Blue Waves, a $6.3B Binance Hack, & Fake Job Numbers?

0:00Joel Cheesman: Okay, so you open up a bunch of construction jobs, a bunch of bricklayer jobs, and you're telling me that the 50-something-year-old with a master's and MBA and a long career track record, who also has knee and back pain, is racing to fill that job as one - Oh yeah, are you in my bedroom? Are you in my bedroom? One-fifth of what they ever need first, right? Is that the pillow talk you have, Cheeseman? Don't underestimate how excited the fair sex can get when you talk about gout, Chad. But it's, uh, can't really put it into words. All I have to say is iodine. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Hide your kids.

0:42Joel Cheesman: Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Soash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, rash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chat and Cheese Podcast.

1:05Oh, yeah, it's 10 p.m. Do you know where your podcasters are? Hey, boys and girls, it's the Chat and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Bluenami Cheeseman.

1:17Joel Cheesman: This is Chad Payne voted on Tuesday, so wash. And I'm JT. Stop saying the quiet part out loud, O'Donnell. And I'm Maureen, a.k.a. Moe. Is this hope and joy I'm feeling? Wiley Clough. And about eight lattes from the look on your face. On this week's episode of HR's Most Dangerous Podcast, feeling blue, feeling icy, and who'd you rather? Let's do this. Too bad there's not much news going on, guys. Too much, not a lot going on, unfortunately. I've never seen Moe so happy. I've never seen Moe so happy. I'm doing okay today. So it's the light of a clear blue morning today. What could it be in the news cycle that's got you so excited?

1:57I don't know.

1:58Joel Cheesman: The saving of our democracy, the preservation of hope and joy. The holding of the institutions. Yeah. I just, I don't know, man. I couldn't be happier. I think it's important that the kids out there understand if they don't, if they haven't, they've been locked in a closet for a day or a week. Let's get to some results here, kids. So in the House, the Dems flipped 29 seats and took control with 258 seats. In the Senate, Dems have 54 seats. Republicans have 44 with two seats still uncalled. That's Mississippi and Alaska. El Saeed wins Michigan. Hamilton wins Kansas, the first Democrat since 1932.

2:45Joel Cheesman: Jackson kicks Susan Collins ass in Maine We're just talking about that JT Let's talk about Georgia Ossoff in Georgia Who's more than likely going to be running for president in 2028 Keisha Lance Bottoms as governor in Georgia Then there's Texas Big Texas Tallarico beat Paxton What an asshole First Democrat That was nuts First Democrat since 1988 Wild What's also nuts, we'll get right to that in a second, Chisma, but Gina Hinojosa beat Greg Abbott to become the governor of Texas. So crazy. Then you've got Amy Acton, who was the governor of Ohio after kicking Vivek Murmasami's fucking piece of shit ass.

3:31Joel Cheesman: What an asshole. Anyway, anyway, so in the Senate races, Iowa flipped, Kansas flipped, Maine flipped, North Carolina flipped, South Carolina flipped, and Texas flipped. So I'm going to stop there. Thoughts? Unreal. Unreal. I'm just elated. I have four thoughts, if you'll... Is that like your four skin? Your four thoughts? Yeah. So my first thought is like America won last night. I'm married to a Canadian. My work wife lives in Europe. and I hear on an ongoing basis how awful America is and how bad it is. And I always say, like, the institutions are going to hold. The separation of powers, like, we've been through worse.

4:19Like, it's going to be okay. And this was one of those it's going to be okay moments. And you couldn't have this in Russia. You can't have this in China. You can't have this in a lot of countries in the world. Our institutions held. Who knew that a bunch of old white guys back in the 18th century were going to have such an impact on our lives today? Number two, this was not a big thumbs up to the Democratic agenda. This was people sick and tired, I think, of being sick and tired, sick and tired of whether it's you name your issue, fill in the blank. This was like, we're not going for this. This isn't who we are.

4:54We're not playing this anymore. The Democrats have been handed a gift. What they do with that gift is up to them. They need to have a nice balance of like, let's go after Hegseth. Let's go after all the knuckleheads in the administration. but also like let's put forth legislation that Trump can veto that are like nonpartisan, like let's let's ban stock trading in Congress. How about that? Let's have a minimum wage. Let's have an increase in minimum wage. Like there are a lot of things that they can do to be the common sense party and the party of the middle. Number three, I want to look at this a little bit from a business perspective.

5:27I think that gridlock, it's consistency. Businesses are going to know what they're in for. They know like the tariff thing is going to chill a little bit. They know like things aren't going to happen and they can build their business strategies around that. For the last two years, I think businesses have frozen shit up. We don't know what's going on. So let's not just do anything. So at least now maybe the rules of the road will be more clear. And number four, Chad, I know you and you've left you've left America, but this this fell down into the local races. So where I live, which is not Democrat at all, and Indiana in general is not our congressperson, Victoria Sparks, who's Republican Trumper, she got ousted.

6:08We have a new state senator. It was an open seat, but it was a Republican seat forever. And we have a new state representative, all of them being Democrats. So this wasn't just the national level. This flowed into the state level. So it's a big deal. It's a huge, huge night. Those are my four takeaways.

6:25Joel Cheesman: I'm just happy that my phone isn't going to blow up anymore. I mean, it's already hard in election season to watch commercial after commercial where they're just crazy what they do to, you know, to slander one another. But the texting at the end, it was like five every 15 minutes. So to see a quiet phone this morning was really nice. I have to say, before we went live on the show, I did love your billion dollar idea. Apparently you stole it, but I think you should mention it to the world and see if that's done. I think we were doing an interview and it just sort of evolved into this. So our idea is, You go vote early, vote early, and you get a little QR code or like a little coupon code to opt out of all the information, all the ads everywhere.

