Guilty Pleas, Autopilots and Iced Lattes: RecFest USA Live

0:01What's up? There we go. Oh, yeah. Was I supposed to do that? Yeah. Woo! Are you from Tennessee? Because you're the only 10 I see. What's up, boys and girls? This is Chad and Cheese Podcast. So bad. I like it. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman slash, wait, Joel Nashville Hot Cheesman. Do it again. I promised that one. Do it again. Do it again. Do it again. Do it again. Do it again.

0:30Joel Cheesman: Hide your kids. 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 Chad and Cheese Podcast. Oh, yeah. Are you from Tennessee? Because you're the only 10 I see. What's up, boys and girls? So bad. This is the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Nashville Hot Cheeseman. This is Chad. It's a marathon, not a sprint, so wash.

1:07Chad Sowash: This is Maureen, a.k.a. Mo. There's a new sheriff in town, Wiley Clough. The bedazzler, Maureen. Let's get you ready. And I'm JT, drinking pernicious IPA O'Donnell. There it is. And on this episode of HR's Most Dangerous Podcast, we are live from Wreckfest. in Nashville, Tennessee. What's up, kids?

1:33Joel Cheesman: Okay, okay, so Moe, finally, we're all together. We're doing this live. Moe is drunk. Oh, day one. I'm eating skinny pop.

1:43Chad Sowash: Day one, cheers.

1:44Joel Cheesman: Cheers.

1:46Chad Sowash: Look in the eyes, look in the eyes. This is yours. We made it. Day one. It's good stuff. If you can't tell and you're listening, we are in the Shaker booth. Yes. Who has graciously given us their... their facilities here. Thanks, Judd! Now the show's over, so it's kind of an easy thing to do to give us the show. Yeah. But let's hear. Day one is in the books. Loved it. Ladies first. Great, yeah. Like takeaways, sessions that you enjoyed. I mean, Innovate Stage rocked. We had 10 amazing groups on our stage. Lots of interesting stuff. Super enjoyed Scaleless. Just going to give that shout out. I thought they presented very interesting stuff.

2:27Chad Sowash: And the sleeper hit was our last one. Glenn from Ronstad put up some slides that people were snapshotting left and right. People totally missed it. Smart dude. So they should go look at it. Yeah, it was really, really smart dude. Was it data? It was, but he's thinking about AI in the way that everyone's going to be talking about next year. You know what I mean? Like literally, he's doing the stuff nobody else is doing. And the screenshot at 4.45 p.m. last session, that's legit. Is that legit?

2:54Joel Cheesman: So you didn't have to walk 20 minutes this time.

2:57Chad Sowash: No, thank you, because you told me exactly where to go.

2:59Joel Cheesman: I'm here for you. I'm here for you.

3:00Chad Sowash: I mean, last time they dropped me off, like, literally, probably, like, beyond the stadium. Next area code. Where am I? What's happening? It's not super convenient. There's no address. It's just the fairgrounds. Yeah, I was like... The dog park is the cheat code.

3:13Joel Cheesman: That's the move. The cheat code is the dog park. That's the dog park. So if you come to Wreckfest next year, get dropped off at the dog park. Was your phone blown up last night? I got as soon as I fucking got here, my phone was blown up. Everybody was out. Everybody was fucking drinking. Yeah, bitch. It's a marathon, not a sprint. No, amen. Oh, my God. Motherfucker showing up drunk this morning. I mean, Wreckfest is on, but not that early, kids. Tonight's the night. You have a different network than I do. I went to the hockey game solo, So I fortunately hooked up with Mike from Aaron app sponsor of our t-shirts.

3:54We got that off the checklist. We got our Aaron app promotion in there and ended up having raising canes. Now I felt like hell in the morning.

4:05Joel Cheesman: Not because of the raising canes, because of the beer or alcohol and or both. Yeah. Now you have an early flight tomorrow. Yes. And I'm curious, was it just, I'm not going to go to sleep? Was it power nap and go to the airport? Because you're going to Cabo. So for me, this is not the party. And I know for a lot of people, this is the party. I'm going to Cabo for five days. Buddy's getting married. I'm the best man. I mean, this is on. So again, it is a marathon. Only Chad goes from Portugal to Cabo to good old party.

