And that's where the partnership with Maria's organization, Syndio, has really changed the game on pay equity in general. And I think about equity, much more broadly than pay equity. I also think about it as workforce equity, how you hire, how you promote, how you bring people in and participation equity. Are you really allowing everyone to have an equal voice? So I kind of think of equity as very, very broad and looking at some of the root causes, gender, but far beyond that as well. Chad (07:57.109) Talk about the partnership with Syndio. How is that actually helping impact? Ana White (07:59.521) Yeah, yeah, it's helped a lot. We used to do pay equity ourselves internally. When we did it, yeah, yeah, we have actually, I have to give kudos to our team. We have a good internal data analytics team. So along with legal counsel, we did periodic pay equity analysis. And it took about 10 weeks to complete it. And frankly, it used a lot of internal resources for that. Chad (08:07.421) How? How did you do that? Was it spreadsheets? Ana White (08:28.423) So we wanted a solution that would give us more frequent insights and that would also look at root cause prevention, not just remediation. So when we partnered with Syndio, it allowed us to monitor pay equity more frequently and the analysis now takes hours rather than months of a period of time. So we do monthly pay equity audits, which I feel really good about. And at some point in time, I can tell you a cool story about that too. Joel (08:56.615) One of the things that intrigued me about this issue is how subjective it is. I feel like all of you are champions of data in terms of gaining progress, gaining change in organizations. Each of you talk in general terms of how you've used data to promote change within your organization. Chad (08:56.756) Okay. Alim Dhanji (09:17.536) I think from my perspective, you know, when you start quoting the disparity between men and women, for example, looking at gender inequity, it's striking because that's a fact. It's not irrefutable in a sense. I think then you can start to have real conversations around what it's going to take to close that gap. And understanding the root causes is one aspect. But then there's obviously an economic impact and you've got to plan for it just like you would with any other business strategy and thinking through about what roles specifically do we have in equity? Are there specific locations, countries, et cetera? And I think that if you use data to be more thoughtful and planful, can create actions that are very specific on one hand. What I really like about Syndio is the Pay Finder software. And I think what that does for us is make sure that we have governance throughout the pay process, not only for new joiners, but also as we promote people, making sure that we are paying people at the right level, within the right range. And you can have different discussions with the business leaders. Joel (10:32.177) So there's data on the front end, sort of like, let's pay people, like pay everyone equally. How about on the results side of it? Like paying people equally means what that the C-suite would care about or being more equity means what in terms of more products sold, more cost, like what on that side of things, where does data play a role? Or does it? Alim Dhanji (10:56.988) I think it definitely does. We just wrapped up our engagement survey, for example, and I see direct correlations between the questions that we ask around equitable practices and fairness and engagement. That's a key driver for us. There's been dozens and dozens of studies out there that tell you if you've got higher levels of engagement in the workplace that correlates with higher levels of customer service and therefore profitable growth. So it's not just common sense, it's actually a causal relationship and data tells us that. So you have better economic output as a result of equity. Maria Colacurcio (11:28.226) Was just going to kind of piggyback onto that because TD SYNNEX has such a cool story. Actually Lumen does too. You know, when we're talking about solutions for talent because of pay transparency, which started with… Joel (11:40.026) Ana? Ana White (11:40.065) Yeah, I completely agree, Alim. Go ahead, Maria. Maria Colacurcio (11:56.364) …pay ranges for advertised roles need to be public. About one third of employees across the United States are now covered by some kind of pay transparency legislation. But the EU Directive is really supercharging that because now you've got multinational companies with more and more disclosure company. So as a recruiter, you're sitting across the virtual or actual table from a candidate that has so much information. They have so much information at their fingertips. And now you've got to articulate not just the range, but why a candidate is low, medium, or high in that range, and really be clear about what the company values. So one of the things that I think is cool about the stories from these two companies is that when you put in the hands of your frontline, not just the range that's based on competitive and market, but also the range that's based on internal equity and how people that are in your company are actually being paid today, and the blend is what you're offering that candidate, but you can explain it. You see time-to-fill actually accelerate. You see offer acceptance go up, which makes sense because people want to work for a company that actually values them. So if at the very beginning of that relationship between employee and employer, they're hearing that, so this means when I come in, they're not going to hire someone that works for me, that's going to get paid more than me. And I think that's a big part of it. But Ana, what would you say? Ana White (13:17.792) Yeah, completely agree. Yeah, I completely agree, Maria. We're also using Pay Finder. We have over 50 of our recruiters that are actively using it. And it's super helpful with very real-time data to make sure we're doing the right thing when we bring in talent. And not only candidates appreciate that, but internal employees appreciate that. And going back to Alim's point earlier, we also do frequent surveys, maybe too many. for our employees, but we love to hear kind of how they're thinking and feeling. We're about to kick off our next one next week. And we feel really strongly that equity, inclusion, diversity, allyship, all of that makes a difference in the employee experience and absolutely makes a difference in the customer experience. And then we think our company performance all-ups. It directly interrelates. Joel (14:01.809) Hmm. Ana White (14:05.949) And I'm a huge fan of trying to be as objective as possible as a math major. So I love on the pay equity side, it's very data oriented. Chad (14:14.899) So when you're taking a look at all that data, because you've got all the external data and then you've got obviously where the landscape starts to push. Let's say for instance, just from a technology standpoint, developers get a push and externally they're getting paid more. Now you have to, you're taking that external data internally saying, okay, now we've got to pay more. Now there's got to be not just paying the next person coming through the door more, you've got to equalize internally, correct? How do you manage that just from a balancing act standpoint? Ana White (14:48.223) Challenge. I'll be honest. I'll be honest because the market can move quickly and internally you can't always keep up with the market. That's why you have to do these cross checks and there's not always parity from a broad perspective because the tech market moves so fast. So it is challenging but what Maria's organization does for us is allows us to find out how we're doing and how we resolve it internally. But it's not easy to be honest. Alim Dhanji (15:16.944) Yeah, for TD SYNNEX, it really started at the top. It's a big change management initiative first, and it has to start with the top. So Maria did a great job working with our executive leadership team, setting the stage, making sure that everyone understands what the mission here is and why it's important, how it's going to impact the business, and why it's good for our culture. So once the change management is set, then it's about raising the acumen across HR, our recruiters, and then ultimately, people managers. So they understand. There's a lot of misconception around what, you know, there's like a black box and decisions are made around compensation. And then there's some white smoke that comes out. We have to demystify that. And if you do that, then that transparency creates credibility and greater trust between our workforce and leadership. I think ultimately, Maria Colacurcio (16:03.148) Good job. Alim Dhanji (16:12.801) Yes, you want to get to closing the gap, but you got to do it in a way where that change is managed so that people don't feel that someone's getting more because of their gender or their race. It's because it is the right thing to do because it's fair. Chad (16:26.185) And it's also perfect because you're going to have to explain and defend if you get audited. So if you have that flushed out beforehand and you are transparent, then everything seems like, and I could be wrong, tell me if I'm wrong, seems like everything comes a little bit easier that way. Am I right? Maria Colacurcio (16:41.442) That's exactly right. And this era of transparency is not going anywhere. And I think what I'm hearing from customers like TD SYNNEX and Lumen Technologies is that in this era of transparency, it's not only the recruiter that has to articulate why people are paid what they're paid. You've got to use solutions that people managers, whether it's a promotion or a job transfer. Ana White (16:44.685) Yeah, totally. Maria Colacurcio (17:07.222) So there are states picking up some of the elements of the EU Directive, and one of those is around career progression. What that means is if you promote two people, you've got to explain to the person that wasn't promoted, why that person was picked and what you need to do to get on that same path. So companies really need to be able to articulate not just pay that's equitable and pay that's competitive with market, but also how is their pay consistent with their current policies? A lot of times companies–when we reflect back to them in the software, here's why you pay what you pay, your pay for tenure, your pay for performance–they don't like that. They actually want to shift their policies. And so what that means is you need strong recommendations and intelligence built in so that you can make the merit process a little more nimble. You can start to shift and augment people's pay in a way that's equitable, but also fair and competitive because all of these decisions now require explanation alongside the decision. Joel (18:07.236) In June of 2023, the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action, a story I'm sure you're all familiar with. We're a year on from that. Has it been a big deal? Is it much ado about nothing? What is that meant to the DEI progress? Alim Dhanji (18:27.014) So my point of view here is that companies that raised their commitments as a result of social justice after the tragic murder of George Floyd, some went a little bit too far because they were doing it for window dressing. And I believe that just as Maria started off the conversation, the pendulum swung a little bit too far and it's now correcting. But those companies, and think TD SYNNEX is one and Lumen is definitely another, and there's other companies out there, long before social justice had a commitment towards inclusion and were already working on various strategies to make sure that there's equity, are continuing on. And I don't think that there is a day, unfortunately, where you're gonna check off and say, we're done with DEI. Ana White (19:22.051) Mm-mm. Alim Dhanji (19:22.076) This is going to take a long time for us to advance and we've got to keep at it. But I think the key differentiator here, which is why I really like what Syndio is doing, is it's creating transparency. And it's building trust. It's building a level of fairness that can be audited. It's not so subjective. And I think that's really important when people are looking at commitments and how it's impacting them in the workplace. Ana White (19:53.365) Yeah, I completely agree with what Alim said and I would just add my last few companies I've been at and especially now at Lumen Technologies, it's one of the reasons I joined. I knew our CEO, Kate Johnson, really put people first and DEI is a top priority for her and that has been steadfast and hasn't changed and I really, really appreciate that, and that's kind of what I was talking about in the beginning around workforce equity in terms of recruiting, hiring, retaining great employees. We do a lot of different things to ensure that we can diversify our employee population, really to match our customer set as well and really evolve kind of the demographics that you might typically find in a telecommunications company. So, and like Alim said, it's a total journey. Like you're never done, you're never there and there's always something to learn. No one knows it all in this space. So we're taking a real growth mindset. And we're looking to kind of raise the bar sort of on what we do each day. But specific to hiring, we're very passionate about this. And we look at some diverse partnerships and really drive around our culture and our culture renovation. We're renovating our culture in a really exciting way. We also try to have the most inclusive job descriptions and advertisements. We work with over 200 diverse organizations and 900 universities on some really cool early in career talents and other things where we've won some fun awards there. And if you look at diverse representation for our early in career hiring, we tend to have around 50% female and just around that same color, same number for people of color in terms of what we bring in from universities. So we try and really look at bringing in the best possible talent there. Chad (21:45.929) So real quick, Ana, every CEO says that people are our greatest asset and for the most part it's BS. How did you know going into Lumen that this wasn't just BS? This was something that was true. So if you could help us and you just talked through a lot of partnerships, what kind of, and even some outcomes, what are some more of the outcomes that you're seeing that you're able to see on a daily basis that really inspire you to continue to do this work? Ana White (22:01.496) Yeah, it's great. So starting with when I joined, what I knew was Kate–I had worked peripherally with her at Microsoft when she was the President of the US–and I saw that she lived that saying. Like we talked earlier, there's some performative stuff happening where people say the right things, but they don't do the right things. To me, actions matter and impact matters, not just what people say. So I knew that in Kate and we had, we've hired a really pretty much almost fully new senior leadership team at the top. And when we brought in leaders at the top, that was a key question for me: is understanding what they truly believe about diversity and inclusion, and would they come with this similar philosophy or not. So that's held sort of at the top of the house because I have seen companies to your point that don't truly live that. But in terms of impact and what we've done, one thing I could say that's very, very recent is we added an eighth cultural behavior. We have seven behaviors; we just added an eight this year called, allyship. And I feel really strongly about allyship. Can be an ally to, anyone can be an ally to someone else. They need to start with a growth mindset and curiosity, and learn about the experiences of people that look and are different than them. So we've done a very intensive allyship at work training for all of our people managers as a requirement. And then our individual contributors can do that if they so choose to. And it's really teaching people to learn about different experiences and how to show up as an ally. There's many examples I can give on how to do that, but that's a key behavior for us and we're deeply investing in training. Another example I can give you that's very real-time this week–we brought in all of our employee resource group or ERG leaders from around the world into Seattle and held an ERG summit with our senior leadership team so that we can learn across the nine ERGs that we have, how it's going for them, what's going well, what's not going well, what can we as a senior leadership team do to help them more, to raise the bar on how we do this at the company. And I think that shows it's not just words on a page or saying something, it's leaders leaning in to learn with curiosity and then forward action and take action in the right way to be a true ally. Chad (24:30.631) And Alim, you actually took this position. You've been in the position less than a year. You took this position because you felt like senior leadership was deeply committed to DEI. How did you see “deeply committed?” What were the actions? What were the outcomes? Not just words, what did you see was happening that you wanted to be a part of? Alim Dhanji (24:55.974) So it was the very first call I had with Patrick, who was the incoming CEO. I'm a LGBT–a member of the LGBT community–and I've got two kids. So sometimes when you've got kids, the natural assumption is that you've got a wife at home. And so I find myself coming out every day and it gets quite tiring. So I got on the phone with Patrick and the first thing he said to me was, before we talk about work, I'd love to talk about your kids and your husband. Maria Colacurcio (25:05.97) Thank you. Chad (25:17.963) Ha Alim Dhanji (25:26.264) And you know, just there and then there's a sigh of relief because I don't have to go through my narrative that I already have prepared. It's something very small, Chad, but it makes you feel so much more comfortable. And you know that you're not just being tolerated, you're almost being celebrated. And I think that makes a difference. You want to be yourself at work. And I knew right there and then that there's going to be a different relationship. And then every single person that I met within the company was very consistent about that. And I think these days, talent have choice about where to go. And so anything that gives competitive advantage is a good thing. And if you can be more inclusive, have a sense of belonging, then that is definitely going to give you an edge. Joel (26:12.071) I think more and more companies though, don't want to get on either side. More and more companies, we don't want Kid Rock shooting our beer and we don't want the other, like, we just want to do business. Was that a discussion internally at any of your organizations? Like should we stay the course that like you're talking about Alim or should we forget all these issues altogether? So when we don't get called out, don't, we just don't want to be political. Was there a discussion internally? And if there was, how did that go? And have you lost candidates because of, because of the position? And is that okay? I assume it is. Alim Dhanji (26:44.442) Yeah, looking at it candidly. Candidly, So not so much with TD SYNNEX, but I came from a big consumer brand previously. And that was in the news a lot because of some of our ambassadors were high profile entertainers and were controversial. So there were issues that required our employees to call the brand out and we had to make a choice. Ultimately, the organization made the right choice and severed relationships. But it took a little bit too long. And I think that what that entire experience showed to me is that our talents these days have a voice. with social media and different ways of showing up with activism, they are an important, a critical stakeholder just as much as an activist investor would be. So we've got to be conscious about the workplace that you're setting and the commitments you're making and then living by them. Otherwise, it's just window dressing and they will call you out on it. Chad (27:57.203) What I've heard from you, Alim, real quick, what I've heard from you a lot, Alim, is that you've been talking about business and business impact. And I think you have as well, Ana. And when it comes down to it, if you can demonstrate business impact, I mean, that's what you're there for in the first place, right? So, I mean, to me, this isn't a DEI issue, this is a talent issue. But it's you being able to blend that talent issue and obviously equity–trying to get to parity–issue into your, again, your landscape. Which is constantly moving. So talk about that a little bit. Ana White (28:32.619) Yeah, yeah, I love that comment, Chad. And to be honest, at Lumen Technologies, we're trying to transform an industry and it's a bit of a roller coaster. So we're having some real lowlights and some highlights. But I would say right now we're on a very positive momentum. And I would, of course, I'm a bit biased here, but I would credit our culture as a key driver for our business success. And part of our culture is what we're talking about. It's about diversity, inclusion, and allyship and equity. But it's been a total roller coaster over the last few years at Lumen with really trying to move to cloudify telecommunications and be the backbone for AI. And we've had some very low lows. And right now, we are on a very positive momentum with our new release of Private Connectivity Fabric and some of the recent announcements we've made. So we're really happy to see that. And we just had a town hall this week in Seattle. And Kate–I was very happy she said this. So it's not just me saying this on this podcast–but she said the real credit for our business transformation and our recent success and momentum is our culture. And so I feel strongly that if we continue this work as a company, we will see further business success. With our customers, we're here because of our customers. So we know that and everything we do is in light of our customers. But you have to treat your employees right. And the more they feel like they are truly included and have a feeling of inclusion and belonging, the better they'll perform and the better they'll treat their customers. It's just common sense in my opinion. Chad (30:16.575) So you're signaling from the top though too, because you take a look at the, the, the leadership slate. It's fit. It's about 50, 50. Usually we take a look at leadership in the C-suite and it's usually about 80-30, if you're lucky. Right? So you're at, you're at 50-50. And it sounds like from what you'd said before, when Kate came in, that was something that she really focused on because again, that signal is a very strong signal to the rest of the organization with regard to culture. Has that been something that's actually helped you and the rest of the team? Ana White (30:47.095) Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for bringing that up, Chad. Yeah, I feel really good about that. Now, Kate is a female CEO. She's an exceptional CEO and we have three female EVPs–myself, Ashley and Maxine. And it is a very diverse leadership team at the top. We've also done work to have diversity at the VP ranks. So where I think we've done a really nice job is at the top. Now women in the company can see themselves getting to VP roles, to EVP roles, and ultimately, hopefully, like Maria, like Kate, can see themselves as a future CEO. We want to see more and more of that to cause for that inspiration, motivation, and we're really excited about that. We still have work to do, though, as you look across the company. We have work, like every company, we're not there. Chad (31:17.087) Yes. Mm. Ana White (31:36.387) But we're excited about kind of the top of the house. Yeah. Chad (31:39.463) Excellent. Excellent. So there is a workplace equity report. I'm dropping this on everybody before it even comes out. Syndio has a workplace equity trends report that's being released in late October and it finds HR practitioners remain committed to prioritizing workplace equity. Specifically 67 % of respondents believe their workplace equity programs will continue. Now I've got a question first and foremost to Maria and then secondarily to Alim and Ana. Maria, is that something, I know from a market share standpoint, that's great, because that's two thirds of the market that actually feel like they want to prioritize this. Tell me a little bit about that and then I'm going to have a follow up question for the other two. Maria Colacurcio (32:24.416) Yeah, of course. So I think what's happening here is there's some very loud news that's making folks presume that that number is much, much lower. But I do believe because we're working with you over the course of what we do in our platform, we're analyzing 10 million employee records. So in the customers that I talk to on a daily basis, they are scared. There is fear. There's fear of the reverse activists coming in. There's fear of their goals being misconstrued as quotas. Chad (32:29.515) Mm. Joel (32:33.543) Hmm. Maria Colacurcio (32:52.918) And one of the things that software does is software is agnostic. So we can actually help companies with analytics to prove that they're not favoring or disfavoring any one particular group. They're simply being consistent with their policies and practices and making sure that they don't have disparities that are because of something like gender, race, or ethnicity, which again, that is unlawful. So I believe when HR practitioners are answering these surveys. Absolutely. 67%. They are committed to these practices. They understand the connection to business outcome that you're hearing from Alim and Ana, but then they have to go commit and basically influence their leaders. So if they don't have a Kate at the top, if they don't have somebody at the top that believes in this, they have to go persuade and get that leadership team on board so that they can act on that belief and that persuasion that this does sort of create positive business outcomes. So I think that's the bit of the discrepancy that you're seeing and feeling in that number. Chad (33:54.357) So it's a lot stronger than what people are feeling in the market. So Alim, real quick, there's still a third of your peers, sir, that do not believe this is priority. What do you say to them? Alim Dhanji (34:07.804) I think that they're stuck in a cave. I'm sorry to be so blunt. I think the reality is, that in some ways equity has been politicized and the people that feel that it's wrong are saying that it's inequitable. The reality is you are trying to make it fair for people to advance by addressing their disadvantages. And, and I agree with Maria, the best way to do that is by being transparent and being data led so that you can make the right decisions that are defensible. I also believe that it's a moment in time and there's sometimes this pressure, whether it's politics or, or, certain stakeholder groups that are, that are pushing a specific narrative. I think that this will correct itself and ultimately, it's about having the right culture so that you can have the right talent and have the right productivity and organization to win. Chad (35:11.979) How about you, Ana? What are you telling those peers? Ana White (35:13.571) Yeah, that was well said, Alim. I think it is about data. You can look at the McKinsey studies out there. There's also another organization called I4CP that does deep analytics and research around high performing companies. And a lot of that shows that the highest performing companies have the best cultures where employees feel included, valued, et cetera. So if you do things like pay equity, and workforce equity, your broader population is going to have that infusion of feeling of inclusion and belonging and a much higher engagement level, which will directly correlate to business results. There's many studies. It's actually quite objective if you start to look at it, both externally and internally. We try to cut our data every which way to learn each time. In the data, if you look at it, can show you that. But it's also the right thing to do. So stepping back from pure data, it's just the right thing to do. Joel (36:14.325) One for Alim and Ana. I don't know if you guys get sales calls very often, but you may have heard that AI is a really hot product these days. However, new products come with risks and we've heard a lot about AI being biased. You may have heard about Amazon's program pretty early on and just continuing that we're seeing legislation at the state level and federal level. What are you doing on a corporate level to make sure that if you're using AI, that you're not breaking the rules or the law. What questions are you asking? Are you are using any kind of third party services to audit your activities? What are you doing in regards to AI and keeping yourself safe? Ana White (36:51.499) Yeah, yeah, I'm a huge fan of AI. AI is also really important to Lumen from a customer perspective, but kind of looking at ourselves internally, we have an AI committee that we look at the ground rules and all of that. We have a partnership with Microsoft. We're using Copilot. And so they've done a lot of this research around AI and bias and things like that. We're relying a lot on Microsoft around this and Copilot has massively improved our productivity. The other thing I personally learned a lot about when I was at F5, the security company, is prompt education and bias that can occur in prompts. The other thing I'd say is engineers that develop and use AI, they also need to be diverse and understand kind of the biases that can creep in if there's not a proper level of diversity across the board. And so it starts with awareness, understanding, et cetera. But our partnership with Microsoft on Copilot has been really good to allow kind of that internal productivity for AI. And then we supplement beyond Copilot as well to kind of raise our bar on what we do around AI internally. Chad (37:38.325) Yes. Alim Dhanji (37:59.644) Yeah, and I can almost say ditto because we're also having fun with Copilot. And the committee really does work. And what we've tried to do with that committee is have a diverse group of stakeholders involved. And use cases from various functions and business lines are presented for consideration. And then when we would select that use case for AI, it doesn't matter how trivial it is. We assess all the implications, whether legal implications, ethical implications, et cetera, et cetera, so that we can understand consciously what we're signing into. But there's a broader change management point around AI because I read somewhere that something like 67 % of people who use AI in their work don't admit to using it because it gives away their superpower. Chad (38:32.693) Mm-hmm. Alim Dhanji (38:52.086) And so there's maybe a job security concern there. So what I'm doing with my team globally is we're going to have an HR or AI hackathon. And we're trying to demystify this. Whether you're creating a job profile, because I've not met an HR person who loves creating job profiles, but AI actually helps you do that rather quickly. And so whatever the use case is, we're going to have some fun with it for 48 hours and try to get people comfortable with AI. Chad (39:22.463) That's awesome. Ana White (39:22.583) Hey, I might copy you on that one. I like the hackathon idea, that's cool. Alim Dhanji (39:26.856) That's great. Maria Colacurcio (39:27.33) I'll just offer a quick anecdote. I moderated a panel on Tuesday at an event put on by Cadence called Femme.ai and the panel was with investors. And we got this great question at the end on sort of where do you see the biggest opportunities for AI to reduce human bias? And one of the investors, she was a growth stage investor and she shared that they have a bot that listens to calls between the partners, the VC partners, and identifies when they're speaking about founders. So, it listens in when the VCs are sort of discussing a potential founder entrepreneur and deciding whether to invest. And the bot actually points out potential bias. And she shared that that was really helpful because as people are up and coming in the organization, it's often scary to point out to a partner that you're kind of applying some sort of proximity bias or cultural bias, or they look, feel like me, went to the same school as me, bias. But when it's a bot just sort of pointing it out, as a neutral third party, it makes it a little bit easier to deliver that message. I had never heard that example before, and I thought it was a pretty solid example of where we can be implementing some of these technologies in a way that's productive. Chad (40:36.265) Yeah, very good. Very nice. Very nice. Last but not least, Ana, you teased a story earlier and we're not going to let you out of that one. So we're going to end up on Ana's story. So... Ana White (40:42.307) Yeah. Cool. Great. Joel (40:42.885) No teasing. No teasing. Ana White (40:47.651) Okay, cool. Thank you. Thanks, Chad. I love the data, but I thought data and stories is kind of fun. So when I think about Pay Equity, Kate, the CEO, and I have been traveling a lot around the US, and recently India and Singapore. And on one of our trips, I believe it was in Texas, it was one of the states recently, after the town hall that we did with a Q&A. One of our employees came up to me and it was a really meaningful moment, I would say, in my career because stories stick, in my opinion. He came up to me and said he lived there for quite some time. He'd been an employee for quite some time. He had recently received a pay equity adjustment and the impact to his family was quite substantial. And his eyes started watering and we took a picture together and I got his permission to share it with one person on my team. And he also said not only the pay equity adjustment just recently, but also the shift to allow work from anywhere, not to have to be located in one specific spot and be in the office. So, we have moved to, can work from anywhere. And that gave his family, him and his family, a whole other level of freedom where he now spends so much more dedicated, high quality time with his family. And with that combination pay equity adjustment, he was, he said he felt so seen, heard and appreciated by the company. And to me, those are the moments that matter. Chad (42:14.485) Well, the moments of the matter and they, the people that will stay, the loyalty that happens, I mean, that's just a beautiful thing. That's awesome. Great story. Thanks, Ana. Joel (42:22.759) What a feel-good moment to end a Chad and Cheese episode. That is Ana, Alim and Maria. Guys, we'll go reverse order this time. Ana, for our listeners who want to connect with you or learn more about the organization, where do you send them? Ana White (42:37.603) My LinkedIn, so Ana and last name is White. Please reach out to me. That would be great. Thank you. Joel (42:43.355) Lucky enough, Alim, where do they go? Alim Dhanji (42:46.788) If you can find me on TikTok, you have exceptional skills. Otherwise, LinkedIn is probably the best place to find me. Chad (42:53.237) I'll be looking on TikTok. I'll be looking. Joel (42:54.533) Understood and Maria, about you, and where can they learn more about Syndio? Maria Colacurcio (42:59.648) Yeah, same. So my LinkedIn is just Colacurcio and then Syndio’s is synd.io . So connect in either place and we'd be happy to hear from anyone. Chad (43:09.461) Beautiful. Joel (43:09.743) Love it. Thanks for joining us everyone. Chad, that is another one in the can. We out. Chad (43:14.995) We out.