7:08Joel Cheesman: I would love that. We'd have the voting done by September. We'd have it all done. Imagine how many people vote. I'm so sick of my phone blowing up. It's going to be great to have some peace and quiet, man. Well, when you're a pro voice on LinkedIn, Chad, like our ladies here are, I mean, it's enough that you've got to deal with LinkedIn. messages all day and now politicians are out there. Yeah. Yeah. No, locally it was good though. I had, you know, I split my time. Obviously I live in New Hampshire, but I do spend time in Maine. So Susan Collins, 30 years as a Senator out and the first openly gay Senator in Chris Pappas, he's been a lifelong politician in New Hampshire building his servant leadership.

7:47Joel Cheesman: So those were significant events, but I'm not going to lie. I'm glad it's over. It's just a lot in the end there. You're just done with it. Circle a little bit more on business. A couple of things I want to get your, everyone's take on number one is elon musk slash data centers oh dude what happens there and then the other thing is the billionaire tax got voted down in california and he takes on those from a business perspective well i love seeing these tech bros get the throw down i love that they thought that they could buy us off i love that they thought that their their money would just continue them allowing to just go and do whatever they wanted to do it's almost half a billion dollars I know, absurd, absurd.

8:27Joel Cheesman: So I'm so thrilled to see a billionaire lose so hugely in having put all that money behind an election. And I mean, all these all bigly, bigly. I mean, all of these tech boligarchs, I mean, they all just just knelt down at the altar of Trump from the beginning of this term. And to see the repudiation of that is just it's amazing. I hope that they'll have a little bit of humility and stop thinking that, you know, they can just get whatever they want by throwing money at things. It's astounding. And I think this moment is so huge when it comes to AI regulation. I mean, the people have spoken, really, like they don't want these data centers everywhere.

9:06Joel Cheesman: They want some rigor behind what's actually happening with these AI companies. And I'm just I'm that's one of the best things about this election for me is recognizing that the people are not just going to continue to be held at the will of these like eight wannabe trillionaires when it comes to this stuff. Thrilled. We didn't fall for the banana in the tailpipe. You're not going to fall for the banana in the tailpipe. Joel had four things. I have one thing. This election isn't about who voted. It's about what voted on Tuesday. pain at the gas pump voted pain at the grocery store pain of housing costs pain of doctor's office visits pain of unemployment or underemployment pain of low wages pain of ice rates pain of watching billions of dollars spent on new wars and pain of fucking reflecting pools taking priorities over the rest of that pain.

10:04Joel Cheesman: So that pain voted on Tuesday. One of my favorite Rocky quotes. What's your prediction for the fight then? Prediction? Pain. Pain, baby. Chats, if you remember this, our friend Matt Lavery, God rest his soul, in a prediction show, he played that as sort of his prediction. Uh, so when you, when you, when you added that to the show, uh, media files, I was like, I got to wear the Jersey somewhere in the Matt Lavery, uh, honorary Jersey, just, uh, just for that, Chad, appreciate that. I think, I think a hundred percent when we're talking about the economy that people, I mean, companies and people have no clue what was going on chaos.

10:47Joel Cheesman: Now we have stability, stability also can translate into confidence. competence goes into spending. So there's there's a lot behind that. And that's at the local level, too. Right. So, you know, I'm very hopeful, much like Mo, very hopeful that this can turn into competence and it can actually be consumer competence because our consumer confidence index has been shit since Trump has taken office. Wasn't the gerrymandering thing a surprise? Like they they they hyped up all these districts gerrymandered. They're going to go Republican. and they didn't. It was like, there were so many surprises last night.

11:23Joel Cheesman: But the thing is, when you have this much pain, I don't know if you want me to go through the list again or not, but if you go through this much pain, you can't fucking gerrymander that much pain, dude. You can gerrymander some of it, but not all of it. And there's just so much built up pain in the U.S. right now for most Americans. Word of, a little bit of cautionary tale though. Trump has been embarrassed domestically. I fear that he's going to, his rage is going international. If you're a listener in Europe or Asia, I think he lays vengeance into the rest of the world if he can't do it in America.

11:58Joel Cheesman: He's going to double down on crazy. He's going to double down on crazy. I don't know where the crazy is going to be. I think it could be everywhere because he can't focus. So I think it's going to be everywhere. I don't know, man. I mean, his early responses have been pretty tempered. I was shocked. He was just like, man, if I'd been on the ballot, it would have been different. Wait a minute. You told us all to vote as though you were. and we did but like he seemed kind of like okay i'm gonna work with the democrats which was just a completely new tune for that guy great great guy but it's a rhino that's why he lost yeah yeah yeah it wasn't him it wasn't him of course it wasn't him these are just bad candidates i mean he wasn't talking about paxton's ass was he no he wasn't no he wasn't no that was the one ass he didn't talk about in the last oh my god the ass talk and the pool was the most bizarre thing i've seen in my lifetime that was so well i was like here comes the five thousand dollar check talk here comes the whatever and it was the didn't happen but maybe he got all his billions for himself and his family and now he's ready to just ride off into the sunset maybe that's it like maybe he will just bow down do you think he thinks that's actually going to happen when he's out of office i mean because i don't know he's still he was president i get it but everybody around him is he just gonna have like literally a bible fat sticks thick stack of pardons before he leaves probably i would i would count on it but yeah i mean honestly that's kind of probably the best case scenario is that he he just like walks off we are so ready for like some some semblance of calm yeah i mean when when the whole nixon thing happened i mean ford came in and pardoned nixon and just like was said let's move on from this so i could see whoever's next president says let's just say goodbye to trumpism and mega and let's move forward see i'm on the other side i'm on the other side i think if we would have hanged jefferson davis on the white house lawn this confederate bullshit all of this stuff would not be happening today that's the problem that i think we don't take it and again i don't think we should hang him.

14:07Joel Cheesman: I didn't say that. I'm just talking about Jefferson Davis. He was a traitor along with his generals. But in this case, I mean, he deserves some type of ramifications. So just to allow them to walk off into the sunset like Nixon is not a fucking answer because the next one's going to be worse than Trump. I did not have Jefferson Davis on my bingo card for today's show, Chad. We just lost everyone under 29 or maybe 69 on the show. I don't know. do some fucking work kids it's called history jesus christ that's why that's why they come i just want to ai it i just want to ai it chad i just want to ai it all right are we ready to move on from the election time for a history lesson nope that's i just gave my history lesson and actually no not really i want to bask a little bit more but continue okay sure all right I'll give you a shout out.