4:38Chad Sowash: Cabo. I'll get back to Portugal. What's the sense of the attendees? Are they hopeful? Are they ready to write checks? Are they a little more cautious? What's your take on the attendees? I heard a lot of people talking about like five, ten years out, which was really uplifting in the doomsday AI era. So I was like, sweet, you guys are optimists.

4:57Joel Cheesman: They did not think they were going to get killed. Okay, I like that. That's good. It's like the new meme where where do you see yourself in five years? And it's the scene from the Terminator.

5:07Chad Sowash: So good. So good. That's funny. JT, any insights from the attendees? I think people are here to get answers. I think they're done wondering, should I use AI? How do I use AI? People want to know what their new tech stack should look like. They're open to it. I'm hearing people say, I'm ready to dump what I have. I want new stuff. And this is the place to be for that. So I think you're going to see some major breakups. I think some companies are going to dump some stuff that's been around for a long time and go for some of the new stuff that's here. We're going to talk about that a little bit later.

5:39Major breakups. We're going to talk about brown and consolidations. Jail sentences. There's some jumping holes. Oh, my God. In today's show. It is. Should we get into shout-outs? Yeah. Yeah. Our shout-outs, as you know, Loyal Fans, is sponsored by our friends at Proven Base. Oh, I love those guys. Just sent out two bottles of chicken cock this week. Jim Stroud's over there. One for me. Yes, Jim Stroud. I love Jim Stroud. Proven Base is locked and loaded for the marketing goodness. Love those guys. And it all starts with bourbon from Chad and Cheese. So thanks to Proven Base. Who wants to go first on shout-outs?

6:09I will.

6:11Joel Cheesman: Jamie, again, last minute we had two legit new hype videos that we put out, and they had them on screens all over. I sent them yesterday. Had them on screens all over the venue, and we didn't have them as in time. I walked into us. I walked in. Did you? Yeah. Did you? And we were playing on the big screen. So Wreckfest, Wreckfest team did an amazing job. They did amazing. As always. It was amazing. I'm going to shout out to Iced Lattes. I don't know if you guys have seen this on the socials. Stop it. I just did an interview with Forbes. So someone brought an iced latte, a labeled Gen Z candidate, date and higher than now recruiter decided to put it on social media, that that was a bad move, that you don't bring it, you don't like just sort of casually bring in a latte into an interview as if it's like just part of your day.

7:09How do we, what do we think about lattes, sliced lattes in interviews?

7:12Chad Sowash: You guys saw me on the phone when we were on the stage. That was me on the phone with a journalist at Forbes asking me about this. And I said, well, at an event with thousands of recruiters would you like me to tell you my opinion it was insane it people are obsessed with this thing i think it's polarizing i think it pulls out the generations big time and how people look at stuff differently my comment was this i'm a gen x-er there was no way i wanted to wear a suit spend money on something that i couldn't wear other days of the week we institute a casual dress gen z is bringing in their own stuff down the line and that might be bringing lattes maybe but they gotta wait their turn man we had we had to present ourselves to it what is wrong with you you gotta you gotta know your audience oh my gosh i gotta say i gotta say

8:02Joel Cheesman: so i think i think this is perfect because if you bring an iced coffee into an interview and that turns them off them that's not the company for you right if that's not the culture i mean can Can you imagine being two weeks in, in that tight ass company? Fuck those guys. So I mean, I think this is a great, literally culture signal to say, fuck you. I don't need to be in this company. It's just, it's dumb. It's dumb.

8:29Chad Sowash: It's crazy. It's, I'm with you completely. Don't dress for the job you have. Dress for the job you want. I just want to dress. It's a fucking coffee, babe. It's okay that I'm the angry old guy on this topic. I'm not going to lie. I would leave the iced coffee in the lobby. That's just me. I'm an elder millennial, and I definitely wouldn't roll in with an iced coffee. My advice to a job seeker is if you're going to spill that thing on yourself, no, don't bring it in. If you're going to distract it, don't bring it in. Don't risk it. I feel like it's probably never going to be the reason you don't get the job, but it's not going to be in the pro column.

9:03Chad Sowash: So, like, why do it?

9:04Joel Cheesman: To be able to have a newspaper call when we've got all this shit that's happening in the workforce, in the economy. I'm just saying. I mean, things that actually matter, and they're calling you about fucking ice lattes? Yes. Forbes, you're fucking stupid. You're talking about the wrong shit. It's because we need a break.