In this episode, Professor Zeke Hernandez from the Wharton School delves into the key themes of his book, The Truth About Immigration - Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers . He unpacks the complex realities of immigration in the U.S., covering both legal and illegal immigration, while highlighting the significant economic contributions immigrants make. Professor Zeke also explores the urgent need for reforms in America's immigration policies, particularly in relation to high-skilled immigrants, and the ways in which the outdated system hampers the nation’s growth. Drawing from historical and contemporary examples, he discusses how immigration impacts the labor market, economy, and culture, and the role immigrants play in job creation. Additionally, he reflects on the challenges of cultural assimilation and shares insights on how to navigate difficult conversations about immigration, aiming to reshape perceptions of newcomers in a positive light. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:30.624) Yeah, it's your favorite to average white guys also known as the chat and cheese podcast. I'm your co host Joel Cheeseman joined as always Chad so washes in the house as we welcome Zeke Hernandez, tenured professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania Zeke welcome to HR is most dangerous podcast. Zeke (00:53.89) Thanks for having me on. Joel (00:55.828) No problem. Thanks for coming. Thanks for coming. So before we get into the nitty gritty of some of your research and commentary, give us a little taste of, who Zeke is as a person. Zeke (01:07.17) Yeah, let's see. I was born in the little country of Uruguay, which means automatically I'm a huge soccer fan. I love to both play and watch. I live in Philly, which means I suffer all Philly sport pain, including recent losses and old losses. Married, five kids. And yeah, I just, I love to travel, love to meet people from all over the world. And I'm a professor, as you mentioned. Joel (01:28.117) Hello. Joel (01:34.998) Did you say five kids? Holy cow. Chad (01:35.611) Zeke, yeah, yeah, and just so you know, we call it football around these parts, Zeke. This soccer stuff, it's a little bit much. Zeke (01:43.935) Hahaha Well, yeah. There's one that you use your foot with, you know, like actually. But I like, I like football. I like, you know, I like the throwing kind too. Chad (01:50.121) Well, Joe's so. Yeah, exactly. I like to call. yes. Now we like to call that American football. American football. Yes. So so so Joel gets a message from me. I don't know about a week ago. And I was like, you know, there's we're hearing a lot about immigration, not just in on the news cycle, but but also in what we do is the workforce. Right. And I just sat down, started was in a coffee shop, started reading your new book, The Truth About Immigration. Joel (02:02.55) Throw a ball. Chad (02:29.995) And I thought I'd reach out. And then I saw all this content that you're putting out that literally starts breaking things down around immigration and stats, historical context, those types of things. And I thought, hell, we need somebody smart on the podcast to be able to break some of this down for idiots like Joel and I. So right out of the gate, me why. you thought it was so important, especially in this time, in this cycle to be able to publish a book. Zeke (03:02.902) I mean, like you said, just pay attention to the headlines, right? It's crazy. We're hearing so many things. And look, I've spent 20 years researching how immigrants affect our economy and our society. And I've also talked to audiences from all walks of life. I mean, I'm not talking just academics. I'm talking everything from rotary clubs to church groups to lawmakers to business leaders, right? So it's not just one group. And here's what's really obvious. And you just have to read the headlines to see this. There's basically two stories that were told about immigrants. Chad (03:14.665) Mm-hmm. Zeke (03:33.098) One of them is that they're villains, that they're here to take your job and rape your daughter and undermine your culture. But then the alternative is what I call the victim story, that immigrants are these poor, needy people that need our pity and it's going to cost us a lot to welcome them. And those are the two alternatives. And both parties now kind of fall prey to those two things. And yet when you look at the data, it's neither fear nor pity. Immigrants are actually like net positive. Chad (03:52.681) Yeah. Zeke (03:59.938) contributors to everything you want for your your neighborhood, your country to be really prosperous. And nobody's telling that even though that's what the data actually does. And so I felt, hey, nobody's telling that story. I got to put it out there, not because of it's a political opinion, because it's like it's empirical fact. Chad (04:18.769) It is interesting that you say that too. Joel (04:18.954) Professor, how much of your commentary is illegal versus legal? Because I feel like the political landscape has just put everyone in the same bucket. Talk about the difference and what you argue for. it for both elements or are we demonizing illegal and legal immigration together? Talk about that sort of political reality. Zeke (04:42.454) Yeah, look, I think the thing you hear a lot is I'm not against legal immigration. I'm only against illegal immigration. The reality is we have to understand what every immigrant does. And we can all agree that we want regular immigration. want an orderly immigration process. But if we don't understand why we have so much illegal immigration, and if we don't understand what people living here without authorization are doing, we can't make good decisions about that. Okay. Chad (05:01.353) Mm-hmm. Zeke (05:12.012) So let me put it kind of perhaps in a big picture answer, and then I'm sure you'll drill down on that. Every person, every person economically does five things. contribute the big five inputs to the economy. Okay. They contribute their talent. They contribute investment. They contribute innovation. They contribute their consumption and they contribute the taxes they pay. Everybody brings those five things. That's true. Whether you're a U S citizen, that's true. Whether you enter the country legally or illegally. Chad (05:34.473) Mm-hmm. Zeke (05:41.6) Everybody does those five things. We don't have enough people being born in this country, so we need more people from the outside to bring those five things. But there's a bonus, which is that immigrants bring a lot more variety of those things, because they just have different tastes and preferences. They have different connections to investment networks. They have different innovations. They bring different skills and talents. And so you don't just get a quantity of those five things. You get a variety of those five things with immigrants. That's the short of it. Now we have to fix. Chad (05:41.908) Mm-hmm. Zeke (06:10.198) the immigration system so that we don't get as much irregular immigration. But I want to emphasize that even illegal immigrants are bringing those things. Chad (06:18.655) And talk a little bit about investment because I mean, you talk about those five things and I think all of those, you know, pretty much we've heard before, but we haven't heard the investment angle. How are immigrants actually bringing investment to this country? Zeke (06:33.486) Yeah, you're right. That's one of the big untold stories. I'll illustrate that with an example. So early last year, 2023, just a couple hours from where I live in this little town called Hometown, Pennsylvania, population 3,500, there's this company called EMD Electronics that made a $300 million investment that created 200 high skilled manufacturing jobs. These are jobs basically to build key parts, key inputs for making chips, the chips that power all our electronic devices. And I was like really confused by this. I was like, why would these jobs and such a massive investment show up at like this place in the middle of nowhere, right? Because it really is kind of in the middle of nowhere. And so, you know, being kind of the nerdy professor, I started digging into it to try to understand what's going on. And it turns out that Hometown PA was founded by German immigrants in the early 1800s, okay? And then you might think, well, what does that have to do with anything? Well, it turns out that EMD electronics is a subsidiary of Merck KGAA, which is a German corporation. And it's not a coincidence that those two things are happening. That is, there's a lot of research showing that where immigrants settle, what happens then for many, many years after, even for over a hundred years later, companies from the immigrants home country invest like Merck KGAA investing. in hometown Pennsylvania and those investments create jobs and they create jobs for local people. And that's true, not just of like ancestral immigrants like the Germans and hometown PA, but it's true of recent immigrants. So a lot of the investment we're getting from India, from China, from European countries, from Mexico is direct investment coming because it's coming to the communities where immigrants from those countries now have settled. then on, yeah. Chad (08:05.278) Hmm? Chad (08:18.979) So wait a minute, wait minute. This isn't an isolated, this is not an isolated incident. What you're saying is, and you have research to back this up, that the money actually follow the people. And in this case, it is rather interesting that German money would follow 100 years-ish behind settlers. Zeke (08:44.93) Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sure you're asking, well, why? That just seems really weird. Right? Well, look, the easiest way to understand this is put yourself in the shoes of a manager of a company that's growing and has to make investments around the world. The world's a big place. There's a lot of uncertainty about where to put your precious capital. Right? You need a network of trust. You need a network of good information about where to do business. And immigrants over time create these corridors of information, of trust, of ideas that create these corridors between places like Germany to hometown Pennsylvania, or Filipinos living in California back to the Philippines, or Mexican firms in places where there's lots of Mexicans. And you end up with investments, job creating investments that are a pull factor that immigrants bring when they settle into towns. And nobody tends to talk about that, right? Everybody gets stuck on the question of, these immigrants, they stealing jobs, right? And we never get to like these investment and other effects that happen. And there's another angle to investment that I'll mention real quick. It's not just that immigrants are pulling investment from where they live, from their home countries. Immigrants are also making investment directly in businesses because they're 80 % more likely to start businesses than native born people in the US. Okay? Chad (10:08.799) 80 %? Zeke (10:10.318) 80 % more likely, right? Their entrepreneurship rate is 80 % higher than, than, us born people. And those investments are creating jobs. And you see that everywhere. That's everything from an ethnic restaurant in the corner of your neighborhood to a corner store selling calling cards to Latin America, to Google and zoom and Pfizer and Colgate, right? Like, like these are all immigrants started companies, all over the economy that are creating jobs, not you know, for a tiny group of immigrants, but they're creating jobs for natives. So when you pair the foreign investment and the local investment, immigrants become net job creators for everybody. Chad (10:42.143) Mm. Joel (10:51.062) Dr. Hernandez, this is a recruiting show by most, by most public opinion and popular opinion. Why it seems crazy to me that we don't think of immigration in more of a recruiting terminology. In other words, we should be out trying to get the best and brightest into our country. And it's amazing to me that if you get a master's degree or a PhD in this country, you don't get automatic citizenship. Just give me your opinion on. What's going wrong? we improving it? Is it getting worse? What's the state of giving sort of high level, you high intelligence, high, high degree people like instant citizenships? Why, why isn't that happening? Zeke (11:33.07) Because Congress can't get its act together. That's the short answer, right? And it's a net loss to us. You know, we have data on this, for example, you know, we educate the number, we educate millions, millions of the world's best and brightest every year. And we, we only, so the latest estimate is that less than a quarter of them remain in the US labor market. Okay, so the negative way to put that is we're Chad (11:40.179) Mm-hmm. Chad (11:50.601) Yeah. Zeke (12:01.026) We're sending three quarters of them out. It's a huge, it's America's brain drain, right? It's not keeping these people. Okay. and, and, know, and by the way, the only ones that really make it into the U S labor market are the ones that graduate with STEM degrees. Anyone that doesn't have a STEM degree, they're essentially not making it to the U S labor market. And again, it's because politically we can't get our act together. And you know, what's really sad about that is that there are like proven benefits of hiring foreign born talent. Chad (12:05.705) Yeah. Zeke (12:31.086) companies get. I can talk about those if you want, but so it's not just that we're, you know, it's not just that we're filling, not just that we're filling shortages in the labor market is that we're missing out on positive benefits that come from native and foreign born talent interacting together. Joel (12:46.986) Is it your sense that this is split on party lines? Is it split on geography? Like kind of where people, the coast versus the middle of the country? Like where does the, where's the wedge happening? Zeke (12:58.966) In terms of people getting into the labor market. Joel (13:01.342) of PhDs getting automatic citizenship. Is that party lines? it geography? Just the whole thing's fucked up? Like, what's your take? But look on your face, the whole thing's fucked up. The whole thing needs to be tracked. Chad (13:11.382) We'll go with the latter. Zeke (13:11.598) The third option, though. Well, yeah, look, I'll give you... Let me give you a few examples, okay? So the last time we updated our immigration laws was in 1990, okay? So your listeners here, think about the labor market and the talent market in 1990. We weren't sending email in 1990, let alone using the internet or AI, right? And so we... And by the way, the immigration system was already sort of outdated for what the market needed in 1990. So let me just... Joel (13:33.6) Mm-hmm. Zeke (13:41.07) give you some real examples of the dysfunction that such an outdated system create. If you're an Indian in the US trying to get an EB2 green card, that's an employment-based green card in category two, you have a master's degree, right? You're a very desirable human capital. Do you know how long you have to wait in line for a green card? 195 years, okay? 195 years. That's insane. Chad (13:58.367) Mm. Chad (14:07.135) It's not worth it. Go to Canada. Go to Canada. Zeke (14:09.666) Well, that's exactly what's happening, right? We're losing that talent to Canada. We only give out 85,000 H1B visas per year. Okay, these are visas for skilled people with bachelor's and master's degrees and PhDs. Companies demand at least five to 10 times, no, not 10 times, let's say five to eight times as many, okay? And so what happens? My colleague, Britta Glennon, shows that when companies lose out on the H1B lottery, guess where they take those jobs? Chad (14:11.998) Yeah. Zeke (14:38.986) India, China and Canada, right? They're not, yeah. But, but, here's what's really critical. It's not a one-to-one exchange. It's not like, okay, look, I'll do the job in, in Missouri or I'll do it in Mumbai. Okay. You actually hire less than one person overseas for every person you can't hire in the U S so there's something lost. There's something you could have done in the company, right? Maybe the team needed two or three key pieces of talent or skill and that team now can't do that thing. Chad (14:40.499) Offshore. Offshore. Chad (14:52.457) Mm-hmm. Zeke (15:08.844) Right? So, so there's a net loss, a deadweight loss as economists like to say, it's not just like you're changing the geography of what you're doing. You're doing less. and that, and that, for example, makes companies less innovative. It makes companies less productive. They hire fewer natives because they don't have key skills on which to build around certain tasks. So it's, it's really like, you have to look beyond that job position and all the spillover effects of not being able to fill it. Chad (15:17.727) Mm-hmm. Chad (15:38.143) So instead of just looking at America's brain drain, because I think anybody saying that, somebody with a master's or PhD, yes, we should definitely look at that. But what about America's muscle drain? I mean, they might not be the best and brightest, but the lower half of those individuals that are coming into entry level jobs, they're the ones who are actually boosting the economy. Now, one of the reasons why America, and correct me if I'm wrong, but Listen to the economist, one of the reasons why the economy has done so well and we are outperforming everybody else out there is because of the immigrants that are actually doing the hard supply chain jobs that most Americans don't want to do. Zeke (16:23.118) You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. And this is where we have to get into the real controversial issue that that Joel brought up at the beginning about undocumented or illegal immigration. Okay, here's another fun fact about our messed up system. Of all the green cards we give every year, we give about a million green cards a year. Okay. And we give 140,000 only for employment based purposes. So that already tells you something. And of those 140,000, do you know how many we give to people that don't have a college degree? Only 5,000. Okay? The city of Philadelphia where I live by itself could use all those up every year. So when you only give 5,000 green cards to so-called unskilled people, well, guess what's going to happen to fill the gap between what we allow and what we need? Illegal immigration is going to happen. People are going to cross the border to fill jobs in farms and construction sites and household services. Chad (16:55.197) Wow. Chad (17:01.386) Mm-hmm. Zeke (17:21.874) in manufacturing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's just going to happen. And many times it happens because employers have a very hard time screening who's here legally or not. It also happens because immigrants know that they're needed. so, you know, anytime you have such a disconnect between supply and demand, you're going to get a black market for whatever that good is. It's going to happen, right? So we just have to make the system make sense and reflect reality. Okay. And also I wanna, for the HR professionals listening to this, I think many of them would agree with me that a college degree isn't the only indicator of skill, right? There are really skilled people, machinists, construction people, kinds, barbers that do really skilled work that we all appreciate. So it also makes no sense for us to have a system that only caters to say Indian and Chinese engineers. That makes no sense either. Joel (18:20.649) I want to tell you a story about my, my teenage son and stick with me here for a second. he first got his job as it's a fast food restaurant, basically towards the end of COVID or right at the tail end of COVID. As you remember this time, it was, we can't hire enough people, like open interviews, people were getting jobs on the spot and he started work around 2022. When he started very few, any immigrants or people who had been in the country that weren't born here naturally weren't working there. He was getting raises periodically. He was moving up the food chain. It wasn't until the last six to 12 months or so that their workforce was getting far more. They're all from Venezuela, according to him. I haven't fact-checked that, but he says they're all from Venezuela in that time. In that time, he's gotten fewer hours, no more, no more raises. So Zeke (19:09.048) Probably right, yeah. Joel (19:16.854) As an 18 year old, he looks at this and says, the Venezuelans are fucking my shit up. Agree or disagree that that's his state of mind. And he looks at in what to do for a living. And he was, you know, when he was told two years ago, the world needs plumbers, the world needs construction, the world needs all of these blue collar traditional jobs. And what he's thinking is, well, all these immigrants are coming in. They're eventually going to do those jobs. And I'm going to go from taking orders to not having that opportunity. To me, both things could be true. Yes, some Americans don't want to do those jobs, but some Americans do want to do those jobs and they're, hitting kind of this loggerhead of immigrants bad. How do I tell him that this is good? Zeke (20:06.006) Yeah. Yeah. Joel (20:06.39) And is he wrong? Is he wrong? Zeke (20:10.668) Yeah, yeah, that's a really good case study. It'll take a little bit to kind of break it down. Okay. So, by the way, I believe what you're telling me and you said this is your nephew, right? Joel (20:24.694) My son, he's 18. Yep. Zeke (20:26.168) your son, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I misheard your son. Okay. So there is some research showing that actually there are certain small groups, very small groups in the US that sometimes are in direct competition with new unskilled immigrants that arrive in the economy. One of those is actually teenagers like your son. So in places where there's a lot of unskilled immigrants, teenagers tend to work fewer hours, which seems to be exactly what's happening with your son. On average though, the average unskilled worker is not losing a job and is not losing wages to immigrants. Teenagers, because they're new to the labor market and don't have as many skills, are the most similar in the labor market to very, very new immigrants that don't have other skills coming in. But in the long run, that doesn't work out that way in a way that's negative for your son. And here's why. What the research shows is that Sometimes there can be very short-term disruptions like what your son is experiencing, but what that does is it creates sort of a reallocation of people into jobs that play to their strengths. So for example, in restaurants, a native-born English speaker like your son might become the waiter or the manager of the restaurant, and the immigrants who don't have language skills end up doing the kitchen work and the dishwashing work. In construction, the native person becomes a foreman that interacts with the customer and the immigrants are disproportionately doing like drywall and roofing because that doesn't require language skills. so there's kind of a reasonably efficient reallocation of skills into positions so that it becomes kind of a win-win for both. And because the jobs that require language skills and higher order skills pay more, actually sometimes what that entry of immigrants does is it actually, sometimes acts as a little bit of a push That moves natives a little bit up the skills ladder and then they end up earning more in the long run, right? Now your son might face the short-term discomfort of having to search a little bit. So we do see that sometimes happening, but I do want to say this and this is really important to say for the record, the average person in the labor market in the US actually does not lose jobs nor loses wages to immigrants, right? Zeke (22:48.504) Teenagers sometimes do. And then the other group that sometimes does is actually the prior wave of immigrants that still hasn't acquired enough language and other skills. But the average native-born person does not, which is a common misconception. Joel (23:03.222) I will add a postmark on that in that the franchisee who owns that restaurant is building a new restaurant within like two miles of that one. So there will be new opportunity born from that store. So I appreciate your comment that yes, there's some, there's some discomfort, but there's a reshuffling of things and things grow in light of that. And things do have ways of working out. So I do want to, I do, I did want to postmark that. Chad (23:03.881) So. Chad (23:13.642) Zeke (23:30.008) Yeah, th- Joel (23:31.382) But that may give him a new opportunity if he were to stay in the business to be a higher level employee based on his experience. Chad (23:36.819) possible management. Zeke (23:36.942) Yeah, or he might decide to do something else. mean, because the other thing, one of the reasons that often there's this fear that immigrants will displace native workers is that we only think immigrants as providing their labor, but we forget that they provide those big five things that I mentioned. So when you have this influx of Venezuelans, like these Venezuelans don't just get home from work and sit on their hands, right? They're spending their paycheck, like going to the movies or going to a restaurant or sometimes maybe opening their own restaurant, which makes the economic pie bigger. And there will be an opportunity for your son in there. What might be a little unsatisfying is I can't tell you exactly what that opportunity is gonna be, but I can tell you that economy is gonna be bigger and more diverse. Joel (24:16.919) The good news is everyone loves a good curd burger from Culver's. That's the good news, no matter where they're from. Chad (24:17.394) isn't it? Hey. Zeke (24:20.654) That's great. Yeah, yeah. That's great. Chad (24:24.927) Well, isn't it also important that we understand systems like e-Verify? Because as Joel was talking about with like plumbers and HVAC, and I know my next door neighbor is a plumber and I mean, he makes a great living. And he said directly, I wish we could actually hire more immigrants because their work ethic is amazing. They come here, they do a great job, but we can't because they won't pass e-Verify. So there are systems in place for at least for these employers who are above board. And it just doesn't seem like we are educating the rest of our people that, look, there are these jobs that are available. They're doing these great jobs, but also there are safeties in place. Zeke (25:10.636) Yeah, yeah, there are. mean, to be honest, e-Verify is notoriously unreliable. I mean, look, USCIS has massive resources and they can't keep track of who's in the country legally or not. Do you expect a small business to have the resources to do that? Obviously not. And I think we can all agree that we'd rather have a market that's composed only of legal work, you know, workers who are here legally. Chad (25:16.883) Okay. Zeke (25:35.918) But again, to fix that, we have to update the system. Modernize it from 1990 to now. When you have 11 and a half million permanent undocumented immigrants in the country, it's not that you have a few bad apples that are crossing the border. It's that our entire system for bringing apples in is super screwed up. And so we could just fix the system for bringing in apples. I mean, we have to be honest about that, right? Chad (26:00.028) You Zeke (26:05.558) And when you talk to employers on the ground, which you do, they're the first ones to tell you, like, we need these people. I just wish we had a better way to hire them, right? They're not saying, just kick them all out because I have endless natives wanting these jobs. That's just not the truth. That's not what's going on on the ground. Chad (26:22.719) It seems like there's a huge fear factor in place and by it's estimated by 2035 to 2040, the demographics of America is going to flip and white people will not be the majority anymore, which in some cases feels like it's freaking some people out. Right. And we keep hearing this narrative of we are losing our culture. Can you speak to that a little? Zeke (26:48.866) Yeah, look, I have a lot of sympathy for that. And I can understand that's a very good question. There's always been a fear of the next group every time, right? Whoever the next group is. And this started all the way in the 1840s. Chad (27:02.008) Yeah. Irish, Polish. Yeah. yeah. Zeke (27:06.338) Yeah, exactly. Right. So the Irish were supposed to be unassimilable. It's kind of cute to look at that in hindsight, right? The Italians were supposed to be unassimilable. Eastern European Jews were supposed to be, you know, every new group was supposed to be impossible to assimilate. And so, you know, I think history is a very good guide. It's a very, very good guide for what's going to happen. Right. People want to come to America precisely because of what America represents and what our core values are. And yes, for prosperity as well. And We have waves and waves of history that tell us that immigrants assimilate very successfully and actually they preserve and enhance the core values of what America is. yes, they now in fairness, they, it's also a lie to say that America will be identical a hundred years from now than it is today, right? In the same way that like, yeah, we go to the ballpark and we brought, right? Which Germans brought, Chad (28:02.441) Yeah. Joel (28:03.573) Nachos. Zeke (28:05.324) Yeah, which we brought some nachos. And by the way, like these were foods introduced by two really scary immigrant groups, right? But what they've done is they've introduced foods that we love, but they haven't like changed the constitution. They haven't undermined our core institutions. And so I think we have to be willing to let our grandchildren eat different foods while trusting that American institutions are strong enough, right? That's how I would think about it. Chad (28:16.895) Mm-hmm. Joel (28:28.138) Is that a harder bridge to build in America than say Europe? Because we were founded on immigrants coming from like there's a little Italy, there's a little like Chinatown, these things, you don't find those in Europe. These are countries that have been around for thousands of years. this is, is it fair to say this is a bigger issue for them, a much more challenging issue than it is for America? Or do you find that it's the same no matter what? Zeke (28:53.65) I think immigrants, when allowed, when you allow them to fully participate in the labor market and when you allow them to move freely, given those two conditions, they assimilate quite well everywhere they go, whether it's Europe, you know, Asia, the U S whatever, the, the, the U S has, I think, I think it's a fair thing. Like it's an empirical statement to say that the U S has been by far the most successful in doing that. Because despite kind of our federal level fights. On the ground, Americans are very welcoming of immigrants. Immigrants are actually popular. People like immigrants, right? Two-thirds of Americans like immigrants on the ground. And so we do pretty well with that. has a different historical background. Europe also does certain things with immigrants sometimes that doesn't help. For example, many European countries are actually fairly generous to refugees. But they're generous in a way that doesn't allow them to do those two things I mentioned, right? They put them in very concentrated ghettos or neighborhoods, right? They don't let them move freely and they don't let them participate freely in the economy because in exchange for like the generous welfare benefits they provide, and then they end up with like immigrants who have a harder time assimilating. The US in some ways by being like, you know, more laissez faire, more like ungenerous, sort of lets people participate and they do the rest. Joel (30:13.131) Mm-hmm. Joel (30:17.416) There's lot to be said for the Statue of Liberty, whether indirectly or directly. To grow up in a country where that is there and bring us your poor huddled masses, that still exists. Chad (30:17.865) So. Chad (30:26.451) Mm-hmm. Chad (30:31.451) It still exists. just need to, we need to talk more about it. And again, it's like we want to pick and choose the things that we talk about that are hundreds of years old instead of looking at our past and our history. And that being said, do a listener, let's say a listener or somebody viewing this podcast, and they want to be able to talk to uncle Hank during Thanksgiving dinner, for goodness sakes, how do they approach difficult conversations? like immigration once this is because this is so fraught throughout our new cycle. Zeke (31:07.958) I know, and it's so sad, right? I mean, if you pay attention to the cover of the book, you'll see that I was very deliberate in choosing like happy colors because part of what I'm trying to communicate is actually it doesn't have to be fraud. When you look at the evidence, this is actually a topic that is very much a win-win. But where I would start with Uncle Frank at the Thanksgiving table is I wouldn't actually start with like what I do and be like, it turns out here's fact one, here's fact two, here's fact three, and you're an idiot, right? Because Uncle Hank's gonna get really mad. You know, so what I would do is I would start with what are the underlying values and goals that Uncle Hank has. And I think there we can all agree. For example, if I ask you, look, what do we want for our, our communities? We want them to be safe, right? Nobody would disagree with that. We want communities that produce jobs for everybody. We want, you know, we want cultural vitality. We want demographic balance. We want you know, we want a plenty of investment We want new innovations and products that make our lives interesting so we can agree to all of that So I would start with what do you want and I'm sure uncle Hank would agree with all that and And then and then uncle Hank would be in a position to be like, okay We want the same thing and now we can say alright Let's talk about how immigrants contribute to all those things you want uncle Hank, you know, and there yes there may be a little bit of myth-busting but it's in the direction of here's what you want uncle Hank as opposed to Chad (32:16.937) Yeah, find common ground. Zeke (32:29.622) in the direction of Uncle Hank, you're an idiot, right? And so start with what you want. Just make a list and then go from there. That's what I would do. Chad (32:38.657) Even if Uncle Frank's an idiot, we should back off of that, right? Yeah, we should definitely back off of that. Zeke (32:45.196) Well, I can't tell you what to do. mean, yeah, yeah. Joel (32:45.558) Is this Frank or Hank? I'm very confused. Frank and Hank. I guess they're brothers. Chad (32:48.467) Well, they're both idiots. They're both idiots. Just go ahead and throw that out there. Zeke (32:52.12) Look, this comes with the territory, but having written this book, I've been attacked viciously by people who are really angry about immigration, right? And sometimes it's people who really don't wanna talk, right? And they'll call me slurs, right? They'll say, you're gay, right? It has nothing to do with my position on immigration. they'll say, by the way, I happen to be married to a woman, I'm straight, but they'll tell me things like this that are like, you don't even wanna talk, right? You're just kind of. Chad (33:18.557) Yeah. Joel (33:21.014) When they go there, just know that you've won the argument. They have nothing left but to call you gay. Zeke (33:22.048) You want to fight? Yeah. Zeke (33:26.454) Yeah, yeah. So let's assume that the uncle's sincere, right? Yeah, anyway. Chad (33:31.038) Yeah. Joel (33:32.48) So I want to take sort of the other side of this and you mentioned, you know, we need population, we need people. Chad thinks we should, we should not be in that position, but that's a different podcast altogether. I think if you listen to the opposing people who oppose immigration, they will say that it's a drain on healthcare. It's a drain on education. It's a drain on, you know, welfare and government services. But I want you to talk about the other side. Like those things happen if we close the border. Chad (33:43.637) Anos. Joel (34:01.974) too, because we don't have enough younger workers to do those things, to support those systems. So talk a little bit about the other side where there's no immigration and what happens. Zeke (34:13.602) Yeah, sure. mean, look, let's use the Great Depression as an example, Prices went down during the Great Depression, right? know, cost of housing was really cheap in the early 1930s, but that's because you had a demand shock. You had a smaller economy, right? You shrunk the economic pie and people couldn't afford things. And, you know, yeah, there was less demand, less, you could even say less competition for public services, et cetera. Chad (34:22.195) Yeah, not good. Yeah. Zeke (34:43.018) I don't think that we want that, although the mass deportation idea is taking us in that direction. People, right? People of all kinds, whether immigrants or not, end up being the ones who pay taxes, end up being the ones who provide the labor force to build housing and infrastructure, end up being the labor force that provides teachers when you have to build a new school. It's true that in the short run, right? And by short run, mean, you know, say one to five years after immigrants arrive. Sometimes if the inflow is unexpected or really rapid, you're going to get a strain on public services. Schools will be a little more crowded. The cost of housing could go up a bit. You know, the city is going to have to spend more, more taxpayer money on public services or housing, et cetera. Chad (35:24.478) Mm-hmm. Zeke (35:32.782) Yes, that is going to happen with new people, whether they come from California or whether they come from China, right? That's going to happen. But again, the goal isn't to kick them out and shrink the economy. The goal is to increase the supply of all those things. And that's where new people are the solution. One example is like the claim that's been made recently that immigrants are putting pressure on housing prices. Well, the only way to get out of that is to build a lot and increase the supply of housing. Who's going to build your houses? It's not native born people. I'll tell you that, right? Immigrants are a quarter of the construction labor force, but they're more than half of key bottlenecks in construction, like drywall installation, roofing, flooring, and other, you know, very manual, very, very, you know, what you could, you could call it unskilled, positions. So without immigrants, you can't get yourself out of the housing crisis is the point. And the same is true with like our long-term entitlement programs. The same is true for building new schools, cetera. Chad (36:07.513) huh. Joel (36:31.862) Is mass deportation even realistic? You mentioned that and we hear a lot on the news. It just seems unrealistic. Zeke (36:39.51) No, logistically, would be, I know this is controversial, but it would be more expensive to mass deport the, say 12 million people that are here without authorization than to give them all amnesty, if that makes sense, right? So an economist would say, look, you're much better off with amnesty than mass deportation. But that's just the direct cost of the deportation. The real pernicious part is that you're kicking out 12 million people again. who provide those five inputs, talent, innovation, taxes, consumption, and investment, right? And so do you wanna create a Great Depression scenario again where you contracted the economy? That's the real long-term cost of a mass deportation. And that's what would really, really hurt us more than whatever much money we'd have to spend on identifying, rounding up and flying out 11 million people or 12 million people. Joel (37:34.462) And it would also send a message to everyone, don't come here. And it would affect things for a longer period of time than just the mass deportation. Chad (37:38.825) Yes. Yes. Zeke (37:42.156) That's right. And I think the people who listen to this podcast who need to hire talent would be some of the first in line to say we are being really hurt by this. Our businesses are being hurt by this. Chad (37:55.583) Well, I think you're seeing CEOs of major, corporations today saying that and who they're actually putting their voice behind for president. I mean, it comes down to yes, tariffs and whatnot, but also a lot of that has to do with immigration and ensuring that we have the workforce necessary to be able to service, to be able to provide that supply chain that's necessary just to be able to keep us moving every day. Joel (37:56.298) I think you're right. Zeke (38:25.838) Absolutely, let alone consumers. Do you want to lose 12 million consumers in the economy? I'm not sure that you do. So it's both a supply and a demand side problem. Chad (38:31.762) No, no. Chad (38:36.069) It is it is kids. Well, that is Professor Zeke Hernandez. If you haven't if you haven't gotten it yet, you got to get the book. It's called The Truth About Immigration Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers Sounds Sounds Interesting America. Zeke, if you do us a favor, tell us where if somebody wants to connect with you or maybe even buy the book, where would you send them? Zeke (38:59.032) Yeah, I think the easiest place is go to my website, ZekeHernandez.net , ZekeHernandez.net, and on social media, I'm Prof Zeke, Prof Zeke, all one word. I love to connect. Chad (39:10.643) Sounds like a great podcast. Prof Zeke. Joel (39:12.448) Ty, everybody go hug an immigrant. Go hug an immigrant. Chad, that's another one in the can. We out. Zeke (39:12.718) Well, you might have a competitor. Chad (39:21.242) We out!

In this episode of The Chad & Cheese Podcast, your favorite snarky duo, Joel and Chad, tackle the light and breezy topics of, oh, you know, political dumpster fires, mass layoffs, and the slow-motion train wreck that is HR tech. But don’t worry, they keep it upbeat with some good ol’ fashioned sportsball updates (because, priorities) and ADP’s latest shopping spree, snagging Workforce Software like it’s a Black Friday deal. Oh, capitalism, you're so quirky! As Chad and Joel take a deep dive into ADP’s "brilliant" master plan to fend off up-and-coming HR tech rivals (cue ominous music), they also get a kick out of SEEK’s acquisition strategy, which—spoiler alert—might just shake up the market. Or, you know, not. Depends on whether anyone's paying attention. Then, the boys turn their attention to minimum wage debates, a topic that's sure to get everyone riled up. Wage increases? Economic impacts? Let’s just say they’re here to highlight how much of a mess that conversation still is. But wait, there’s more! The podcast also drops some love for Tulsa’s remote work program—a totally chill and not-at-all desperate attempt to lure workers with promises of wide-open spaces and cheap rent. And because no episode would be complete without a tragedy, they wrap things up by discussing a truly uplifting topic: workplace safety after a factory accident. Workplace accountability? What’s that? PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION (Blame AI for errors) Chad (00:12.617) So. Joel (00:32.088) Two guys who love the nightlife and love to boogie. Hi kids, you are listening to the chat and cheese podcast. I'm your cohost Joel, the real father of IVF cheeseman. Chad (00:43.049) Hahaha this is Chad, I can't take this fucking political cycle anymore, so wash. Joel (00:52.03) on this episode. Layoffs, acquisitions, and bad bosses. my, let's do this! Chad (01:03.194) my God. Thanks for that. I needed that. Jesus. God. Jesus, yeah. Joel (01:04.494) 19 more days as of this recording. 19 more days. As if it'll end in 19 days. Chad (01:11.381) Well, yeah, think we've got a greater likelihood of it ending if Kamala wins because we don't have to worry about really a change of power to be quite frank. Joel (01:23.438) She better landslide that shit if she does. She better leave no doubt that she won the election. Chad (01:30.153) Yeah, well, welcome to democracy. Welcome to democracy and propaganda. Joel (01:33.614) It's gonna get crazy. I'm just sick of the texts. my God. Like I get 10 to 12 texts a day asking for money or buying stuff. I mean, if my texts are any indication, Ted Cruz is in trouble. I get more Ted Cruz stuff randomly. So that can't be good. Chad (01:43.901) Ha! Chad (01:56.925) You get Ted Cruz texts? Jesus Christ, I'm glad I'm not on the list that you're on. Joel (02:00.302) So I get, I'm on, I'm on, well, I'm on some GOP lists somewhere. so I get all kinds of shit. I'll get state stuff here locally. I'll get, don't know. I don't know. Yeah. Like most of it's Trump, by the way, isn't it weird? The whole sale shit that he's selling, selling coins. He's selling like NFTs. He's so it's just so, it's just so weird that, that we live. It's so weird that we live in a time. Chad (02:11.283) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Chad (02:22.441) Dude, he's a fucking con- he's a con man. He's a fucking con man. Joel (02:29.87) where a presidential candidate is selling shit. It's just weird. It's not like the history books have no, there's no stories about Lincoln roaming the Midwest selling top hats or something. It's just such a weird fucking world we live in, man. Chad (02:34.146) Mm-hmm. It's, yeah, it's idiocracy. Chad (02:43.455) Yeah. Chad (02:51.221) I would like- Joel (02:52.03) I don't fucking get it. then, and then sports guy, let's get to sports real quick. The Buckeyes lose in a sham of a sham of a rule. by the way, takes time off the clock. If you know, you know, the Browns trade, trade a wide receiver one for a third, third round pick. The, the guardians are down O2 to the Yankees. It's just, it's just, it's just a, it's a bummer time for sports at least. Chad (02:56.604) yeah. Chad (03:08.611) huh. Yup. Chad (03:16.021) Yeah, well, see, I don't mind the Buckeyes losing by a point. Here's why. First and foremost, they're going to get into the playoff. Okay. Now they have a chip on their shoulder where before everybody was touting how they were the best this, the best that, and so on and so forth. They needed a chip on their shoulder. They're going to have that. They're not going to go in as number one, which I am fine with. So I think this is good for billboard. I think for the billboard on the... Joel (03:24.92) Mm-hmm. Chad (03:44.157) on the wall when you're going in every week, you're not number one. So for me, I think it's okay. I wasn't happy that they lost, but I think it's gonna work in their favor. Joel (03:45.678) Mm-hmm. Joel (03:57.07) At least they didn't lose to Vanderbilt, Alabama. That's, that's the worst. I think that loss is worse than Appalachian state beating Michigan back in the day. That is a horrible loss. Chad (03:59.413) Hahaha Chad (04:08.159) I think it is too. think it is too. Okay, okay, let's get the shot out. Joel (04:11.158) And by the way, Ball State plays Vanderbilt this week. So if they beat Vanderbilt, can officially say Ball State is better than Alabama just for the record. Chad (04:20.371) Yeah, by proxy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Joel (04:22.002) my proxy. shit, let's get to let's get to something that we know. By the way, our shout outs are sponsored by our good friends and Canadians. Chad (04:26.527) Checkouts. All right. Chad (04:33.749) Keyora, Keyora, Keyora. This shout out made simple. It's interesting this week, shout out to smart recruiters for launching Winston. We spent all last week in Scottsdale talking to companies specifically about how they're using technology. Joel (04:33.996) That's right, Kiora. Text recruiting made simple. What you got, Chad? Joel (04:52.238) Mm-hmm. Chad (04:55.841) to automate, save money at the same time. I mean, to do the things that we should have been doing for years. And we got some amazing stuff, which is going to come out, kids. Get ready for the AI session, season two and season three. But then this week, then this week, we see smart recruiters launching Winston. And this is going in the same direction, which I think is incredibly smart because all of these old legacy applicant tracking systems who have the forms that nobody's going to fucking fill out. They have conversational engagement, which to me feels like conversational AI is going to be happening here using scheduling, multi-layered screening, adaptive UI. What does that mean? I guess we're going to find out. then agentic insights, which I believe means the AI will dynamically build reports. CEO, newly minted CEO Rebecca Carr is putting her stamp on smart recruiters pretty damn fast. And since we're pretty close, with them and the rest of the team, I am pretty excited to take a look and get a deep dive into some of this tech. And if anybody has not seen our latest interview with Rebecca Carr, just go to ChadCheese.com or go to YouTube, ChadCheese on YouTube. Chad (06:17.215) Shout out to automation. Joel (06:18.4) And good, good on smart recruiters for giving their AI a boy's name. Everyone's a woman. Everyone's sort of a feminine, like good for them. Winston's a good, strong, strong name. Good, good for them. Good for them. All right. My shout out goes to Natasha Badger. Who the fuck is Natasha Badger? Well, let me tell you, she's gone viral on Tik TOK for giving some, some job search advice on how to leverage LinkedIn in a smart way. Chad (06:29.109) Winston. Chad (06:37.619) no clue. Joel (06:47.962) she's up to about 2 million views, knowing that a lot of people aren't in our industry. know that you've gotten contacted by some folks as I have as well are looking for a job. and, some of the kids are watching the show and on YouTube, I thought it'd be, I it'd be worthwhile to show her tick talk that is blowing up. If you haven't seen it already, check it out. Chad (06:56.629) Mm-hmm. Chad (07:35.124) No we don't. Chad (08:22.047) Shortcut. Joel (08:26.987) Mm-hmm. Chad (08:29.629) Boom. Boom. Joel (08:30.572) Genius. And if you haven't seen it, our recent interview with Alison King entitled, unemployment pros job search journey is something that you should watch if you're looking for a job. Some really creative ideas around LinkedIn to find a job. Shout out to Natasha Badger. What a great last name. Badger, Natasha Badger. Love it. Love it. Almost as good as getting free shit from us. Chad (08:35.977) Mm-hmm. Chad (08:45.909) Definitely. I Chad (08:52.765) All right. Well, that's that was free advice. Now we've got free shit that you can go to Chadcheese.com slash free and register. What are you registering for kids? you know, you know, T-shirts, those sexy little T-shirts with the new guns and roses, Chad and cheese logo on the front and the Aaron app logo on the back. Beer from Aspen Tech Labs. That's craft beer. It's going to land on your doorstep. Whiskey. Two bottles of whiskey kids from Tex Colonel slash Bullhorn. Bourbon barrel aged syrup from our friends at Keyora. And last but not least, birthday, birthday, birthday, your birthday. You might get rum from Plum. Go to ChadCheese.com slash free, register, can't win unless you play. Joel (09:46.926) That's right, Chad. Some listeners are celebrating a birthday this week. I'm to go through the whole month because we're traveling, which I know we'll get to in a second, but, celebrating another trip around the sun. got Gary Gray, Cheryl Callaway, Brandon Pointer, Melissa Allen, Rob Janone, Dennis Tupper, Sean Horton, Tom Kenny, Ryan Beck, Punkage Jindal, Cameo Owens, Jonathan Stelling, Jeremy Roberts, Heather Cochran, Desiree Goldie, Tracy Jackson, Bob Warbrow, Tom Daniels, John Sullivan. Chad (09:48.501) Yeah Chad (09:53.365) Let's do it. Yes. Chad (10:06.581) There we go. Joel (10:16.874) And look out Chad, it's a double Scotsman treat. Chad (10:21.878) Ooh, what? What? What? Joel (10:24.792) That's right, Stephen O'Donnell and Scotsman number one, Stephen McGrath are celebrating another trip around the sun. So happy birthday, everybody. Happy birthday. Chad (10:29.95) There he is! Chad (10:36.393) Happy birthday. So we talked about a little bit about fantasy football. I really don't want to because on Monday night, Monday night, right before I was slated to win and right before they started, my guy sat on the bench because he had an injury and that was last minute. I didn't get a chance to sub in and I literally lost by like maybe five points or some shit like that. So yeah, that hurt. That hurt. That hurt. Joel (10:42.254) Uh-huh. Joel (10:54.008) Mm-hmm. Joel (11:00.344) That's that's fantasy baby. had my tight end on the first play got hurt, got hurt at, at the Eagles, but yeah, that's, that's how it goes. Let's get into it. That's our cue for the fantasy football leaderboard. Fantasy football is, know, Chad sponsor by our buddies at factory fix. check those out. If you guys are looking for hourly employees, here's your leaderboard after week six of NFL football, David Stifle. Chad (11:06.679) yeah. Chad (11:17.845) Mmm. Yes. Joel (11:28.15) is still in number one spot. Dean Daddy Mac, Daddy Mac Mackerel took me to the woodshed and gave me a boomerang to the head this week. Yeah, he did. Number three, Jennifer Terry Bradshaw, Tharp. Number four, I'm still there. Joel slippery slope cheeseman. Number five, action Jackson Dalquist. Number six, Laura magic Martinelli. Number seven, Dina Pero for pyro. She was last year's champion as you know, number eight, Chad (11:30.001) Damn! Chad (11:35.091) Ooh, put the spanking. Chad (11:41.951) Damn. Joel (11:56.876) With a bomb, Adam Gordon Ramsey quickly finding the seller of the the league. Number nine, Keith, the commission Sunderling number 10 bad Chad. So wash number 11, Christie linebacker Lisbon and number 12 in the seller. Again, Sean Horton hears a who that is your leaderboard for fantasy football sponsored by factory fix. Chad (12:06.677) Damn. Chad (12:25.974) Excellent, excellent. We've got one more week of travel. That's next week. We're to be in New Orleans for HR gumbo. It's going to be a blast, kids. It's going to be a blast. Keith Sonderling is going to be on stage with us. know Guru is going to be there from Fair AI. Fair now, H-I. My bad. AI. Julie is going to be on stage talking about black box AI and how it might impact individuals with disabilities. Joel (12:43.852) Okay. Chad (12:51.221) We're gonna be rooftop parties at Rosie's, another more formal gathering at the World War II Museum, which should be a blast for you history buffs out there. And yeah, it's gonna be great. I'm gonna get a chance to pull a lot of speakers on the mic and just have a good time down in NOLA. Joel (12:56.162) Nice. Joel (13:08.344) The big easy baby. Well, before we get to topics, that's right. We got some layoffs to talk about. Well, quick update. talked about career builder plus monster. That's their official name now. Real creative career builder plus monster. aim group is reporting that, the layoffs hit about 200 employees, roughly 15 % of the workforce. so that, was sort of highlighted and top towel. Chad (13:11.017) Hmm. Y'all. no. no. Chad (13:21.951) Ha ha ha ha! Chad (13:36.949) Mm-hmm. Joel (13:37.568) A company that Chad says no one knows. So anyway, this might be news for you. Just the name of the company, the self-proclaimed world's largest fully remote workforce has laid off a whopping 70 % of its engineering team affecting roles across software engineering, data science, and design in multiple countries like the U S Ukraine and Poland. Chat any thoughts on updates on layoffs? Chad (14:06.803) Yeah, just a continuation of last week with Monster. If that's not anything we should be surprised with. But I do have some insider knowledge that we were talking about, whether they would have two databases, two types of tech, et cetera, cetera. Nope. From my understanding, again, this is a rumor, from the inside, they're going to go to one platform, one tech platform. And then they'll more than likely merge the candidate databases into that one search platform. So try to make it a big, bad career builder plus monster. On the top toll side of the house, it was funny because just literally last week, one of my friends was asking me about them because they were pretty much being dragged into conversations about, prospectively, being on the leadership team. And I was like, don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. I mean, they are so far behind the rest of the competition that's out there. Joel (14:54.933) huh. Joel (15:03.601) huh. Chad (15:03.631) it's, it's just not worth it. literally isn't worth it. And then this information comes out and like, holy shit, talk about dodging a bullet. but yeah, yeah, that a lot of this doesn't surprise me. We're