15:05Is it time for shout out? History lesson combo, Chad, for you. It sounds like all of you are going to bypass your shout outs and give me the stage. Give me some runway to celebrate my father for a little bit. Some of you know that our friends on Facebook or other places lost my dad a couple weeks ago to just old age. Really? He was 86, had dementia for a while. Chad knows this more intimately than anyone. but trips to the ER, like there were a lot of things that had been happening that led to this. It was not a sudden passing. But in many ways, the election and sort of the American story, he really lived it.

15:47Born in 1939 to Elmer and Mildred Cheeseman in Terre Haute, Indiana. His father had a third grade education. His mother graduated high school, but was a homemaker, as you were back then. He has a sister and a brother. He played baseball, really embraced sports. He was part of a Babe Ruth Little League World Series team in 1955. He was the first of his family to go to college. He was the first to graduate college. He got an MBA. He was a coach most all of his life, really, track cross-country football. He was an athletic director for a short period, worked at the University of Montana. He ran 10 marathons in his life.

16:33He ran 15 or so mini marathons in his life. He made just an amazing contribution and impact on hundreds, if not thousands of young people in his coaching career. He's still contacted from past players who thank him for the impact that he made on their lives. His phrase that he always used to say was PMA, which meant positive mental attitude. So he always preached PMA, every birthday card, every Christmas card at the end of it had PMA. My sister is going to get a PMA tattoo in mirroring his autograph from a Christmas card that she has. So a life well lived, really an American story, came from nothing, made an impact on many, many lives.

17:24You will be missed by many, many people, including me. But this shout out goes to a well-deserved guy that raised me. I mean, what other burden can you possibly celebrate than that? Shout out to Willis Franklin Cheeseman. God rest his soul. Rest in peace. And obviously, PMA. All good.

17:42Joel Cheesman: I just got to say, Coach, we're going to miss Coach. But talk about a guy who lived a life. 86? He did it, 86? 86. funny story check is you the first time you met him i think was it acl austin city limits music festival in texas yeah so i won't go into the the the point there why i was why i was there with my dad but my dad and i were there he was in his 70s and funny story we took i'm like i'm not going to be mosh pinning with my dad so we took lawn chairs to this music festival and he he just he pulled about this ratty ass chair to take the first band we go see he puts his chair up my chair is there I go get a beer I come back he's on the ground his chair is like on top of him and I'm thinking oh my god my dad is going to die at ACL of a heart attack or stroke or some shit what had happened is the chair broke so he was on the ground from the broken chair and he was perfectly fine But then we threw the chair away and five minutes later, the chair was gone.

18:48Somebody like, I got a free chair and the chair was out of the sense. And then we eventually saw his soon to be wife, Julie, at the show. Oddly enough, oddly enough. Yeah. Happenstance. Happenstance.

19:00Joel Cheesman: Well, well, before the podcast, kids. Really? Yeah. If only we had been sponsored by Shaker Recruitment Market during those days of travel, we would have had some chairs that actually worked. We do have shaker chairs that are actually of high quality, which is a good time to mention that they're our travel sponsor. Love them. Our travel for the season is over. We'll talk about next year, probably when next year happens. But we are right in the midst of fantasy football, where Joel Cheeseman is a rocket up the charts here. But let's get to thanks to Factory Fix. I'm wearing the jersey. As you know, thanks for sponsoring our unhealthy habit.

19:48But here is your first to worst for week eight. I believe we're going into week eight, Chad. Number one, he's been there the whole time. Jared, the Joker, Joel Dersma. Number two, Benjamin Franklin Kuntz. He's on fire. Then you got Joel Pepper Jack Cheeseman. Oh, yeah. Number four, we got Nicholas. Don't call me horse shack. tie shack number five ragin cajun daijan amare number six scott scott clark griswold then we got nick live in la vida loca livingston followed by bombing bosco bujatovich number nine we got chad so close so wash uh keep working at it chad number 10 last year's champ mckenzie mad dog Maitland, followed by Molly Sly Stallone.

20:35And in the basement, we got Desiree Goldie Hawn, who's still winless, but we still love you. We still love you. That's right. I think Moe's going to be on Desiree's show, or Desiree's going to be on here. Aren't you doing a show with Desiree?

20:51Joel Cheesman: I'm going on Talentless. Actually, I think I dropped that ball. I need to firm up the plan. Shocking. I know. You guys are shocked that I have thought. Is that coming up or has that been recorded already? It's coming up. I need to thread the needle and book it. But it's kind of worth it. You're going. I love it. Yeah. I'm on their Friday. I'm on their talent list Friday. Yeah. Looking forward to it. That's Desiree's plan, Chad. She's going to pull Mo and JT off our show for putting her in last place. She's trying to get me scheduled on the phone or on the podcast. So I don't know. I might have to eject out of that one.

21:33I'm going solo, everybody. She doesn't want me on, so I'm going solo, everybody.

21:41Joel Cheesman: You can come on mine, Joel. Talk about being old. Let's get to topics talking about going on.

21:51Guys, you know our topics today are sponsored by ProvenBase. Find talent others can't reach with ProvenBase. Love free bourbon. Well, I mean, who doesn't really? Who doesn't love a little free cock? Oh, I love chicken cock. I do. I love it. That's right. ProvenBase are sending two bottles, not just one. One from Chad, one from me to a lucky winner. But you got to go to chadcheese.com slash free to win some. You got to play to win, Chad, basically is the rule. Again, thanks to ProvenBase for that. Now to the news, everybody. Crazy ass story of Binance. That's a company that does crypto shit. A Binance engineer was contacted via a job platform for a fake role.