9:21Chad Sowash: And you know what? If she hadn't said Gen Z, this would have gone nowhere. Correct. Because of the generational label. That's the only reason we're talking about. It's poor. I feel like we're split down the middle on this one. We are. Interesting. Interesting. It's all right. JT, you got a shout out? You got a shout out there, Jenny? I am, but I'm going to circle it back to Wreckfest, And I just want to say that Mo and I got to work with Chloe and Andrew. And even though they were across the pond, they were absolutely amazing. Super attentive. Just need to say again, like Wreckfest, they're a 10 out of 10.

9:51Chad Sowash: Yeah. I've loved every minute of it. So thank you, Andrew and Chloe, for making our lives easier. Yeah. That's sweet. It was really awesome. Great team. I'm going to be insufferable for a minute. Okay. Will you allow me to be insufferable? Here we go. Get at it. I mean, something new and different for me, you know. Now for something totally different. Very exciting news. You now are surrounded by not one, but two LinkedIn top voices. Just announced. Just announced. The girls official. Yep. You know, comes with, I'm sure, lots of money and glory. But anyhow, I'm just so excited to be here with you.

10:27Chad Sowash: So proud of you. How great at recruiting are we? I mean, these girls are getting called by Forbes, Business Insider. We're nobody, but we recruited them to be in our universe. I feel like you're picking us out. I'm like, this is the whole thing. Get people that are better than you, and you can just sit back and relax. The truth is, I got it because of you, I'm sure. They were like, yes, where to present. Yeah, they haven't given us that distinction yet. Chad, we know they're going to Cabo. What are the travel plans? Events brought to you by Shaker Recruitment Marketing.

11:01Joel Cheesman: Where's Joe? He's already gone to dinner. That bastard. Brought to you by Shaker Recruitment Marketing, as you can see. I could live in this booth. This is beautiful. Yeah, so I'm off to Cabo. Then we're in – Oh, I'm in – Amsterdam? No, I'm in Dallas for SIA Collaboration X. Doing a shark tank there. Doing an expert roundtable there for like three days at the Omni in Dallas. Then we're going to Amsterdam. Yep. E-Recruitment Congress. That is going to be a blast. They're actually going to have humanoid robots working. Oh, yeah. They're going to have metaglasses, too. The show. They're going to have eyes that report GMO.

11:40Joel Cheesman: I don't know. You came over to me to see how I was going to.

11:43Chad Sowash: Creeps me out.

11:44Joel Cheesman: Then I'm going to go to. No, we're both going to go to Vegas for the Paradox slash Workday Frontline Hiring Event. Fun. And that's going to finish out our year. Is that it for you, too? That's it? That's it for me. How about you guys?

11:57Chad Sowash: That was a lot more than I got coming up. That's fine. I'm excited to like nest. Do you have anything coming up? You're going to nest? Do I have anything coming up? I probably do. Where do you live now? It's escaping me because I haven't slept. You've been in limbo. Not on the island. I moved from the island back to Seattle. Are you back in the city? So I'm in the big city. And honestly, I think the move to the island was probably a little bit of escapism. If I'm like being really honest about it. I moved to an entire lady in our country. I'm just going to unload you. All your problems. JT, any travels?

12:26Chad Sowash: Florida, baby. I'm going to be there for about four months this winter. Yep. Yeah! Because the golf game is good and I can't lose it. And, you know, October 15th, you can't golf in New England anymore. So this girl is going to be temporarily hanging her hat in Florida so she can get her golf game on. All right. Well, from golf to fantasy football, cue the boats and hoes, everybody. I don't want to talk about it. Week two is in the books. I believe you don't want to talk about it. Here's our order of first to worst. Jarrett Holdersma. Why don't people have normal names? Where are the nicknames?

13:02I don't have the energy anymore.

13:04Chad Sowash: Oh, my God. You're so old. Get the names. We need nicknames. Next week. Yes. Yeah, next week. Scott Clark, the Janamar. Nicholas Tisiak. I'm in fifth place. That was a nice move for me. Bosco Vujatovic. I feel like I said that one right. Nick Livingston. You'll like his nickname. You'll like his nickname. I got that one already. Mackenzie Mad Dog Maitland. There we go. Her's from last year. Mad Dog. She won last year. Molly the Manslayer Sly. Does that work for you? Oh, yeah. I love Molly. Ben the Slasher Kuntz. I don't know. Chad number 11. Sucks. 1-1. You're not in the basement, though. And the basement is our friend Desiree Goldie.