going to see a lot of the smaller players who haven't evolved fast enough. They don't understand how to partner in, in build. they're going to, they're going to get flushed down the toilet and that's where it feels like top tiles going. Joel (15:24.908) Did you tell your buddy not to fall for the banana in the tailpipe? Chad (15:28.021) Yes. Yes. Joel (15:32.206) The question I have is 70 % of your engineering, is that an AI thing? Because that's crazy. Thriving businesses don't cut 70 % of their engineering team. That's not a good sign for anybody. Chad (15:45.385) Yeah, tell that to Elon Musk. Joel (15:48.802) Tell that to throw. All right. Time out. Did you see the whole taxi thing and the people robot and the bus? That was awful. Like the, the, the robots were mostly apparently, by human humans were, yeah, like they were hardly remote. anyway, the stock, the top stock took a big hit, but anyway, okay. Yeah. If you haven't checked that out, it's, it's, it's pretty bad, but let's get into some of our industry news here. Chad (15:52.841) Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah. Chad (16:04.134) Remote control. Yeah. Yup. Chad (16:13.333) Tesla is a wreck. Topics! Joel (16:20.238) All right. A little company called ADP has acquired Michigan based workforce software. The acquisition integrates workforce software solution and time tracking, scheduling, other services into ADP's existing services. Chad, your take on this acquisition. Chad (16:39.293) Yeah, I mean, when companies say they have a build partner or buy strategy, most only have a partner strategy or maybe a buy every now and again strategy, but ADP can drop the coin necessary on any given fucking day and buy whatever they want. So in this case, yes, workforce has a portfolio of companies. ADP is buying that portfolio. That's awesome. But more importantly, ADP added complimentary capabilities to their suite of solutions, which they can now offer to their million plus customers in over 140 countries because workforce is also global. Workforce software has been in business since 1999. This is not a startup kids. This is a full-fledged been in business for a long damn time. So the question is why sell? Well, VC and PE were deep into workforce. Joel (17:15.488) Mm-hmm. Chad (17:36.213) software and since Evergreen dumped some additional cash in the kitty in 2019, the clock was ticking and apparently time was up. At the end of the day, what's happening here is we're starting to see ADP, and this is gonna be hard, man. It's not gonna be easy no matter how much money they have, trying to pull everything together with their Lyric automations, right? AI automations. It's gonna be incredibly, incredibly hard. Although if there's any company who can do it in the space, Joel (17:51.48) Mm-hmm. Chad (18:05.607) It's them because they got the cash they got the people and they got the know-how so it's going to be interesting to watch this Joel (18:11.16) Mm-hmm. Joel (18:16.782) So Bloomberg reported that this deal went down for about $1.2 billion, not too shabby for that, for workforce software. I'm sure their shareholders are pretty happy about that. They employ around 700 people. They're a pretty steady company. Headcount, no dips, no valleys, no peaks. mean, they're just sort of steady. Eddie, like I guess a good Midwestern Michigan company should be. Chad (18:23.359) Mmm. Chad (18:32.607) Yes. Joel (18:42.86) You mentioned ADP is 1 million clients in 140 companies, like a huge ADP is a huge business. And when they buy someone, I mean, there's a lot of accountants, a lot of due diligence, a lot of people looking under the hood to make sure that it makes sense. So like, I think that that's your comment about if anyone can make it work, ADP is certainly up there. historically acquisitions don't work out very well. so we'll see what happens there. I think that this Chad (18:43.177) Yeah, Lavonia. Chad (18:50.516) Yes. Joel (19:11.596) I think this was a big move for ADP to stay like long-term relevant. I don't want to necessarily say blame deal for this deal. Sorry, I had to do that. But I do think that ADP has made a living off payroll and they've included services. I don't know how good those services are. I don't really hear a lot of people like banging the drum for how great ADP's other stuff is. Their marketplace is pretty thriving. So they get sort of a good look at what other people are using, what they want. Chad (19:19.859) Hahaha Chad (19:38.175) Yeah. Joel (19:40.45) But as more platforms, like there are certain platforms that aren't building in your marketplace. Deal is not building in your marketplace, remote oyster, all those companies, they want to be your competitor. And as they add payroll to their services, ADP has really no other choice in my mind than to start competing on the other software services that those companies are providing. So if you want to be the one platform to rule them all, you're going to have to have some of the services. that workforce software provide. And they seem like the winner that gets the golden ticket to get acquired by ADP. But I think this is spurred primarily by, shit, we have competition and we need to do things to make sure that we're not irrelevant in 10 years. Chad (20:27.423) Yeah, I don't think they see DELO's competition yet. I see them as a they see them as a very small, small fish. know, 500 million ARRs, nothing to ADP. They drop that in their couch cushions. Although DELO is awesome. And I really believe, you know, what they are doing could transform not just the EOR side of the house, but also staffing as we talked to Atlas about that, too. Jim over at Atlas. Joel (20:53.806) Mm-hmm. Chad (20:56.106) I do think that one of the, one of the, superpowers that ADP has is they have so many fucking solutions that they go in. They get somebody to use one or two, and then they, they land those solutions and then they expand with all these other things. So the sales process starts when you become a customer, when you become a customer, because then it starts to explode and, an acquisition like this, get ready kids. Joel (21:10.828) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Joel (21:18.872) Mm-hmm. Chad (21:25.203) because every ADP customer who's not already using Workforce Solutions, they will automatically start getting sold on this. And this is nothing but, again, being able to retain and expand that wallet share. So, yeah, I don't think they're worried about deal, which is good for deal, but they definitely should know about deal just from an acquisition standpoint. Because again, if anybody has the cash to do it, ADP has the cash to do it. Joel (21:29.454) Mm-hmm. Joel (21:38.412) Ha Joel (21:53.422) Interestingly, ADP is a public company. The market more or less yawned about this deal. take that for what it's worth. I mean, it's just like maybe it's just a fly on the ass of an elephant. Also unlike stock twits, which is really normally a cornucopia of bullshit and crazy stuff, like nothing on this deal. take that for what it's worth. But on that note, let's take this thing down under, shall we? Chad (22:00.341) Which is good. Which is good. Joel (22:22.264) Take it down under SEEK. SEEK has entered an exclusivity agreement to potentially acquire XREF for about 28 million US dollars aiming to broaden its service in HR tech, specifically employment verification. The deal's progression depends on due diligence and negotiation with XREF's board open to recommending acquisition to shareholders if conditions are met. However, Chad (22:22.611) The land down under. Joel (22:48.642) Completion isn't guaranteed as discussions continue. Chad, your thoughts on this impending deal. Chad (22:55.573) So remember when I was a fan of Seek pulling out of Latin America, which would give them more of a chance to focus on markets they actually know? Now Seek's integration with Xref, implemented earlier this year in June, allows employers using Seek to request reference checks provided by Xref. So going down funnel, integrating reference checks is smart. Going down funnel is smart. This move is smart. If you offer an easy way to post jobs, Joel (23:05.208) Mm-hmm. Chad (23:24.829) acquire talent, then reference check that talent all in one platform. Ta-da, that's a winner. There are 2.5 million SMEs in Australia and around half million in New Zealand. That's your prime target because most of the bigger companies already have reference check, background companies, those relationships in play. So Australia and New Zealand are, they're not large markets. And even though we've got plenty of People that tell us, well, Seek is big in APAC too. It's all well and good, but those markets are all incredibly fragmented. APAC speaks a ton of different languages. They have a ton of different cultures and yes, there's money to be had there, but Seek needs to keep it simple. I like the idea of Seek not just owning the land down under candidate acquisition side, but also driving down funnel with the prospect of reference checks. background checks and just again, there's more money down funnel. And I think seek, this is a smart, smart seek move. And you don't hear that often from me. Joel (24:29.312) Mm-mm-mm. Down funnel at the down under. So you mentioned earlier, the by builder partner question. And I think that it's, it's sort of fascinating on this week's show. And a theme that we've had is that companies are sort of struggling with, we buy, build or partner on some of this stuff? And we, talked about a zip intro a couple of weeks ago, about a month ago and zip, zip seems to be married to, we're going to build it like, damn the torpedoes. We're going to build it. We're not going to partner, no marketplace, no acquisitions. Like that's their strategy. I am more and more, Chad (24:39.048) Mmm, yeah. Chad (24:47.924) Mm-hmm. Joel (25:05.142) job boards, think are struggling with, okay, what do, what are we going to be when we grow up? We're getting pushed from the commoditization, the, the programmatic side. you know, merger, let's just merge, let's just get two dinosaurs together and hope that we can, we can wait it out. Zip or seek in this case, interestingly is saying we're going to buy stuff, which we used to see all the time in the job board space where there's a crib builder buying everybody, or monster seek is on the same path. And I think that. to your point, you can't just be post jobs, look at resumes, here's some review stuff. And you just, have to be more than that to your customers. And if your customers love you, should be able to get them on these other products and services because they love you and their sales rep. And yeah, it's like, so, so if you get them in, you know, if you get them in, if you get them in deep, then it should be something you can do. I do think interestingly, I think you mentioned this, X Chad (25:47.763) like ADP does. Joel (26:02.698) XRF clients extend beyond, you know, Australia and sort of their sphere of influence. So this is just a Trojan horse to kind of get seek in other markets and work with other companies. Cause it's really easy to just put jobs up on Google for jobs and start showing traffic from this service and getting money from that. So yeah, I think this is smart. It's not done yet. Usually when deals aren't done yet, there's like somebody leaks something. Chad (26:28.243) Nobody says anything. Yeah. Joel (26:28.974) Somebody want like, somebody said, Hey, we're kind of looking, will this like new buyer might come in someone else, get a better price. Like that's kind of it. We rarely hear about leaks in our industry. but you know, Australia is Australia. Somebody got stung by a spider and lost their shit and told, told a reporter somewhere who knows, but yeah, I like, I like this deal. I like that seek is focusing on more important things than, Latin America, which they know nothing about. And this is a good step forward. It's, it's a lesson that maybe zip recruiter could learn something in there and their strategic. Because they they've done some crazy shit lately. Chad (27:01.897) Hmm... Hmm... Chad (27:09.257) Ridiculous, Phil. Joel (27:10.304) All right, quick break and we'll talk minimum wage. Joel (27:19.214) Chad, was the last time you were in New Jersey? I've been in New Jersey in a long time. I guess the ICEMS meeting, was that the last time? Yeah. Edison. Yeah. I haven't been, I haven't been in New York in like five years. It's awful. I love New York. It's terrible. Okay. Well, let's get to the news. New Jersey's minimum wage will rise to $15 and 49 cents per hour. It's a very exact number. on January 1st of 2025, thanks to a constitutional Chad (27:23.023) probably the last ISIMS. Yeah, the last ISIMS meeting. I mean, don't go there often, but you know, if I am, it's generally a good ISIMS meeting. Chad (27:35.086) wow, yeah. Joel (27:48.888) cost of living adjustment. this, critics say the wage might still fall short of a living wage in some areas, prompting discussions about further increases. They may have a point. A new UC Berkeley study found that California's new $20 minimum wage for fast food workers resulted in an 18 % wage increase without, and I underscore without, significant job losses. or price hikes. law led to a small one-time price increase largely absorbed by customers like you and me, suggesting overall it was a positive economic impact. Chad, what are your thoughts on some of the highlights on minimum wage this week? Chad (28:32.147) Now we've talked about this before. You pay your people more, they can buy more shit. That's how capitalism works, kids. If we're not paying people enough, they can't go buy stuff, right? They can only put money into their rent. The things that they need, gas, water, those types of things, basic food essentials. The thing that bothers me about this is they say this is a cost of living adjustment. Well, their cost of living adjustment sucks because if you take a look at $15.49 an hour, working 40 hours a week is $32,200 a year, 32,000. The living wage for a single adult is 51,000. They're not even close. So how's that a cost of living adjustment? And if you're a single adult, so let's say you're a single mom with a kid, the living wage is $43.67 an hour. In New Jersey. So this cost of living adjustment to me seems like more fluff. Yes, people are getting more money, but it's not enough to live on. And we need to, we need to do that. And if we give those people more to live on, again, we're going to juice the economy. need to push, we need to push, not trickle, push the money from the top to the middle, to the bottom, so that those people can have great lives instead of shitty lives, trying to scrap and work three or four jobs. Yeah. eating meatloaf if they're lucky. Joel (30:06.51) So a quick reminder, the federal minimum wage is still $7 and 25 cents an hour. It hasn't changed in 25 years. so that's multiple people, multiple parties in the white house, multiple parties and part in Congress. Nothing's been done. and sadly we are days away, from a presidential election. And this has hardly been an issue that we're talking about. We're talking about like not. Chad (30:13.311) ridiculous. Chad (30:18.037) 2008. Chad (30:22.143) Yep. Joel (30:35.918) taxing tips. That's great. But how about a how about a more homogenous solution? How about something more inclusive of everybody? Like, let's make sure the dishwasher in the back, you know, of the kitchen gets paid and not just the waitstaff that's out serving the customers. Like that seems like a better conversation to me call me crazy. Come Kamala is on record of $17 an hour. That's progress. That's progress. Trump has had nothing in terms of rhetoric or policy of doing anything. Trump's been in the White House. Kamala is in the White House. Nothing has been done in that seven and a half years that those two have. Something needs to give. 25 years is ridiculous for the largest economy in the world not to increase the minimum wage. All right. That's my, that's my sump speech. it's been way too long. It's stupid onto the, the California law. You and I nailed this one. We nailed it. said, look, companies are going to cry, squeal like lobby payoff, whoever they had to, get this done. And it would, and it would not, this would not be nearly as bad as they, this would not be dogs and cats, cows falling from the sky. Chad (31:49.301) And they did. Chad (31:57.395) Nope. Nope. Joel (31:58.784) Everything would be okay. All right. People have more money. When the lower end of the poverty, when lower in the spectrum gets money, they spend it. When the higher end gets it, they put it in a, you know, a 5 % savings account, T-bills and whatever. Okay. So if you put more money in the hands of the workers, more money goes into the system. That's what's happening in California. In this case, I hope it starts happening in New Jersey and other places that this, hopefully the States can adopt this stuff because the federal government clearly isn't going to get on board with this stuff. Chad (32:08.307) Yes. Chad (32:22.175) Mm-hmm. Joel (32:28.366) in and out was the story or one of the, one of the companies that they, that they highlighted burgers went up very little bit now in and out is an exception. They are a remarkable business, but they were really hard lined on. We're not going to increase that much. pay our workers a lot already and that's not a big deal, but not everyone went out of business. This was not a disaster. This was fine. And we need to eventually, in my opinion, get to a $25 minimum wage per hour federal law. Chad (32:37.471) Mm-hmm. Joel (32:58.318) end of story, hard stop. California is really close. The world has not ended. They'll get to 25 at some point and we'll find that the world does not end. If you're a shitty business, you're a shitty business. and if you're a good business, you can pay people a good wage. it's okay to pay a little bit more for that barbacoa bowl or that nacho Supreme. Trust me. Trust me. I've not, I have not suffered at all when I visited these States. Chad (33:10.793) Yeah. Chad (33:25.543) I, here's the thing. mean, 11 % of the U S is in poverty. We are the strongest nation in the world, 33 million people. And these are people who are working in many cases. We call them the working poor. They're working their asses off. Right? I do believe the federal stance just to be able to force the state's hands to be able to make them pay more. We definitely need to raise the federal. Joel (33:35.608) Mm-hmm. Chad (33:54.677) But we we should actually pass laws that focus on what a living wage is and being able to you know Being able to parallel against living wages and the whole no tax on tips thing That's total fucking bullshit man because most of those people don't pay taxes on those tips They don't they don't qualify to pay taxes on those in the first place. So I mean, it's it's literally it's it's a it's a mirage, right? It's something it's it's a great stump for stump speeches Yay, that's great for my, yeah, it's bullshit. Do the big stuff. And you're 100 % right. We've had Republicans and we've had Democrats in office ever since Ron Reagan's dumb ass did this fucking trickle down economic shit and nobody's fixed it yet. And nobody's fixed it yet. He's rolling over in his grave. I don't care. Joel (34:23.66) It's jazz hands. It's jazz hands. Yep. Joel (34:41.804) Yeah. And, you know, so you mentioned, you mentioned, the number of, of, poor people below the poverty line. Mark Cuban has a great point in that look, you're either going to pay in taxes when entitlements and, you're going to pay them a higher wage. Frankly, I'd rather them work for a living, get a higher wage and make a living wage. I, this is both sides should be able to come together on this. It's, unfortunate that it's become so polarized polarized. Well, speaking of cities, Chad (34:54.576) Mm-hmm. Yep. Chad (35:00.319) Yeah, yeah. Chad (35:10.91) Amen. Joel (35:11.788) I haven't been to in a while. Let's talk about Tulsa, Oklahoma. They've successfully countered a brain drain with what they're calling Tulsa Remote. They're offering 10K for remote workers to relocate for a year. They've attracted over 3,300 participants. This initiative has not only saved participants significant housing costs, But also brought substantial tax revenue to the city and state showcasing a model for urban revitalization through remote work incentives. Chad, your thoughts on Tulsa's Tulsa remote. Chad (35:51.997) Yeah, I love this. And this is from the New York Post last year. Quote, most of the remoters are staying put. According to Tulsa Remote, 90 % of the participants have remained past the required year and nearly 500 have bought homes. End quote. So yes, they're taking the brain drain. And what that means kids, brain drain is when all of... your knowledge is leaving the state, right? And they're having a brain gain. So they're bringing them back. As of December, 2022, Tulsa remote participants generated 563.6 million in direct employment income for the city of Tulsa, according to their economic impact report. Also, there were at this, at the point of this report, there were 2,819 participants. They paid 10,000 each, totaling to a little over $28 million. And again, the result is $563.6 million in direct employment income. Where does that money go? In 2023, it was estimated that Tulsa Remote was responsible for a presence of an estimated 3,554 full-time equivalent jobs in Tulsa County. 253 were program members and the additional ones were actually local jobs created by this, by the need for household spending, right? Significant gains in healthcare, restaurants, retail, real estate, et cetera, et cetera. Here's the fun part. Tulsa Remote, the new remoters in 2023 came from 45 different states, eight different countries and overall have grown Joel (37:25.582) Mm-hmm. Joel (37:42.402) Hmm. Chad (37:43.697) more diverse, that population, more diverse, 53 % have identified as a part of an underrepresented racial and ethnic group in 2023. What's happening here, kids, is there's a little stipend, $10,000, seems like a lot, 28 million, but it's bringing hundreds of millions into an economy. It's juicing the economy. So when we were talking about juicing the economy with minimum wage and actually boosting that so that they spend it, Joel (38:10.83) Mm-hmm. Chad (38:13.557) Tulsa's saying it, they're just going above and beyond, not just for the people that live there now, but they're drawing people into Tulsa. And I mean, when's the last time you actually said, not that I don't love me some Tulsa, but when's the last time you actually said, you know, I think I'm gonna relocate to Tulsa. Not many people say that. You get a program like this and they're like, hey, this sounds like a good idea. 500 homes bought, it's amazing. Joel (38:25.133) Uh-huh. Chad (38:39.538) Amazing. Joel (38:40.93) No, I have never said, I'm going to pack up and move to Tulsa. However, the Joel of the mid nineties may have, may have thought like, Hey, why not? Fuck it. I'll go to Tulsa work. so if I'm a young person, this is very interesting. And we've heard other States do this. think Burlington, I mean, there's been other cities that you can Google it. I'm sure, but, does much, it better be more than 10 K to get me to move. Chad (38:50.741) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Chad (39:03.687) Muncie, Indiana has like a small program. Yeah. Yeah. Joel (39:10.19) to Muncie, I say that my wife will get a job at Ball State and I'll live in Muncie for my, my, my silver year. forms of this have been going for a long time. colleges and states, state schools have said, Hey, if you stay in the state for a certain period of time, we'll forgive your loan or part of your loan. or you go to school for free in some, some States, think like, West Virginia, if you have a certain GPA and you stay in the state, you can go to school for free. So we in America have a really interesting dynamic in that we have little competitive corporations known as states that compete each other, can be with each other for talent and resources and everything else. And most countries don't have that privilege or that luxury. And whether it's minimum wage where, California does it, everything's okay. or, you know, Colorado is weed, like everything's okay. And so these things get worked out and then competition comes into play and states and places are better for it. So I salute Tulsa. think more states should, or more cities should do things like this. More States, competition is good for business. That's what my, my, econ teacher told me. what's interesting and you've pointed out is the international flavor of this, like to, to, appeal to, I don't know, someone in Germany to go to Tulsa. Chad (40:16.021) Mm-hmm. Joel (40:31.986) And like work remotely from there. that's really interesting that they can do that. And I think is more countries, Germany's in a two year recession. For example, we've talked about the UK having issues with, you know, demographics, like there's opportunity for the world to come into America via Tulsa, and grow that economy and make it, make it great. So the only downsides are like, if I live in Tulsa, Chad (40:42.453) Mm-hmm. Joel (40:55.994) And this schmo next to me like moved into town last month and he's getting 10k and I've been here my whole life like what's up with that like give me some money so the that's I could see some some local rivalries or some trash talking about like nice. If you get if you get the 10k you better go buy that guy a nice bottle of bourbon to make him make him Chad (41:16.757) Well, I think you're spending money in his community in the first place, making it a thriving community instead of making it a shitty community. So at the end of the day, they're actually doing them a service. But here's the big thing. Usually what the government does is they give money in forms of tax breaks to companies, right? And that's literally corporate welfare. They're giving them corporate welfare. Instead of that, what I love about this is they're giving the people the money. Joel (41:24.331) Uh-huh. Joel (41:36.836) huh. Yeah. Yeah. Joel (41:45.9) Yeah. Chad (41:46.601) The people should have the power to be able to do all these things and again, juice the economy. So to me, this is an entirely different set up. It's been running for years and we are, starting to see other cities, not really states, but cities start to try to emulate this. It's really cool. Joel (42:03.854) Yeah, it is cool. You're giving my neighbor way too much credit for understanding the big picture on this stuff. wants, he wants his bottle of bourbon. Chad (42:11.441) I know, I know, fucking stupid humans. Joel (42:14.67) We'll be right back. Joel (42:20.468) Alright, speaking of stupid humans... Chad (42:24.797) Mmm. Joel (42:28.558) All right. Tennessee factory worker, Johnny Peterson's family has sued Impact Plastics and its CEO after he died in flooding from Hurricane Helene, alleging the company forced workers to stay despite severe weather warnings while managers left early, highlighting inadequate safety measures during the disaster. Specifically, founder and CEO Gerald O'Connor had quote, stealthily exited the building, end quote, according to court papers. Peterson was 55 years old. He is survived by a wife and two kids. Chad, your thoughts. Chad (43:08.057) It's really simple. We need to break out the orange jumpsuits. mean, owners and all leaders are responsible for their workers' safety. Again, owners and all leadership are responsible for their workers' safety. Gerald O'Connor and all impact plastic leaderships should be sitting in the Johnson County jail right now. We have to put a priority. on our people, which we have not been doing for many, many years. We put it on the top and those motherfuckers get away with shit. We can't do that anymore. We've got to throw them in jail. Maybe, you know, very high bail, maybe no bail, but at the end of the day, people died. This isn't they had a bad day. This is they died. Joel (43:54.84) Mm-hmm. Yeah, you took the words right out of my mouth until someone's in an orange jumpsuit. this issue is, not going to go away. And I fear that is as climate change makes these incidents more, prevalent in our lives that we're going to hear more about workers getting hurt. Killed in this case, because of bad management, not taking into account, the workers. that they take, you know, that they, that they hold in their hands. the suit is, suit is heartbreaking. they, they, the account of Peterson's final moments, including text messages with his family. he revealed that he would not escape the floodwaters. he had stepped in back in the building to help employees, other employees who were trapped inside, but he eventually became trapped himself after the water made it impossible to leave the car. he texted his daughter. Chad (44:29.705) Yeah, it is. Joel (44:52.994) quote, I love you all. That was it. that was all he managed to type out before the water, I guess took his life. So just a horrible story. These are real lives. Jobs are jobs. They come and go lives. You only get one. And my, my heart, know yours as well. Chad goes out to his family, that they survive this and hopefully get some, some justice in court. But yeah, let's see some, some orange jumpsuits if this happens again, if not in this case, no dad jokes. This week, Chad, life is precious. Instead, go call a loved one. I'm calling my dad. Maybe he'll have a good joke for me in next week's We out. Chad (45:23.509) Mm. Chad (45:28.841) Give a big hug. Chad (45:33.545) We out.

When we last spoke to Rebecca Carr, she was the interim CEO at SmartRecuiters, a popular ATS. Fortunately, the "interim" title has been removed and now she's just CEO. Of course, that comes with a whole new set of challenges, and we were more than happy to visit with her at the HR Technology conference to check-in on how it all went down, what's the current state of the business and what the future holds. It's a candid look into the inner workings of SmartRecruiters, as well as so other players in the recruitment space. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION (cometh) PODCAST INTRO: 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, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up, boys and girls, it's time for the Chad & Cheese podcast. Joel: Here we go. Alright, let's do this. Chad: Yes. Joel: We are alive from the SmartRecruiters booth at HR Tech, everybody. Rebecca: Yes, we are. Joel: If you're watching on YouTube, you can see our beautiful booth provided by our friends at SmartRecruiters. And what better first was to have... Chad: Hello. Joel: The newly minted CEO, Rebecca Carr, who was just on the show with us a few months ago when you were interim CEO. Rebecca: That's right. Chad: In Vegas, right? Rebecca: In May. Chad: Vegas. Joel: So, really quickly... Chad: I'm gonna take credit for that. Joel: Those that didn't see that or hear that interview... Chad: That's never happened before, a white man taking credit for something that you've done? [laughter] Joel: Not the CEO, man. Rebecca: I know. It's your podcast. Joel: Don't mess with the CEO. Rebecca: Yeah. That's what did it. That split the board over... Chad: Doubtful. Doubtful. Joel: You have a historied past, you don't have to go into everything but just give us kind of a quick elevator pitch on you. Rebecca: On me. HR Tech product leader for 16, 17 years or so. Third or fourth ATS, I think, here at SmartRecruiters. A recruiting tech veteran, for sure. Chad: Second time with SmartRecruiters too. Rebecca: Second time with SmartRecruiters. Eight years in total here, eight and a half years in total. Started in 2014, built, deployed the first version of SmartRecruiters, left, came back. CPO for, I guess, six, seven months and then here I am. Chad: So, what made you come back? What made you come back? 'Cause there's always that thing and the boomerang stories are always really interesting to me. Rebecca: There's still a lot to solve here. My break was I went to background check, I went to checker and I actually dipped my toe and earned wage access products like payroll fintech products. [laughter] Rebecca: Actually very fascinating. At the time, I thought, yeah... Joel: Okay, fascinating. Rebecca: But the level of customer connection is missing there, I'm more of a people relationship person and recruiting is that. I started as a recruiter, that was my first job. So, to come back and actually build for that persona was attractive to me. At the time, SmartRecruiters was going through a bit of transition. It was right after Jerome stepped down and I think we were looking to re-emerge as a really strong B2B SaaS player enterprise which is what I love. I love the global nature of this business, I like to travel, I love our customers overseas. Why not? It was a good moment. Joel: So, you have the honor of being the first interim CEO to become CEO on the show. I'm wondering... Rebecca: Oh, really? Chad: Yeah. Joel: Do they throw a party? Are there farm animals and wrestlers? What happens when you get... Chad: Where did farm animals come in? Rebecca: It's not quite as sexy as you'd think. You sign a piece of paper and then you put a note in Slack and everyone gives it lots of emojis and then you move on because you've been doing the job. Joel: No birthday cake, no... Chad: Yeah, 'cause you've been there. Rebecca: You've been doing the jobs, yeah. Chad: So, quick question. When it comes down to... We see a lot of... And good, bad or indifferent but just your perspective, we've seen a lot of CEOs come in from other industries that really don't have a base in what we do. And this industry is so much different from marketing or sales. Yourself, Adam Godson, both recruiters, right? Rebecca: Yep. Yeah. Chad: Came up through the ranks and now you're both CEOs. What do you think that gives to you? Obviously, the experience, the background, but is it an edge? Rebecca: I would like to think it is. I mean, customer empathy. I mean, takes one to know one. If you've been in the seat, if you actually understand how this tech works, where the key challenges are, how a recruiter actually interacts with the hiring manager and you've been there and done that, you design tech differently. Hiring is, generally speaking, one of the most democratized processes we have right now. You've got a bunch of recruiters sitting out there that are essentially facilitating hiring managers making decisions, all these interviewers in the fields. It is very, very, very collaborative and yet systems, most recruiting tech systems are designed just for recruiters. And that's a problem, it's break down. And I think what you see from a product like Paradox and what you're starting to see from products like SmartRecruiters is just empowering hiring managers to do more and be more effective and be more efficient so that recruiters can be more strategic. Joel: By many metrics, it's tough being an ATS these days. A lot of competition, a lot of efficiency and most notably, you probably read the story about Klarna who is allegedly... Rebecca: Just ditching it all. Joel: Trashing Salesforce... Chad: Allegedly. Joel: And Workday. So, I'm curious, your perspective on the current state of things and what kinda threats you see out there to the business. Rebecca: Yeah. I think that what they're doing is fascinating, it's definitely possible. So, if you think about the way that most people engage with all of these HR tech systems, it's just a big process of a lot of administrative action and the reality is with AI and intelligence, you shouldn't even need to log into any of these tools. If you had a singular interface or agent which you engaged with, you ask questions, you asked it to do things, you would theoretically engage with a Slack, a Teams, an SMS, WhatsApp, some sort of productivity tool within your organization, and it would connect all the dots behind the scenes. More and more, especially... Even you mentioned... We talked about Workday as it relates to Klarna, even Workday is starting to really lean into ecosystem and connectivity because we all can't be something for everyone. So, be a specialist in orchestration, expose those APIs to your end users and let them build interfaces that are adapted to the personas that are engaging with that UI. Rebecca: It's actually a really interesting idea and I think it's what's gonna have to happen in order to drive adoption because in order for AI to work, you need to have great data and to have great data, you need to have adoption and none of our tools have any adoption. So, how do you create adoption? You create better, more personalized experiences. The more people engage with those personalized experiences, the better and more intelligent it gets. But you have to let go of the UI, we've all gotta stop being so precious about our user experience and our buttons and our colors. I think the threat to most of us is gonna be if you don't get open quickly, if you don't take your platform and make it API-able, you're gonna lose... Is my hunch. Chad: Well, and data is... AI is pretty much becoming a commodity. Data is where every... That's the super power for every organization and you're an applicant tracking system, so you had better gather that data... Rebecca: Yes. Chad: And it better be able to index it incredibly well. I mean, it's one of the things that we've seen over the years, and I'm sure you've definitely seen, customers asking for all these customized things that really kind of screw with their data at the end, not to mention, you being able to prospectively aggregate a lot of that data to understand what the ecosystem actually looks like, so all of your nursing or all of your high volume or what have you, how can we change that so that we can say, "Okay, Mr. Customer, Mrs. Customer, these are the standards that we're putting in place so that we can actually leverage that data better?" Because the data is what matters, we need that clean data. Rebecca: Well, it's an interesting question 'cause when you were saying that, my first reaction was one of the things that screws up SmartRecruiters data sets the most is actually internal mobility. And people look at me and they're like, Why? Why internal mobility? And I'm like, oh, because you have this very thoughtful recruiting process, you put it in the workflow, it changes at the country, at the region of the job level, great, and then you open a job and someone internally goes, Oh, that project manager job, I really want that. So, what do they do? Instead of applying, they go on Teams and they Slack the hiring manager and they have a whole conversation... Chad: Back door it. Rebecca: And then they interview offline, no one even knows, their CV is not even in the database, they end up deciding they're gonna move forward with that person, they have a different comp, a different benchmark than even with the job did, but they're great, they're high performers, like, we really want them to have the job. So then, they make the decision, they hire them, what do they do? They throw the CV into the applicant tracking system against the job, they move it to hired, they have no skills that are relevant to the job description you just said and no interview feedback, no notes, and then suddenly, poof, the AI goes, "What the hell just happened to me? You gave me nothing to work with there, what's going on?" And I think it is about that one fact like, why didn't that internal candidate want to go and engage with the hiring manager through the ATS? Rebecca: Something was broken about that experience, so I think it starts with building experiences that are adaptive to the culture and community of the organization that are. As a good example, we use Slack almost entirely here at SmartRecruiters. If I knew that there was an internal job and I could just forward that directly through Slack to the hiring manager, by doing that, it picked up a signal that I was interested and immediately added my employee profile to my ATS and then my discussion with them was recorded as notes, my system is learning and gleaning some information but it's because I'm bringing that to the flow of work of the employee that is there. And so, our systems are not designed to do that today, it's something that we all as vendors need to lean into. Chad: Yeah. And a very rigid and very instead of fluid. Rebecca: Yes. So, that flow of work though is super important. The more you can bring those activities to places where people are already operating, the more they're adopted. The more insight that just naturally falls into the system, the better the intelligence, the better the matching and then all those other tools like a recruiter being matched an employee to a job just fall into place. Yeah. Joel: Yeah. You touched a little bit about the marketplace, vendors, new products and services, there are more companies that make it easier to build apps onto marketplaces. Just curious about your trends, what you're seeing, the amount of growth, any kinda cool technologies that you're seeing being built onto SmartRecruiters that we should pay attention to. Rebecca: Yeah. It's actually... Some of the coolest and most interesting to SmartRecruiters are the people doing things that are workflows we know won't ever go away but they've just made that workflow a lot better and a lot cleaner for everyone else. So, as a good example, we have a partner in the Netherlands that is essentially building a new agency portal. Who likes agency portals? Nobody likes agency... I have an agency portal, we haven't touched it as a product team in 10 years. Chad: Wow. Rebecca: But agency recruiting is just what happens especially in certain markets. We've got... Chad: Especially Europe. Rebecca: Probably 40,000, 50,000, 60,000 agency hires that are made a year through our platform. These types of apps and experiences are things our customers latch on to immediately and provide impactful business value and also better learnings. I think some of those are the ones that are ultimately gonna benefit from this moment of consolidation in HR tech 'cause someone like me, it's an easy value-add. I can sunset my code from the past that I was never gonna invest in any way, I can give better experiences, I can drive better adoption. A really cool, cool thing but there's a bunch of little ones like that. We're working with a lot of partners that use design systems to embed in our UI, so Visier is doing this with us right now, HiredScore is using some of our stuff to embed. So, those people that are, again, not just saying to me, "Hey, I want an iframe in your UI which isn't gonna help anybody, I actually wanna find a way to funnel my data to you through a user experience that people are going to engage with." I'm finding that they are getting the most attention from some of the big vendors. Yeah. Chad: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Iframes are definitely the proverbial hammer on a crew. Joel: Shout-out to HirePort. Chad: Horrible. Joel: We didn't see that coming. Rebecca: We didn't see that. I find it pretty fascinating. Joel: Visier and... Chad: Yeah, HirePort. Rebecca: Yeah, little ones. Chad: So, Amazon Q just came out and they're talking about actually having developers to be able to go in and do updates, virtual developers, robot developers to be able to do updates, moving backwards, and that takes a lot of a technical team's time to do all that technical debt, that maintenance, so on and so forth. Where do you see this going? 'Cause now that's the first iteration going backwards. Obviously prospectively, moving forward, where do you see... As a tech CEO, where do you see this going? And what does that mean for development and your development team? Rebecca: Well, I'd say as a CEO that sits there and talks about investment profiles all day with my board, there's more and more pressure to do two things that are a bit counterintuitive. One, be an innovator, drive more innovation and two, reduce or improve RND efficiency. RND spend is a percentage of revenue, there's a lot of pressure to drive down and down and down with the assumption from these investors that you're going to go and invest deeply in AI products first and foremost in the RND function. And there's a lot of cool stuff that is coming out, we're starting to deploy a lot. And despite all of the product investments, some of the things that we're gonna be coming out within the next couple of months, we are actually not growing our RND team because we're finding ways to implement tools and technologies that replace three, four or five heads in RND. So, what it's actually doing, it's allowing people to move fast and innovate but also improve their business profile. So, suddenly your Rule of 40 company becomes a little bit easier if you're not having to keep throwing an engineer at the problem. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Yeah. Rebecca: And I think there's gonna be an expectation from the investment community that people do that a lot more. It's certainly something that I was used to and was ready for the sales and marketing efficiency conversation, but the level of depth to which investors also have RND experts and former CTOs that are leaning into this exact problem and pushing it on their portfolio companies is more than I expected. Joel: Oh, the investor community... Oh. Chad: Oh. Joel: You're a good-sized organization, you're global. Rebecca: Yep. Joel: Diversity, equity and inclusion has taken a bit of a hit in organizations in the past year, some companies publicly abandoning it. Just curious about your take on that, how you make sure that you keep SmartRecruiters diverse, a lot of flavors and make sure that you stay on track to keep that. Rebecca: Yeah, no. I mean, we still see some of our customers asking for add-ons or partners within the ecosystem to measure and understand but certainly not as much as it was like two, three years ago. At SmartRecruiters, it helps just by investing in representation. People wanna work for people that they see themselves in and I think that means starting with a strong leadership layer. I can tell you as a female CEO as a good example, the amount of individuals that sort of come and say like, How do I develop? How do I get that skill? It's not something I've seen in my last three, four companies. But you could say the same for racial, ethnic, any of the categories that one could invest in. And for me, it's about recruiting and finding balance. You're not gonna rip or replace your bench every single month but when you have the opportunity to like being very holistic about your interview process and when you do that, you see a lot of natural momentum within your organization and we have certainly seen that here at SmartRecruiters. Chad: So, I wanna get back to the ecosystem again real quick 'cause you smile really brightly when we talk about the ecosystem. Joel: It is a bright smile, isn't it? Chad: Yeah. Rebecca: Yeah. Joel: It's a CEO smile. Chad: So, we've seen a ton of companies go to a marketplace ecosystem kinda scenario. Some of them thrive and some of them just... It burns, crashes and burns... Rebecca: Yeah. Chad: What's the difference between those two models? Why are some thriving and why are some not thriving, and why will SmartRecruiters thrive? Rebecca: Well, and SmartRecruiters has actually not thrived in the marketplace world at every moment of its existence. We have over 400 partners that sit out there and I would argue we failed at doing it really well. Even though we have great integrations and we can claim that there's good capability there, we haven't had focus around why we have a partner and the value that they bring and how that partner competes and speaks to our world. Everyone has just... It's been agnostic. Everybody can integrate in the exact same way. The reality is there are certain problems I wanna solve and there's certain problems I definitely don't wanna be solving. Chad: Oh, yeah. Rebecca: And to be very clear with my partner ecosystem about where I have that line and then seeking to pick the best ones like actually... Not just saying I'm an open door, but who's the best people analytics platform I can do? What's the best skills matching platform that I can go to choose? Chad: Well, you have to be very clear with your CTO too because if I know CTOs, they wanna build everything. Just about. Right? Rebecca: Well, yeah. Or there's like... I have this conversation with some my product leaders all the time as we think through channel and opening up a partner, a partner integration that we think is gonna drive revenue. Well, the more diluted you become there, 500, a million, 1.5 million from this one, that one, that one, yes, it adds up but it's wildly distracting. Who are gonna be the people that you can lean into that are gonna build with you, not just take my API and consume it, but build with you, build an experience that actually aligns to your mutual product strategies and then go to market with you in a really effective way? Not every partner is willing to do that. It takes relationship building, it takes a lot of time and evaluation of sort of where you each wanna go, what your road maps look like, how you tell the story together. And so, I'd say focus is gonna be the big difference between those two. There's a spray and pray versus targeting, I'm gonna go back to JobBoard analogies. [laughter] Joel: Love it. Love it. Rebecca: There you go. Chad: It always goes back to that. Joel: Yeah. It always goes back to that. So, 2025 is right around the corner... Rebecca: It is. Joel: I know as CEO, you're the visionary, you're the big picture. Give me some of your goals and objectives as we go into 2025 and feel free to drop the IPO date. [laughter] Rebecca: Goals for '25. So, we're in growth mode, we're in transformation mode. In the next couple of weeks here, we're gonna be doing an announcement which we're really excited about. Really like our 3.0 vision for what this company can be. There's a lot of urgency in this space around driving change and we say where AI-powered software for superhuman hiring. I think you're gonna see that in the product that comes to market. We've gotten a lot of interest in some strategic partners that I think we're gonna lean into and have really deep connectivity too. That's awesome. I'll take that as an opportunity to make the mutual ICP of our brands really successful in this new world. So growth, growth, growth. We're on fire. You might see some new markets in there, here or there. I don't know. Chad: Ooh. Joel: Hello. Hello, [0:20:08.9] ____ tease. Chad: Expanding the footprint. Joel: Such a tease. Rebecca: Well, globals are our bread and butter. That's like... I mean, it's hard to be a strong player and multinational, like the... Chad: Well, talk about that though 'cause it is. Going from France to Germany... Rebecca: Is hard. Chad: Well, incredibly hard. You've got two countries incredibly close to each other that are totally different from a culture standpoint and I would assume also from a partnership standpoint, the partners that you guys bring in place, not to mention also the experience that you provide to your customer, so talk a little bit about that 'cause that's not easy. Rebecca: Yeah. And frankly, I remember when Jerome made the call to go invest here deeply, it was like 2015 or so, I thought he was crazy. I was like, oh, my gosh. Here's the founder like shiny object syndrome, more like we're falling in that path, ended up serving us very well as a business because we doubled down in functionality that was unique to some of those markets that is actually very complicated and deep and hard to roll back on if you're just adding it to an already very robust system. It's allowed us to differentiate, it has required that we put a lot more people in some of these markets. So, you can deploy SmartRecruiters, you can be sold to implement used support totally in French, totally in German today. That is a challenge when it comes to sales and marketing efficiency but we've figured it out, actually. We figured out how to work that motion at scale and it has been something that's allowed us to surpass some of our competitors that have tried to enter those markets, so I don't wanna lose any ground there. I think it's actually something we continue to lean into and so as we think through our next generation of products, very focused on that ICP like enterprise global multinational is important. We have to check that box. Joel: What are some of the greatest threats to the business in 2025 that you see? Rebecca: I'd say generally speaking for our most of best of breed ATS, it's the sweet pressure that comes from the Workdays, the SAPs, the [0:22:15.9] ____, especially in our non-ICP. So, when we originally built the business, it was just, "We'll take every customer, obviously." it was a start-up. You're seeing the people where our product strategy hasn't entirely aligned get a lot of pressure from this way. Think about brands in software and tech and otherwise, Workday is grabbing significant market share, SAP SuccessFactors, we're seeing a lot of Oracle Recruiting Cloud come back in deals, things like that. And it is because these teams are being pressured to drive efficiency and if you've got a free recruiting module and you're not hiring a lot, justifying and finding that value prop is hard for some of these teams. So, we're actually leaning a lot into content around how to have that conversation but yeah, the pendulum is swinging back to suite and that's something we're constantly thinking about. Chad: So, what can SmartRecruiters do to be able to help TA professionals, HR professionals, have that discussion with the C-suite? Because we talk about time to hire, cost per hire, CEO doesn't care about that, doesn't care. They wanna know how it impacts the bottom line and we have the data to be... We just have to take it further. So, it's really on you, not that you don't have enough on your shoulders already, but it really is on you to be able to help them in a couple of different ways. Have that data, that data all the way through and it's a TA, so talent acquisition and talent management but have that data and then to be able to create a narrative to pitch, so that's why we need SmartRecruiters because we're actually gonna put butts in seats to be able to drive revenue so that... Rebecca: Big theme. Chad: It's gotta be. Rebecca: Productivity and efficiency. That's the conversation even my CFO is having with all of my teams. Productivity and efficiency, how can you deliver a lot more with less? I don't wanna add one more body but I need to grow, what are we gonna go do? And that is probably the number one reason why people need to be looking at automation AI, how their vendors are implementing it that challenges... We expect this from our customers but if you're not a SmartRecruiters customer, the amount of pressure you should be putting on your vendor to go solve this problem because your CFO is not gonna give you any more money to buy an add-on product. So, how do you think about getting the most out of the vendors that are in your ecosystem today? Rebecca: And for me, that's about telling an automation and AI story with our new products which in some cases are just part of our core suite because that's what recruiting needs to be versus go write me another 10X check on what this is gonna... Like, this is what it's gonna give you... I'm sure over time, will be premium opportunities for us to invest but at the end of the day, in order to sort of retain and grow our existing base, we need to give them more productivity and so we're telling that story the challenging piece being, in order to tell that story, people need to adopt the tool. So, you see vendors like SmartRecruiters putting a lot of early AI products into the space or into the product so that they can get data so that they can start to tell the story proactively with their customers and then they can layer on more and more experiences that are gonna just amplify that message. Joel: That is Rebecca Carr, everybody, newly minted CEO at SmartRecruiters. Rebecca, for our viewers and listeners that wanna know more about SmartRecruiters, where do you send them? Rebecca: Smartrecruiters.com. Joel: Easy enough. Rebecca: Easy enough. Joel: Another one in the can, chat. We're live from HR Tech in the SmartRecruiters booth. We out. [music] PODCAST OUTRO: Wow. Look at you, you made it through an entire episode of the Chad & Cheese podcast or maybe you cheated and fast forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back, valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckle heads instead. Now, go take a shower and wash off all the guilt but save some soap because you'll be back. Like an awful train wreck, you can't look away and like Chad's favorite western, you can't quit them either. We out.