22:34After interviews, one sharing personal social media to build trust, he downloaded a malware-laced coding assignment on his work computer. This gave North Korean hackers access, leading to a$6.34 billion heist of Binance wallets. Fortunately, the money has been returned to this point. Chad, I did not have Binance and North Koreans on my bingo card again, in addition to Jefferson Davis. What are your thoughts on this crazy news story?

23:06Joel Cheesman: Dude, and this is after we just talked about Bullhorn getting hacked, right? So, I mean, this is happening all over the place. Now, this is an entirely different scenario. And I was automatically drawn to the story when I saw the words hacked and job interview in the article's title, right? And I automatically thought, oh, shit, the platform got breached. But it wasn't. That wasn't it. The hackers first targeted a Binance wallet engineer and was able to get him through a free and open source software manager called Homebrew. There were some holes in that software. And so they got to him that way.

23:47Joel Cheesman: Binance found the malicious code and wiped it. But at that point, the hackers started to understand the types of people who they wanted to target inside of Binance. So they created a fake company with fake jobs and started recruiting Binance engineers. One Binance engineer made it to the interview stage with a fake company and a fake job. And as part of the interview, as you said, Joel, he had to download an assignment, which GoFigured contained malicious code. and now was on his work computer. Kids, don't use your work computer for this shit. Exactly. What is he thinking? So it wasn't a single access point, and it never really is.

24:29Joel Cheesman: They accessed one engineer, learned from that. This is a probing scenario, right? You've got to probe the perimeter. You've got to figure out where the weaknesses are. And then in this case, literally, you set up a fake company, fake jobs. You have access. It's amazing. But lastly, I want to say thank God it was not an interviewing platform, because can you imagine the paranoia that would have happened in the HR tech community? Oh, my gosh. After Binance got robbed of over six billion dollars. I mean, just thank God that did not happen. Totally agree. Dude, so was it kind of like a numbers game for them where they're like, hey, we're going to target a number of these internal employees and then one of them will be stupid enough to actually download this on their company computer?

25:14Joel Cheesman: Like, isn't that like the first rule of job searching is you don't do shit on your company computer because it's all trackable? So what? Oh, my gosh. They just were like, hey, someone will do it. Wow. Stunning. Stunning. I do think, though, you know, I'm the voice of the job seeker here. Everything we're going to talk about today, it's not built for the job seeker. The job seeker's on the hook. This is the second time this has happened. This is not the first time in history. It happened back in 2022, where there was a job offer made. The company was called and I did my homework on it, which was so shocking, but they lost $625 million.

25:51Joel Cheesman: It was called the Ronan Bridge Act. So this is happening. And what makes me so upset is that we're still not thinking about the guardrails that need to be put in place because job seekers are desperate for jobs. And I know you're going to say, wait a minute, this guy was an engineer at this place. But the truth is, everyone right now is worried. Do I have a job? Will I have an income? If you talk about fear in the elections, people are petrified. I talk to them every day. And so even if you have a good job, you're probably going to take that conversation just to see what's out there to cover your bets.

26:29Joel Cheesman: And the fact that the sophistication level of this, the way they can create HR and interviewing... I hear this every day of people. right a ceo on whatsapp yeah you sounds like just social media accounts just last night somebody messaged me and said jt is this you are you searching a confidential search for a board advisory role immediately messaged you back nope look at it it's a gmail account i would never message you from a gmail account but people are so desperate right now they're willing to kind of look the other way and not do the due diligence and quite frankly it's so sophisticated that even if they do there's stuff that's getting by them and so it's frustrating to hear all of that The only thing I don't agree with is don't use your fucking company computer.

27:12Joel Cheesman: That's it. I totally agree. I totally agree. Your personal computer. Yes. Do it all. Do it all. What you said, JT, do all of that. Just don't use your company computer. 100%. Yeah. 100%. No, I get it. I get it. I mean, this, you know, this poor person is going to be humiliated forever. Historically, I mean, job seekers have been targeted for that very reason. the desperation means they'll do anything i'll give you my soc i'll give you like my bank account i'll give you like whatever and right what's different is it used to be get get into their bank account the individual now it's how do we get into the company accounts and how do we get in this case it's a finance company how do we get that crypto and if i if i'm any bank on the planet right now and that includes regional banks that have a lot of money but maybe don't have the security of a chase or a wells fargo um i'm super concerned about all this because ai has made this game so fast it's great from from what i read on the story like before they even knew what happened like stuff was gone like so the ai and and when quantum comes around i guess this shit's going to be faster than you know faster than fast like the speed at which this stuff happens i don't know if companies can keep up it's doing nothing for my anxiety i'll tell you that i just i i think literally everything's a scam so i'm like very reluctant to click on a friend will send me a link and i'll be like is this actually you tell me what this is like i just don't believe anything really yeah i mean my my personal personal story here like i i've always been concerned about identity theft and and whatever and then i got to a point where like well shit like everybody's probably everywhere in the dark web yeah and then it's sort of nothing ever really happened i've gotten two in the last six months, like accounts for credit cards being opened in my name.

29:06Now, fortunately your bank accounts, your Amex, whatever, like alert you when this stuff happens, but I have to call, Hey, it's not me. And then fraud, and then it still dings my credit. So I'm looking at like life lock or whatever these solutions are to protect myself. So it's happening to me. It's definitely happening to multimillion dollar, billion dollar companies, and it's only going to get more sophisticated.

29:28Joel Cheesman: Absolutely. We need a ton of protections. Yes. Well, I mean, again, we talked about Bullhorn last week and in Bullhorn, there's a lot of data, there's a lot of security. So the company's going after different things when companies are going after different data points in some of these record keeping platforms versus money, right? I mean, they're going to try to look at any, any way they can link together holes to be able to access. And I mean, so that it's, it's gotta be more protocols. And as we talk about creating more jobs in this new AI world, a lot of it's going to have to be in, in cybersecurity.