13:48And that is our fantasy first to worst. Sponsored by our friends. Anyone's game. Factory Fix. Factory fix, baby. So fun. Can I get a topics? I haven't gotten a topics. Topics. All right, guys. Here we go. Fuck yeah. The founder and former CEO of Junko Diversity, a New York City-based AI-powered job platform that connected clients with job candidates from diverse backgrounds, pleaded guilty to securities fraud in a scheme to defraud investors of a mere$27 million. Chad, your take on Junkos in the clinko.

14:23Joel Cheesman: So$27 million, forgery and fraud, and this is not over. I mean, there's still, what is there? This is just a settlement. It does not resolve the federal, civil, and criminal proceedings against her, number one. Okay. She's looking at 20. She has. I mean, we really need to have these CEOs in orange jumpsuits. Here's the thing. Okay. she's getting nailed while we've got all these AI companies that are legally hacking other companies, and we don't have any other CEOs. How about the administration and the White House? Yeah, well, I mean, they're all crooks, right? But anyway, we have all these dudes that are doing...

15:15Joel Cheesman: I mean, she did some bad shit, okay? And she deserves to go to the clink. She deserves it. 27 million fucking some, you know, PE people over. I don't know. Anyway. But at the end of the day, that's happening, right? And then we've got Ronstadt who fucked over 200 employees in Europe because they shut down Monster and they paid themselves out. Remember that. And management fees, the executives got money and over 200 employees got fucked over, right? I mean, we are not having the discussions about the bigger deals. This is 27 million. These other ones are like 200.

15:59Chad Sowash: Yeah, like potential doom.

16:00Joel Cheesman: Million and or in the billions, right? So anyway, I think, yes, she needs to get nailed. But there are so many other motherfuckers out there that they deserve worse.

16:09Chad Sowash: But we love to take down a woman in power. So, you know, I'm not surprised. There we go. There it is. Yeah, there it is. There it is. I mean, they broke the law. I get the female thing. Set it open an eye. I want to believe that the bad guys won't always win. I want those good guys. If you're going to step on toes, just know what toes you're stepping on. And she stepped on the toes of some really powerful people with money. The people at Ronstadt have no power. They're not unionized. They don't have any cumulative power. The governments do, though. This is great. I love this from the judge. She said that she used, it was old school fraud using news.

16:46New school buzzwords like AI and automation to dupe investors. I mean, she fabricated numbers. She mocked up different bank accounts. For investors. For investors. She totally got to get switched. And she screwed over her employees.

17:02Joel Cheesman: And again, I don't think anybody on this couch thinks that you are wrong at all. But what we're saying is that measure needs to be taken to all these other motherfuckers who are, they're criminals. Hacking is against, is hacking not against the law? It is. And it's happening. I mean, we're in the under, like we're on the upside down. Because we got Trump's speech writer betting money on Kalshi. Kalshi. So he goes to jail. But crypto president, nothing happened. And the Melania coin, nothing happened. So we're in the upside down in terms of the legal role right now. Oh, somebody save me. Do you have, can you save us from this?

17:40Chad Sowash: I don't think so, my friend. Damn it. By the way, Chad agrees with me on this. which is like every show and every topic. Let's take a quick break, get a refill if we need it, and we'll talk about Harvard and Symphony Talent when we get back. Nice. All right, guys. Harvard has acquired Symphony Talent, combining its predictive talent assessment and reference checking technology with Symphony Talent's recruitment marketing, employer branding, and candidate relationship management capabilities. Financial terms of the transaction was not disclosed. Chad, your take on Harvard acquiring Symphony Talent.

18:13Joel Cheesman: I can't allow this to go any further without a history lesson. Oh, no! Let's go to the history lesson. That's right. You guys are doing a really good job of those sound effects. You never do those. Really impressed. Yep, yep, yep. So, Harvard and Symphony Talent, how did we get here? Well, let's start with the Harvard side, okay? Kids, there is so much history here. It is amazing. And there are so many companies wrapped up in this. So in May of 2022, Dallas-based digital hiring provider Outmatch acquired Harvard, Harvard, which is an Amsterdam-based volume hiring company. In November of 2022, they rebranded to Harvard.