Buckle up, folks! This episode of HR’s Most Dangerous Podcast comes straight from the green room at Recfest USA in Nashville, sponsored by Shaker Recruitment Marketing. Chad and Joel sit down with the one and only Rachel Morgan, VP of Client Services at Shaker, to talk about the glamorous world of recruitment marketing—mimosas in hand, of course. Rachel takes us on a wild ride from her days of wrestling with job boards (RIP SimplyHired) to the modern marvels of programmatic advertising and employer branding. Spoiler alert: AI is still the buzzword, and job seekers are still stuck in application limbo. Rachel drops some truth bombs. And for you TikTok skeptics out there, prepare to clutch your pearls—yes, people are finding career advice and jobs on the same platform where they learn to dance badly in 15 seconds. But the real meat of the episode? It’s all about gatekeeping! Want to get your shiny new HR tech in front of Shaker? Be prepared for some "American Idol" realness, where only the best get through. Enjoy! PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Podcast Intro: 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, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Joel: All right guys, let's do this. We are live from Recfest USA in beautiful Nashville, Tennessee... Chad: Green room. Joel: From the green room. Chad: Green room. Joel: Sponsored by Shaker Recruitment Marketing. Sitting down with Rachel Morgan... Chad: I love a green room. Joel: VP, Client Services at Shaker. Rachel, welcome to HR's most dangerous podcasts. Rachel Morgan: Thank you. Great to talk to you guys. Chad: Did you get any mimosa? That's the question. Rachel Morgan: I did. I had to stop myself. I thought I could bring one in here, but there hasn't been a lot of food lately, so. Joel: Never stop. Rachel Morgan: As much as mainlining mimosas was, I'm on my third coffee. Joel: That's right. So aside from a mimosa fan, our listeners likely don't know you. Rachel Morgan: Correct. Joel: Give them the elevator pitch on Rachel. Rachel Morgan: Oh, great. Well, I've been in TA recruitment marketing basically since I was in college. I started as an intern, so I found this by mistake. Chad: So about five years. Rachel Morgan: Yeah, five years. Thank you so much. Yeah, I just graduated. I'm in client services. So I do all things talent acquisition strategy and a lot of consulting. So I came to Shaker about five years ago. Chad: A lot of consulting. That's always fun. Joel: So you've been around for a while. Rachel Morgan: Yeah. Joel: Talk about the evolution of what you're doing. How has it changed? Rachel Morgan: Well, when I started, I was an analyst for PPC, so I was doing job postings on Indeed and building out SEM campaigns. Chad: Oh. Oh. Rachel Morgan: So it's gone a different way. That was still in the days of like Monster was half of our office swag. Chad: I remember those days. Rachel Morgan: SimplyHired was still a thing, and job boards were still figuring it out in terms of, that was like pre-programmatic days. So I would say we're shifting a lot more towards programmatic but we're also just looking at digital as a whole. A lot of PMax shifts away from different social platforms but also focusing a lot on tech. That's been the biggest thing since I came to Shaker, was we're neutral, so all of the tech. Chad: As a consultant though, you have the opportunity to provide advice to the industry. What's one main nugget of advice that you would provide to listeners and viewers today? Rachel Morgan: Please, please, please, please look at how long it takes to complete an application and see if you... Chad: We're still having this conversation. Rachel Morgan: Own recruiters are responding. I know, but you know what, I was talking to someone the other day and they were like, I have been searching for a job for a year. I'm still not hearing back. And we keep talking about AI and how we're fast tracking everything and we're making it smarter, but they're not hearing back any quicker in some cases. So there's still a disconnect there between what we're saying as an employer and what our focus is, and what our clients are actually delivering on. Joel: So we're heading into 2025, but I wanna look back for a second. What were sort of the main themes of last year, the biggest gripes that companies had, the biggest questions they had about the tech that was out there? Rachel Morgan: Still a lot of uncertainty around AI. Everyone's throwing it out in every product offering. What does that actually mean? How do you implement it? How does it engage with candidates and how are you teaching it? We were just talking about it this morning. AI is not new. It just seems to be the buzzword that everyone's attaching. And so kind of helping clients navigate what that really means for them. A refocus on employer brand. A lot of folks started looking at it in 2022 right when we were kind of like in the depths of getting out of COVID and what did they wanna refresh. I think there's a renewed interest there. And then I would say probably one piece that we still continue to look at is just media diversification. We get a lot of folks who have historically been going to traditional job boards, programmatic, but they really wanna know what's new, what's next? How are we leveraging social? But how are we looking at like untraditional channels as well to recruit? Chad: What is new? What is next? That's the question. Rachel Morgan: That is the question. I shouldn't say this, but I don't have a TikTok account. But I was talking to... I know, I know, really gonna age myself on that one. But I was just talking to someone and... Chad: Oh, stop it. I have a TikTok account. Rachel Morgan: They go to TikTok... Chad: He has a TikTok account. Rachel Morgan: To find all of their career advice, and that's where they're turning to get applications and to really engage with candidates. And I think for a while, companies looked at that as a fad or are we can't get it through our branding, or our legal team doesn't like it, or it's a little risky for us. And so I think just any social channel, but really with that, focusing on how you have your own employee advocacy and building those like micro influencers almost to help tell your brand. Chad: But we have platforms that actually can help companies. And you can send out links to employees or managers or hiring managers, whatever it is, and have them do videos, and then it comes to a central location that we control and manage. So this is not an excuse anymore. Rachel Morgan: It's not. And they need to have a dedicated resource. A lot of times that's what we find, is, well, it's great. Once we get all that content, what do we do with it? Who's gonna monitor it? And you need to have somebody dedicated. That's not going to go away. There is still a piece that needs to be a person behind the camera, just, or library. Chad: Yay humans. Joel: Yay humans. Rachel Morgan: Yay humans. Joel: Yay humans. Rachel Morgan: Yeah. Joel: And speaking of humans, let's talk about gatekeeping. You talk about knowing all the tech at Shaker. There's a lot of tech to know. Rachel Morgan: There's a lot of tech. Joel: We have a lot of startups and companies that listen to the show and want to know, man, how do we get into Shaker? How do we get in front of the right person? What's the process? Talk about that for the company out there that wants to get their tech in front of you. And it's a good tech, let's pretend that, that you want to get it in front of your customers. It's not a shitty tech. What should they be doing? Rachel Morgan: Reach out. We just revamped our website. Shaker.com. Drop us a link. Megan Tracy, our VP of partnerships, that woman is fantastic. She's kind of our first line of defense, if you will. She's gonna do a vetting process. If she likes you, she brings in the VPs. We do kind of a collaboration. And if all goes well, you make it in front of the entire client service team or the extended teams, Siobhan and our social team, depending on the tech that we're looking at. Chad: Let me translate that. If it's worth it, it's gonna take a minute. Rachel Morgan: Yes. Chad: Okay? This does not happen overnight. And I mean, as advisors to startups, we tell them, talk to the Shakers, and it's not gonna happen overnight because they have to do the due diligence that these companies just are not doing, and that takes time. Joel: I have this vision of American Idol where there's a big line out and you get one song to either make it to the next level or get the hell out. Rachel Morgan: Really I'm thinking more The Voice. We all have chairs. They turn around if we really like you. Yeah, you get a ding? Chad: Oh, I do like The Voice. Joel: That's fair. Chad: A little Christina Aguilera. Rachel Morgan: A little raise some hand. Chad: No, I like that. Yeah. Joel: I'm too young for The Voice. How many get through? Chad: Because there are tons. Rachel Morgan: Okay. So we have 29,000 vendors in our system. Rachel Morgan: You Shaker, 29,000... Chad: Shaker have 29,000 vendors in our system. Chad: How many do you review a year though? Do you know that? Rachel Morgan: Oh, hundreds. So we have meetings twice a week that are set up with vendors for education, continued learning, seeing new product releases. I'm having people come in and do pitch demos. Chad: These are the ones that made it through. Rachel Morgan: These are the ones that make it through, correct. Chad: That's where everybody wants to be. Rachel Morgan: That's where the... Yeah, you gotta get the eyes. So yeah, two every week, and that's just for continued education purposes. And then we do one-off calls. We're always happy to take a demo, even if it's just one-on-one and see if it's right fit. Joel: So clearly there are some diamonds in the rough, but it's your job to find those diamonds. As we go into 2025, what from your viewpoint are the next big things, either whether it's trends or the next companies or startups that you're really paying attention to and excited about? Chad: That's a good question. Rachel Morgan: That is a good question. So I'm not going to give you a specific vendor. I would say our key focus right now is anything ROI driven. So I was just talking to John Graham, our VP for D&I. And he was talking to a vendor today about the idea, how do we measure employer branding? You just launched an EVP or an employer brand refresh. What's the measurement? We always get asked that like, oh, how did it perform? We're like, I don't know. And so I think that's gonna be a key focus. We were just talking to a partner about that who does more employee advocacy and how we could potentially gauge that. But our thing is ROI all of the time, whether that's a tech partner, whether that's a media vendor, get some tracking in place, help us, help you, what are your integration capabilities? And ultimately that's gonna be the story that we tell and how you get in front of us. Joel: I was really fishing for that Grindr for Jobs. I was really hoping she was gonna say the next big thing. Chad: Not gonna happen. Joel: Grindr for Jobs. Chad: Not gonna happen. Rachel Morgan: I think the swipe right, swipe left might be out, but we'll see. Joel: She's saying there's a chance. Chad: No, I'm with her. I'm with her. Not a chance. If somebody wants to be able to connect with you on LinkedIn, I think Joel, you should do this right now. Joel: I should. Chad: Where would they send you or where would you send them? I've had too much mimosa. Rachel Morgan: Where would I send them? On LinkedIn. Joel: Yes. We're on day two for the listeners out there. Rachel Morgan: Solid. Solid. Rachel Morgan, you can find me at Shaker. You can also go to shaker.com and drop a line. We will get your email and know it will be directed to me. Joel: Thanks for hanging out. Rachel Morgan: Yeah. Thanks guys. Joel: Chad, that's another one in the can. Rachel Morgan: Another one. Joel: We out. Chad: We out. Podcast 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 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. There's so many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any who, 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.

In this episode of the Chad and Cheese Podcast Joel and Chad are back to roast everything from Waymo’s self-driving cars (stealing Uber gigs!) to the meteoric rise of podcasting (yes, another one). They also dive into Spirit Halloween, the undead of retail, and the bloodbath between Indeed and ZipRecruiter for job board supremacy. Things get juicy with layoffs at CareerBuilder and Monster post-merger (yay, "synergy"), plus Nomadic Learning's acquisition by Guild, which sounds like corporate Hogwarts for talent development. Oh, and guess what? MrBeast is now in the hiring game with Vouch—because why wouldn’t a YouTuber fix unemployment? PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:33.048) Two guys who have been to the desert on a horse with no name. Hi kids, it's the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your cohost, Joel Milton Cheeseman. Chad (00:42.998) This is Chad, podcaster on fire. So watch. Joel (00:46.498) And on this episode, Indeed Lawyers Up, Monster Bleeds, and Mr. Beast is coming to town. Let's do this. Chad (00:53.614) Woo! Joel (00:59.876) What's up, Chad? You're looking fresh and healthy and well rested. Love it. Chad (01:02.638) Look at this. yeah, look at this. Hey yeah, if you're watching on YouTube, you see these wonderful palm trees behind me. look at this. Look at that. yeah, that's Camelback. I think that's Camelback. Yeah, just got back from the gym. I'm hungry as hell. I'm excited about this podcast. It's a good time, man. It's a good time. Joel (01:22.052) Life is good for Mr. Sowash. Hey, have you seen the Waymo's here in town? Chad (01:26.806) They look fucking cool, dude. I mean, they're Jags, right? Jags or Porsche or something like that. Joel (01:31.48) Well, so I took my first ride in one. you had, have you had the pleasure? Chad (01:34.654) no, no no no. Joel (01:37.966) So we go to the airport and you see them drive by picking people up. just these cars with no driver. It takes a little second to use that. I never took one because they give us an Uber credit here at the Paradox event, which is very generous. But this time I called an Uber and Waymo was an option on Uber. So I'm like, sweet, I'm totally taking the Waymo. So it's very cool. It pulled up. There's a little roundabout at the hotel and you unlock the car with the app. Chad (02:04.664) you Joel (02:07.62) You get in, it says, welcome to Waymo, blah, blah, blah. It's a really nice, appealing voice. Now it got in trouble because it kept going around the roundabout. And on turn three, I roll down the window and I look at the valet guy and I go, is this normal? And he goes, yep. So I look like an idiot going in circles around this thing. I call the customer support and this voice. Chad (02:18.114) Ha ha. Chad (02:26.562) Ha! Joel (02:35.192) The voice of God comes down from the car and says, yes, sir. It looks like you're having some trouble. said, yeah, I'm going around in circles on this roundabout. It took control of the car. It figured it out, got me on the road and into my destination. But it, is the future. When you ride in it, it is like, this is the future. You can pick your music. It's very stress free. it's it, I didn't think it was too slow. A lot of people think it's too slow, but yes, if you get a chance to do a, the Waymo. Chad (02:56.238) That's awesome. Joel (03:03.373) Dance try not to be in a roundabout, but otherwise I am a I'm a big fan of the Waymo auto driving Chad (03:11.95) Yeah, definitely have to take one while I'm here. It looks like fun. I don't know if it's fun enough to go around in a cul-de-sac 27 different times. But dude, Scottsdale. Love Scottsdale. And before we get too crazy, I got to thank Jay-Z, Adam, the entire crew, but the real superstars. Let's just put it out there, kids. Jordan and Tyler, who made sure that you weren't sleeping. Made sure you weren't sleeping. Joel (03:20.684) You Chad (03:40.054) in an alley somewhere. And we had a full slate of amazing interviews for season two and three. That's right. You heard it kids of the AI sessions. Now, if you haven't heard or even watched the AI sessions, season one, go to the sessions.ai where we've pulled together four amazing interviews in 11 episodes. That's right. The Chad and Cheese are serving up practical business uses of AI in snackable ways at Joel (03:41.852) huh. Chad (04:08.45) the sessions.ai. We're just having a blast, Joel (04:11.844) Definitely having a blast, having a blast. You ready for some shout outs? Chad (04:15.852) Yeah, let me go ahead and continue riding that podcast train. So shout out to podcasts who are continuing to have a moment. It's like we've had a moment and it's continuing and hopefully it continues to continue. V.P. Kamala Harris is hitting the podcast circuit. Yeah, Cheeseman. There's a fucking podcast circuit. V.P. Harris was on the It's All About Smoke podcast with retired NBA pros Matt Barnes and Steven Jackson. And the big news was that Joel (04:18.948) Mm-hmm. Chad (04:45.838) The VP was on Call Her Daddy with Alex Cooper, who you might remember, she signed a three year, $60 million deal with Spotify. But she's fly. She has fly. And then... Joel (05:00.196) Spotify, Spotify, not Spotify, that's the, yeah, she is fly, super fly. Chad (05:06.906) VP candidate Tim Walls, your buddy from next door, he was on the Smart List podcast with Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett. While, and this is all while, Trump snubs 60 minutes. So the big networks are getting snubbed and podcasts are taking the message to the people. Shout out to podcasts continuing to have a moment. Yes! Joel (05:10.875) huh, yeah. Joel (05:17.092) Mm-hmm. Joel (05:28.676) Shout out to podcast, shout out to podcast. So a quick reminder, our shout outs are sponsored by our friends at Kiora. Simple text recruiting everybody there. Chad (05:35.138) Go! Joel (05:41.73) That's right. That's right. You're learning about them more on our giveaways segment of shout outs. My shout out goes to Spirit Halloween. don't know if you do still Halloween Chad, you're in Portugal. You probably don't dress up anymore. That's probably something in the past, but yeah. Yeah, it's still a thing. And you've probably seen the Spirit Halloween store pop up at your local neighborhood. Well, was pretty interested at what is going on with this business. Turns out Chad (05:55.057) Not in Portugal, not in Portugal, but there's stores everywhere for God's sakes in the US. Joel (06:11.544) This company that sets up shop for two months out of the year makes $650 million a year basically doing business for two months. have 1,450 locations that pop up all around the country, which is nearly as many stores, Chad, as Target, one of your favorites. So anyway. Chad (06:32.066) Holy fuck. Joel (06:33.438) SNL always being a good laugh about pop culture and what's going on in society. Had a really funny skit on Spirit Halloween. Let's check that out real quick. Chad (07:10.456) Thank God. Chad (07:37.368) Yes. Joel (07:47.332) where murder happened. Joel (07:54.094) Hahaha. Chad (08:10.926) No. Joel (08:11.076) You Chad (08:46.702) You Chad (09:06.19) Yeah. Ours is a bed bath and beyond at this point. Joel (09:10.978) Yeah, yeah, Bed Bath & Beyond. Shout out to Spirit Halloween stores employing people for six weeks every year, every year. Not nearly as good as some of the free shit that we're giving away, Chad, by the way. Chad (09:23.316) No, of course not. Of course not. have, as we talked about, Kiora is giving away not just maple syrup, but bourbon barrel, pappy, aged maple syrup. That's right. The boys from the Great White North at Kiora, they love you and they also love texting. Then we've got beer, craft beer from our friends at Aspen Tech Labs. That's right. We actually deliver. We don't personally, but it does get delivered to your doorstep. Joel (09:38.692) Yeah. Joel (09:51.821) Yep. Chad (09:52.974) craft beer from Aspen Tech Labs, whiskey delivered to your doorstep by our friends at Text Kernel, two bottles of whiskey, one from Chad, one from Cheese, and our friends at Bullhorn. And if it's your birthday, it's time for some rum from Plum. You can do this at chadcheese.com slash free. Gotta play to win, kids. Yeah. Joel (10:19.14) That's right, Chad. Some happy listeners are celebrating another trip around the sun. includes Mark Jenkins, Daniel Fellows, Jameson Stark, Tom Hannon, Carla Dewey-Goings, Todd Duclos, Tom Stone Lake, Rob McFalls, Gemma Hartley-Ribero, and Christine Friedrich. Happy birthday to all those celebrating another birthday around the sun. And where are we traveling to next, Chad? Geez, we're always on the. Chad (10:35.724) There we go. Chad (10:46.762) Well, travels are powered by Shaker recruitment marketing. This is the last event that we have. We're here now at the Paradox event. have our last event of 2024. We are heading to New Orleans for Outsolve's brand spanking new HR gumbo event. Great content. We're on stage with Keith Sonderling talking about compliance and AI. Guru, our buddy from Fair AI is gonna be there. Gonna be rooftop parties. We're gonna be at the World War II Museum. I mean, there's a lot that's going on. We're excited about it. And again, it's their very, very first time doing the HR gumbo. So we can't wait to go. Joel (11:17.156) this. Joel (11:31.31) Love it. And speaking of exciting chat, that's right. It's time for our fantasy football update sponsored by our friends at factory fix. It's a tale of two cities. I'm one city and chans the other number one. And the number one spot we got David more like Goliath, Steve full. He's here at the conference by the way. He's so excited. It's first thing he said to me. number two, your boy right here. Number two, number two in the two spot put, put Chad (11:35.118) Woo! Chad (11:38.925) Not happy. Chad (11:43.469) Yes. Chad (11:50.614) He's so excited. He's so excited. Yeah. Chad (11:59.053) What? Joel (11:59.864) put this got in his place by the way the sky was getting a little too big for his britches we had to we had to take him down a notch dean daddy mackerel the australian whirlwind is at the number three spot action jackson dalquist number four i mentioned adam gordon that's right adam gordon Chad (12:01.474) There it is. and cocky. Joel (12:24.472) Well, that number five spot is a little crappy, Adam. You need to step up your game a little bit. Number six, got Jennifer Aniston, Terry Tharp. Keith, the commish, Sonderling in the number seven spot. Chad, you're coming in at the number eight spot. That's kind of a so, so, so wash position. Number nine, Laura Dern, Martinelli, followed by Dean Perot for Pyro, sorry, Dina Perot for Pyro. Number 11, Christie Lisbon, Portugal, and hitting up the rear. Chad (12:40.248) Yeah. Joel (12:53.294) Sean Horton hears a who, that's right, and that is your fantasy football update everybody as we head into week number six. By the way, I have the Aussie this week, so if I can take out the two internationals back to back, think all the Americans will be really happy, happy about that. But let's get to the news, shall we? Chad (13:01.816) hitting up the rear. Factory fix kids, factory fix. Chad (13:10.958) Chad (13:15.438) Here's a sniper. Joel (13:23.96) That's right. hot off the presses, Chad, hot off the presses. Indeed is suing ZipRecruiter for allegedly misleading statements about Indeed ending free postings, which ZipRecruiter denies by the way, claiming fair competition. Indeed clarifies it still offers free postings, but with new conditions to avoid duplicates. Chad, let's get ready to rumble. Zip versus Indeed, what you got? Chad (13:53.166) So this from our friends over at the AIM group, they wrote an article, quote, being ZipRecruiter, find it surprising that Indeed would take this step instead of working to address the widespread confusion brought about by their rollout of recent policy changes, end quote. So in my opinion, and apparently others feel the same, Indeed has rolled out several half-baked products and policy changes, no matter. If Indeed is suing Zip due to emails and LinkedIn posts, you know they are feeling the heat from somewhere. So it begs the question, does Indeed feel like a wounded animal at this point? And if they're not, they're sure acting like one. So this feels like amateur hour by Indeed. Zip Recruiter is living rent-free in Indeed's head. And so are we, by the way, so are we. I'm waiting for the papers in the mail. Joel (14:46.68) Yeah, yeah, that's, yeah, I was glad this was a zip recruiters lawsuit and not the Chad and cheese lawsuit, which would really be desperation on indeed's part. By the way, Chad, I got my crystal ball out and found the judgment on this case before it even comes out. Chad (15:06.018) Good day, sir! Joel (15:08.462) So let's see what happened here. Indeed, kind of ends free postings, but apparently kind of didn't. ZipRecruiter took the opportunity to put social media posts. Their salespeople probably made calls and sent emails saying, indeed's done with free postings. Come on over to ZipRecruiter and feel the love. Indeed, in fashion, similarly to what LinkedIn does, let's just sue them out of business and scare the hell out of people. Chad (15:36.514) Yeah. Joel (15:36.676) Indeed is alleging that these statements by ZipRecruiter violate what's called the Lanham Act. Lanham Act, you can Google it if you want to. Aiming to poach Indeed's customers through misinformation. That's right, it's good enough for politics, but not good enough for corporate America. I envision, I predict this will get settled out of court. It won't go anywhere. It might even get dismissed. But the fact that Indeed is worried about dollars draining from them over to Zippercurter, I think we both agree that's a real desperate looking act. Indeed should not be in the business of suing lesser competitors looking to shut them the fuck up. Chad (16:13.74) It is. Chad (16:20.78) You make Zipper Critter look like an alpha at this point, Emails in LinkedIn posts? Are you fucking kidding me? I mean, is that what you got? Is that what you got? Seriously. So the whole disinformation thing, I think it's very simple for Zipper Critter literally to go just down the last year, year and a half and show all of the policy changes, updates. mean, one of the things that indeed has been really bad about Joel (16:29.081) Yeah. Chad (16:49.494) is being able to roll out product, be able to do it in a very easy manner that people can understand. And in this case, really what Indeed did, and it makes sense, if your jobs are already in the system because we're going to your site and we're pulling those jobs into the system, we're not going to allow your free job to pop up, Makes sense. But guess what? If you can't message and you're not articulate enough and simple enough to the people, this is the shit that's going to happen. So this is on Indeed. And kudos to Zippercouter for pretty much smacking them around because they look like the bigger ... They're not the bigger site, guys. Let's just be clear about this, but they look like the bigger one at this point. They're the alpha. They're the bully, and indeed is pretty much crying in a corner saying, I'm going to send mommy after you. Joel (17:38.768) huh. The real question, Chad, is what are the odds that you and or I get pulled into court to testify how much bullshit indeed stuff is what? Chad (17:46.094) dude, got volumes. Volumes. Joel (17:50.296) Yeah. The odds are good that Chad and cheese could take, take the stand in the indeed versus zip recruiter lawsuit, which would be social media gold. Traffic would spike in new ways. Okay. From one, from one miserable story to the next. Let's talk. geez. We haven't done one of these in a while, but let's talk a little layoffs. Chad (18:06.049) yeah. Joel (18:17.112) That's right. When career builder and monster merged back in July under the Apollo banner, Chad, you and I both predicted layoffs were coming. We predicted pain, if you will fast forward today and it's looking like the pink slips are a flying. One anonymous online comment said, quote, got the email this morning, unsure of what or how many were laid off and in what departments it was inevitable with the merger. Chad, you were getting info on this pretty early on. What are your thoughts and do you have any other insights? Chad (18:49.314) Yeah, so it seems to be across all departments, but mainly on the monster side. There might be some career builder here and there, but I mean, if you think about it, this is about redundancies because you've got two companies that are literally the same, right? So what kind of redundancies do you have? And since Apollo slash career builder is taking the lead on this and literally Ronstadt just they just walked away. They don't care. They just walked away. They're like, whatever money you have, whatever kind of, you know, quarters or pocket change you have after, go ahead and send it to us. But the rumors are mostly that Monster employees were cut. This shouldn't be a surprise as Apollo will strip any redundancies. Period. Monster was already a carcass of a company and it's going to get worse. The big question is, will they actually choose a technology? and then utilize that technology for both sites just to be able to, again, get away from redundancies. Probably not, because if they have two sets of databases, two technologies, then from a valuation standpoint, they'll actually be worth more if they have two together as opposed to smashing them together as one. So as you said, when they asked Klobber Lang what his prediction was for the fight, he had one word, pain. Joel (20:15.092) Pain. That's right. That's right. Chad (20:16.152) pain. Joel (20:19.864) And speaking of redundancies, Chad, the first one to go was the CEO. In the moment that Mr. Scott Gutz hit the road, people should have seen some writing on the wall. In fact, when this deal went down, I said the following, Apollo gutted career builder, the going to gut monster as well. So if you're employed by monster, keep that in mind and update your resume, end quote. By the way, if you think this stuff is over, think again. This is the Apollo Playbook. Chad (20:25.773) guts. Joel (20:48.1) a lot of these firings were probably in hopes that a lot of people would resign that they would be sick of the bullshit see the writing on the wall get the hell out of dodge those that do not resign they want resignations so they don't pay unemployment all little benefits that come with getting laid off yes severance or whatnot so for those that don't leave they'll be another round of layoffs for the people that they wanted to go they'll pinch they'll pinch this thing but it is much out of it as a possibly can bill Chad (21:03.736) Yeah. Joel (21:16.322) make a ton of money. Randstad will make money because they own part of this turkey. And then as I predict, they'll buy ZipRecruiter and do the same thing with ZipRecruiter. And they'll keep going until there are no more job boards left, I guess. Now the irony, the irony, did you know Monster has an official Instagram account? Chad (21:40.557) It doesn't surprise me, but what's going on? What's going on? Joel (21:41.868) No, nobody knew this, but apparently they do. And call it, this is so funny, back in September, late September, they actually put up a video about what to do if you're laid off at work. I want you to take a look at this video that was put up a few weeks ago by the official Monster Instagram site. Joel (22:31.62) That's you. Joel (22:38.734) That's you. Joel (22:43.204) There you go. Joel (22:52.952) What? Chad (22:56.43) Hello? Joel (23:12.3) I don't know. Was this, was this front running the layoffs? Like they wanted to give like. Chad (23:16.781) That's foretelling. Foretelling, right? Yeah. Just like, yeah, yeah, yeah. You could tell that the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing. Not to mention, I'm gonna go ahead and pimp a podcast that came out, I think it was last week, called An Employment Pro's Job Search Journey. Allison King, who is the VP of People Operations now at Sound Physicians, she actually had a great interview with us. Joel (23:20.59) How stupid. okay. Joel (23:34.83) huh. Chad (23:44.582) and talking about how she went along the job search, went about the job search. So if you're one of those monsters out there, definitely listen to that Instagram, but then go to Chad and Cheese and listen to Allison because she puts out some amazing, amazing practical ways to go after that next job. Joel (24:02.158) For sure, for sure. And how ironic would it be if number four, the act where you got to give 60 day notice, wasn't fulfilled and these idiots get sued over the information on the Instagram posts that they put out two weeks before, laying people off. right. Hopefully this show gets a little smarter as we keep going. Cause I'm not sure it can get much dumber. when we get back, we'll talk about a recent acquisition. Chad (24:14.37) Whoops. Oops. Chad (24:22.795) Doubtful. Joel (24:31.948) All right, Chad, let's talk a little acquisitions, shall we? Guild has acquired Nomadic Learning and introduced Guild Talent Advantage aimed at enhancing talent development through comprehensive education and skilling solutions. Founded back in 2012 and totally bootstrapped, Nomadic Learning employed 19 folks before the merger. Chad, what's your thoughts on this marriage? Chad (24:36.237) Yes. Chad (24:59.544) Guild just went full service. That's what happened. Guild is employed by Fortune 1000 companies to manage their education assistant benefits. So Guild works for employers to facilitate direct payments for courses to education providers for their employees. Guild, this is a smart brokering play, and you and I both love this. I think I can say that. So with the acquisition of Nomadic, Guild can now broker education for your employees. And this is the important part. They can deliver education to those employees now. So it's more of a full service kind of play. You might ask yourself, Chad, why is this even necessary? Well, kids, decades ago, most employers stopped stopped major investments in upskilling and developing their employees, which created what we now know as the skills gap. And today it's actually not as much of a skills gap as it is a fucking skills chasm. Employers are having problems curbing attrition, driving productivity, which all leads or should lead to more revenue. So since this short sighted company stance happened, which stopped major investments in their people in the development. mean, saw a huge, huge opportunity in the brokering and it just made sense. Now, again, they turned full service. They can do the brokering, they can get those things out there, they can make sure that the upskilling starts to happen. You start to, instead of widen the skills gap, you start to try to close that skills gap. They went full service and that kids is what I call a happy ending. Chad (26:44.385) You Joel (26:45.476) that was very insightful, Chad. I appreciate that. look, this is a win-win. I mentioned Nomadic Learning was entirely bootstrap. There's no record in Crunchbase of them getting any money whatsoever. so the, the, so more than likely the owners of this company. Chad (26:58.584) Yep. 2012, man, they've been around for a while. Joel (27:07.744) are ringing the cash register. Look, Guild is an Apex predator in this industry. And when things get little herky jerky, the economy, whatever, the Apex predator goes feeding. Guild has raised $643 million. That buys a lot of beer and it buys a lot of companies that took no venture capital money. And this Chad (27:34.029) Yeah. Joel (27:36.013) Company's 12 years old. There's a good chance the founder was maybe ready for something new. I'm pretty sure in the release it talked about that he was going to be on the advisory board or he wasn't going to be like a big part of what was going on. Someone else was going to sort of take the product side of it. So he cashes out, he leaves whoever invested early on, they're going to cash out. Guild gets rid of a competitor. They add clients from nomadic learning into their fold. Take out a competitor, add new services, add maybe new A players that are at Nomadic Learning into this fold. I don't think this is an earthquake of an acquisition, but it looks like a smart acquisition. It looks like a reasonable acquisition. Nobody was swinging for the fences or throwing spaghetti at the wall. I am also pretty bullish on this acquisition. Well done. Well done, Guild. Chad (28:31.778) I see more. I see more, dude. I see them looking for fish like this and picking off more little fish because again, the brokering piece was just where they started. They can become even more full service. think that is just, that's exciting, right? And they're also starting to use AI or they're going to use AI to actually build courses inside. That's going to be interesting, right? That's going to be interesting. Joel (28:55.556) Totally agree. And I think I can increase your interest level, Chad, with little TikTok news. I know you love the TikTok news. They're still around, although you've been bet that they wouldn't be. You ready to go for 2025? think Jim Durbin's ready to bet another bottle of bourbon on whether TikTok will be around for another year. Anyway, ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, has launched ByteSpider, an aggressive web caller. Chad (29:01.932) Yeah, Yeah, yeah. Ha ha ha ha! Chad (29:12.974) yeah. This is gonna be interesting. Yeah, it's gonna be interesting. Joel (29:25.412) web crawler to rapidly gather data for AI training, potentially enhancing TikTok's features amid US regulatory threats. This web crawler is scraping data 25 times faster. Let me say that again, 25 times faster than OpenAI's GPT bot and 3000 times faster than Anthropics' Quadbot, according to research by Kasada. Chad, your thoughts on the juggernaut called TikTok. Chad (29:55.032) So you gotta ask yourself, why is Bite Spider going into crawling overdrive like this? Because what's the reason for it? So last April, President Biden signed a ban pretty much forcing TikTok to sell within the next year when he actually signed it. So they weren't banned, but they've gotta be sold or they will be banned. So think about it. If TikTok is banned or sold, ByteDance loses American user data. What the hell was ByteDance going to do with that data? Well, short term, it could influence buying habits, daily behaviors, or just nudge someone into becoming a lover of authoritarian governments like, I don't know, China or Russia or something like that. We saw this with Cambridge Analytica and Facebook when that turned into a hellscape during the 2016 election. So it works and they know it works. But that's just a short term side of the house. What about using all the data and feeding a much larger, large language model through these feeds from TikTok on a daily basis? Well, they could prospectively lose that too. They're looking to compete with OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Amazon. using the massive amounts of daily flowing, freely data from TikTok could prospectively go away. So I think what they're doing is they're setting up their contingencies. If they do get sold under the types of, know, the types of terms, Google's listening. Joel (31:33.444) Google is listening, Chad (31:36.056) Google's listening. Yeah, it's my phone, kids. I said Google and then it started doing. But anyway, so yeah, whatever the terms and conditions are, right, they could be happy with them or maybe not. And maybe they do look at for a short time, a short period of time pulling out of the US, right? But I don't see that as a long-term scheme for them, but it would be a long-term scheme if they're owned by a US company, they know they're not gonna get that TikTok data. So how are they gonna get it? Joel (31:41.953) Anarchy. Chad (32:03.97) they've got to go into overdrive with Bytespider. Joel (32:06.84) That's interesting. By the way, you got a call by Google. I got a text from Durbin saying he's not going to bet again. He's not fallen for the banana in the tailpipe this year. That's an interesting take. My take on this is that there's blood in the water. Google has done a poor job of keeping the wolves at bay. Chad (32:30.538) At bay. Joel (32:32.932) they've not sort of hit it out of the park. I think a lot of people thought they would, th th their AI, Gemini is not catching fire. like I think they thought it would look, the search advertising business is a $300 billion a year business. And if you see the alpha, you know, the apex predator injured, like not performing, you can bet your ass. The wolves are going to come for you and we're seeing open AI. We're seeing a perplexity, perplexly just launched advertising as part of their, when you see results and you can bet your ass, everybody wants a piece of this $300 billion business and bite dance and Tik Tok are no different. I don't know how much of banning in America or having regulation be a part of this. think it's just a matter of like, look, the faster we go. the less chance Google has to recuperate, to lick its wounds and get back in the game. This is blood in the water. The sharks are out and they're going to do everything that they can to start taking pieces out of the T-Rex's pie and TikTok meta perplexity. Everyone that's in this game, you're going to see start adding advertising. You're going to see advertising start slowing down for pay per click, market share. There was a story in the wall street journal. about how Google is sort of losing search share. People are searching on AI before they are Google. I know I'm in that universe. I use Google much less than I used to. So this is a blood in the water scenario. TikTok has the big guns to come after Google as does a of these other players. And it's going to be really interesting to see if Google can recuperate and come back. But right now looks like they're going to get their lunch eaten by a lot of big players that are coming after them. Chad (34:26.808) I think all of that can be true all at once. And I think that there's so many contingencies that you have to have in place, but you can't deny the amount of data that TikTok supplies. By dance on a daily basis and by dance building those large language models. They can't can't they can't sit around and think that they're going to be there, especially from the US. So yeah, but I still believe and again, I'm going to go back to what I said last week. I think the big companies, the Microsoft, the Amazons, the Googles who have operating systems, they have cloud companies, cloud services. They're going to play Major League Baseball. Joel (34:42.212) Mm-hmm. Chad (35:07.628) where OpenAI is playing the small ball and they're going to actually infuse the large language models and those bots into their clouds. much like one day I remember when cloud computing, what the hell is this cloud computing? Now everybody uses it. It's just a part of the infrastructure of what we do. This will supercharge that infrastructure and that's just gonna be step one. So I think these big companies are thinking much bigger. Joel (35:11.278) Yeah. Chad (35:34.958) than $22 per month like OpenAI, but I think China is also thinking just as big. And they know that they have to try to get ahead of not just Google, but all of these other companies incredibly fast. Joel (35:47.97) Yeah. mean, look at every business, look at businesses over the years where bigger players have fell asleep. didn't like, they didn't take whether it's search, social, mobile. Yeah. Our space with, with, with vertical search, they don't want to lose again in a market with this kind of potential size. Everybody wants a slice of the meatloaf, Chad. Chad (35:53.993) yeah. Monster. Career builder. Yeah. Yeah. Chad (36:11.749) Man, I'm hungry. Let's do this. Joel (36:13.186) All right, man, let's take a quick break and we'll talk about for the first time ever on the show, Mr. Beast. Joel (36:23.684) All right, Chad, MrBeast, one of the most influential YouTubers on the planet, has acquired Vouch, a hiring platform for creators to improve talent acquisition in the creator economy. The new URL, in case you're interested, is mrbeastjobs.com, how 2007 of them. Chad, what are your thoughts on MrBeast coming into employment? Chad (36:50.04) So is that one up and running? Because when I went to it, there was nothing there. And I was like, why? Well, from what the story said, Mr. Beast plans to use Vouch to supercharge internal hiring efforts before continuing to scale it externally. And I thought, wow, that's fucking selfish. But I mean, anyways, this could be an interesting niche community. I've never used Vouch, so I don't know what the capabilities are, but if creators listen to MrBeast and they want to become one of MrBeast's content creators, or they want to do projects for MrBeast, this is a great place to go. And then if your other companies are like, hey, this is where all the content creators are going. They're looking for Mr. Beast. That's a draw. He's huge from a content standpoint. If that's where content creators are going, maybe we should go there too. So I think the draw of Mr. Beast, not to mention of having more jobs than just Mr. Beast jobs, will actually make this or at least give this an opportunity to be more like a gig platform, you know? Hey, I might want to work for Mr. Beast. I see some projects on here. I'm going to take on some of those projects while I wait for Mr. Beast. I think this is too easy. I do it. I do it every day. Yeah. Yeah. Joel (38:11.202) Yeah, okay. Joel (38:17.282) Okay, so what I know of Mr. Beast, he gives away a lot of money and people watch, people get a lot of money. He'll have competitions, people win a ton of stuff. He does really crazy, crazy, kooky stuff and kids love it. My teens watch, Mr. Beast and watch Mr. Beast. You know I'm a history guy, okay? History is our best determination of what's going to happen in the future. History does not like celebrities, Chad (38:21.262) Mm. Chad (38:37.229) Yes. Joel (38:47.012) people with brands outside of our space come into the space and think they can can figure it out. Okay. Seth Godin, a marketing icon has launched job sites, one called Lynch pen. It's gone. he harmony thought they could do jobs and matching better. They're gone. Elon is going to kill LinkedIn. That'll be gone someday. I think Gary V did some stuff around employment. Look, there's no historical data that says Mr. Beast. is gonna be like a juggernaut in the creator community, gigging and finding things that are going on. Look, he's having too much fun. One of his new competitions is twins competing against each other for $250,000. That is way more fun than figuring out like pricing for clicks on a job or like whatever. he is gonna get so bored with this business so quickly, it'll make your head spin. Chad (39:37.826) Diversification, diversification. Joel (39:45.252) Unless someone is in charge that gives a shit. I don't see this going anywhere. You mentioned gig economy. Those are struggling right now. Upwork is down. Stock is down 28 % year to date. Fiverr is down 10 % year to date. We've seen companies like Kimino who we love and love the founder. They have not set the world on fire. This is a tough business. Make the money in YouTube. Do the things that you know. That's going to be a lot better. Chad (40:09.208) That's tough. Joel (40:14.532) use of your time than this business. Chad (40:19.744) I think Mr. Beast should call the job board doctor and I think it'll all be okay. Joel (40:24.236) Yeah, give a bucket of give it a give a cat bucket of money bag of money to Chad team. So wash at the job or doctor. That's a much that's a much better. And if you want to, if you want to, if you want to kill this podcast, hopefully he does that and Chad walks away from everything and never do that to me. That's right. just like I should just stick to podcasting and not to, bad jokes, Chad. Am I right? Am I right? Chad (40:32.676) Julie mostly, yeah. Chad (40:40.982) I would never do that to you. Chad (40:51.792) I know I keep saying that yes Joel (40:54.22) Okay, here we go. It's October, which means it's Halloween. Let's stick with some Halloween-based jokes. Are you ready? Joel (41:04.792) Where does a ghost go on vacation? Chad (41:08.386) Boozeville Joel (41:09.602) Malibu! What does a panda ghost eat? What does a panda's ghost eat? Chad (41:19.65) Bamboo! Joel (41:20.812) Yay! You got that one. Alright, why did the ghost go into the bar? Chad (41:29.21) I don't know, I should know this one. I don't know. Yes, damn it! It was all boo-centric. Joel (41:31.268) For the booze, for the booze. Enjoy that sunshine, Chad. Get some lunch. I will see you later, my friend. We out. Chad (41:41.453) We out.