30:08Joel Cheesman: It's going to have to be in managing AI and, and doing a lot of these different things. And look, a story I've heard recently and this will kind of play into our our who'd you rather later but more and more job seekers that i'm talking to are given projects they're given like hey do this case study or do this homework for me like this one and a lot of it i think is like train the models and help like if i can interview someone that's high level get them to do an assignment and my ai learns from them from a high level. Some of it's like we're tens of thousands of dollars. You're extorting like or getting, but if the, if the, if, if do this assignment for us, download this, whatever, put this together and put it here.

30:52Like if that becomes normalized, this danger, this risk goes, goes, you know, hyperbolic.

30:57Joel Cheesman: I think it's going to, because if you think about it, anybody, everybody's having AI resumes. Everybody looks the same, feels the same. So you got, you actually have to have interviews, but you can't, because that's, That's not something that you can scale with humans, right? So you have to have these different assessments just to be able to prove that you can do the job in the first place. So therefore, I believe it's already becoming normalized. And hello, if agents do everything for us, then it's just agents convincing your agents to give them shit and download shit. And then you don't even know what you're doing.

31:30Yeah, that's another step. No, thank you.

31:33Joel Cheesman: Yeah, I'm with Chad. It's not an if. It's already happening. Wired did an article this week that just said, look, it's going to get harder to apply to a job. It's going to have to get harder to apply to a job. We're going to have to create more hoops for Hunger Games. And so like you said, those kinds of things are where the exposure lies. And in a race, the AI recruiting arms race is out of control. It's absolutely off rails. Every time I open my LinkedIn feed, there's another company announcing that they've just solved all of recruiting's woes and they're the perfect solution. And none of them are talking about their exposure, right?

32:11Joel Cheesman: So I think 2027 is going to be the year where we start to see more lawsuits, more of these things in the recruiting space. And every company out there is going to ask, did we check and see about our AI tech stack? Did we make sure? Because to say, well, it's on them. It's not on them. It's on you, the employer. You should know how they're doing. This is why I built the candidate first manifesto. This is why I'm building a candidate for scorecard. These companies need to understand their exposure. What they want to do with it is their call, but it is not fair that candidates don't understand what's happening.

32:43Joel Cheesman: Couldn't agree more. The new Congress is going to have their hands full with AI on a lot of different, different levels. Guys, if guys, if you're a fan, please give us a follow, give us a review, uh, your podcast platform of choice. Follow us. Uh, if you like our lovely faces, check us out on YouTube, uh, youtube.com slash at cheese. Listen to the ads because there's no show without the money kids at Chad cheese at Chad cheese. What did I say at cheese? I don't think we own cheese.com. It was totally everything. Can you imagine? It would be cool. All right. All right. Let's take a break. 60 % of the time it works.

33:25Every time U S job openings jumped to seven, $1.52 million in September of 26, up$333 ,000 from August and the highest since May, beating forecasts. Gains hit professional services, government, manufacturing, and construction. Layoffs fell to a multi-month low and quits rose, signaling firmer labor demand and a potential hiring pickup despite modest payroll growth. However, hires stayed modest and the overall market remains characterized by weak churn, also known as no hire, no fire. And don't forget, the survey does not scrape online listings. It asks establishments directly. So, Chad, is this report a slam dunk showing us a brighter future or is it another head fake?

34:13Joel Cheesman: Oh, it's it's more like horse and buggy days. Right. So, I mean, even if I trusted the administration, which I don't, I don't trust the data that's constantly changing from month to month to month, because this is this is horse and buggy shit. We're not actually doing on demand information, which we've talked to Toby Dayton about for years now. Right. So even if there weren't midterms to, I believe, falsely sway, you know, I don't trust the data, mainly because while the data is being paraded around, we're also hearing that Canva announced 22 percent of their workforce impacted by changes to job roles and or being asked to relocate to centralized offices back to work or laid off.

35:03Joel Cheesman: Right. Microsoft, we talked about last week, 60 ,000 layoffs. And that's AI future with fewer jobs. That's what Microsoft is saying. As the business grows, Oracle announced November layoffs of about twenty five hundred. Amazon carried out two additional rounds of layoffs in October. Last Thursday, Goldman Sachs warned that AI could eliminate jobs for 15 million American workers. According to the 10th edition of LHH's U.S. Severance and Separation Benefits Benchmark Study, that's a long one, nearly 70%, 70 % of U.S. businesses expect layoffs or reductions in force in their organizations in the next 12 months.

35:49Joel Cheesman: That's a lot. But did you mention Netflix and Disney there in the news? No, I did not. So I was like 300 here, 100 there. Yeah. But but but looking looking toward the positive side, last night's election results could bring back balance to the chaos in business, likes balance and stability, which, again, instills confidence in the market. So this could change and I believe will drive companies to start spending more outside of A.I. And I believe the confidence in the market will create jobs. I can only hope, trying to be positive, but there's a lot of companies that are doing these fucking layoffs and or return to work slash layoffs and or layoff this, that.

36:31Joel Cheesman: I mean, it's just, it's ridiculous. You know, we've all been in the industry long enough to know that what tech does first, every other industry does second. So when you see what Microsoft did, that some variations on that are going to come full first. We've already seen this three times around the layoffs over the last five years. We know what's coming. What concerns me is that if you look at the Ludwig Institute's functional unemployment rate, it improved slightly last month, but it's still 25%. One in four Americans are functionally unemployed. But what we're not looking at is what percentage of those are white collar workers and how many of these people had six figure high paying jobs.

37:08Joel Cheesman: Last month alone, the number of people that took hardship out of their 401ks went up 6%. These people are trying to hold under 3 % mortgages because they can't buy a 7 % mortgage. This is coming full steam ahead. Microsoft just laid off 60. They're going to lay off 60 ,000 people. They don't take their packages. So this is coming full force. I agree with you. I think the pain of the election, we hope that companies will create jobs. But if we realistically look at it, folks, and everything that's going on, they're not going to create that many jobs. And they're not going to create jobs at the salary band level that these people were at.