In this episode of The Chad and Cheese podcast, recorded live from The Shaker Green Room at Recfest USA, Chad and Joel sit down with Nicole Stephens, Recruitment Marketing Manager at Floor & Decor. Nicole who shares her approach to employer branding and recruitment marketing, focusing on making work environments better and more enjoyable. She emphasizes the importance of doing more with less, offering actionable insights on maximizing impact with zero-dollar budgets. Nicole also highlights how companies can enhance their candidate experience without spending a fortune, using examples from brands like Microsoft and Duolingo. She digs deep into the challenges talent acquisition professionals face, stressing the need to understand the business and make meaningful changes, rather than focusing solely on metrics like social media likes. The discussion touches on important topics like employee advocacy, retaining talent, and the critical role of data in recruitment. Nicole shares practical advice on collaborating with other departments, automating processes without losing the human touch, and the importance of taking action, no matter how small. Finally, Nicole’s call to "work like a European" and embrace more holidays underscores her belief that breaks lead to better productivity and creativity. ENJOY! PODCAST TRANSCRIPT Podcast Intro: 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, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast. Joel: Alright, let's do this. We are live from Recfest USA in Nashville, Tennessee at the Green Room. Chad: Green Room. Joel: Sponsored by our friends at Shaker Recruitment Marketing. Chad: My favorite color, by the way. Joel: As we welcome Nicole Stephens. She is recruitment marketing manager at Floor & Decor. Nicole welcome to HR's most dangerous podcast. Nicole Stephens: Thanks for having me, let's go. Chad: There we go. Joel: Glad to have you here. So it's a little warm, but I want you to like power through this. Give us a Twitter bio about who you are and what you do. Nicole Stephens: Yep, so I'm 90 days into my new company. I do employer brand and recruitment marketing. And my goal is to make work suck less because we spend so many hours there. Let's make it better. Chad: Yeah, so we're not dying at our desks. Yes. Nicole Stephens: That's the goal. Chad: That's yeah, let's not do that. Let's not do that. Joel: You wasted no time. Chad: Interesting. Well, she led right into it. It just makes sense. Joel: I know. I know. Chad: So it's interesting that the Japanese actually created a word for people who overworked themselves to death. Can't remember what the word is, but they actually created it. Almost feels like our culture is getting there. What do you think about that? Nicole Stephens: Yeah, I feel like we do work really hard and I would love to take a page from a couple of the Europeans here today and get some more holidays going. Chad: Amen, sister. Nicole Stephens: I'm all for working hard, right? I love what I do. And I think most of us here do. But someone asked in a session earlier, if you won a 100 million dollars, would you still do this work? No, we'd all be on a beach together, right? Chad: Yeah. Yeah. Nicole Stephens: Maybe we'd nerd out and talk about it. But ultimately, we're all here for the money. So we love what we do. We're lucky to do that. But yeah, I think introducing more breaks makes us better, gives us time for inspiration, and just gives us a break. Come back stronger. Chad: Do you hear that Cheeseman? Work like a European. Joel: There's no fear of us overworking. Ever. Ever. So Nicole, you've relatively come off stage from your presentation. What'd you talk about? What's some of the takeaways from your presentation? Nicole Stephens: Yeah. Okay. Well, I'll tell you the part that I didn't black out for and what I can remember. So we talked about zero dollar budgets, right? 'Cause that's what we all have these days. Do more with less. Budgets are tight. Sales and marketing. Here's all the money. Employer brand, talent acquisition, zero dollars. So it talks about tactics that we can use across the candidate and employee lifecycle that costs nothing. How can you improve your candidate experience, your career site, your job ads, XYZ, all these different tactics that we can do a better job with to make people happier, give a clearer representation of what they're getting when they come to work for us. So using examples of big companies like Microsoft and Duolingo. Well, Duolingo is not that huge, but, and then also smaller examples like Buffer, Salary Transparency, Plane, CareerSite. So drawing inspiration from different companies, different regions, industry, sizes, take time to look around. What are other people doing? How can we actually make things better? Chad: So it's interesting because you're right. The whole zero budget thing, because we're seen as a cost center and we're not because sales and marketing wouldn't exist without us. So what do we have to do to be able to demonstrate that without the actual people doing the work, generating the products and the sales and the client retention and so on and so forth, without us, the entire organization falls apart. So we need more budget to be able to get people, talented people in the seat faster. What do we have to do to be able to actually demonstrate that to the C-suite so we get more budget? Nicole Stephens: I think there are two things and that's a great question. So the first is understand the business, right? And I'm so guilty of this. I've worked at companies that we've talked about and I've joked with coworkers, like I don't really understand how we make money. That's on me. We have to understand as TA professionals, how the business functions. Have a coffee chat with your finance person, have a coffee chat with your ops person, supply chain, understand how the bottom line gets drawn and be part of those conversations. Because we're always bitching that we don't have a seat at the table, right? We wanna see, we're gonna make our own seat, earn that seat, show that you can have that seat and have those conversations about the bottom line. If we don't have a supply chain team, what's the impact to the business? We've got to start with those numbers. And I'm not a numbers person, but we have to do it. 'Cause if we're just sitting here, like we got 38 likes on our posts, who gives a shit? Who cares? Also, that's a terrible number. Chad: CEO doesn't care. Yeah. Yeah. [laughter] Nicole Stephens: But who cares? And your CEO might not be on LinkedIn, you know, he's like, whatever. So I think the first is business acumen and companies who can buy into that and even provide it for their own employees. Like my current company is working on that, which I think is amazing are going to see improvements. And the second thing, and I alluded to this in my talk, but we're all here, right. There're hundreds of TA leaders from literally across the world, mostly US, but we've all these ideas floating around, right? What are we gonna do? When we get home, right. We're all bitching about how tired we are and we're going home and we're so excited to meet everyone. Chad: So hung over. Nicole Stephens: But so excited for our own bed, right? Probably hung over. And then when we get home and Monday comes, we have to make up all these emails. We have all these meetings that we've missed. We have so much stuff to do. How are we making time to actually implement some of these really tactical or really thoughtful strategies that we've learned about? I think that can be a downfall from conferences. And I'm hoping this is a different one. You have all these leaders, you have all these great ideas, make time to actually implement some of these. Chad: Yeah. Yeah. Joel: I'm sure you're connecting with a lot of your EB friends here at the conference. You guys get together, talk shop. What would be sort of the number one advice for the employment brand professionals out there listening for the year to come? What's your number one tip for being successful? Nicole Stephens: That's a great question. I mean, I think, again, I would almost lean on take action. So much hasn't changed. The employee engagement staff from Gallup, 33% of employees report being engaged. That's terrible. That is literally terrible. And that hasn't changed for a really long time. So we're out here. We have smart people, right? You have great, intelligent, thoughtful, strategic people here. Why are we not able to change that? So I think first and foremost, it's like, take action. I don't care how small it is. Once you can start showing more applications, reduce time to hire, you know, more time on page that leads to more applications and bring in that business acumen. That's the first thing. And I think the second piece of advice, and I've been working really hard on this the last couple years, so I feel like I can now tell people do this, is talk to more people. I know we're all tired. We have so much shit to do, right? We have so many meetings and life and everything, but having coffee chats, going to conferences, listening to podcasts, and just exploring what companies aren't on your radar. Like, who's small? Like, when I said Buffer today, a lot of people were like, yeah, Buffer's salary transparency is gold standard. And a lot of people haven't heard of that, but maybe it can inspire you to implement 10% of what they do. Nicole Stephens: So I think it's getting out of our bubble. Both, "Yeah. I'm so busy at work, I don't have time." You do have time. We all have time. Jamie Diamond reads five newspapers a day. If he has time, right, we have time. And I think the other thing is talk to people outside of your industry and your region and your size. Like what's a company in India doing? What are they doing in the UK and things like that. Chad: So don't you think with all of these problems that when you come to a place like this, we're at Recfest, and you see all of these professionals all over from all these countries, or all these companies, and countries, the answers to all the problems are really here already. I mean, people have already... Nicole Stephens: Mic drop. Chad: They've already in many different cases, like the salary transparency, right? That's one piece of an issue that some companies have. That's already been figured out. That's the gold standard. Okay. Check. Right. Then you go to the next one and then the next one and the next one. So I think you're 100% correct. If you're talking to people, especially professionals who are trying to tackle these things that the answers are already there. What the hell is our problem? Nicole Stephens: Okay. Mic drop. Like we can go home now. Yes. I just sat in on a great session by Preston Sharpson and he laid out 20 tactics in 30 minutes that you can do. And I'm sitting there, that one wouldn't work. We already do that. That's a great idea. You're 100% right. It's looking at your candidate experience, it's looking at your employee experience. Where are we doing great? Where do we need to improve? So many companies are already doing a great job. So we don't always need to reinvent the wheel. If you have new ideas, a 1000% go do them, but take the time to look at other companies and see how can you tweak that for you? You're right. The people who can make these changes are in this room, this tent, whatever this venue. We're all here. So it's making time to like keep looking for inspiration in new places and actually taking that action. Chad: I don't think you're gonna ask a question after that. Nicole Stephens: Yeah. We're all going home. Joel: I'm hearing a Jamie Diamond fan, which is what I enjoy. Chad: Yeah, not so much. Yeah. Joel: No, not a Jamie Diamond fan, but his reading prowess is impressive. You work for Floor & Decor. I'm gonna say not the sexiest brand on the planet. Nicole Stephens: Fair enough. Joel: Let's dig deep into this coffee chat question because I think although it's not sexy, everyone that applies is a potential consumer of the product. Talk about the discussions you have with marketing. How do you guys work together, coordinate, messaging? How does that work and what tips would you give for companies that are trying to make that connection? Nicole Stephens: Yeah. So not the sexiest brand. Fair enough. And I think coffee chats have... I gave a talk a couple of months ago at Disrupt HR, completely on coffee chats because they can literally change your career. My talk today came from a coffee chat with James Ellis and I was bitching about employee advocacy and said, "I don't wanna do employee advocacy anymore. I'm so tired of this, copy and paste program." And he said, "Well, redefine advocacy." Mind blown. So I did. Advocacy is no longer to me, a program that people are in. It's every touch point. And that's what I rambled on for, you know, 30 minutes about. So having someone who's smarter than you, a lot of people in this room, right, are more intelligent than I am and more experienced, have those coffee chats with those people and have those conversations. What are your challenges? Advocacy. I'm so tired of it. Redefine it. I was like, I felt like I almost just had permission to do something. And then I was able to redefine it and say, "Hey, at our company, we're not defining advocacy as a program where you copy and paste content. We're defining building advocates as doing things the right way that you mentioned and building touch points and that create real advocates." Chad: It's giving yourself permission at that point, right? So to be able to try to like piece this puzzle together that we're talking about, I think that the coffee chats are amazing. But it's also expanding your network to have chats and be more uncomfortable with some of the chats that you're having. 'Cause James Ellis and I have some pretty uncomfortable chats for God sakes, and they're not all about employment brand. But at the end of the day, it almost feels like we stay in a bubble and then we give ourselves this excuse that we're just way too busy. Well, if we're way too busy, we're going to be in the exact same state that we are right now in six months, in six years. So the big question is, what can you do? Because you are busy, right? You're a busy person. What can you specifically do? And for the audience out there, what can they do to give themselves permission? How do you execute something like that? Nicole Stephens: Like execute permission? Chad: Yeah, not just the permission, but giving yourself time and then being able to... So how do you currently do it? And what would you like to do more of? Nicole Stephens: Yeah, so I'm a little old school. I'm a thousand years old. I literally calendar block and I will say like, "Look for stuff." I recently set up a meeting. So we're starting it this upcoming week and I called it a what if meeting. So it's a meeting with someone in learning and development and someone who's like an HR, BP/culture new role that we're still defining. And I literally said in the agenda, bring specific examples. Don't come. We're not just gonna like chat. We can do that at lunch, right? But bring examples that you would like to see us influence. And the only caveat is you have to have some control over it. So this can't be our social media sucks 'cause we don't own that, right, marketing does. But bring ideas that learning and development owns. Maybe it's a talent management program pilot. Bring an idea that culture can own, you know, and the concept of that call or that meeting, it's 30 minutes. It's like bring tangible examples and the goal is the last five minutes are action items. Nicole Stephens: It's, "Hey, what are you gonna own? Hey, is this realistic? Great. We're gonna take this, go talk to this person and regroup." So I think it's like, it's taking away those excuses for ourselves. 'Cause you're right. If we don't start making these changes, we're gonna be back here next year. How can we make changes? Chad: Same shit. Different day. Nicole Stephens: Exactly. Different outfit, maybe I'll wear a kill. Who knows? Like we're gonna be having these same conversations. Joel: Talk about data and how data impacts your decisions strategically, tactically. What milestones do you look at to measure success? Nicole Stephens: I'm obsessed with this question and I wish we had seven hours, but I've worked at a lot of companies that have not been data driven. We say we are, right. We're data driven 'cause we think people like that and wanna work there, but we're not. I managed a million dollar social media budget for employer brand alone, the only data people cared about was did the budget spend out? Yeah, it spent. They didn't really care. I would try to explain the click through rate. It's above industry average. They didn't care. And so first of all, I will get to your question, but I think the first thing is when you look at brands that you think have their shit together, right? This is a huge brand. They're not always together. They're not always operating in this really advanced maturity level that we might think. I think the first thing is kind of let go of those preconceived notions that because someone's a big brand name, they know what they're doing 'cause that's not always the case. Nicole Stephens: So in terms of data, it's digging into, for me, it's figuring out every single avenue. Is it review sites? Is it, you know, we use phenom. So what are the different pieces of data we have? And then it's figuring out based on where's our problem right now. Well, it's, you know, between clicks and applies. So people see the JD or the job ad, which I'm working on, and they're not applying. Okay, great. That's my area of focus. These are the data points for this next month or quarter. And then you move on and you pick a new one. But that goes back to the business acumen too. Hey, we're struggling in whatever the sales department, the marketing department. So our work here affects our sales hires and it's just bringing it back. But I think you have... I'm not a numbers person. Like numbers over 14, I'm like whipping out a calculator, you know, like seven plus whatever. But you have to get comfortable and start learning those because the people that you're reporting up to, I'm gonna go back to social right, 'cause it's where I came from. They don't care about the click through rate. Nicole Stephens: They don't. You can report on that all day, but they don't care. They don't care if it's above industry average. They care, are you filling roles and are you filling them quickly? So it's looking at all the systems you have. It's LinkedIn, it's Facebook, it's phenom, it's, you know, whatever. It's Indeed. And picking out which of these bajillion data metrics that we have matter and putting those into a couple slides max that people can understand at the top 'cause they have a million other things going on. Chad: Yeah. So if you could choose any technology that was out there today and you had the budget to be able to pull it in because it would fix a problem for you, what would it be? Nicole Stephens: Oooh, that's such a good question. I don't know. Actually, I'm trying to think of our pain points right now, which is high volume hiring and like huge growth, and brand awareness. Chad: What do you use for like the candidate engagement process? What tech? Nicole Stephens: That could use some help. Chad: Okay. Nicole Stephens: I think honestly, a pain point that I would like to solve for is employee engagement metrics. So finding a company that supports with, you know what I mean? Like stuff like that. We're potentially doing an EVP next year. It's our 25th anniversary as a company. So we started in 2020, 2025. Chad: So employee engagement for the purposes of better attrition, productivity. I mean, what part? Nicole Stephens: Both. I think retention, not that our retention is bad, but you all know if we're spending less time filling, once we get people in, we've done so much work to get them in. We spend so much money, so much time figuring out are we gonna use Indeed? Are we gonna use, you know, EasyHire? Are we gonna use whatever? We spend a lot of time on that. Understandably, we're TA. I have a huge interest in once we get candidates, ensuring that they're happy and ensuring that we're supporting them because I've worked places that are not great. And that has just created in me this goal of like, I wanna make sure we're not selling you garbage. So I think having more like tools and a clear strategy on measuring that, whatever that looks like would be great. Joel: You touched on Glassdoor for a second, and there was a time where it was really easy to look at reviews and there was one site and that has expanded into TikTok and social media. And I know I'm shocked on a regular basis at how anonymity doesn't matter anymore. If I'm getting likes and re-share, like that's what's important. How do you as an employment brand person think about social media and employees spouting off about you and what you're doing? Do you empower those employees to talk? Do you stifle it? How important is the three paragraph review of old versus what we're seeing now? How do you manage that? Nicole Stephens: That's a great question. I'm obsessed with feedback. So I don't care if it's negative. I've worked at companies where I've been told, "Hey, this is a bad review, take it down." Excuse me? And I had that pushback. And I said, "Absolutely not." That's not the answer. You need to dig into why. And if it's one review, fine. If it's a theme, great. So we go through every quarter, pull the themes from Glassdoor and Indeed, 'cause those are our main two and try to figure out, what is the answer. In terms of if people are leaving negative feedback, okay, why? I'm not gonna discount them just because it's a former employee and we lean on that excuse of saying, "Oh, they're a former employee. They're disgruntled." Who made them disgruntled? We did. And why? That's not to say you don't take things with a grain of salt, right? Not everyone's gonna give a fair assessment on their way out. But I think it just goes back to the excuses. We are comfortable making excuses. Goes for me too, right? I don't wanna go to the gym today. We've got to be more comfortable taking ownership and accountability. So if people are leaving negative reviews, look at why. Nicole Stephens: One thing I talked to someone about recently was, at what level do we want to drill down? So if someone, you know, if one particular store is not doing well in reviews, do we wanna give feedback to that store? Are people gonna get called out? Are they gonna try and figure out who said what? 'Cause that's not what we want. Do we need to do it by the district level or the region level? At what level can we still be impactful but not have people trying to suss out, this person said that, and like retaliate. So it's providing that data at a level that still has impact without the potential negatives. And I think two, I'm a huge fan of not employee advocates, but almost like brand ambassadors where you empower them. Go tell me about a day in your life. If you tell me you have 19 meetings that day, I think my record is like 11. Then I wanna know that because then I know I can expect to have double digit meetings and have that culture. So I think, you know, every company sucks in some way. They can be amazing 90%, but like, if you're not talking about the good and the bad, then like, no one's going to trust you. Chad: So let's talk about that engagement, the employee engagement piece, 'cause I think it does pull the employee closer to the brand when they can tell their story. But a few years ago, and this has happened more than once, we had a kid who was working at Sherwin-Williams. He was mixing paint and he had over a million TikTok followers and they loved, it was cathartic just sitting there watching the paint get mixed, right? Well, he got fired. Joel: With Blueberries. Chad: Blueberry, yeah. Joel: And fruits. Chad: But he got fired from Sherwin-Williams. That was a loss for Sherwin-Williams because people came to see that, not just that, but the brand. So have we evolved? And I mean, as an industry, because I know some companies are more evolved than others. As an industry, do we think that we have evolved enough to start to allow our employees enough rope to actually do those type? Maybe not mixed paint, but talk about their job on a daily basis. Good, bad, or indifferent. I mean, that's... I mean, we've got to be authentic. We always say we're gonna be authentic and our employees are our most essential asset, right? So if they are, are we going to finally allow them to be authentic? And we in turn being transparent about our organization. Nicole Stephens: First of all, that was a huge L for Sherwin-Williams, right? I mean, that made absolutely no sense and I hope so. I think that goes back to us as kind of the creators and owners of advocacy programs. I would love to create almost an influencer program and give people support and encourage them. Hey, you know, talk about all the parts of your day. It's heavy to lift tile. I went to visit a store. Y'all, I have been working out recently and they handed me a stack of tile, my arms literally dropped and I was like, "Wow, this is heavy." We get a lot of feedback on our review sites. It's a really heavy job. You have to be ready to lift. So that's on me. Now that I know that to start producing content, showing people lifting this heavy ass tile and having them understand this is part of the job. You need to be in shape or you will get in shape, right? You'll get your steps in. So for me, I'm on the far end of wanting transparency. I want an employee influencer program that's beyond advocacy where it's like, I'm not telling you what to say. Nicole Stephens: I'm not giving you prompts. You have free reign. But although that's on us, I think it takes a lot of buy-in with leadership to explain to them, ultimately this will be good. You're gonna have to be okay with some bumps in the road, and that takes a pretty evolved and confident leader. So it's having a lot of conversations. What if this happens? What if that happens? And we've got to be ready to kind of back that up. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Why'd you look at me when she said, get your steps in? What was that about? Chad: I don't know. It must've been... Joel: A lot of talk about automation here at the conference and we're looking for efficiencies. We're looking to cut costs as organizations, but I think there is a risk that we lose humanity and the brand suffers for that. How do you look at automation in a way that doesn't hurt the brand that actually could enhance it? Nicole Stephens: That's a good question. And someone in a session yesterday said something like, we're confusing AI with automation. Like artificial intelligence, is it actually helping us with decision-making or is it kind of a tool to help like an administrative assistant almost in helping us with that? Wow. Right. Mind blown moment because I was like, what a great articulation of what I've been thinking, but haven't been able to say. So we're saying AI and there are a lot of talks today and yesterday, and I'm sure they were great on AI, but are we really using them for decision-making or are we using something to automate things and make our days easier, which is great and calling it AI. I don't know that a lot of us saying we're using AI are really using it with the artificial intelligence versus automation. And when we do get there, we a 1000% need to think about the humanity and bringing our real voice and culture in, but I'm not sure that a lot of us are there yet. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Nicole, I want to thank you for coming to the Shaker Green Room. We've had a blast. Nicole Stephens: Thank you. Chad: Great, great discussion. Now, if somebody is listening, they wanna connect with you or maybe, I don't know, maybe they just wanna take a look at jobs. Maybe they wanna come work with you. Who knows? Where would you send them? Nicole Stephens: LinkedIn. I spend way too much time on there like a lot of us do. LinkedIn or Floor & Decor Career site. Thank you guys so much. This is great. Joel: Thanks for stopping by and hanging out with us, Nicole. Chad, that is another one in the can. We out. Chad: We out. 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, is so weird. We out.

In this episode of the Chad and Cheese podcast, Euan Cameron, CEO at Willo, returns for a Firing Squad reunion. The conversation covers the journey of Willo since their first appearance on the podcast in August 2021, including their fundraising efforts and product evolution. Euan shares that Willo recently raised $2 million in funding, bringing their total funding to over $3 million. He also discusses the importance of maintaining a frugal mentality and the challenges of dilution. The episode concludes with a discussion on Willo's customer base, which has grown to 12,150 customers in 195 countries, and their global reach in interviewing candidates from every country in the world. Willo has experienced significant changes since their last conversation, including the shift to candidates being comfortable on camera and the move upstream to larger enterprise organizations. They have developed a platform capable of interviewing and assessing candidates through video, audio, text, multiple choice, and assessments. The company has seen success in the US market, with 60% of their revenue coming from the US. They attribute their success to word-of-mouth referrals and delivering the best customer experience. Integrations have been important for SMBs, but not a major acquisition channel for larger organizations. The team has grown organically and is doubling in size over the next year. Willo is focused on automating the onboarding process and improving the efficiency of the next steps after assessment. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:05.388) The music's not playing and that's a problem. Chad Sowash (00:09.198) Yeah, no, that is a problem because we've got a thing. got a thing. Yeah, want to fire squad it. Well, we also need. There it is. There it is. Joel (00:10.282) That is a problem. And we want firing squad intro, right? Let's let's try this. Let's try this again. Chad Sowash (00:23.481) Ahem. Joel (00:36.78) Let's go. What's up everybody? It is your favorite guilty pleasure, AKA the Chad and Cheese podcast. And this is Firing Squad reunion episode with our friend Ewan Cameron, CEO at Willow. He's back since he first aired his Firing Squad in August of 2021. Ewan, welcome back to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast. Chad Sowash (00:43.672) I just gotta be guilty. Chad Sowash (00:53.897) yeah. Euan (01:02.969) Thank you, Joel and Chad. It's lovely to be here. Chad Sowash (01:05.05) a much, much, much different setting than before, because we were in the heart of COVID when we went through the firing squad with Ewan in August, I think it was mid -August of 2021. That seems like forever ago. So Ewan, kind of like recall what was going on back then with you and the team there at Willow. Joel (01:12.076) Mm -hmm. Euan (01:29.034) Yeah, I mean, if we cast our minds back, that was our first year and we had just raised our first £250 ,000 of investment. And it was me, my co -founder, Woody, and one salesperson. That was the extent of the company. And yeah, like you said, it was COVID. I was sitting in the office on my own. It was 9pm. It was dark. It was great. Actually, it was really nice. I loved that time. Chad Sowash (01:32.311) Yeah. Chad Sowash (01:57.69) God, and then he to talk to our dumb asses. So for the kids at home who did not listen to, shame on you by the way, who did not listen to the August 21 firing squad, give them just a Twitter bio of you. We'll obviously get to the company later. Tell us a little about you. Joel (01:57.868) The Scotch was going down nicely. Euan (02:00.317) Yeah, yeah. Euan (02:20.202) Okay. So my, my background is actually marketing. So 15 years ago, I started my career in digital marketing at the time when digital was just becoming the thing that marketing departments were doing. They were sort of grappling with social and websites and there was a real transition and that was where my career started. So didn't really know traditional marketing and yeah, I got caught my teeth in marketing for a number of years, different organizations, all startups. And in all of these startups, I was. deeply involved in the hiring because in most startups you don't have hiring recruiters. You don't have anyone to do that. You're doing that yourself. And I was exposed to the process of hiring and also just the pitfalls of hiring, particularly for startups. And I'm sort of growing my experience and my career. Joel (03:09.236) It's a Twitter bio, Ewan. I hate to bring out the crickets on Firing Squad. Chad Sowash (03:10.094) Yes, we want to hear about Glasgow and Scotch. You haven't even hit any of those things yet. I mean, come on, Euan (03:13.022) but with her as a longer bio. Euan (03:19.69) Yes. Yes. So let's, let's fast forward. Elon made the bio longer. I think we're good. so yeah, career started that and then I'm like hiring and hiring sucks. I'm thinking to myself hiring is tough as shit. How do we make it better? Started inviting people to send me in videos and you know, that's where the company was born was basically this, this really crude rudimentary idea that I had back in 2015 was basically just, you know, don't send me a CV, send me a short video. Joel (03:23.244) Speed it up. Chad Sowash (03:43.159) Mm Euan (03:48.36) People put them on YouTube and started sending me and it was great. And that was really the start of it. And then, yeah, like you said, based in Glasgow, got a five year old daughter who back when we spoke with like two, so she's much, she's actually at school next week. So that's pretty crazy. Yeah. It's a very exciting time. And yeah, all, all, all good. So yeah, basically, you know, throughout my career, moved from marketing, hired startups, and then decided that hiring was broken as, as we all know, and you know, decided to flip it on its head and change, change it up for the better. Chad Sowash (04:04.44) Yeah, it's a great time. Chad Sowash (04:18.552) Mm -hmm. So. Joel (04:18.7) And your favorite scotch is? Euan (04:21.898) Highland Park, Highland Park, 15. Yeah. Yeah? Chad Sowash (04:23.418) I'm a big fan. I am a big fan of that. That's not that smoky, peaty shit that Cheeseman likes. Viking heart. That sounds nasty. Okay, so here on Firing Squad, kids, what we like to do is we like to go back into the annals of Firing Squad and bring back some of the... Joel (04:28.992) Not, yeah, not, Pete enough for me, but I can, I like their Viking heart. Joel (04:38.442) It's a white Chad Sowash (04:51.928) founders and obviously Willow in this case, to talk a little bit about not just what we heard then, which we're going to listen to here in a minute, but then start to look at how they have moved forward. So let's go ahead, Joel, cue up that beautiful bean footage and let's hear that first two minute pitch. Joel (05:07.852) Here we go back. Let's go back to 2021 everybody. Here we go. Joel (06:44.103) Hahaha! dog bark during Joel (07:09.632) So he's not nervous enough, the dogs are unleashed. Euan (07:13.428) Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Joel (07:29.974) Very nice. We sounded so young back then, didn't we? Chad Sowash (07:31.736) There it is. There it is. Yeah. Well, that just encapsulated, think it brought us all back to the COVID days because back then somebody would go fucking crazy if they heard a dog in the background. No, you just carried on just like a trooper. You didn't even stop. It was like, look, this is every day. in a pandemic. Fucking dog's OK. Not a big deal. Let's just let's carry on business. So that was that was that was definitely a feather in your cap on that one. Joel (07:49.194) Mm -hmm. Joel (07:58.892) So looking back, you proud of that performance? Do you feel like you nailed it, did a good job? If you had to pitch that again, would you be an improved U -1 or is it about the same? Euan (07:59.779) Thanks, yeah. Chad Sowash (08:04.28) Was it cringy? Euan (08:10.162) proud of that performance. think it was quite clear, concise. I like that. Joel (08:12.086) Good for you. Good for you. Joel (08:17.74) And it was pretty close to two minutes. a lot of founders come on. It's like 35 seconds and we're done. Yeah. So you, you did a good job of, of, of putting up. So, let's remember real quickly, Chad, our reviews of Willow. we know how the Scots get really defensive and they're real sensitive. if they get a bad review, Adam Gordon. so, so my, mine was a, a golf clap. My underlying thing was I thought you needed to make. Chad Sowash (08:21.356) It was, it was a little short, a little short. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Euan (08:21.375) Yeah. Chad Sowash (08:31.951) Yes. Chad Sowash (08:37.722) sensitive. Yes. Joel (08:44.288) more money, which may bring us to some breaking news after we get to this portion of the show chat. But I said, if a little bit more money came in that I was going to be a fan, your review was a little less positive. What did you say about Willow? Chad Sowash (08:50.887) good call. Chad Sowash (08:59.232) Yeah, it was, there was a lot of shit that needed to be tightened up at the time. A lot of shit and there was a lot of marketing pieces that the puzzles, you know, just they weren't fitting together. And Ewan being a marketing guy, I just wasn't going to have it. So I wanted to send a signal to Ewan and kind of stiffen his spine a little bit. And I think that's happened. I think I helped. I think I might've helped. Joel (09:24.14) And at the risk of having flashbacks, you and I just, want to remind that he, got the guns, everybody. He, he got the guns, but he took that. And we always say on the show, Hey, look, we hope that you come back in a few years, stick it in our faces that you've been a big success. This must feel pretty good to you to come back three years or so later and stick it in Chad's face. Chad Sowash (09:28.792) Hahaha Euan (09:41.14) Here we are. Chad Sowash (09:43.836) he's not acquired yet. He's not acquired yet. Don't be starting that. Don't be starting that. We're like, we're probably in the third quarter right now. He's doing really well. Don't get me wrong, but we're about in the third quarter. Yes. Yes, you are. Yes, you are. Yes. I didn't say you're going to go away. That's a sexy t -shirt. Joel (09:52.896) He's still in business. That's, that's, that's, that's saying something. Not just still here. You and you, you, you have some breaking news that we want to report before we get into rehashing where you've been from, from the beginning till now. So what kind of, what, what, what's your news? What you got? Euan (09:53.565) Yeah, Yeah, we're still here. Yeah, Got the t -shirt to prove it. Chad Sowash (10:07.38) what? Huh? What? Chad Sowash (10:14.255) Mmm. Euan (10:15.178) Breaking News, thank you. So Breaking News, you mentioned obviously funding and over past four years we have raised a very moderate amount of funding until recently. We did our most significant round last month. So this is the first time I've shared this news outside of the company. We raised 2 million US last month and that 2 million US, yeah, in the bank. Chad Sowash (10:33.806) Mm Joel (10:36.236) All right. Chad Sowash (10:36.686) Wow. Joel (10:40.62) Congratulations. Euan (10:41.783) And that's a big milestone. It really gives us the headway to really push forward now, which is exciting. Chad Sowash (10:48.442) That's awesome. That's awesome. So the first was from 1818. And how much was that? Was that like around three -ish? Yeah. Euan (10:59.018) Correct, yeah. So over the past few years, we have raised 700, 800 ,000 from 1818. Yeah, so a million in total, including angels. Chad Sowash (11:06.498) Okay, okay. Gotcha. Okay. So your total is a little around three, a little over three right now. Okay. Excellent. So you had 1818 and they're based out of, they're based out of Europe. They're based out of England. Okay. Yours. And so who's the new investor? Euan (11:15.016) Yeah, correct. Just a little bit over three. Euan (11:22.416) It's currency. Yeah. Yeah. Euan (11:28.766) Yeah, great. So our new investor is Mark Bilge. So he is basically co -founder, sorry, Peter Bauer, Mark Bilge and Peter Bauer, co -founder of Minecast. And they came to us three years ago, invested a small amount in the company. And that was great. We were super appreciative of that. Essentially an angel size check. And then we approached them about six months ago and said, hey, we're raising again. Chad Sowash (11:38.404) Okay. Chad Sowash (11:44.1) Mm Chad Sowash (11:51.619) Nice. Euan (11:56.854) And between Mark and Peter, they decided to give us a really healthy capital injection of the two million, which is amazing. And it was a great process as well. it was, I think a large part of that was down to the fact they invested quite early and they've obviously been getting updated. We've kept them in the loop. So this was a really enjoyable and fairly easy, painless round. Chad Sowash (12:05.166) Nice, nice. Joel (12:19.54) And one of the things we talk about on the show is companies rarely fail because they didn't take enough money. They fail because they took too much money. And I think listening to you, some people might say like, why wouldn't you take more? you've been, you have a proven model. You're like, you're doing well. Was there a reason why you sort of tempered your check amount to what you did? Euan (12:26.804) Yeah. Chad Sowash (12:41.23) dilution. Euan (12:41.578) Absolutely. Dilution and you're spot on though. You're spot on as well, Joe. Obviously the past four years we've built the company on a shoestring, some would say, but that frugal mentality is I think a large part of our success and you don't want to lose that. So yeah, dilution naturally for all of us. Everyone in the company is a shareholder, but there's also this frugal, keeps us fighting, which I think is important. Joel (12:42.444) Setting them up. Chad Sowash (13:10.232) We've seen we've seen tons of startups who have gotten tons of cash and they are flailing and I think because they they don't have to focus right they feel like they've got enough money in the bank They can just go out after everything and you can't I mean you still have to have a lot of focus a lot of discipline I think a lot of startups that are out there today They find themselves needing cash tomorrow, right? It's like we need cash tomorrow And every one that I talk to is like, you've got to start the conversations years in advance. This isn't something that you do tomorrow, right? Other than if you have an idea and you need some pre -seed or something like that. So when you started the conversation with 1818 and then obviously the new investors, what kind of a timeframe and was it a constant courting of those investors? And do you continue to court other investors at the same time? Euan (14:07.161) Yeah, that's a great question. We have a CRM and the CRM is basically an investor CRM. And you have to, right? I I basically treat it like a big sales process. Since we started speaking 2021, I've been building that CRM out. It has about 150, you know, BCs, angels, syndicates in there. And yeah, to exactly your point, I keep them warm. I court them, keep them all in the loop. You never know when you're going to need them. And like I just example there, when you do approach one of them, it's, if you've been courting them for four years, it just happens. It happens a lot more quickly. Chad Sowash (14:16.953) Yeah. Mm Euan (14:42.804) There's the trust, the credibility is already there. It's also really fun. Like I actually really enjoy that process of, know, there are a lot of them want obviously to deploy capital. The VCs are trying to deploy capital. So let's ourselves in the most attractive position possible. And yeah, just running that, running that CRM. I'm going to continue running that for as long as it goes. It's exciting to see how you keep that kind of going. Absolutely. Joel (15:05.196) So when we spoke in 2021, you touted 4 ,000 customers in 135 countries. What's it look like now? Chad Sowash (15:05.754) relationships. Yeah. Euan (15:18.858) So 12 ,150 countries. And the figure that makes me even more proud about that is that we have interviewed to date millions of candidates, but all those candidates are located in all 195 countries around the world. So we've actually interviewed a candidate in every single country around the world, which is exciting. Yeah. Joel (15:23.21) Nice. Chad Sowash (15:40.174) Wow, that's awesome. That is awesome. So talk a little bit about, because when we talked before, mainly, and talk about the evolution of the product itself, text -based from the standpoint of, I would read the question and then I would respond via video, right? Is it still the same kind of process? What have you changed? What has evolved? Where have you pivoted? Give us some ideas of where you've changed since we talked last in August. of 2021. Euan (16:10.634) Absolutely. So biggest change first and foremost is when we spoke, we were obviously in the midst of COVID. As we came out the other side of COVID, the really stark realization was that candidates were in the main comfortable on camera. So that was something that we didn't have before we spoke. mean, literally 2019, 2020, candidates weren't comfortable on camera. They didn't do this. They didn't have cameras. Like a lot of their laptops didn't even have cameras. So they couldn't be on it even if they wanted. So that obviously changed. Chad Sowash (16:16.484) Mm. Chad Sowash (16:30.244) Mm Chad Sowash (16:38.232) Now we have these things. they're, they saw this on. Yeah. Euan (16:40.2) Yeah, exactly. And everyone selfies. Yeah, exactly. You do more selfies than you do take pictures, right? Your phone's filled with your own face. And that is a massive change that we have obviously benefited from as an organization because of the natural video element is kind of commonplace. But as you mentioned, it has obviously evolved. One of the biggest evolutions, which we never really spoke about in the show because we didn't know at the time, but our biggest evolution has been our move upstream to larger enterprise organizations. Chad Sowash (16:45.038) Yeah. Euan (17:09.13) And the move upstream has obviously pulled the product along with it. That was obviously intentional from a product perspective was like, we don't really know what we're going to build here. Let's just listen to the customers. you 2021, we have a fairly basic feature list product. 2022, it starts to evolve with the customer. By 2024, we have today a platform that's capable of interviewing and assessing candidates. Chad Sowash (17:18.724) Mm Euan (17:35.934) So it's video, it's audio, it's text, it's multiple choice, it's assessments, all wrapped up in one. And that's what the enterprise and the larger multi -region organizations are looking for. They essentially come into us and they're saying, hey Willow, we want you to assess our candidates rather than in the previous conversations. was, you to do the interview stage, that pre -screening interview. So it's a really interesting space that we've managed to take up over that four years. Chad Sowash (18:05.572) How do you assess? mean, because, tell me it's not facial recognition, number one. I was kidding, I was kidding. That was a higher view joke. But how do you assess? Euan (18:12.478) So this is, guess, yeah. Euan (18:18.162) Yeah, it's a great question. And this is one of the most fascinating pieces of work that we're doing at the moment around AI and the introduction of AI. Because customers again, are coming to us and saying, hey, we want to assess that skill, and we want to use AI. And you can't just, you know, say, we're to use AI to assess candidates because every employer is looking for different things. And, you know, a candidate that looks good to you could be terrible to them. And that's obviously true with what we're doing today as well. So what we allow you to do as an employer, or as a recruiter is build your own assessments in the platform. So if you want to assess their numeracy skills, you build the numeracy skills questions. Or if you want to assess their copyrighting skills, you build the copyrighting questions. The beauty of that is, well, there's a couple of reasons. First of all, it allows the employer to customize exactly what they're looking for. And every employer is different. But it also allows us to be that multinational company that we strive to be in the first place. countries, you can't operate in 150 countries if you just have this blueprint of what a good candidate looks like and what an assessment candidate platform looks like, because what they're looking for in this country isn't the same as what they're looking for in this country. And even the countries can be more biased or less biased or introduce different factors, external factors is really up to them. We can't say, and it's not our place to say how they should be hiring or how they should be assessing candidates. So we give them the framework and we give them the tools to build their own assessments. And that's, think, know, large part of our success today is that flexibility. Joel (19:48.608) Yeah, you touch a lot on the global growth and it's the dream of most European startups to come to America. We know that the list of failures is pretty long, but you're one of the success stories. What has been the secret sauce? What advice would you give to others looking to grow into America and elsewhere? Euan (20:07.754) So 60 % of our revenue today comes from the US, for a company based out of Scotland is quite an exciting prospect. Quite a nice thing to say and a large part of our success. Chad Sowash (20:24.174) He starts every call with that. Joel (20:25.644) It only took 20 minutes before me to play that. Please. Euan (20:25.962) Well, why not? a large part of, would say a large part of that success is actually just word of mouth, delivering the best customer experience. US customers love to tell other customers and other prospects about, you know, great tools that they have experience with. So huge part of that is down to the word of mouth and the success of our customer success and support teams. And it's been key since day one, I've always felt like even the smallest customer, and this is a great point to actually touch on. from an internationalization perspective is that we aim to be the SaaS platform that's accessible to all organizations. So whether you're a coffee shop or whether you're PWC, we have a product for you and we also treat you the same. And that's obviously been completely key to the success in the US. For example, when we started speaking, we had one Chick -fil -A restaurant as a customer. Chad Sowash (21:21.347) huh. Euan (21:21.738) And that's obviously grown into multiple Chick -fil -A restaurants, but then we also have the New York DMV as a customer. And we treat them the same. We treat them with the best customer experience possibly can, because you never know who they're going to speak to. And that's been really the flywheel in the US for the past four years. It's just been delivering that great customer success and then just driving it more and more and more. And customers are joining the flywheel either through self -serve or through the sales team. And they're telling other people about it. Joel (21:47.542) So you're saying Chick -fil is the secret to growth in America is what I'm hearing. A chicken sandwich is behind all of this. Chad Sowash (21:48.068) So you talked about integration. Euan (21:52.212) That's the key to your flywheel. Yeah. Chad Sowash (21:53.914) Chick -fil -A, Hobby Lobby, not being open on Sundays. So integrations, we talked about integrations during the first podcast too, right? And that was something that was really driving your focus. Is that what got you to where you are today? Is that where you were able to acquire all of these Chick -fil -As as a... as clients and then also to be able to grow just because of being connected to some of those core talent platforms. Euan (22:25.898) wish it was and it's actually not become the reality. The reality is that most of our mid -market enterprise customers just expect the integration. So we have to have integrations because they're expected and we have over 25 integrations now, most of the key kind of ATSs, but they're just expected. And we have an open API. The key really for us with the integrations has been for those very small SMBs. Chad Sowash (22:29.452) Okay. Chad Sowash (22:44.088) Mm Euan (22:54.238) The SMBs, go and buy Ashby or they go and buy Greenhouse, they buy like a single user license. And then they go into the marketplace and then they go, what does this work with? And then Willow obviously pops up. So it has been great from an SMB perspective, but really in the kind of main revenue generating segments of the business, it's unfortunately not been. And as you will know, it's obviously a lot of time invested in building and maintaining these integrations. But yeah, they're definitely not an acquisition channel for us, like we thought they might be. Chad Sowash (23:17.892) Hell yeah. Chad Sowash (23:21.786) What's the percentage of SMB revenue versus enterprise revenue right now? Euan (23:28.554) SMB revenue is about 40 % of the organization. So it's a healthy base, and I love that. I that's obviously nice for de -risking the whole organization. Chad Sowash (23:31.52) Okay, okay. Yeah. Well, and it sounds like it's coming through those integrations so you don't have to try to go out and sell SMBs, which is a bitch, and or try to advertise to SMBs, which is a bitch. So you guys are literally just focusing on direct market, going direct to these brands to be able to introduce Willow to them. Euan (23:41.928) Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Euan (23:56.264) Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Through integrations and also again, through word of mouth, we do quite a lot in terms of the sharing aspect of Willow. For example, we have the affiliate program. We also have a lot of branding on the platform itself. So when you share, for example, a candidate with someone else in another SMB, they know that it's Willow. They can't mistake that. And then they get of get involved in that. So yeah, it's an interesting strategy, which Chad Sowash (24:03.009) Mm Euan (24:24.434) Yeah, when we originally spoke, felt like integrations were the key to our acquisition and that was going to be the real hack, but it didn't really play out. Chad Sowash (24:31.524) Mm -hmm. Joel (24:33.868) Talk about the team for a second. When we last spoke, it was a bit of a skeleton, skeleton crew to say the least. And you've grown head count pretty organically. you know, according to LinkedIn, you have 43 associates. were talking to me earlier about 20 or so, actual employees. according to LinkedIn, you've grown over 20 % in the last two years. You have very few, sales and engineering in the last year or so that that may be just be something LinkedIn misses in translation, but talk about growing the team, how you thought about who do we add first? When, does certain people come in? How has the year of efficiency and AI impacted how you look at engineering talent? Talk about the team. Euan (25:15.944) Yeah. Great question. And this is really, you picked up on the engineering and the sales piece. The funding that we just took really unlocks a lot of that. We've sort of maxed out in terms of those heads, but in terms of the overall head count now, yeah, as you said, across multiple countries now. So we're actually UK, Philippines, US and Canada is where our team are. The engineering team based out in the Philippines. And yeah, the team has evolved and grown. As I mentioned at the start though, hiring for a startup is different. We've really taken each hire very seriously, very carefully. Everyone has to get four votes from existing employees before they get hired. It's been a real challenge to try and find the right people to work. As you said, it's still small team, a small but mighty team. We're doing quite a lot of heavy lifting for who we all are here. Joel (26:11.265) Are you leveraging contract work? Are these all sort of your employees? Did you use more contract at the beginning? How did you balance that? Euan (26:18.698) Yeah. The balance is about the same. yeah, 20 build time and then about 20 contract. And those contractors can be, you know, anything like translators and things. been, it's been useful to have those folks, but they're not always necessary to be full time. Chad Sowash (26:35.101) Let's talk about efficiency because that was really one of the big, one of the big pushes that that you had. We actually talked to GM not too long ago and they were talking about taking their schedule to interview from six days to six minutes. And back in 2021, you were talking about 15 minutes of schedule, which is, mean, that was really fast. So talk about just again, we're talking about flywheel here. Everything is starting to spin. It's starting to become much faster. Euan (27:02.139) And that's the end of the talk. Thank you. Chad Sowash (27:04.482) There's a hell of a lot more competition out there today, even though some of it's new and they don't know what the hell they're doing. There's still a lot of noise out there. So talk about how you guys are using, whether it's AI, automation, new process efficiencies to be able to take Willow to that next level. Euan (27:23.562) And you mentioned the space. mean, the space since we spoke has grown significantly. The number of entrants in the market, we're like 180 competitors in our space now, which is a huge change. mean, we're literally, you could probably count them on like two hands before. And most of them are, you know, AI powered or claiming to be AI powered as well. It's a really interesting change over the past few years. The focus for us really has been, how do we keep delivering on the time to hire that we promised? But the real focus over the past few years has actually changed and evolved into that quality of hire as well. Because you can hire quickly, but if we aren't hiring quality, then no one really cares. The kind of time to hire thing, it's a nice kind of outcome, but the outcome that employers really care about, like Toyota, for example, we have Toyota as a customer in the UK and the outcome they really care about is the right people. And the time to hire thing is just a nice. you know, side effect of abusing Willow. So the 15 minutes still stands today, but the quality and the retention of those folks is more key to us. And that's, that's interesting, particularly when you talk about AI, because there's, there is obviously a lot of noise around AI and hiring, like most industries, but for some reason, a lot in hiring. And what you end up with is this strange scenario where you have candidates are AI powered and your recruiters that are AI powered. And you end up, well, okay, who are we actually hiring here? And the time to hire might be like seconds because that's how it could be. But the quality of the hire is completely shit. so I think there's, there's a real balance to be had. And this goes back to, thankfully, the vision that we had at the very start, which was let's make hiring about people. Let's make hiring human. And we are in the midst at the moment of obviously developing AI, like I mentioned, but the AI that we are introducing is about giving and surfacing the right information. from the humans rather than replacing humans. And that's a real challenge. You for example, at the moment we're transcribing all the videos and all the audio content, and then we're allowing you to search and filter that content. And that in itself is a superpower of AI. Like you literally couldn't do that two years ago. You'd have to do like, you know, horrible like control find and the transcript is never very good because it's literally a transcript of what the person said. So an AI transcript is obviously much better. Euan (29:47.924) You can do really cool stuff as well. You can, for example, interview people in different languages now. So I can interview a Spanish person without having any Spanish knowledge, thanks to the AI transcription in Willow, which is really cool. So there's like small AI, you know, superpowers, which we're giving our customers, which don't allow or don't make it possible to replace that human. And that's key. I think that's key for us as we move forward into the future. I just can't see a world that's going to work out very well where you go, okay, time to hire three seconds. Joel (29:56.266) Wow, that is really cool. Euan (30:17.342) And then you go, okay, cool. What's quality of hire? What's retention rate? And they're like, yeah, shit and shit. But we can hire people really quickly. Chad Sowash (30:24.855) Are you pushing the transcription into the applicant tracking system? Are there some clients that they want that as a record? Okay. Euan (30:31.69) Both, both, yeah, both. And customers also, they ingest it through our API or through Zapier. And then they can do their own cool stuff with it as well. Some of them, for example, will like to summarize it. They can send it down to their hiring managers or they can use it as a recruitment agency and pitch people. A lot of cool stuff you can do with the transcripts. Chad Sowash (30:37.998) Mm -hmm. Yeah. Joel (30:50.989) Tell us a story, every startup has a curve ball or an unexpected event happen that they have to really think on their feet. Tell us a story about where you were like, fuck, and how did you respond? Chad Sowash (30:56.538) Storytime. Euan (31:06.086) Every day. We have one of those. Euan (31:11.85) the biggest, the biggest, the biggest moment is, and I think it's, it's, it's symptomatic of our enterprise customers, enterprise customers. come along at the same time for some reason, you know, I would love it if we just did one enterprise customer at a time, but they never do. No. So like the biggest, the biggest enterprise customers that you can imagine in the world came to us at the same time and they both had their own requirements. And we obviously wanted to win both of them because the opportunities there are huge. Chad Sowash (31:29.737) That's how works. Yeah, no. Euan (31:42.186) and we just don't have the physical team to do it. this is like last year, what we had to do was literally just deliver both projects exactly at the same time. All of the enterprise customers, as you folks know better than me, need features. They always want specific features that are specific to them. And they want it like, yeah, yeah, they want it tomorrow. Chad Sowash (31:58.254) Yeah. That they don't use Yeah. Joel (31:59.18) This is like that interview question where they say like, what's your biggest weakness? And the answer should be like, I have trouble delegating. I wanna take on all the work. Ewan's like, we get so many enterprise customers that it's a total freak out. So great answer on that one. Good answer startup. Yeah, when someone asks, what's your greatest challenge? I always say, so many customers. We don't know how, it's so many customers and they're so huge. Chad Sowash (32:11.491) Hahaha Chad Sowash (32:17.464) He was talking about, he was talking about two. He was talking about two. Euan (32:18.418) You Euan (32:26.036) Yeah Joel (32:28.748) We don't know. We don't know what to do. Yeah. All right. I'm to let you out on this one. what does the company look like in 24 or 36 months? Is it big changes? Stay the course? Like, what are we looking at? You got, you just got money. What's going to, what's going to happen? Euan (32:29.14) Hey, it's the reunion. Chad Sowash (32:33.594) Let's get, let's get, let's get. Chad Sowash (32:41.039) acquisition. Euan (32:43.784) changes. So team headcount is doubling over the next year. So please apply and yes, be good. But send your applications in that'd be great. The other big changes we are really moving more aggressively towards the automation of the onboarding piece. there's obviously Willow is obviously very focused on this this part of the moment. Assessment and screening, but there's this there's this really Chad Sowash (32:49.135) Wow. Chad Sowash (33:07.16) down funnel. Euan (33:11.73) Attractive direction for us, which our customers are going to pulling us in and you know, you see at the moment the kind of the move between willow to offer or Willow to next stage of interview process or assessment process quite clunky and they all have their own natural ways of doing or funky ways of doing it so that the natural stream for us is to move this way into the onboarding and the next steps and Really just take away a lot of pain, know, for example, we We see customers at the moment, know, they're literally copying and pasting the email address of the person you want to offer into like a spreadsheet. And then someone picks up that spreadsheet and writes an offer letter. It's dead clunky, not good. And when you're doing that enterprise level, you're literally doing that hundreds of times a day. Sometimes it just doesn't make any sense. It blows our mind. So we're trying to make that a lot more efficient over the next few years. And that really allows Willow to take on slightly more of the picture, but also just still focusing on a tight part of We're not going to go the other way, you know, towards the attraction or anything like that. Chad Sowash (34:14.094) hear that Joel we've got Willow offer letters coming soon. All right kids. Joel (34:17.044) That's right. If only there had been some layoffs recently in our industry that you and could could grab some talent. Chad Sowash (34:26.042) There's some people out there, my friend. So Ewan, thanks again for coming back on. Great to hear the story. Definitely keep us in the loop. But for all those kids that are out there who, maybe they want a little taste of Willow, where would you send them? Or maybe they want to connect with you. Where would you actually send them? Euan (34:43.21) Absolutely. I would send them to willow .video and that's w i l l o dot video. And they can not only book a demo, but they can also just try the platform for free for 15 days. Anyone can do that forever. Yeah. You can jump into the free forever. Actually you can. So you can use it one job for one year free. so check that out. That's obviously a great way to get into things, whether you're an SMB, mid -market or enterprise. Chad Sowash (34:53.614) Forever. Forever. Joel (35:07.436) If it's not Scottish, it's crap, Chad. You and thanks for joining us. Keep doing what you do. Chad, that's another one in the can. We out. Chad Sowash (35:08.281) Beautiful. Euan (35:14.036) Thank you. Chad Sowash (35:14.286) That's right. We out.