37:40Joel Cheesman: So you're talking about a massive amount of people sitting out there right now. That's it. That will never experience the pay and the level they were at before. And they built a life around it. And if you've ever lived a life and had something that's severely taken away from you, it is so depressing. So we're going to see a lot of pain and hardship. And it's not being talked about. Right. It's not being seen. Everybody is like so excited to profit off AI. And look, I love innovation. I'm using it too. But the way we are not looking at this and not talking about it is so disheartening to me as someone that talks to these people every single day, you know?

38:16Joel Cheesman: And so these numbers are useless to me, right? They're not real numbers, you know? We're going to see more numbers on Friday, and they don't mean anything either because nobody's talking about the nuances of what's happening. Thank you. More nuance now. That's what we need. And this conversation needs to take place. And I cannot agree with you any more than with what you just said, because it's just it's so true. The pain is acute for people. And we live in an acquisitive nation. We have more. We spend more. We lock ourselves into lives that we will no longer be able to afford when we see the writing on the wall for what's happening for these white collar workers.

38:51Joel Cheesman: And these job gains and these openings, you know, they're largely happening in other industries like hospitality and education and other places that don't necessarily command the same salary. and it's not like a one-for-one swap. And also, by the way, they're openings, right? Those aren't hires, right? So you have ghost jobs everywhere, right? We all know that what up to, I think Greenhouse said up to like 70 % of jobs can be ghost jobs. Or scammers. Pretty high, right? Or scammers, or scammers, right? So, I mean, this is, you're absolutely right. The picture is not being accurately painted. And I think it's just gaslighting people on a major scale.

39:26Joel Cheesman: And I think that just adds to all of the pain like you were talking about, Chad. It's just like insult on injury, right? Well, you want no nuance, Mo? I'll give you some nuance. The problem is a job number is not like inclusive of every job. And you have to dig into like what types of jobs are actually rising. Well, number one, a group of people you won't hear bitching about data centers is construction workers, laborers, engineers, technicians. Like the labor unions are really quiet about data centers because those folks are getting paid so much money and they can't fill those seats fast enough.

40:05So that's almost a third of the new jobs are the construction manufacturing type jobs that we're talking about. The others are health care. Thanks, boomers. They're still sick. They're still in care. And I've just lived this in real life. firsthand. A lot of aging people need help. And if we close the border, we don't have immigrants to actually fill these jobs. So they just remain unfilled jobs forever as old people get, you know, sicker and sicker. So I'll give you some nuance there from that perspective. To me, we're still in a no fire, no hire. To Chad's point, hopefully some stability or at least gridlock or what are the rules of the road?

40:41They have free companies to do more. Maybe immigration loosens up and ice, you know, gets smacked down budgetarily. But yeah, I don't, a little bit of sunshine does not mean the sun is rising. And we're trying to make that happen in this jobs report, this jolts report. And I don't, I don't see it personally.

40:58Joel Cheesman: One other question about that is I see, you know, with these jobs jolts reports that they're talking about people who quit, right. And the voluntary quit that, that concept I think is a little bit cloudy too, because your companies are doing these RTO mandates that are essentially quiet layoffs, right? And so how many of these people, like, I don't see this report and think, oh, cool, people are really confident about their ability to get another job. I'm like, are the confident people in the room with us? Like, that's not a thing that's happening right now. So is this a bunch of nonsense about people who, you know, got caught up in these really, I mean, they truly were more involuntary departures from their organizations.

41:32Joel Cheesman: I wonder how much of that, I wish we could parse through that, because that's another question I have about this report. And by the way, correct me if I'm wrong, JT, I'm sure knows this more intimately than I do, But if you resign versus get fired, your benefits are much different. And it's absolutely one of the things we talk about with the Microsoft. If you take the buyout, then you're voluntarily leaving and you're not going to be able to apply for unemployment benefits, depending on what state you're in, like you said. But at the same time, we're making it clear to people that's probably the best offer you're going to get.

42:02Joel Cheesman: So if you decide, no, I'm going to wait because I want unemployment benefits. Guess what's going to happen when you get laid off? There's not going to be that money there. People need to start looking closely at these buyout offers. The problem that I see is they take the buy off and then they decide to take 5 months off. And they do not understand just how difficult the job search market is. I tell people it's sort of like getting on a rotary. You know when it's really busy and you're like, it takes a while to get in. That's how it is for a lot of job seekers. And they burn about 6 months before they realize something is functionally wrong with this job search.

42:36Joel Cheesman: Oh my gosh, right? And now, and this is, we're seeing this time and again, there's a lack of education around what's really happening again, particularly at the white collar level. And so they're burning cash, burning 401ks, and then waking up one day and saying, what did I do wrong? And they didn't do anything wrong. They didn't do anything wrong. It's a system. Other than not knowing. And it's worse if you're over 50, if you're over 40. It's tougher and tougher the older you get. And you're likely not going to make the decision to leave for yourself. And you're going to make less money than you had when you were let go.

43:05Joel Cheesman: So there's another prepare for. There's another there's another group that immigrants talk about. Yes, it's hurting, hurting everybody's here. Go to our next news story. Ice Ice Baby. We're finally starting to get some numbers around the impact of the Trump administration's ice raids since 2025. Intensified ice enforcement has reduced local employment in targeted cities beyond the numbers of beyond the number of arrests. Brookings Research estimates roughly 4 to 13 jobs lost per excess arrest, totaling hundreds of thousands across high-surge metros, including among U.S.-born workers via chilling effects, business disruptions, and lower spending, especially in construction and related sectors with no clear short-term gains or natives seeing any benefits.

43:56Chad, I want you to stop, collaborate, and listen to what's going on here. Give us your take.

44:02Joel Cheesman: That was cute. Thank you. We were overwhelmed by the optics of these ice rates. I mean, I don't need to get into it. People died, kids in cages, that kind of stuff. I don't want to get into that. We were overwhelmed by that as well we should have been, right? But I don't believe that anyone thought about the local economies and how they would react and the actual impact they would feel. So the data shows that an arrest to jobs loss ratio of roughly one arrest equaled four jobs lost in these cities that ICE operated. So after 11 months, they actually went back to see if there was a rebound. Were the jobs shortfall?