In this episode of the Chad and Cheese podcast, the hosts dive into several hot topics, with a sharp focus on ZipRecruiter's latest blunder—its new product, dubbed a "stink bomb." As job boards like ZipRecruiter and Dice face a rapidly changing market, the hosts discuss how this flop reflects broader challenges in the industry. The conversation touches on the pressure job boards face to innovate and stay relevant in a landscape where AI, tech advancements, and shifting job-seeking strategies are reshaping the future of work. Takeaways: - ZipRecruiter's "stink bomb" underscores the struggle for job boards to innovate. - Job boards like ZipRecruiter and Dice must evolve to survive in an AI-driven market. - AI's impact on jobs is often overstated, but tech is still influencing the future of work. - Innovative job-seeking strategies challenge traditional norms. - Networking events like HR Tech are essential for industry connections and staying competitive. - Understanding market dynamics is key to navigating the evolving employment landscape. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel (00:30.936) Two guys who were nowhere near Tiananmen Square in 1989. Hey boys and girls, it's the chat and cheese podcast. I'm your cohost Joel eating the cats cheeseman. Chad (00:42.645) This is Chad resume databases are back. So wash. Joel (00:46.754) And on this episode is AI's impact on jobs overhyped, zip recruiter and dice look to innovate their way out of the abyss and why it's a perfect time to start poaching Amazon employees. Let's do this. Chad (01:06.587) for the boys since I didn't bring it to, I didn't, didn't bring it to my Kiara hat kids. If you're watching audio, Kiara hat that I didn't bring to HR tech. said I would, I said I would, but, yeah, it didn't, didn't make the packing list. It's fair. It's a good hat. Joel (01:14.53) There you go, Kiara, that's right. That's right. Joel (01:22.222) They had like the coordinating shirts and they're taking the branding to a whole different level. That's right. Our new shout out, shout out sponsor making techs recruiting easy. That's Kiora, Kiora as we're settling in after our HR tech hangovers being in Vegas. think I'm back to normal. How about you, Chad? Chad (01:26.751) good hat. A Lululemon shirt. Chad (01:37.296) That's Cure! Yes, very much so. I'm good, dude. I, again, I, I'm, I'm a big fan of understanding that it is not a sprint. It's a marathon and watching some of these kids, even guys our age, fucking sprint the first night. It's like, Nope. Can't not going to do that. I got work to do. got, I got things to do. Right. so yeah, no, I I'm all good. I'm all good. Joel (01:52.77) Mm-hmm. Joel (02:04.238) So I had a bit of an epiphany at HR tech. know you know this, the listeners don't. So the second night, think we're both fairly tired. think I messaged you and I say, or you message me and say, you're going out to the parties. And I say like, that's the plan. and then you're like, Julie's feelings somewhat not great. We'll see what happens. I lay down, I closed my eyes and I'm like, I'm just gonna take a little power nap and get up. I don't wake up till like 10 45. Chad (02:32.021) Go on. Joel (02:34.51) And I'm like, well, I guess I'm in for the night. So I just turn everything off and go to bed and I track my sleep. And I showed you like how good my sleep was. I have these rings and if they are green, it's awesome. If it's blue, it's like you're in another zone. And I had one blue and then the rest green. So there's something to be said for a good night's sleep. when you're traveling on the road for sure. I don't know if it'll be a habit, but, it could be. Chad (02:41.215) Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Chad (02:56.835) yes. and not easy to get. Joel (03:02.222) I'm understanding, I'm understanding why Jerry Crispin for so many years would just, wherever, did you ever go to one of his dinners? Chad (03:02.695) not easy to get. Chad (03:11.934) no. Huh. Joel (03:12.046) Okay. So he would have these dinners and he would invite, I don't know, five to 10 people. And that was his thing. And he would interact with different people. But like, I'm, I'm quickly learning why Jerry did that. We're getting in that like 20 years ago, Jerry, and it, you know, like we're like, it's more appealing to me to have a nice dinner and some good drinks and conversation than it is yelling at everybody trying to like engage with people. I'm sort of beyond. Chad (03:18.325) Sure. Chad (03:39.431) And there's a good amount of yelling. Yes. Even in the expo hall. Joel (03:41.334) I'm beyond that. Call me old. Tell me. Yeah. Yeah, tell me you're old without telling me that you're old. So what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? Let's get to that. Let's get to shout outs. You have some stuff from HR tech that you didn't get to last week that I think you want to want to talk about all the good goodness in Vegas. Chad (03:49.694) You Chad (03:54.792) Okay. Chad (04:01.971) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, right, right out of the gate. Shout out to higher road.com. we were handing out free beer, thanks to, to hire road in Vegas last week. and we obviously overperformed because we ran out of beer in less than 30 minutes. So it's, it's always great to catch up with friends over beer. And when you're giving away free beer, you have more friends than you originally thought you did. So that was, that was fun. and then last but not least big. incredibly large, humongous shout out to Alin Bailey, Rebecca Carr, Kaylee Bateman, and the whole crew at the Smart Recruiters booth for making sure that we had a comfy couch, chairs, a beer fridge, plus VIP tickets to the Skyfall Lounge pretty much all week. And I got a new Aura Ring. So I'm gonna, I'm trying this out again. Joel (04:34.642) yeah. Joel (04:42.99) Mm-hmm. Joel (04:53.646) For the kids that don't know, what is an aura ring, Chad? Not to be confused with the aura penis ring. Chad (04:57.429) That's pretty much one of those. Yeah. Do they have one of those? get into, yeah. I mean, if you have the Apple watch, it's got the health, piece, any of the wearables these days are really focused on the health side, the, or a ring, which you can see if you're watching on, if you're watching on YouTube, it's simply just one of those. It's just a ring instead of a watch. Joel (05:03.062) which is a whole new market that they should go after, by the way. Joel (05:24.942) Yeah. Yeah, I love it. I love it. and I found out that I have a career as a beer guy at a, at a stadium near you. got the cold beer here, I think, down pat because of the, the free beer giveaway. my shout out bringing back to the industry goes out to Courtney summer Myers. Now who the hell is Courtney summer Myers? well laid off twice, Courtney summer Myers. Chad (05:28.725) Pretty cool. Chad (05:34.665) Yeah, yeah. Chad (05:46.151) Joel (05:50.574) is a 28 year old graphic designer in the UK who openly declared her job hunt on LinkedIn with a hashtag desperate banner around her profile picture. Now you've seen on LinkedIn the open to work as well as the hiring banner. No, no, no, Courtney said, I'm making my own. She's a graphic designer. She knows the sizing and how to get everything right. She challenges the stigma of needing work and sparking both support as well as criticism as you can imagine. Chad (06:01.705) desperate. Yeah. Yep. Chad (06:12.671) Are we on? Yeah. Joel (06:19.892) on LinkedIn. as of this recording, checking out her LinkedIn profile, she has yet to find a job. So even though all this attention is going on with her, she hasn't found a job. People are torn by this whole badge thing on LinkedIn. I'm a little confused why everyone's so open arms on this. If she wants to make a different kind of custom thing, I say more power to you. Hashtag desperate. It could happen. It could be a thing. say LinkedIn. That could be the most innovative thing that you've done in the last six months. Create a new desperate banner for the people that are really unemployed and really looking for jobs. Shout out to Courtney Summer Myers. Chad (06:49.149) Hahaha Chad (06:58.237) Yes. And real quick, I mean, you were talking about LinkedIn. Last week, I think you talked about the video feed and how you like the video feed. I was, so I was messaging with Joel Algy. It does a shit ton of video. And a couple of his came up and I was like, how are you getting your videos in those feeds? And he's like, I have no clue. But when they do get into the feed, they get some major attention. The big issue is you can't interact with the video. So like, Joel (07:02.392) Mm-hmm. Joel (07:19.224) Really? Chad (07:27.477) on TikTok, can interact with the video, can thumbs up, can make the, you can make a comment, that kind of thing. it doesn't seem at least mobile version, to, be able to allow for that. So it looks like we're still early stages, and LinkedIn still hasn't figured the shit out yet. Joel (07:44.568) That is interesting. So Joel isn't uploading his videos to LinkedIn and somehow they are. So they're contracting with somebody to get the... Chad (07:46.388) Mm. Chad (07:52.271) No, he's uploading them to LinkedIn just in the regular feed, but yet LinkedIn is not pulling over all the videos that are being uploaded into the feed. Because he said, if you get a video uploaded to that feed, you're going to see hundreds of thousands of views because they aren't taking them all. So I don't know what they're doing to choose to pick and choose which videos to use or not to use. Joel (08:03.371) Okay. Joel (08:11.245) Yeah. Joel (08:18.734) mysterious algorithm that is LinkedIn. Chad (08:23.573) trying to figure it out. Joel (08:26.84) Well, speaking of videos, Chad, I was immensely overwhelmed by an unboxing video of our t-shirt. Now I'm sure you've seen his unbiased. If you have kids, they're unboxing toys. If you're shoe geek, they're like my boxing. Unboxing is a big thing with the Gen Z and the millennials. And I never thought that Chad and cheese would be the focal point of an unboxing. a big, big, big shout out. Chad (08:41.695) Mm-hmm. yeah. Yep. Joel (08:55.566) goes to Gia Johnston, who's now maybe in the pole position as our best fan, biggest fanatic. She did an unboxing. Let's take a look at this. If you're listening to this, you'll have to check out YouTube for this, but our YouTube listeners will see this. Chad (08:55.914) Yeah. Chad (09:03.753) Hahaha Chad (09:25.011) I love the tat sleeve. I love the sleeve. Joel (09:27.659) Yeah. Joel (09:37.71) There you go. Chad (09:48.466) you Joel (09:57.08) for Chad (10:01.363) There it is. That's the money shot. There it is, Gia. There it is, Gia. Joel (10:03.534) Chad (10:10.045) Ooh, little airing love too. Joel (10:18.81) and we love you, Gia. Are you kidding me? That is awesome. That is awesome. Chad (10:22.365) No. Did we just become best friends? Joel (10:26.338) And I'm so glad we got the branded bags and like, I'm so glad that was so awesome. Thank you, Gia. That made my week. That made my week. So free shit is out there to be had Chad. You don't have to unbox it. You can get a t-shirt just like that. Tell them how they can do that. Chad (10:31.001) yeah. Chad (10:34.495) baller. That was baller. Yeah, that was baller. That was baller. Very nice. Chad (10:42.59) No! It's very simple kids. and this isn't just about having a t-shirt. also give away free craft beer from Aspen tech labs, free whiskey, two bottles from text kernel slash. might know them as bullhorn. and then if it's your birthday, you might get some rum from plum. If you go to Chad cheese.com slash free. That's right. Cause it's free. It's all free. Chad (11:15.88) Love it. Joel (11:16.814) That's right. By the way, forgot to mention Kiora given away Pappy aged bourbon barrel, syrup from, the fine country of Canada. So let's get to our birthday roundup. These are listeners that are celebrating another trip around the sun. goes to Sean Luchans, Valerie Doyle, Caitlin Grady, Ryan McGrath, George Dobbin, George out in Scotland. hope he's listening. Kevin Grossman, Ling Wu, Chuck Genuardi, Leah Maguire, Brett Farmelo, Andrea Durla, Carla Cruch, Matt Chad (11:24.477) I love it. I love it. Love it. Chad (11:37.917) My man. yeah. Chad (11:42.677) Excuse me. Joel (11:46.09) Neeson, John Lawton, Brandon Luzer, Sarah Fell, Casey Dockendorf, my sister-in-law, Alison Holbrook, and our favorite Belgian. That's right. That's right. The true muscles from Brussels. Levin, House of HR, celebrating another trip around the sun. So happy birthday to everybody. Chad (11:53.279) There it is. Chad (11:58.862) Leaving! Chad (12:08.589) I love it. Can't wait to see leaving again. I can't wait to go back to House of HR and the e-recruiting conference whenever they choose to have that again, but hopefully it'll be in Amsterdam. But as we're talking about events, Shaker recruitment marketing, just so you know, kids, powers the Chad and Cheese travel. Next week, we're in Scottsdale for two of Paradox's client boards. And I love these events because they are talent acquisition practitioners. Very heavy. talent acquisition practitioner that yeah, we're gonna be filming season two of maybe three of the AI sessions. Now kids, if you have not seen the AI sessions, run, don't walk to thesessions.ai. That's right, open up a browser, type in thesessions.ai where you can watch season one of the AI sessions, which is an 11. Joel (12:41.944) So happy. Joel (12:50.574) Mm-hmm. Chad (13:08.199) Episode mini series and every episode is about 10 minutes long or so so yes It's snackable bites of AI with friends like Eileen Kowalski from General Motors then We're heading to Nalyn's. That's right, New Orleans for outs of brand spanking new conference called HR gumbo one of my favorite places to eat food in the United States is New Orleans This looks like a pretty damn cool event. We're gonna be at the World War two museum Joel (13:32.12) Yeah, yeah. Chad (13:37.941) One night we're going to be at a rooftop another night and the thing I love about this is they brought in Chad and cheese to make compliance cool or let me talk about AI and we talk about compliance Our friend Keith Sonderling is gonna be there because you can't make compliance cool without a guy Who can wear a suit and still rock it and look cool himself? So we're looking forward to being there for all of these events Joel (13:50.552) Yes. Yes. Chad (14:02.197) You can go to chadcheese.com slash events to register unless it's the paradox event. You got to be a VIP to get to that one. Outsolve. I think there's still some seats left. So if you want to go to New Orleans, you want to see some Chad and Cheese, you want to talk about AI and compliance, go to chadcheese.com slash events. Register today. Joel (14:08.861) Yeah. Joel (14:13.774) Okay. Joel (14:22.978) That's right. Not to be confused with the HR a two Faye conference going on the week, week after that. I have not been to the world war II museum, which apparently is amazing. Have you been there yet? Okay. All right. Definitely making time for that. Chad (14:31.742) dude. Yes. Yes. It is, is, it is amazing. It's, it's got, it's got the, it's got the two sides, the two fronts. So you go in one, one area and it's got the European front. And then you go into an entirely different experience for the Pacific front. It is amazing. Joel (14:44.074) huh. huh. Joel (14:50.85) How much time should I set aside for it? Three hours, four hours? Chad (14:54.161) It depends on how long you want to take, but I would say probably three to four hours. Joel (14:59.872) Okay. So about as long as I take to set my fantasy draft every week, which by the way, Chad brings us to fantasy football with our friends at factory fix.com. Here's your leaderboard, a leaderboard that you may not be too happy to hear. Number one, action Jackson Dalquist in the top position. Number two, Adam Gordon Ramsey. That's right. The man who auto drafted and knows nothing about American football is in the two spot. Your boy. Chad (15:04.838) yes. I don't want hear about it. I don't want hear about it. Chad (15:23.944) areas. Chad (15:27.733) Good for him. Joel (15:29.398) It's all Gouda right here. Joel Cheeseman in three spot David. Don't call me Goliath stifle it for Dean. The daddy mackerel, the Australian, the Mac daddy from down under number five, Keith, mentioned him Sonderling Keith, the commission Sonderling number six, Laura Liza, Martinelli, Dina porno for Pero, Jennifer, Terry, Tharp, Anniston. Chad (15:39.445) you Joel (15:53.962) Number 10, Chad thought he was drafting Ronaldo. So wash, followed by Sean Horton. Here's the who and number 12 at the caboose. Kristi gnome Lisbon is in the last place spot. And that is our fantasy football roundup as we head into week four, by the way, I'm, I'm facing Adam this week. So, my pride is on the line. If I lose to a Scott, who knows Jack. Chad (15:56.303) I did. You Chad (16:06.318) factory fix, baby, thanks so much. Chad (16:17.538) Joel (16:22.528) about American football. don't know if I can show my face. I may be blacked out on next week's show if I lose to Adam Gordon. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Well, let's get to some news, shall we? Chad (16:24.053) It's a long season. It's a long season. you Chad (16:35.411) In Tropic! Joel (16:39.022) the world is a fun place these days, isn't it Chad? Well, AI is in the news. Imagine that. OpenAI concluded a funding round at a $157 billion valuation, raising $6.6 billion led by Thrive Capital with participation from Microsoft, NVIDIA, and other names that you probably know. The company expects to bring in $11.6 billion in sales next year. Chad (16:52.319) Thanks. Joel (17:04.993) That's up from just 3.7 billion in 2024. However, however, Chad throw some cold water on this puppy. One MIT professor isn't so optimistic by his calculation, only a small percentage of all jobs. What he says is a mere 5 % is ripe to be taken over or at least heavily aided by AI over the next decade. Expecting a big bubble to burst. Chad, where are you on the side of these opposing viewpoints? Chad (17:35.573) Yeah, I don't think there's a bubble that's gonna burst. let's just, I, Guy's smart, he's from MIT, don't get me wrong. I don't think he's a workforce economist. At the end of the day though, remember that earlier this year, OpenAI was valued at a reported 80 billion, up from the 29 billion from 2023, from last year. Now today, $157 billion valuation. There are 11 million chat GPT plus subscribers, 1 million paying business users on chat GPT. Revenue last month up 1700%. And yet open AI expects to lose roughly $5 billion this year on a revenue of 3.7 billion. So this to me feels a lot like social media in the early years. LinkedIn first came out, it was new because it was slanted toward professionals instead of just friends like Friendster, MySpace, Classmates.com and even Facebook who at one time wasn't open to the public. You needed a university email address to actually join Facebook. There were so many flavors and yet only LinkedIn and Facebook have survived the early social media wars. Now, Joel (18:48.238) Mm-hmm. Chad (18:57.107) I love using chat GPT, but I kind of feel like open AI is the Friendster or MySpace of AI right now. And the question is, why do I feel this way? Well, Microsoft windows is the most widely used operating system for computers with a market share of about 72 % as of February of this year. According to a statistical about 56 % of organizations worldwide use Microsoft Azure for cloud services. And the hair 20. 23 revenues for just Microsoft cloud was 64.7 billion. Google retains 82 % share of global search markets and 11 % of cloud infrastructure market. Google's cloud revenue is 33.1 billion in 2023. Now the last big boy, Amazon web services had 31 % of the cloud infrastructure market by, which generated $91 billion globally. Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have the power to keep little open AI in their sites watching from close or afar, whether you're Microsoft or Amazon, while building the next evolution of cloud services that will be baked into everything. Because where is all the AI needed? In our operating systems, in our cloud services, in our everyday platforms. So these companies, not open AI, Google, Microsoft, Joel (20:17.646) Mm-hmm. Chad (20:26.545) Amazon, they've built rails and they're playing major league. They're playing at the major league level while open AI is still playing small ball. So when open AI is baked when AI, not open AI, but when AI is baked into all of these other areas, we're not going to have a use for open AI anymore. So for me, it's, it's an interesting chess move from all of these companies because they're looking at infrastructure where open AI is looking for subscribers. Joel (20:47.694) Hmm. Joel (20:57.154) posing views. Gotta love it. Joel (21:02.798) So I got a quick message for Mr. MIT. OK. Chad (21:06.793) You Joel (21:09.856) I would be, I'm hard pressed to think about a company in any sector who isn't thinking about how do we reduce our headcount. Unless you're talking about like real service stuff, like in and out or hospital, like almost every business on the planet is thinking about how do we automate ourself into less head count into less headaches with people, which will lead us to our dock worker story in a little bit. like, if you, if you have, if you have the, if you have the recipe of every company on the planet, just about is trying to figure out how do we have less people do this, do this work. And you have. Our friend Courtney and my shout outs, tell her that AI isn't impacting her ability, ability to get a job. Every image that you and I put on for shows now is us hacking around on Dolly or whatever to create an image of whatever it is. Right. We don't have to pay a designer to do it. We don't like that is so easy for us and we're not the only ones. I promise you. Like the, the, the need for designers like Courtney is reduced is being reduced because of AI. Chad (21:51.253) Mm-hmm. Chad (22:06.921) Hmm. Chad (22:11.25) No, no. Joel (22:15.726) We're going to talk about the dock workers a little bit on the show. A huge, every sign that they hold up is fight automation, like fight the robots, like push back on automation. That's another business that's being impacted. So for me to like, I don't know if someone at MIT is so removed from real life that they think about this in very different terms than I do, but looking on the ground and seeing just what we do in our business, AI is impacting so much and everybody's trying to figure out. Chad (22:25.167) Mm-hmm. Chad (22:41.865) Mm-hmm. Joel (22:45.24) how to do it. So I think that dude is totally off the rails and I'm not falling for his banana in my tailpipe. So moving on to, open AI, very interesting. your perspective is interesting. I think more about, the Netscape days. So if you're early internet user, AOL sucked ass, it was awful. And then, and then Netscape came around and you're like, this is amazing. This is like kind of fast. got, like, I can go to where I want. And then Microsoft came and basically suffocated it with every computer you bought had had a internet Explorer or whatever it was called at the time. And then now Google launches Chrome and Safari. So you have that sort of been commoditized. don't know if AI will go on a separate, on a significantly different path or not. I am a little bit troubled by the recent exodus of a lot of executives at the company. And I don't know if that's, know, Sam was ousted and then like, I know, Peter Teal made a call and said, I don't think so. And Sam comes back and now everyone who maybe wanted him gone is like, I'm out of here. So there's some internal stuff going on at open AI that we probably don't appreciate, but it's probably going to be a long-term issue with them. If they want to come out of this, they're probably going to go public at some point. And when they go public, they're going to have to open the kimono a little bit. What are we doing? Where's growth? And then like, what's our revenue? Like that's going to sort of put them under a microscope. Chad (23:59.807) Mm-hmm. desk. Joel (24:10.614) I do believe that if I'm Google, Amazon, all the companies that you named, I have, I have rails and customers and distribution channels that a open AI does not. What, what Metta is doing with like smart glasses is really interesting. and their AI is built into that. So yeah, where we're going in the world is very interesting. It was, is open AI the next Netscape is the next AOL is it the next Friendster MySpace history says yes. Chad (24:11.135) Yep. Chad (24:21.756) Nope. Joel (24:40.396) History says yes, that this will not be the thing. Chad (24:41.781) Open AI or are you talking about all of the, just AI specifically because that's different. Yeah. Joel (24:45.588) Open AI as a business, open AI, AI is going to happen. I have no doubt about that. Chad (24:53.031) It's already happening. What I'm saying though is Google has their own AI, Amazon has their own AI, Microsoft has their own AI, which is different than open AI. And those three companies will smother open AI or buy them. then they will be, AI is going to be baked into everything is what I'm saying. Joel (25:11.566) Yeah. Does it get commoditized like email and the browser and like, so sure. Now Sam and, and, and Johnny Ive of Apple fame are apparently working on some device. That's an open AI chat GPT thing. Like that may be a total different thing that takes off at the end of the day. If you have a podcast, it's going to be fun to talk about and fun to watch and technology and how this impacts the world of work. Chad (25:14.407) easily. Yeah, data is the new gold. Chad (25:36.435) No, it's going to Joel (25:39.534) but yeah, it's, it's very, they have a much bigger cannon, to fight some of the forces that you're talking about with the kind of money that they've been given, by some big, big players. But speaking of not so big players, let's, let's go to, let's go to zip and dice. Can I, can I answer you in that? All right. They were in the news, this week. Who's, who's ready for some mind blowing innovation? Chad (25:39.956) Yep. Chad (25:53.428) Mmm. Chad (25:59.797) Joel (26:04.628) After listening to the open AI stuff, zipper recruiter has launched an enhanced resume database offering employers advanced search tools, instant candidate contact access and workflow management that promises to expedite the hiring process. wait, Chad, there's more facing competition from programmatic advertising tech job board dice has revamped its strategy to include all tech jobs, enhancing visibility and job quality. Chad (26:22.868) Yes. Joel (26:32.098) while addressing market share loss and adapting to AI in hiring processes. Chad, your thoughts on news out of Zip and Dice, which by the way, sounds like a crime fighting duo from the 1970s. Next on Zip and Dice, they take the mob on directly. Your thoughts. Chad (26:49.855) Zip and dice. Let's hit dice real quick. Paul Farnsworth, the DHI CTO, said, mistake we made was we wanted to be the go-to website for technologists in their careers, which means we needed all the jobs but held back for fear of diluting the roles that our job seekers only saw through us. So, Paul, buddy, people want options, okay? Did you not see how Indeed won the general job board wars? They used all the other job boards content against them and became quote unquote the Google for jobs until Google launched Google for jobs. This is also short term thinking. Staffing didn't want the entry level developer. So Dice focused on job postings for mid level and higher. The problem is today's entry level developer is tomorrow's rock star developer. You box them out and they create communities elsewhere like HackerRank, Stack Overflow, GitHub, Hackajob. Dice focused way too heavy on staffing and they missed the much wider total addressable market and strategic long play. So Dice should have integrated hacking challenges and skills development into their systems decades ago. But much like Monster and Crew Builder, they got fat, they got lazy, they got art the dart. And they pat, got passed over by other providers. So just from a dice side of the house, that's what I saw. Joel (28:29.986) What was ZipRecruiter at HR Tech? I might've missed that. No, no, they weren't. Was Dice at HR Tech? No, okay. Was Monster, indeed? Yeah. Which is very, I want to check in real quick on our friends at ZipRecruiter. I've bad mouthed their podcast. know, had a waste of time. What's the point? Chad (28:33.929) I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. No, well, no. Joel (28:54.668) And I, and I ditched, I ditched, I disrespected them on the number of, of reviews and, and like engagement that they had, as of this recording, they have 16 reviews, Chad. That's right. 16, after being two months into this thing. And by the way, I'll, mention this again. They have about 1500 employees that they could send a group chat out to and say, Hey, can you review our podcast with our CEO that's on it or president or whatever? So I want to check in with that. Chad (29:17.46) Yes. Joel (29:21.954) Both of these companies, their stock price year to date is down 30 plus percent. Dice is actually down quite a bit since this article came out from our friends at AIM. What really shocks me, can ZipRecruiter not get a decent brand to endorse their shit? Do you know who the, if you go look at their new resume stuff, you know who the company is that is the testimonial? Chad (29:30.666) Hmm. Chad (29:50.197) I have no clue. Joel (29:51.468) Yeah. You think it'd be like, I don't know. Could we get a Chipotle? Could we get like somebody that somebody knows the company that is their testimonial is Butler America, Butler America. Do you know Butler America chat? Have you, have you been like to a Butler America store or bought from Butler America? No, no. So they're launching a new product and their testimonial after being in business as long as they have with as many clients as they have. Chad (29:55.183) huh. Chad (30:09.875) Now, you're clear what the fuck it is, Joel (30:20.66) is Butler America. In all seriousness, though, the stuff they mentioned has been done. Like why they're wrapping this pig and some lipstick that says this is innovation and this is new stuff, like is ridiculous. What what zip needs to do and maybe dice on a lesser extent is take a page out of the bullhorn playbook. Okay. Build a marketplace on zip recruiter. Instead of wasting your time on whatever this shit is, build a marketplace that startups that everyone that was at HR tech, because you weren't can build stuff on your platform that then your clients can access and use. And then you'll get like the next startup. Chad (31:02.933) It's too late. It's too late. It's too late. It's too late. It's too late. What you're talking about right now for ZipRecruiter, it's too late. Joel (31:06.712) I don't know if it's a bit of a hell Mary, but I'd be much more excited about zip recruiter. If zip recruiter said we're launching a marketplace and here are here are 10, here, here are 10 partners that we're launching the marketplace with. I'd be much more interested than we have new search features. Chad (31:22.613) 75 % of the marketplaces that are out there are worthless. 75 % of the marketplaces out there are fucking worthless. They don't have time for that. Just the marketplace and how the company uses the marketplace. They're worthless. In ZipRecruiter's standpoint, so this is not a new product. I mean, are you kidding me right now? The market needs a supercar. Fast, sporty, something that... Joel (31:30.222) the apps in the marketplace or the marketplace is worthless? Chad (31:47.997) gets the job done fast, right? ZipRecruiter gives us a model A and all they did was change the fucking windshield wiper blades. Seriously, what's going on over there is online career center, Monsterboard, eSpan, Career Mosaic, Headhunter.net, all 1990s job board shit. Monster.com bought Trovix, Trovix in 2008. And soon after that, they released Sixcent Search, which is this. Joel (32:15.982) Mm-hmm. Chad (32:16.693) Zip recorder, if you're listening, it's very fucking simple. Stop the insanity. The market doesn't need an easy to search resume database. The market needs you to ingest the job description, apply the requirements to your database of candidates, automatically surface those candidates while inviting them to, I don't know, actually apply for those jobs. Once someone applies for the jobs, ask a few screening questions. Joel (32:40.814) Mm-hmm. Chad (32:44.935) If they pass the screening questions, go ahead and schedule them for an interview or depending on the job, go ahead and offer them a goddamn job. The thing is, what you're asking for, no, they don't have time for that shit. They've got to do the basics right and they're not even getting the basics right. That is playing fucking PhD level chess when they aren't even playing checkers right. Joel (32:55.811) Mm-hmm. Joel (33:07.948) I'll go you one better. They should just have Apollo on speed dial and be like, what do we need to do to get a deal done? What do you need from us to get you to write a check and we can be done with this whole thing and we can join the career builder, monsters, zip recruiter, whatever, year of, year of efficiency and we can all get the hell out of this game. I go back to dice. What I did find interesting from the story in the comment, I think from the CFO that they interviewed is that with AI. Chad (33:17.735) It's not gonna happen either. Chad (33:28.981) That happened. Joel (33:37.69) language barriers are being broken down. In other words, there are so many Indian, Indian developers and there may be lack of English or like there there's nuance there that they don't get that AI can solve. So if you have all these conversations with developers and employers, and it's totally English the way that you think it is and like that language barriers cut down, does that reduce the like. Chad (33:47.406) Yeah. Joel (34:06.358) Is there not a premium on like English speaking native English speaking programmers? Because everyone sounds the same. It doesn't matter. And I can, I can even not speak English and we can have a conversation about development that goes away. think that could be a huge deflationary, development. that, if that takes hold, that was something that I thought was interesting from the, from the interview, but more or less. Chad (34:27.285) It's not interesting. Everybody has it. The thing is, DICE is talking about technology that everybody's going to have access to. What they didn't have access to and DICE has squandered is building a community in technology. Again, AI, commodity, data, not the commodity, that's the gold. They have squandered the gold and now they're focusing and this is a fucking bullshit diversion. They've got nothing. They've screwed themselves over. They're the monster and career builder that we all know and used to love and they're now merging and dying very slow deaths. Same things happen in what dies. The CTO is talking about where they fucked up. I got it, but... Joel (34:49.336) Yeah. Chad (35:09.747) everything that you're talking about around language barrier, everybody has access to that. So I don't understand. Why should I be excited about Dice? Joel (35:19.736) Not necessarily dice, but the trend of the barrier of language being torn down, I think is interesting. That's all. I don't have it. Chad (35:25.767) Everybody has it. Chad (35:30.388) Yeah, you do. Joel (35:34.274) What are we in week six now of American Chad back in the back in the saddle. He's going back to Europe at the end of October, everybody. So he'll be, he'll be in a much better mood. Well, let's, let's take a breather and we'll come back to a topic that Chad will not get excited about unions. Chad (35:39.634) On the way. Chad (35:49.611) Mmm, I'm sure. Joel (35:55.182) All right, Chad, a story that's been, I don't know, really big on the news, the news station, the mainstream media, the U S and the U S East and Gulf coast dock workers went on strike this week impacting half of the nation's ocean shipping due to a labor contract dispute over wages. And you guessed it automation. This strike potentially costs $5 billion daily affects 36 ports and raises. Chad (36:01.588) yeah. Yeah, should be. Joel (36:23.458) concerns about economic impact, inflation, and job security. But wait, there's more. There's more. A recent government watchdog report has revealed that major shipping firms involved in the international longshoreman's association strike like Maersk and Costco, not the Costco that you buy your paper towels, but the other one have spent billions on stock buybacks, prioritizing investor returns. Chad (36:29.194) Mm. Joel (36:49.13) over salary and wage increases for striking dock workers seeking better pay and job security. Guessing you have some thoughts on this news item, Chad (37:00.245) Yeah, I mean, pay the people for God's sakes. It's fairly simple. In this case, if Maersk, instead of using 6.5 billion with the B kids for stock buybacks, they could have maybe used half of that to pay their people better. Now, and I like billionaire Nick Hanauer's simple description of why giving the money to the rich is bad for America. It's bad for capitalism. So a billionaire receives money from stock buybacks. He wants to go out and buy another car, maybe two. With that money, the rest of it goes into a bank or portfolio. So the lion's share doesn't go into the economy. Instead, Maersk could have chosen to use the same money or half of it to raise workers' pay. And then the results could have ended up in down payments on hundreds, maybe thousands of cars and trucks. So what makes more impact on the economy? Buying a couple of Ferraris or hundreds of Ford F-150s. It's easy, the latter. Plus remember for all you listeners out there, that's what capitalism is. Giving people the money they need to pay their bills. Number one, that's a good start, but to buy more stuff. We're a buying economy. It's hard for people to buy shit if they don't get the fucking money. So we need to raise wages. Especially for the people who doing the hard work. That's, to me, is very easy. Everything I've just described is capitalism. Getting the people who are doing the hard work, the money, so that money goes back into the economy. Again, that's capitalism. It's what we should be doing. We should be focusing on that. We have become incredibly imbalanced with regard to where the money's going. And that's over from decades of trickle-down slash supply-side economics. Joel (39:03.672) This is not a bunch of baristas unionizing and going after a coffee company. This is a, this is, this would be a Ken in New York. You and I are too young even to sort of comment on this, but the, the, the strike in the eighties with the air traffic controllers and Reagan at the time. So this is something that is going to impact everybody. Chad (39:08.295) No. No. Chad (39:23.216) yeah, Reagan, yeah. Joel (39:29.62) If shit can't get in, if shit can't get into the country from the East coast and the Gulf, you you better stock up on toilet paper now. as I did yesterday, by the way, talk about going to Costco, different Costco. Europe is going to feel the pain because they can't send that, you know, they can't send French wine and Lamborghinis, to the States or whatever comes over from there. While America Chad (39:40.277) You Joel (39:55.138) doesn't send a ton of stuff out. It's going to hurt farmers because agriculture, like we do feed a lot of the world still, and those goods and goods have to go out. That's going to be really interesting. think Mexico is going to be in a pole position to like long-term be more of a player and where we're going. But this is a Netflix series waiting to happen. We're talking like global impact. We're talking like president, because the president doesn't want to look anti-union. but they also know they need to do something about this. The companies, like if you're looking for a way to regulate companies to stop shit like this, like regulate companies and say, look, if you do a stock buyback, you're not getting government contracts or federal contracts or we're like Maersk, I think is a Norwegian company. mean, they're, think they're over in Europe. like tear, do you put tariffs on companies that pay shareholders as opposed to paying workers? Like there's a whole political layer of this. It's interesting. Chad (40:33.205) Mm. Joel (40:54.562) But to me, the most interesting, Harold Daggett. Harold Daggett is like Tony Soprano. He makes, he makes your UAW guy look like, you know, a boy scout. I want to play a video of him. If you've, if you haven't seen him a little, a little context, he makes a ton of money. He, he has a mansion with like a Bentley, reports have been done about he's like, he's gotta have mob ties for sure. Chad (40:59.285) Mm-hmm. Joel (41:24.206) He is a badass motherfucker and he will cut a bitch if not shoot a shoot a dude. So listen listen to what Harold Daggett says about the current state of the negotiations Chad (43:02.621) He needs take some lessons from Sean Fain. Everything that he says is, don't get me wrong, is true, but there needs to be, Sean Fain is direct, right? But there is some diplomacy that's happening there. I'm not talking about crippling anybody, right? But at the end of the day, I mean, he's right. And for these people not to get fair wages when you're seeing, I mean, they work during COVID. Joel (43:04.248) Damn. Joel (43:12.462) Mm-hmm. Chad (43:27.806) Not only did they work during a fucking pandemic, they didn't take pay raises when the company was getting fucking record profits. I mean, just blowing profits out of the water, enough to obviously spend billions of dollars on stock buyback. I mean, it's only fair to these workers. And again, as I'd said before, from a capitalism standpoint, then that money juices the economy. It's all good for us. I don't know why people are so pissy. about people actually getting paid fairly for doing hard work. Joel (43:57.71) Yeah. Yeah. One of the challenges with the UAW side is there are other car companies that you can buy cars. This is an instance where if shit doesn't get through, it, it's brutal. It's brutal. real quick chat. I don't know if you saw the message. So I have Amazon in the intro. do you want to do it real quick or just skip over it? Okay. All right. Real quick. Cause we're, we're getting kind of wordy, this week, a new survey. Chad (44:18.581) Yeah, we can do it real quick. We'll do it real quick. Joel (44:25.794) by blind shows that 73 % of Amazon employees are considering leaving due to the new five day work week policy starting in January of 25, highlighting significant dissatisfaction and potential turnover, especially among senior staff. Another 80 % said they know someone who is already looking for another job because of the new policy. While 32 % said they know someone who has quit because of it. Chad, shit's getting deep. Deep at Amazon, what are your thoughts on these numbers in this poll from Blind? Chad (44:54.452) Yeah. Chad (44:58.591) Well, there's definitely some reports saying that this is literally just trying to push people out, you know. So this is kind of like a forced layoff without having to pay the severance. But if that's the case, do you think Amazon thought nearly 75 % of staff would eject? I don't think so. So Amazon's woes, where they are burning through entire populations of warehouse workers and are also losing billions of revenue, dollars in revenue, because they don't have the people in the warehouses to do the job, will now be shifting over into the Amazon office space. Amazon is really good at technology. What they're really bad at is people and being human. And this could shock Amazon very quickly. Joel (45:48.238) Yeah. So you know, when, when, when Trump won the election in 2016 and probably 75 % of Democrats at least said they're moving to Canada, if Trump gets elected, this reminds me of that. of course, the number of people that actually did move to Canada was probably in, in single digits. A lot of people were just venting. A lot of people were mad, which is what they do on blind, by the way, they vent kind of anonymous, like I can talk shit. Chad (45:59.874) Ha! Joel (46:15.148) I don't think we're anywhere near 70 % of Amazon losing that many people. It does show dissatisfaction with like, we don't want to go back to the way it was and they are going to lose people for it. Maybe they can pick up all the open AI people that are leaving the executive suite over there. But yeah, Amazon has an issue. They want to automate as quickly as possible. The C-suite like being disgruntled. Maybe it is partly they want to get rid of people because they're getting rid of people anyway. with automation and robotics. And maybe this is part of that, part of that strategy. I don't know, but it's kind of weird at Amazon right now. Chad (46:52.703) I look back at the warehouse situation. They're losing eight billion in revenue because they're fucking up the human piece. I don't see this as anything different. Joel (46:59.82) Yeah. Yeah. I mean, remember the story about technology, like we won't need coders. So maybe part of this is like, well, if we lose 20 % of the coders, well, they were going to go away anyway, because we're displacing them from automation. All right. Well, let's, let's take a quick break and geez, let's do a pivot and talk about condoms. Chad (47:12.531) Well, we will find out. Chad (47:23.433) Man, when's the last time you used a condom? I was just thinking about that. Once it's... God, it's been fucking decades. Joel (47:29.87) That's really personal, Chad. was single for a while, about 10 years ago. So I would say I'm at least maybe close to a decade plus, but yes, as a fixed married man, I have not been acquainted with condoms in quite a while. Anyway, condom usage in the U.S. is declining, particularly among teens and young adults due to advancements in long-term birth control and STI or what I was. Chad (47:37.269) good call. Very responsible, very responsible. You Chad (47:49.331) Yes. Joel (47:59.124) Educated as STD anyway STI prevention drugs reduce fear of HIV and varied sex education college aged women Said that young men discourage condom usage and are often insulted by the implication that they might have an STI Chad raw doggon is apparently in with the kids. What are your thoughts? Chad (48:20.979) Yeah, I mean, we were scared shitless as kids because of HIV, right? mean, getting a girl pregnant, was you scared shit about that. But I mean, definitely dying from having sex. A lot of those things that you just said, they're going by the wayside. You've got different methods of birth control. Hopefully those stick around and we don't have, we could prospectively push a national regulation where Joel (48:31.95) Mm-hmm. Chad (48:50.133) States can't take that away. But from a condom standpoint, I yeah, I mean, the use, especially for for boys, young men, the most irresponsible of our of our population are young, dumb, full of come kids. And that is and so they're not good if there's no prospect, little prospect, let's say little prospect of pregnancy or STD slash, you know, HIV. Joel (48:59.086) Mm-hmm. Chad (49:20.082) yeah, they're not wearing that shit. Irresponsible as hell. Indestructible. Joel (49:27.992) Gen X, the only generation that became 30 at the age of 10 and is still 30 at the age of 50. it sucked for us, dude. Everything killed you. drugs killed you. Sex killed you. twisted sister lyrics were going to kill you. Driving was like everything you did was going to kill you. and as a, as a result, we either didn't do anything or like, like was super careful. Like the, Chad (49:33.429) you Chad (49:50.773) loved it. Joel (49:55.18) The Lynn biased cocaine death was just when I was at that age, like drugs kill you. like drugs are something I never touched because I thought it really would kill me. the AIDS thing it's yeah, I don't have much to say about this, other than where it that shit up, dude. there is a lot that can go wrong, even if she's on the pill. or we have medicine for this shit. Like be, be smart, be smart, be smart. Which is not where I went when I thought about this week's dad jokes, Chad. No, didn't, didn't think about precaution on this one. All right. Let's, let's have a little eighties vibe with this week. what do Yoko Ono and Ethiopians have in common? What do Yoko Ono and Ethiopians have in common? Chad (50:32.329) Be smart, yeah. Chad (50:48.467) They both had beetles in their mouth. Joel (50:51.746) They both live off dead beetles. Chad (50:54.227) No, Joel (50:55.926) What's what did Spock find in the toilet? What did Spock find in the toilet? Chad (51:04.019) I don't know, I'm not a toilet joke guy, go ahead. Joel (51:06.732) The captain's log, the captain's log. All right, let's end on this. What's the opposite of Christopher Reeve? What's the opposite of Christopher Reeve? Chad (51:18.65) I don't know. Joel (51:20.482) This one's bad. Christopher Walken. I'm going straight to hell for that one. We out! Chad (51:28.408) We out.

Allison King, VP of People Operations at Sound Physicians, shares her experience and insights on job searching and personal branding on LinkedIn. She emphasizes the importance of creating a strong LinkedIn profile and being active on the platform to build a professional network and showcase your skills and interests. Allison also discusses her approach to job applications, including reaching out to connections for support and leveraging LinkedIn Jobs. She highlights the value of being strategic in your outreach and making specific requests for assistance. Additionally, Alison shares her thoughts on job boards and the application process, recommending a focus on LinkedIn for professionals and entry level jobs, new grads alike. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION (AI did it) Joel (00:23.889) OOOOH YEEEEEEAHHH! Joel (00:28.443) Yeah, what's up kids? It's your favorite guilty pleasure aka the Chad and cheese podcast. I'm your co host Joel Cheeseman joined as always, my co pilot Chad sewage is in the house as we welcome Alison King VP of people operations at sound physicians Alison welcome to HR is most dangerous podcast. Allison King (00:49.224) Thank you so much. Happy to be here. Joel (00:52.665) Happy to have you now, a lot of our. Chad (00:52.842) What was that? What was that dance, Cheeseman? What was that dance? That was interesting. We're not on video, so you wasted it. Joel (00:57.157) That was kind of my Michael Jackson meets Corey. That's my Corey Feldman, Corey Feldman dance. Minus minus the parachute pant jacket. I don't know what that thing was called back in the day. Allison, welcome to the show. A lot of our listeners won't know you give us give us a little Twitter bio little elevator pitch on who is Allison. Chad (01:06.761) Yes. Allison King (01:10.99) Thank you. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. My name is Alison King. I live in Western Massachusetts. And yeah, my life is really revolving around my three and a half year old son who is just pure chaos. So that is where a lot of my energy goes, but Yeah, I live in the beautiful state of Massachusetts over by the mountains and the hills. love hiking. I love camping. I love being outdoors. We were talking earlier about the cooler weather. Excited about that. Chad (01:51.844) You live in the state of chaos, Allison. Let's just put it that way. You have a three year old, they're running at this point. They're not walking. They're running. yes. yeah. You're in the, you're in the state of chaos. It's a good thing you are in Vermont because the only thing that you have to worry about is possibly bears and deer. Allison King (01:54.894) Yes. yeah, three year old boy. Yes, exactly. I'm in the thick of it. Massachusetts. Joel (01:56.997) Yeah, three year olds are. Joel (02:10.929) Falling for fall where she is going to be beautiful. This must be an exciting time of the year. September, October. Damn. Lucky you. Allison King (02:11.244) Yeah, right. Chad (02:14.493) yeah. Allison King (02:14.794) It is. Yes. Yes, the leaves are kind of starting to change already, which is crazy, but super pumped. Woohoo! Yeah, I do. Joel (02:21.625) and you have a new job, which is exciting. Chad (02:25.556) Well, yeah, and let me set this up though. Let me set this up, kids. So we talk about talent acquisition all the time. And we do it from the standpoint of being talent leaders, technology leaders, and so on and so forth, and what we think the candidates want, right? Well, when we get a chance to be on the other side of the fence, that's that to me, being an insider's look to what the hell is going on out there. And Allison got Joel (02:28.581) Yep, set it up. Allison King (02:42.114) Mm -hmm. Chad (02:54.078) that opportunity. It's not a fun opportunity, but it did end up well, which is great. So we wanted to bring you on to talk about that journey, about all the things that you learned as a TA professional looking for a job in TA and HR. And then, you know, really some of the pros, cons, some of the things that, you know, you would do now, possibly different as a TA leader from a tech stack standpoint, from a human standpoint, and those types of things. Joel (02:56.465) Mm -hmm. Allison King (02:56.724) No. You're good. Yeah. Joel (03:18.801) Hmm. Chad (03:23.07) So that's just kind of the setup kids. And that's why we wanted to have Allison on. So start, give us, give us the story Allison. Where, where did it all start? Allison King (03:27.663) Right. Yeah, for sure. So I will correct you on people operations, not TA, but partner very closely with TA and handle a lot of that ops. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, Chad (03:34.107) Okay, that's big. It's actually bigger. That's bigger than TAS. Allison King (03:44.302) My journey has been pretty crazy in the last four years. I have had the unfortunate, task of helping organizations downsize a lot. So I've seen about 6 ,000 people laid off, throughout the different companies I've worked with. Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, I've had great perspective from. Chad (04:03.561) Ouch. Allison King (04:09.036) the people operations side of things, the HR side where we're really helping these folks who are trying to transition into new opportunities. And when it came to be my time, one, I was very shocked. Even if you know everything going on in an organization, I still was very surprised by it. And, you know, the first thing I thought to myself is what do I do from here? Where am I going to go? What is my mindset really? And so I had to take a pause for a few days. I wasn't allowed to announce my elimination just due to different areas of the organization needing to be notified and everything beforehand. And so I had a little bit of time to kind of think through my approach and Chad (04:56.052) Mm Allison King (05:02.442) I've been just so active on LinkedIn as a participant and someone who's reading posts and really trying to find people or LinkedIn influencers that I really resonate with. And through that, I felt like I need to have a little bit more of a presence of what my thought processes are and what I enjoy doing and what my passions are. Chad (05:23.839) Mm -hmm. Allison King (05:27.47) From there, I kind of tried to just make a brand for myself. I had also an opportunity to actually, I had an open role for my team, my previous team, for a PeopleOps generalist about a month prior to me being eliminated. And I saw firsthand just 2000 applicants coming in in two days trying to fill this role. Chad (05:45.438) Mm Allison King (05:56.602) And my partner in TA and I just reading through all of these resumes, what stands out? What are, what am I looking for as a hiring manager? And I kind of flipped that role for myself. What is this hiring manager looking for and how can I make myself more visible and also more appealing? And so that started with my resume. What am I looking to do on my resume? How can I make that a little bit better? Joel (05:56.859) Hmm. Allison King (06:21.134) What is my presence on LinkedIn? How many followers do I have? How many posts have I had recently? And so through all of this short period of time, I was able to, with help of ChatGPT, my best friend, create a LinkedIn post that really kind of skyrocketed a bit. had, for me at least, it had over 500 ,000 impressions, 300 ,000 views and That is really where everything kind of kickstarted with my journey as a job seeker. And it was overwhelming and exciting at the same time. And I had the opportunity to really be able to be specific with where I want to go and look inward at my own values and where do I want to, you know, find my, I want to find my values in another organization. I'm not just going to go pick and choose the first thing that comes my way. Joel (07:19.281) Say more about the chat, chat GPT being your best friend. How did, did you, did you just say, write this for me? Did you write it and say, clean it up, give it some comedic overtones? Like talk about how you use chat GPT at the beginning. Chad (07:19.327) Mm Allison King (07:19.693) So that's. Allison King (07:23.294) Yes. No. Allison King (07:31.224) Great question. Yeah, so I always say this is a very odd thing, but I have my degree in mathematics. I'm a numbers person. I like data. am not by any means an English major. I don't write well. And so chat GPT is always helping me with how can I make something sound better? And so with chat GPT, actually had my own chat designated to job search and I would just kind of talk to it like a human and so it would know exactly what my tone is, what I do. It helped me with just crafting different ways of saying things to put on my resume and it's definitely not a here please create a template for me and how can I you know look better online but it really got to know me as a person. Joel (08:04.241) Mm Joel (08:21.968) Mm Allison King (08:26.05) which sounds kind of weird, but you know, my tone, how I speak. And so then it helped me with taking just brain dumps of information and making it sound good. And so it helped me with creating posts online on LinkedIn. helped me with drafting just different bullet points on my resume and creating questions or bouncing ideas off of it for interviews. So was huge help in that aspect. Chad (08:53.854) Did you redo your entire LinkedIn and resume using chat GPT? Allison King (09:00.142) No, so I always keep my LinkedIn profile up to date. So wherever I start, try and do, you know, a little synopsis, little summary of, you know, my role at the company and the different experience places on LinkedIn. But so my LinkedIn is usually pretty up to date. It's the resume that I had to do some tweaking with. And one thing with a resume that can get really overwhelming is as soon as that green banner goes up, you are inundated with people trying to get your business with writing your resume and, you know, helping you find a job. And it is just like, I don't want to spend my money doing this right now. I just lost my job. and so yeah, it was, it was helpful. Yeah. Chad (09:41.578) Yeah. Yeah. Chad (09:49.332) Right. Joel (09:54.131) Can we talk about the green badge real quick? Because there's a lot of debate about. Allison King (09:57.793) Yeah, yeah, Chad (09:57.834) Yeah, because you said 500 ,000 impressions. Do you think turning that on helped you? Allison King (10:03.47) 100 % I do. I know a lot of people think it looks desperate, but I don't think so. I think if a company is looking at me as desperate for putting myself out there, then I don't want to work there, in my opinion. yeah, think that people, if they're recruiters looking out at others for maybe a job posting that hasn't been out there yet, it's not public, and they're trying to look. Joel (10:05.361) because... Joel (10:30.832) Mm Allison King (10:31.896) first before they post it, they're going to start looking at those open to work things instead of poaching first. And that's how they know. If you're open to work and they don't have a green banner there to see, then it's a little bit more difficult. Joel (10:44.667) Did people reach out to you specifically because of the banner or was it all like recruiters and resume writers and people that wanted to take your money? Allison King (10:53.6) I think it was a combination of the green banner and the posts that I did along with it. So yeah, so I didn't just do a random post. did everything in my post. had, you know, obviously I'm open to work, but these are the things that I'm proud of for my last job. I think that's lacking in a lot of job seekers, you know, announcements of looking for employment is they're saying they're available, but they're not saying, you know, what have I done specifically that would be. Joel (10:58.713) Okay. Allison King (11:23.276) you know, attractive to a new company. And so I think the combination of the green banner with that post really kind of took off. Chad (11:31.7) about content creation because you actually talked about being a content creator. Do you think now that I guess just pretty much the landscape that we're in that you have to be almost like a continuous content creator? It doesn't have to be three or four posts a day but it has to be fairly regular. Is that something that you believe that you have to do to continue to build your own brand just in case? Allison King (11:34.531) Yes. Allison King (11:54.894) I think it's helpful. Do you have to do it? Maybe not if you have a large network that you are constantly reaching out to. I don't have the energy for that, to be honest. I'm not someone who loves to go to networking events and talk to 20 people in an hour. So I felt as kind of in... Chad (12:04.286) Mm -hmm. Allison King (12:17.994) extroverted introvert that I would rather just post and put it out there so people can see. And I was posting probably two to three times a week and ChatGPT helped me and the scheduling of LinkedIn helped me as well. You know, I have a three year old, I can't just be on social media all the time. So having those scheduled was really helpful as well. Joel (12:41.423) Any, any tips you have on the content creation side? Did you tag companies or tag people to sort of get more awareness? you, did you comment on other people's posts at companies that you wanted to work for? Like talk, go kind of deep on not just posting an article, but tagging and commenting and what your strategy was around there are tips that you would give job seekers. Allison King (12:45.708) Yeah. Allison King (13:01.869) Yeah. Allison King (13:07.2) Absolutely. yeah, commenting is huge. So I for sure would go to other companies that I was looking at and make comments. I requested connections with people higher up that I would work with and send them a message saying, you know, hey, I applied to this role really interested and kind of talk a little bit about myself. But to me, think, and I say, Chad (13:07.593) deep. Joel (13:08.401) Go deep. Allison King (13:34.99) create content because I think it's getting yourself out there. It's creating your brand. You're showing what you're passionate about and what ideas you have and the work that you can do. And I think that that shows kind of an example of your work in a way to others that maybe networking doesn't really show. But I think also commenting on my own post saying, Chad (13:46.772) Mm -hmm. Allison King (14:01.762) Thank you. That actually gets you more views and that gets you more impressions and everything. And you're showing up on more people's threads because you're actually commenting on your own post. Joel (14:11.505) So replying to people who commented, like make sure you say thank you and you keep the conversation going. That's a good tip too. Yeah. Allison King (14:16.332) Yes. Keep the conversation going. Exactly. Chad (14:23.326) So let's talk a little bit about the prop. Go ahead, go good. Joel (14:23.665) How about other forms of... Joel (14:27.825) How about other forms of, how about other platforms? Were you on TikTok posting videos? Were you on Instagram and other other social or were you like laser focused on LinkedIn? Allison King (14:37.664) laser focused on LinkedIn. And you have to realize that this was just a really short period of time. So within a week, I had nine companies that I was interviewing with. so, and within three weeks I had three offers. And so I didn't necessarily need to go on the different platforms. I don't have TikTok. I have Instagram, but that's really a personal thing. I use all of my professional social media on LinkedIn. But that's. Joel (14:39.332) Okay. Chad (14:44.251) Mm Allison King (15:06.636) You know, on Instagram, there's Upwork is a company that's going kind of viral with all of their TikToks and everything. And, know, commenting with them and getting yourself out there on their comments. So other people are seeing, and so utilizing other organizations as well that are kind of going viral. Chad (15:23.188) So you said three weeks, nine companies, three offers. Let's talk a little bit about the process because I'm sure those nine companies, I'm sure all the companies, but definitely those nine companies had different processes. What did you learn from that? What would you take away from that? And what will you try to institute within your new organization? Allison King (15:36.11) Absolutely. Allison King (15:40.931) Mm -hmm. Allison King (15:45.814) Yeah, absolutely. I've gone through interview, actually to get to my last role that I was in for two years, I had to talk to nine different people and that was exhausting. Yeah. So even though I did get that role, it's very stressful to go through such a long interview process and that's a director role. So it's leadership and not necessarily executive where you're really needing to meet with every single person. Chad (15:57.566) Wow. my god. Allison King (16:14.71) so going into this job search, I'm like, if I have to meet with nine people that might not be worth it for me. But also there's a role for a head of people for more of a startup company. And they wanted me to do a whole presentation and kind of like a work, example and presented to their executive team. And I have thoughts about, you know, doing free work. in an interview process, you know, I think it's, yeah, I think it's bullshit to be honest. Yeah, it's, you know, if you want, can do, you can understand the person and how they work and you can see what they do through their LinkedIn if they're, know, active on it or other platforms. Chad (16:46.548) Tell us about those thoughts. I want to hear those thoughts. There we go. Thank you, Allison. Thank you. Yes. Joel (16:51.323) Say the quiet part out loud. There you go. Allison King (17:11.756) where you don't need me to do an entire project and presentation for you for free that you could potentially take and enroll with. And so that's free work for me. And that's kind of a big no -no. So if you're looking for me to do some free work for you, I'm probably not gonna do it and I'm gonna move on to my next opportunity. Yeah. Yeah. Chad (17:22.029) huh. Joel (17:32.357) Yeah. Let's talk about outreach. Outreach for a second. I get people that message me that I know. And it's like, Hey, I'm looking for a job. If you, if you come across something, let me know. And that, that seems really not very strategic to me. Like come to me with, I see that, know, someone at such and such company that has a job opening that I'm interested in and like, Chad (17:33.546) Yeah, that's. Allison King (17:50.636) No. Yeah. Joel (17:58.149) So talk to me about your outreach strategy and what tips you would give. And I hope obviously not just, just blast your network and say, Hey, I'm looking for a job. Help me out. Like be more strategic about that. Hopefully. Allison King (18:08.593) Right. Exactly. Yeah. So I reached out to folks specifically that I worked with at my last position. So there was some time before I signed off officially. And so I had talked to people and, you know, people asked, how can I help you? You know, all of that. And my specific request was I'm going to post something, please repost it. I'll send you the link and I just want you to repost it. I want to get those views. so share that to your network. And if there's a position that I see that I want to apply for and we have a mutual connection, I'll let you know. I'm not going to, as you said, of false flat. Hey, let me know if you see anything. Well, that's not, sorry, even if... you know, we've worked together for a long time. You might not be the first thing that I think of when I see something just scroll through my LinkedIn. So you have to be kind of more pointed. I also, I'm lucky to have worked for a company for nine years early in my career that has a really tight alumni group. And so we have a shared Slack channel. So I posted on that and I asked, yeah, I said, you know, Chad (19:22.291) Nice. Allison King (19:25.152) I know I've worked with you for, you know, we haven't, it hasn't been a while, but, or it has been a while, but, you know, can you share on LinkedIn? I don't know if people were your recommendations. I do as a hiring manager, but, can you write a recommendation for me on LinkedIn? Just talk about something specific. And I've had three people write recommendations for me on LinkedIn. And so, you know, just those little things that are more pointed and specific asks instead of, you know, the general. Joel (19:42.171) Hmm. Allison King (19:54.882) Hey, help me out was very helpful, I think. Joel (19:58.371) I love that. That's awesome. Chad (19:58.974) Talk about the technology a little bit. In applying for the job, was it a hassle, was it a pain in ass, or was it actually a pretty good experience? Allison King (20:03.564) You Allison King (20:09.846) Yeah, some good, some bad. think there's still organizations using, like they're not sparsing their resumes. So you have to rewrite. And sometimes I'd say, you know what, this isn't worth my time. I don't really feel like putting all of my resume that you see right here into your application, your ATS. But. Chad (20:18.271) Nah. Allison King (20:34.7) I think that a lot of companies are coming a long way with that. So being able to just click the button on LinkedIn. Ashby has a really great ATS where it's wonderful from both sides, from the applicant and the hiring manager and the recruiting team. I'll give them a shout out because we worked with them at my previous company and they are wonderful to work with and they're very inclusive. So. We were talking about how I hadn't changed my last name from marriage for, two years. And they actually have a section that says preferred last name. I've been going professionally by Alison King for, you know, almost two years now. And so just to have that reflected in the application was. It did not break the system. No. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Didn't break the system. Chad (21:22.952) And it didn't break the system. Wait a minute. It didn't break the system like, LinkedIn. Okay. Okay. Joel (21:30.38) boy. Allison King (21:31.596) And then that, you know, you have your work days and the things that you have to sign up and create a username for every single company you work for. that gets a little old, but when you're applying for a larger company, probably work day. Yeah. I would say so I am a workday user. I'm about to go implement work day at my, at my sound physicians. And so I, you know, it's exciting, but Joel (21:42.725) What was your least favorite ATS to deal with? What was your least favorite ATS? Okay. Allison King (22:00.354) their ATS needs a little work in my opinion. Chad (22:04.202) Yeah, I think what has happened and I'm definitely not going to make any excuses for work that that's for damn sure. But what I think is happening with technology and we've seen this for well over a decade now is that a company will, they will get a piece of tech and then they will set it and forget it, right? And then during that timeframe, new process methodologies, new features, new partnerships, those things actually pop up and we still have the 10 -year -old Allison King (22:28.163) Right. Chad (22:33.374) version and then we start bitching about that version. You know what I mean? So I would suggest everybody else that's out there, whether it's workday or it's no matter what system it is, right? Always try to stay abreast of the new functionality that's happening out there because it was funny today, actually yesterday, Rebecca Carr was announced as the CEO of Smart Recruiters and somebody actually said in a thread, well, I wish it would do X, Y and Z. A customer Allison King (22:36.555) Right. Allison King (22:46.764) Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. Mm -hmm. Chad (23:02.314) of smart recruiters, not a employee. A customer said, we do that. Give me a call. I'll show you how we do it. So I mean, I think there are some great opportunities, much like you said, like with the alumni group, also with those customer groups to be able to share best practices so you don't find yourself with a relic of a system. Allison King (23:22.956) Right. Absolutely. And Workday has some really great resources with community and you know, all of, there's such a big network of people that can help you with that. It is just such a large system where you need, you know, the, all of the roles behind the scenes to do those updates. Yeah. Chad (23:31.944) Mm Chad (23:36.86) yeah. Joel (23:42.385) One the things I really fascinating about this, Allison, is it, it it's job search. I don't want to call it 2 .0 maybe, but the way that you sort of took this on is I'm going to create content. I'm going to do it on a platform where people are looking to hire folks. I'm going to be engaged on this platform and the laser focus. If we had asked someone 10, 15 years ago, the strategy would have been like, how many job boards did I go to? How many resumes did I send out? Like. It's just a very different way to think about it, but I have to assume that you did go to job boards. So I want to know like your thoughts on the most effective ones, your experience there, was it painful? it convenient? Like talk about your job board experience. Allison King (24:25.366) I actually didn't go to job boards. I stuck in LinkedIn. Yeah. So. Joel (24:27.931) Wow. Chad (24:29.438) There we go. There we go. Allison King (24:33.344) And I think that's my experience as hiring someone on my team the month before is there is like Indeed, for example, Indeed will create a resume for you from your profile. And as a hiring manager, those were so painful to read. And I just, and I think maybe I took my experience as a hiring manager and said, you know what, I, these weren't Chad (24:44.81) Mm Allison King (25:01.998) the group or the, yeah, it wasn't the group of individuals I was looking for that were coming in from Indeed. And so I chose not to use that platform. And I'm not saying that's not useful for others. just, you know, I was looking for more of a leadership role. Joel (25:19.131) So was the applications from the outreach on LinkedIn? Yes, we have a job. You need to go apply to it. So you went directly to the company site based on someone saying, go there. Your jobs weren't or your postings weren't going to, I'm fascinated that you didn't go to one job board, especially as a professional. So you never thought about like lazy apply. Did you look into that? What are your thoughts on like sort of this machine gunning your resume to everyone? Any thoughts on that? Allison King (25:41.07) I Allison King (25:48.302) So I mean, I used LinkedIn jobs. So I guess that would be the job board that I used. And so I was searching for open roles on LinkedIn. And that's usually what I did. So whether it was I had to apply through LinkedIn, through the little click, or it would direct me to directly to the site. Joel (26:06.299) Yeah, very different, very different. You're a professional, you have a network of hundreds, maybe thousands. They don't show you on LinkedIn. Feel free to tell us how many people you're connected to, but there are going to be a lot of new grads, a lot of young people that maybe come across this podcast or looking for information and advice. What advice would you give to someone that maybe doesn't have? Allison King (26:09.208) Yeah. Allison King (26:15.842) Mm -hmm. Over two dozen. Yes. Joel (26:30.253) a large network or have a good footprint already in LinkedIn? should they immediately at what age should you start getting your footprint on LinkedIn for the time that you do get laid off? Talk about talk, talk to the new grads about what they should do. Allison King (26:42.392) Great question. Yeah, I mean, I think in college, LinkedIn wasn't a thing when I was in college, or if it was, I wasn't aware of it at the time. you know, I think when you're starting to figure out where you want to go and what you want to do with your degree or maybe not with your degree, wherever you're planning on going, create that LinkedIn and start networking. Networking doesn't necessarily mean that you have to go talk to all these different people and have coffee dates with 20 folks in six months. It's just connecting, sharing your content or not, reading content. commenting on it. think just being active and showing your interests is helpful. And this is, I will say this is more from an HR lens and, you know, the lens of roles where you have people and you can learn on LinkedIn. LinkedIn's a great tool with, you education. They have trainings and LinkedIn learning that you can go to. And I think that's a huge tool for, for grads or younger folks in their career. Chad (27:34.076) Mm -hmm. Yeah. Allison King (27:54.368) as well as just connecting with people. As soon as I started saying, you know what, I don't need to know everyone that I'm connected with on a personal level. I just want to see what they're all about with their content on employment law or something along those lines. just being present in that I think is really helpful. And so I would say, Get a LinkedIn account as soon as you can and once you start learning about where you want to go. And even if you're not a content creator, an influencer, anything like that, it's still just a helpful tool with educating yourself and learning about all the different roles that you could go to and what your career path could look like. Joel (28:42.161) Great advice, great advice. All right, everyone, that is Alison King. She's the new VP of People Operations at Sound Physicians. Alison, for our listeners who want to know more about you or Connect, where would you send them? I'm going to guess LinkedIn, but go ahead and let me know. Chad (28:44.369) Excellent. Allison King (28:47.128) Awesome. Chad (28:51.914) Woohoo! Allison King (28:53.197) Now. Allison King (28:58.638) You got it. Yep. LinkedIn. My URL is Allison H King. So, you know, a little LinkedIn address, Allison H King. Chad (29:00.116) Duh. Chad (29:10.686) Very nice. build your personal brand, Cheeseman. Build that brand. Joel (29:10.737) There you go, love it. Allison King (29:15.03) Do it. Joel (29:15.983) My brand is in trouble. I don't think, I think it's beyond repair at this point. As, as, as job boards might be according to Alison, not one job board did she visit. All right, Chad, that is another one in the can. We out. Allison King (29:32.686) Thank

Live from the SmartRecruiters booth at HR Tech in Las Vegas, this one is all beef, no filler. Stickin' it to Eightfold, "black Nazis," Brett Favre and cold beers start the episode off on a strong note, followed by the breaking news. Commentary focused on newly minted CEOs at Appcast and Enboarder, a $30 million round and a $250 million valuation at Silicon Valley darling, backed by Peter Thiel and Jack Dorsey, Mercor, and Amazon getting generous with Prime subscriptions for their employees ... in addition to a minimum wage starting at $22-hour. Buckle up kids, it's live from the bright lights of the Vegas Strip. PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Podcast Intro: 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, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for The Chad and Cheese Podcast. Joel: Oh, yeah. Two guys who will never get a Taylor Swift endorsement. Hey, boys and girls, this is the Chad and Cheese podcast live from the SmartRecruiters booth at HR Tech. Chad: Yes. Joel: I'm your co-host, Joel Black Nazi Cheesman. Chad: That went off the rails really, really fast. Joel: Too much. Sorry. Chad: And I'm Chad. I love me a little Winston Sowash. Joel: And on this week's show, new CEOs all up in your face, mark her I hardly even know her. And Amazon is in its prime. Let's do this. Chad: Yeah. Joel: You're almost in Euro Chad mode here in the SmartRecruiters booth. Chad: Dude, I am totally in Euro Chad mode. I love it. I mean, this is the ChadCheese/SmartRecruitersbooth. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Particularly, you got Winston all over the place. You got Chad Cheese. We're up on the banner up top. Joel: You got coffee mugs for God's sakes. Chad: The funniest thing, well we'll talk about funny things, but Gerry Crispin came over the other day and he said, this is the coolest thing I've seen. Joel: And he's an old fucker who knows... Chad: And he knows. Joel: He's seen a few things. So that is saying something. Chad: Yes. Joel: If you've never watched us on YouTube, this might be the episode to do it. The background, the faces. The branding is super, super cool. Chad: Gregorio, he's hooking us up, making sure we look sexy. I love him. Joel: Yes. Gregorio is on the other cameras, loving him. Chad: I love it. Joel: So we're here at HR Tech. Any any takeaways? Chad: Yeah. Joel: Thus far. Any stories? Chad: I got a funny story. Joel: Oh, okay. We love funny stories. Chad: So yesterday here in the SmartRecruiters booth and I saw, a bunch of the employees, they were like, it was pub crawl time. And a couple of the girls said, Hey look, this is, they had like this orange drink. They're like, this is really good. Go over to Cornerstone. Check it out. You should probably get one of those. There's a long line for this thing. So I'm like, yeah, it's got to be good. So me and a couple guys we're sitting there and we're talking, we're bullshitting. We get about four away from getting one of these things. It was an Aperol Spritz. Joel: Oh no. Chad: I'm like, dude, I'm not doing this. I know it's very European, but I just can't. And one of the guys was like, well, they point like to the booth next door. And they're like, they've got beer right over there. I'm like, okay, fuck this. I'm gonna go get a beer. I'll see you guys in a minute. So I walk over, I see they've got beer. I'm like, Hey, I'll take an IPA, guy pops it, gives it to me. You know that they scan everybody who comes into the booth. Joel: Oh yeah. Chad: Guy looks at me. Joel: You don't normally wear your badge. So I'm surprised that, it was out. Yeah. Chad: No, I don't, they're usually in my back pocket. Joel: Everyone. Knows you. Chad: Anyway. Anybody. Joel: It's such a good deal. Chad: Anyway, dude looks me up and down and then just kind of like. Joel: Not, in a sexual way. Chad: Dismisses me. Joel: Just. Chad: Dismisses me. Then I start walking out and I have people looking at me like, what the fuck is he doing here? And I'm like, wow, this is great customer service. So then I take a couple of steps and I think I turn around and I was in the eightfold booth. [laughter] Joel: Was it not as big as a Hawaiian island that you didn't know that you were in the eightfold booth? Chad: Not this time. Joel: Oh my God. Chad: It was a different setup. Didn't look like a UFO. Joel: We live rent free in Eightfold's head. And it's more and more, than it has been. Now, Veritone just partnered with Eightfold. Chad and Cheese sponsor Veritone. Our buddies have partnered, so they've at least done something right. Meaning Eightfold in the last two to three years. So we'll have to dig in into that one. Chad: We'll give them that. Joel: My shout out to SmartRecruiters. What an amazing imagery design that they've given us here. They've been more than hospitable and generous with everything. So to Lynne. Chad: A chat with Rebecca this morning. Joel: To Rebecca, yeah the whole team. They're Rocking the green Converse. I'm going to see if I can get a pair of those 'cause you know I've got a pair of Chuck Taylors, Chuck Taylor's from Columbus. I know you knew that. Your hometown. Chad: Yeah. Columbus North High School. Joel: There's got to be a statue in town or something. I don't know. But there you go. Chad: Probably, I don't know. Joel: Columbus claim to fame, Cummins and Chuck Taylor. Chad: Yes. Joel: Brett Fav has Parkinson's. Did you hear about that? That's... Chad: Definitely heard about that. I mean, all the shots that he took and I mean, again, being in a collision sport like... Joel: Football. Chad: American football. Joel: American football. Chad: American football. Joel: Oh, I got a story about you. If they're talking about that, go ahead. Chad: But yeah, I mean, and we're gonna see more of this. CTEs gonna pop up more. I mean, this is gonna be really hard from an optic standpoint for the NFL moving forward. I mean, we're gonna look at do I want my kids to play in school? I mean, seriously. And they're starting to have those concussions while their brain's being developed. I know I had them being a defensive back. So yeah, I mean it's gonna be bad for optics for the NFL. Joel: Yeah. And sad for him. Chad: Yeah, definitely. Joel: Whenever someone in our age range gets something, dies, whatever. Not to darken up the mood, but always hits home. But I'm gonna lighten it up now. Chad: Okay. Joel: Euro Chad story real quick. Chad: Go ahead. Joel: So everyone out there, Chad is a real estate mogul in Portugal, owns real estate there, and then he loves Europe. He's gone to the dark side. Chad: I have one flat. Joel: For us Americans. Yeah. See, it's a flat now. So we're in line for the elevator, not the lift, Chad, it's the elevator. And Chad goes, we're in the queue to I think Matt Alder or somebody, and somebody goes the queue, seriously. Oh my God, you've totally converted. So yeah, Euro Chad is now the default. Chad: It's a thing. Joel: No matter where Chad is. And the default Chad of course on this show, 24/7 365 is awesome free shit. My queue to give a quick shout out to Kiara, who actually stopped by the two founders. They're doing text recruiting done easy, and they are sponsoring our shoutouts. So shout out to them. And free shit obviously, we just sent out some beer, Aspen Tech Labs, our friends there are making that possible. Two bottles of bourbon, one Chad pick, one from me. That is our friends at Textkernel/Bullhorn. Chad: Textkernel, baby. Joel: And if it's your birthday, you might get some rum from plum. Chad: Rum from plum. S?: Can you feel the tension in the air right now. I know I can. I can feel it all the way down in my plums. Joel: But some birthdays, we'll get to those at our next show. Chad: Don't forget T-shirts. You're wearing the T-shirt. Joel: T-shirts, my bad. T-shirts. Chad: Aaron app. Joel: If you're here at HR Tech, you're seeing some red shoes. Chad: It's sexy. It's sexy. Joel: Walk in the booth, one of their new promotions. Chad: Yep. Joel: Check that out. But yeah, big love to Aaron for that. Chad: Real quick events. I got to hit the events because we're here. Joel: You love events. Chad: HR Tech. Amazing, fun. SmartRecruiters, thanks so much. We're going to be at Paradox Client board. If you haven't seen the AI sessions, go to at thesessions.ai that's right. We put together an 11 episode series that's gonna knock your fucking socks off. So if you haven't seen it, go to YouTube. You'll see it there or just go to thesessions.ai. It's killer. We're gonna go back there. We're going to record at least one more season, if not two, but it is amazing. A little teaser. Joel: Who are some of the interviews that we have on that show? Chad: Eileen Kovalsky from General Motors. You might've heard of that little company. We had Keith Sonderling, EEOC Commissioner at the time. He's now left. We also had Jess Rush, who is the VP of People. Joel: People. Yep. Chad: Yeah, people at Paradox. And then also very good friend of yours and mine, Adam Godson from recruiter to fucking CEO. Love this dude. Some amazing, amazing interviews. So you got to check that out. Joel: Yep. I love it. Chad: Then kids, we're going to New Orleans for HR Gumbo's first annual. They've never done this before. They're having Chad Cheese come in. Again with our friend Keith Sonderling. We're looking at the possibility of having a representative from the OFCCP on stage with us as well. Joel: Yeah, I saw that. Chad: Dude. You know why? 'Cause Chad and Cheese make compliance sexy. Joel: Yes. Chad: Especially when we're talking about AI. It is sexy and it's necessary. Joel: And the big easy. Chad: Yeah. Joel: Do not confuse HR Gumbo with the HR Etouffee conference, by the way, everybody, and don't make any mistake at who's at the top of the leaderboard in fantasy football this week. Chad: Oh Jesus. Joel: That's right. Our friends at Factory Fix make this addiction possible. Let's run down the internationally heavy leaderboard. Number one, we got Dean, the Daddy Mack, Dean Mackrall, hailing from Australia down under. Number two, and this one makes me wanna vomit, vomit some haggis. Adam Gordon from Scotland is in the number two slot followed by action Jackson Dahlquist. Yours truly, Joel Cheeseman is in the four spot. Number five, David Stiefel of Paradox. Number six, last year's champion Deena Perro. Number seven, Jennifer Terry-Tharp. Keith Sonderling, you mentioned him earlier, he's in the eight spot, followed by you at number nine. Chad: Yes. Joel: Number 10, Laura Martinelli. 11, Sean Horton. Don't call him Diddy. And number 12 at the caboose is Kristi Lisbon. And that is your leaderboard for week three, Fantasy Football sponsored by Factory Fix. Chad: Yes. Joel: And let's get to your favourite. Chad: Topics. Joel: Alright, new CEOs are in the news this week. First up, Chris Forman will step down as CEO at Appcast by year end after launching the company back in 2014 with COO Matt Molinari, who's been at Appcast since 2017, taking over the top spot. But wait, Chad. Chad: Yes. Joel: There's more. Chad: Uh-oh. Joel: There is more. That's not all. Enboarder has appointed Dan Finnigan, our boy as CEO, with the mission to drive growth, leveraging his 30 years in HR tech, including leading Jobvite and filtered. Chad, what's your take on all the CEO news this week? Chad: So on the Europe show Wednesday, we actually went pretty deep, not just the tip. Joel: Just the tip. Chad: Not just the tip with KKR and the move from Molinari or to Molinari from Forman. And so take a listen to that. But again, Matt Molinari is probably one of the best diplomats in our space. I mean, he really is. With KKR and everything that they've taken control, they're gonna need a diplomat, right? Not saying that Chris Forman could not have done this. I just think this is the perfect time for Chris Forman to eject. I saw Chris Forman this week. I've never seen the man happier in his life. I don't know Chris that well, but it was like. Joel: He's distilling maple syrup back in New Hampshire I think. Chad: He was glowing. Yeah I mean, he just looked really good and not to mention, it was funny. Somebody was like, Chris is open for all the shows now. He wants to talk to everybody. And I'm like, I'm sure he does. Because the last thing that KKR wants anybody to think is that there's going to be a quick transition. They want a slow transition because they want that face that Chris, the founder, they want him around for a while. Not that Matt is not competent, that dude is uber competent, but they wanna make sure from an optic standpoint, everything is legit and nobody questions, what the hell is happening in Appcast. Even though they've had some layoffs. S?: Layoffs? Chad: There will be some restructuring. There's no question from leader to leader that shit's gonna change. Not to mention again, KKR, they're reformatting on the Dan side of the house. My God. I mean, this had to be an amazing opportunity for him to get up off the couch. He must be bored and/or this is just a great problem that he knows the solution to, or at least he thinks he knows the solution to. There's no way this is gonna be easy because I don't know that Dan Finnigan would take something on that's easy. I think he likes a challenge. And again, I don't know this for sure. I definitely have to reach out to Dan. Maybe we can have him on the show, right? Joel: Yep. Maybe Dan, come on. Chad: But at the end of the day, Dan doesn't just get off the couch for anyone right? I'm sure he was probably a little bit bored, but he was also looking to solve a puzzle that he thinks an Onboarder can solve. He's not a dumb dude, man. He's a very, very, very smart dude. Joel: So on Forman, if I had his bank account I think I would... Chad: I'd been gone a long time ago. Joel: However, I wouldn't be at HR Tech. I'd be in Key West popping some BlueChew. You know what I'm saying? That's what I'd be doing. And my number is much less than his, I promise. I promise you that. Which of these jobs would you rather have? Private equity breathing down your neck on a regular basis? Chad: Nope. Joel: Asking to be more efficient and cut costs and dealing with all kinds of shit with Stepstone. And you got an ad agency now tied to... Chad: No. Joel: God bless Matt and I hope that he has a good therapist and he's got good meds. 'Cause he may need both of the above. I think you frame that perfectly and you know Matt better than I do. It's a tough job, dude. I don't envy him. On the Finnigan thing. A little funny story. I met Dan when he was at Hot Jobs. This was probably '05, '06. I was doing Cheezhead and a little known fact about me, Chad. I was the first blogger to ever get a media pass to the SHRM National show. Which was compliments of Gerry Crispin who vouched for me and got me in. And somehow I was able to get Dan Finnigan to interview with me Cheezhead. And I remember Gerry told me that Dan came up to him and said, is this Cheesman guy on the level? And Gerry vouched for me. So kudos to him. Dan had a whole team with him back in the Yahoo days. He had a group of people with him. Chad: Entourage. Joel: So I've known Dan for quite a while. I've appreciated his work. He took a really interesting leap to go from Hot Jobs to Jobvite, which although is well known in our industry today, no one knew shit about Jobvite. And people like me were asking, why in the fuck would Dan Finnigan take this job at Jobvite. Chad: A problem? Joel: Now, if you've listened to the show, you know how that ended? Jobvite ended up getting acquired. Dan I'm sure is doing very well. Also, he's on a few boards, he's on some advisory boards and I think just regular boards. But he ended up going to a company called Filtered. You would be okay forgetting that he ever was at Filtered because there wasn't a lot that went on during his tenure except layoffs. Chad: Layoffs. Joel: The head count has gone about half of what it was. They raised about $10 million in 2022, which I assume was part of get a real CEO, get someone on board that knows this thing. But they have wilted for sure. Let me see Filtered. This is how they sell themselves. Filtered is an AI infused hiring platform that changes how companies evaluate and hire top talent while empowering qualified candidates. Yeah, I'm falling asleep. Just reading that. Chad: Is that where Dan just was? Joel: Yes. That's ridi... Chad: No shit, and again, I had no fucking clue. And he's a big name. Joel: Yes. Chad: He's a big get. Joel: Yes. Chad: Okay. Joel: Yes. Chad: There you have it. Joel: So a new start for Dan. Enboarder, founded in 2015 by a former monster guy, Brent Pearson. I don't know if you worked with him. Chad: No, I know him. Joel: Down in Australia. They basically kind of automate the onboarding process. They put video in and all that shit. So they have raised $50 million. That is a good opportunity. Organic growth at that company is on par with what it should be. I think Dan is going to take that company to the next level and really get people to notice, unlike Filtered where even we didn't really notice what was happening. So I don't know what's gonna happen to Brent, who was the former CEO. I don't know if he's gonna be a chairman or just a figurehead at this point. But yeah, Enboarder is doing great things. We don't hear a lot about them being in Australia, but happy for Dan, happy for Matt. I hope he's getting paid because he's gonna need a lot of Tylenol dealing with the owners. Chad: They're coming to the US. You don't take a guy like Dan Finnigan in a very small ass market like Australia and not look at the US. Joel: Yes. Chad: I mean, especially with a guy like Dan. Right? Joel: No question. No question. Chad: Okay, can't wait Dan. Joel: Let's take a quick break and we'll talk about Mercor. Chad: Okay. Joel: Chad, speaking of companies you've never heard of, was Mercor on your radar? Chad: It was not. It sounded familiar, but I think that's because it was so close to Mercer. Joel: Yeah. It can be mistaken for a lot of companies in our space. Well, Mercor is an AI hiring platform, and they've raised $30 million in a series, around valley wing at 250 million big ones led by benchmark with notable investors like Peter Thiel and your boy Jack Dorsey. The startup touts itself as an AI powered platform that sources vets and pays your next employees. Chad, Mercor, what you got? Chad: Yeah. Anything that Thiel's involved in. I mean, I'm not a big fan of, although it sounds like a great platform because it's AI interviewing. I've seen somewhat demos and seen some of their PR. It can be really cool not to have structured interviews. The problem with not having structured interviews is that the AI can treat somebody much differently than the next. That could prospectively be seen as bias. That's a problem. So there could be an issue with an organisation who doesn't really, they're not steeped in HR. They're steeped in Bro culture and Silicon Valley and that kind of money. I mean, it's great they get that money, but you have to understand the regulations. Chad: You have to understand the process methodology, have to understand it all to be able to ensure that you can deliver something that doesn't get your clients in hot water from a governmental enforcement standpoint. So from my standpoint, $30 million is because you have these big names behind it, and that's the reason. None of this sounds like it's actually applicable to our space, which is unfortunate. I mean, can you tweak it to make it where it is more structured? Yes. But then you just become like everybody else. And the way that they sold this, I guaranfuckingtee you was Peter Thiel and AI, right? Unstructured AI. To me, that's the downfall of this organisation, unfortunately. I mean, that's. Joel: You dumbass. Chad: That's a lot of money. 30 million. Joel: Peter Thiel. Don't listen to Chad. We love you. We want you on the show. It'd be a great interview if we could land Peter Thiel. Chad: I would love to have Peter Thiel in the show. Joel: That would be great. Jack Dorsey, maybe not. And he's a little bit too soft spoken, a little too Zen. Chad: He would say nothing. Joel: We'd have to have some incense. Chad: He would say nothing. Joel: Yeah. He would say nothing but say it very softly and in a way that makes him sound more intelligent than us. We have not had, there was a time where all these companies were out of San Francisco. Chad: Yeah. Joel: The names, the investors, the companies, the startups, the kids, the Y Combinators. That's a day I kind of miss. They're all from all over the place now. It's good to have a good old San Francisco based old school, Peter Thiel, Jack Dorsey, all the names. All the names that you know and love starting a business in our space. This to me looks like it's all about global workforce. It's one application. We'll throw your shit into a bunch of tech companies resume databases. Chad: It's a fucking nightmare. Joel: Which appeals to the global audience of techies, who by the way, are getting AI'd out of business in a lot of ways. So they're going to flood to this site, which I assume they're marketing it to the right people and applying to many, many companies that have signed up for this job. So they're playing it as a custom, a concierge experience. Apply once and you apply to all these tech companies. What a sales pitch to a global audience that is looking for that American money, that Silicon Valley cash to flock to this site in a big way. The numbers are pretty impressive. Last two years, 840% headcount increase. The money's there. The head count's there. Chad: They had a startup. They went from two to what I mean 150. I mean. Joel: That wasn't data that crossed my desk. Chad, I'm gonna have to ask Grok what's going on there. Chad: When they use percentages, that's usual bullshit. Joel: Either way, Silicon Valley, it's big names. It's big money. It's fun for podcasters to talk about. Chad: It is. No, it is. Joel: So have another Corona and... Chad: It's a mess. Joel: And watch Mercor. Either. Yeah. Either die a blazing death or become the next big thing. We'll talk about it either way. Let's take a quick break, get another beer maybe, and talk about your favourite, Amazon. Chad, I think you might turn on Amazon. Chad: You're trying to bring me out of my Euro Chad zone. You're bringing Amazon. Joel: You might be into this. Chad: Peter Thiel, Jesus. Joel: You might be into this. This isn't peeing in trash cans. This isn't. That's alright, here we go. Amazon recently announced that hourly members of its frontline team will receive a pay raise that will increase their average base wage to more than $22 per hour. And their average total compensation to more than $29 per hour. The company will spend more than 2.2 billion on the pay hikes as part of the pay raise. Amazon will also also, also Chad, there's more to the story. They'll give you Amazon Prime account to all those hourly employees. In case you're wondering that Amazon Prime account totals $139 per year in benefits. Chad, did you and Amazon just become best friends? Chad: No. Although I love the whole giving your product to the individuals who are working for you. I mean, that just becomes more enduring, right? I mean, you become a part of, it's like, yes, I've got this. I get to watch my Amazon Prime. I get my stuff faster. I mean, you become more of the ecosystem. That makes sense. I love that. Every company should do that, right? If I'm working for a Chewy, I should get free at least one free delivery a month, right? For my dogs or my cats or what have you. Anyway, I think that's incredibly smart. Joel: That should be a layup for companies. Chad: That is too fucking easy. But when it comes down to pay $22 an hour, what's happening at Amazon is that they're having huge attrition issues. We've seen that. There was a letter that was leaked that they were losing $8 billion to the bottom line just in attrition. Not to mention they're also burning out all the way through, burning through the workforce. And some of those locations where they're at, they've got to do something, right? $22 might not be enough. So yeah, I think this is something that you can't just continue to pay people more to do a shitty job. You've got to change the job. And I think they will do that through automation, Andy Jassy, a lot of those things. But also you have to think of the corporate kind of mindset where Jassy's like, Hey, look, where there's no more remote work, right? I mean, so there's contrary thought happening here on whether they really give a shit about the employees or they don't. And at the end of the day, if it boils down to giving away Amazon Prime, like you said, it's a layup. To me, it's more optics than it is anything else, unfortunately. Joel: So I have a story about my Kid. Chad: Oh, cool. He's not pissing in a garbage can. Is he? Joel: Not on my watch, but... Chad: Okay. Hopefully not on Amazon's watch either. Joel: All my kids are doing a lot of shit I don't see, I'm sure. He works at a fast food restaurant called Culver's. If you're in the Midwest, you've probably eaten there, or at least know the name. And they give him a 50% off meal deal. Chad: Easy. Joel: Yeah, totally easy. And they were threatening recently to take it away at his location because of cost cutting measures, etcetera. The uproar. The uproar from, yeah, I mean, it's... Chad: You can't take something away. Joel: In this case, you're just sending everyone to Taco Bell or Burger King or wherever. So you're basically helping your competition in lieu of screwing your employees. So I do agree, although this is a layup, it's not a big expense for Amazon. It's not $139 for Amazon for this. It's probably pennies to do this. It's a layup and it means a lot to the employees. Chad: $13.90 cents, maybe. Joel: So I do like that move. It's very interesting that this news came out right after the whole Andy Jassy. We're cutting all our engineering staff. We don't need engineers anymore. So a little good news for them. After all, the engineers were pissed off. I mean, they upped minimum wage in 2018. By the way, Chad minimum wage is still $7.25 on a federal level. Chad: Fuck me, Jesus. Joel: By the way, we're not talking about that in debates or anywhere on the stump speeches, which is a disgrace frankly. They went to 15 in 2018, now they're 22. It's hard to hate on that. It's hard to be mad at that. Chad: Got to do it. Joel: Enjoy the pay increase folks, because the robots are coming to replace your ass just like the engineers. But for now, at least, this is a good little, if you're in small town America, 22 bucks is a pretty good deal. Chad: If there's a Amazon warehouse in small town America. Yeah. But again, they've burnt through the working population there. So what they're trying to do is yank them back. Better, instead of better working conditions. They're like, instead of 15, we'll pay you 22. What do you say? What do you say? Joel: They've ran out of workers. So they got to boomerang people back or get new people. They're like, eh... Chad: But they're only doing it with money. Joel: I'm doing Target, not you guys. Chad: Yes. Joel: It's not at the goodness of their heart that they're doing this. It's out of necessity. Chad: Yeah. Don't be fooled. Joel: And speaking of out of necessity, Chad, are you ready for your dad joke of the week? Chad: Yeah. Yeah, sure. Joel: It's not related to anything we talked about because we're on the road and we're not as prepared as we typically are. But this is one that my 7-year-old Jeremy told me recently, and I thought it was pretty good. Why should you always knock on the fridge door before opening it? Why should you knock on the fridge door before opening it? Chad: I have no clue. Joel: Because you might catch the salad dressing. [laughter] Chad: Jeremy needs to tell more dad jokes. Joel: We are live from the SmartRecruiters booth at HR Tech. Be back to our regularly scheduled locations next week. Chad, that is another one in the can, we out. Chad: We out. Podcast 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 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. Any who. 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.