44:43Joel Cheesman: Did it get better? No, it got worse. It got worse. So here's the point that stuck with me. The economic shock rippled through business operations and local consumer demand debunking the one-to-one job replacement by Americans. So if you get rid of an immigrant, then American's going to take it over. It's all going to be fine. No. Here are the three things that I see that happen. Immigrants with jobs and money are run out of town not to return. Number two, that loss of money impacted local businesses. Those people were not buying stuff anymore. Not only were they not working, they weren't buying stuff anymore.

45:20Joel Cheesman: And less buying means you need less workers. Or you close up shop because your customers are gone, right? So now think about the H-1B visa bullshit that fucking Sonderling's doing, right? This is talent that won't come to the U.S. Scientists will go to Europe. Developers will go to Canada. And the list goes on and on and on. which means that money that's not only spent in our local economies, but the taxes that are paid by immigrants to the tune of nearly 100 billion dollars a year all goes away. So when when the talent doesn't exist, where are you looking for it? And for example, I'll give you a great example.

46:04Joel Cheesman: If you can't find developers in Des Moines, Iowa, well, you go to another city or another state or. Oh, wait a minute, kids. You offshore to another fucking country, right? Less tax dollars means less money for education, less police officers, less fire department, less roads construction for, you know, filling potholes and shit like that. We become dumber and less safe. The decision to send ice shock troops into cities was wrong in so many ways. And nobody was talking about the economic ramifications. This talks about their economic ramifications. And Joel, just to preview, I've already reached out to Professor Zeke at Wharton, who's an expert in immigration.

46:50Joel Cheesman: He's written a 50 page document along with his peers. And we're going to get him on the show to talk specifically about this economic impact. You're not teasing me, are you? Oh, I'm teasing. Oh, I'm teasing. You're teasing me. That is going to be a great episode. My gosh. This election was about affordability and good. First of all, good point on the H1Bs, because I think that we tend to put ice raids with the folks that are on the essential jobs and those types. Yeah. But also these are college educated in some cases and doing really high level work. But if you look at what is expensive, housing's too expensive.

47:26OK, well, who's building the houses? Immigrants. OK, so if we can't find workers, we've got to pay more. That's more expensive. What else is expensive? Food. Food's too expensive. Okay, well, if no one's there to pick crops, manage livestock, that's a problem. And number three, healthcare. Healthcare is too expensive. We already talked about elderly care. No one is, these aren't nurses. These aren't people that are taking care of these folks. So the three things that are the most expensive all tie back to immigration. And until we loosen that up, these things are going to remain expensive and get more expensive.

47:56Joel Cheesman: Yeah. Can I just say I agree with all of this? And I just want to give a hypothetical out there. Okay. So you open up a bunch of construction jobs, a bunch of bricklayer jobs. And you're telling me that the 50-something-year-old with a master's and MBA and a long career track record, who also has knee and back pain, is racing to fill that job at one-fifth of what they ever made first. Are you in my bedroom? One-fifth of what they ever made first, right? I mean, it just... I listen to it every day. To think that, oh, they can just go get... Just get a job. They're going. They're like, I can't even get a job at my local grocery store or fast food chain.

48:32Joel Cheesman: like we know you speak to this oh my gosh like it just it is so ridiculous the abstract way they just say you know one for one and it's like it so true i can't even right now i know don't underestimate uh how excited the fair sex can get when you talk about gout chad it's uh

48:56all i have to say is iodine oh my gosh oh my gosh yeah it's almost like they didn't think

49:04Joel Cheesman: this through and rather they were kind of pandering to an extremist part of the face it's like fixing a reflecting pool anyway anyway all right so we've we've been up with the election we've been sort of down with all this stuff we're about to get sexy

49:24it's time to have a little fun with who'd you rather when we get back gang all right one of our favorite games for sure who'd you rather all right if you don't know how it works we talk about two companies startups that have recently gotten funding and we all go around the table and say who we'd rather that's right everybody that escalated quickly and in this corner we have play-doh play-doh raised a 16 million dollar series a round by uh round uh led by navaventures bringing its total funding to 19 million founded back in 2025 the san francisco startup builds simulated corporate environments to safely train and evaluate ai agents they will Use the capital to expand their workplace simulation library.

50:14That is Play-Doh. And in this corner, we have Roleo, an Estonian startup that's raised 2.9 million euros. Total funding now is at 3.46 million euros. Its free agent monitors European tech jobs and connects passive professionals directly with employers without traditional applications. Users already include people from Google, Amazon, Stripe, and Spotify. That is Roleo. Chad, we got Plato versus Roleo. Who'd you rather?

50:53Joel Cheesman: So it's really interesting because Roleo is literally just a job board with agentic wrapping on it. I started digging into it, and it consumes your LinkedIn. Then you go into an interview. So it's literally an interview with an AI bot, right? They take more information from you, et cetera, et cetera. This is today's job board. I mean, it's really what it is. It's just an evolution to some extent. So that's what it is. Play-Doh, on the other hand, is an AI training platform, but it's more than that because Play-Doh checks both the end result and how an agent got there, including whether it followed the rules.

51:31Joel Cheesman: So remember when OpenAI's agents hacked Hugging Face? That's because the agents weren't monitored. There was really no QAQC. They just sent them off to do shit, right? Play-Doh fixes that problem, shuts down iterations that don't follow the rules. And in an age of rogue agents, we need more Play-Doh. And I'm going home with Play-Doh. Uh-oh. Hi, papi. All right, JT, who'd you rather? So this is interesting because I think as the voice of the candidate, everyone's going to automatically assume I'm going to choose Roleo. But I did my homework. I did the candidate first scorecard. I took a look at them.

52:09Joel Cheesman: And here's some things everybody needs to know before you step foot on that dang platform. Number one, transparency. The chat with the AI is recorded. It's transcribed and scored and it shapes what employers see. That's the terms in privacy policy, not a signup screen. That's just buried in there. Candidate data control. Great. You can delete your account, but you can't see what the AI concluded about you or you can't fix it. Let's be clear on that. Data use and privacy says, quote, we never sell your data. Your data trains the AI with no opt-in. The policy says data stays in the EU, but their vendor list names two US companies, one for audio and one for video.

52:46Joel Cheesman: Fairness and accountability, the AI ranks who employers see. No public bias testing, no way to see your score, no way to appeal. Candidate value, no sign to hear back when an employer passes on you. You don't get anything. And the coaching tools are coming in 2027. Honest Marketing GDRP compliant and EUAI Act compliant badges with nothing public behind them. Nothing. Friends get paid a referral bonus if you're hired and nothing makes them tell you. You don't even know if a friend got money for referring you. Employer checks no public word on how they check that employer. And if the job is real, that scares the daylights out of me right now.

53:23Joel Cheesman: Anybody can get on there. So think buy-in, buy-in's all over again. So the reality is they're building a product for the candidate. which you know, normally I would get excited about. But it doesn't do anything to protect the candidate. This is a beautiful example of what everybody's building out there right now. Everybody's just grabbing money. And by the way, who pays for this? The employer. Again, we keep making everything for the employer because I get it. They pay the bills. But if you don't think legislation is going to come in 2027, and if you don't think you need to be checking what you use, be careful, employers.

53:56Joel Cheesman: Please be careful. Don't just grab it because is cheaper just because we can build it with AI doesn't mean we should. Right. So shockingly, even though you'd think it that way, I'm also going with Plato for the reasons that Chad talked about. I think at least I'm seeing somebody put some effort in to check about this. I mean, I wake up in the morning, I piss excellence. All right, Mo. That sounds like the vote. I hate Trump so much. I'm voting for this one. Like you hate Roleo so much. No, I don't like the lie. I don't like the lie. Plato gets my vote. You're a pro candidate. We're a pro candidate.

54:28Joel Cheesman: They're not. It's 2 a.m. The Aurelia was a little bit too loud, too boisterous. You know, I needed somebody a little bit flashy. We don't know what's underneath. All right, Mo. It's two to zero. Come on, Mo. Guys, I'm sorry. I'm Irish exiting out of this bar tonight. I want nothing. I want nothing tonight is what I'll say. Yeah. I mean, there's so many reasons that you all just detailed why I would not be super pumped about ending up with either of these. so I think I'm just gonna abstain I'm just gonna I'm just gonna call it it's been a good night everybody had a good time we're just going home alone super pumped wasn't that a Netflix series or something oh yeah that's a great series that was a great series highly recommend that was about uber that was about Travis Kalanick and with my favorite actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt who's also like a very huge advocate for ethical and responsible AI so very smart also one of my first crushes ever so you know joel's too joel's too nice yeah we share that so i'll go home with joseph gordon levitt and neither of those companies how about that i don't know that we've ever had someone just bow out of the competition chad i don't know that okay well yeah there we go i'm like i'm sorry i can't really i can't really get down we've had menage a trois we've had a bow out we've had all this stuff I don't care.

55:50Bestiality, cats and dogs living together. Oh, man, this is taking a turn. Let's go back to gout. We've had some dogs. We've had some dogs in this competition.

55:59Joel Cheesman: Oh, dear God. Let's go back to gout. Well, God damn it. You guys went a direction I didn't think you were going to go. And I was like, I was going to kind of come around to this whole Jack and Jill thing. thing um so i i don't love the ai training thing when you say basically you're going to train your replacement like we're going to track all your shit you do at your job and then at some point it's going to take you over and well it doesn't mean you have to like it uh it may be very profitable i mean look it's like handshake or mercore this whole industry of let's train the ai and people that do that are going to make a lot of money well at some point the ai doesn't need training anymore.

56:42It needs a lot less and people lose their jobs when that happens. And when I roll in the whole, Hey, it's a job application, but we're going to give you some homework and you're going to do this assignment. So like you're able to train your AI on people that are high level on all these jobs without actually hiring these people. You just train the AI and what they already know. So I was, I'm pretty out on the Plato thing. I don't love it. from that perspective. The Rolio as it exists now, I think is a little bit troublesome, but I hear so many stories about, I interview with the AI and, or on both sides, right?

57:18Like I got interviewed with the AI. It's very impersonable. I don't trust anything. I don't know what's going on. I'm getting ghosted. Like there's a horrible experience from the job seeker side, but then also the employers are dealing with this tsunami of applicants, robots that are applying that are perfect. So if a step toward a solution to that world, which I think is not going to belong for this world, if part of that is we're going to match you, but then automatically through the matching connect you with a human being to actually sort of interview with a human on the fly, if that is part of the solution to this whole robots interviewing robots, then I kind of got to go with Rolio.

57:57I'm not super excited about it, but if it's a step toward that

58:00Joel Cheesman: solution then what are you doing i'd rather rolio you know i'm saying i'd rather rolio so we got a two to one and uh that's that's we got an abstain there you go you're out of it you're out of it but i'm just out what what i think we can all want to go home with after a long night of drinks no we don't we don't worry we do no we don't it's a dad joke oh it's a dad joke and i've been off for a couple weeks so i'm pretty excited i'm pretty excited about this guys i'm really excited about it here we go all right guys why was han solo unhappy with his steak why was han solo unhappy with his steak because it was too chewy it was too chewy

58:47Joel Cheesman: that's amazing what's your prediction for the fight pain baby do you win an award for that I can't go out like that what do you what do you call a cow's knees what do you call a cow's knees beefy joints a burger joint oh Barry I was close I was so close this is my day everybody have a drink and celebrate we out We out. Thank you for listening to, what's it called? A podcast. The chat. 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.

59:38Joel Cheesman: 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. So weird. We out.