18:57Joel Cheesman: So Outmatch, the acquiring company, acquired Harvard, and then they actually took their name. Took the name. Which hardly ever happens, right? It's a good move. Hardly like Harvard. I do like it. I do like it. So in 2022, Harvard acquired Pymetrics. You remember Frida Pauly? Frida Pauly. She was also featured in the HBO Max documentary top titled Persona, The Dark Truth Behind Personality Tests, which they did not look very good on. They did not. They had over$60 million in funding. And I'm going to presume that Harvard came in and literally just scooped them up for nothing. Right. So that's the Harvard side.

19:39Joel Cheesman: Okay, there's a little history there. That's good. Here's some deep history, kids. This is where it gets crazy. On the talent, on the Symphony Talent side, there's so much breadth and depth. So first, let's talk about the roll-up that happened from PE firm Symphony Talent Group. Skill Check, Inavantage, what a great name, QSocial, and more notably, finally, which was Jason Kerr's hot recruiting new system. Pretty awesome. HOTUS. Yes, they bought Bernard fucking HOTUS, the number two recruitment advertising agency in the world at the time. HR Logix, which was a high volume applicant tracking system, another huge portfolio company, but it was all high volume.

20:24Joel Cheesman: And then Breezy HR, which was another new age kind of ATS. So, you know, I always say I was with Monster before I was Monster. Well, I was actually with Symphony Talent before they were Symphony Talent. Do you know what their name was before they were Symphony Talent? Give me a hint. No. Initials? No. Okay. No? Finally. Finally. Finally. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. And so finally, Jason Kerr was the creator of Alliance Q and finally was the CEO. Jason is a brilliant fucking dude, but he's a creator. Yeah. He's not a stitcher. Right? And these are all, they're all really good business models separately.

21:08Joel Cheesman: And that's one of the things that we don't talk about in a lot of these roll-ups is that there are some really good business models that are out there, but they just don't work well together. And that's generally what happened here. It was a fucking mess. So in 2016, I was actually flown in to San Francisco to consult.

21:26Chad Sowash: Finally.

21:26Joel Cheesman: Yes.

21:28Chad Sowash: Look at that flex.

21:29Joel Cheesman: It was a, this is definitely a flex. Now, it felt like an emergency meeting because there were execs there. There were senior developers. There were ops people and whatnot. And it was all around how do we tie this together and do it in a compliant manner, right? Because that was huge, especially in that time frame. But it was a mess. Anyways, Jason tried to rebrand during this entire thing. Finally, the whole thing into finally, which pretty much fucked him. because Bernard Hodes was one of the biggest names we knew in our industry. And he literally tried to erase that name from the map. And it just blew up.

22:10Joel Cheesman: It blew up in his face. So he was out. Then they rebranded. There's going to be a test on this. I know. You got to do this with a kid more than three hours. This is how much history is behind this. So Rupesh Nair came in. And we know Rupesh because we worked with Rupesh. He came in and he was part of Symphony Talent Group, which is the PE firm. They rebranded everything to Symphony Talent. And then in 2019, they had another big acquisition, Smashfly. Do you remember where we were when they... Boston? No. Oh. Paris. We were in Paris when they acquired because Jay-Z called me on the phone. Okay.

22:50Joel Cheesman: Anyway.

22:51Chad Sowash: I'm sorry, Jay-Z called you? Come on.

22:53Joel Cheesman: Not that Jay-Z. Another Flex. It's another series of Flex. We're all doing a lot of humblebrags. Okay, okay, almost there, almost there, almost there, almost there. And on August 30th, 2026, Symphony Talent announced that they had spent a decade stitching together these softwares to be able to, these different software pieces, to be able to create this new and wonderful system. August 30th. That's not that long ago, kids. They were trying to make this flex, much like I think we saw from like smart recruiters before they were acquired. Yeah. And next thing you know, they're acquired by Harvard.

23:30Joel Cheesman: For me, this is definitely a bargain basement kind of a thing from a PE firm where they are going to do a couple of different things. They're going to sell off what they can. And then they're going to do the Ronstad model of trying to literally go into bankruptcy and fuck all their, the people that they owe money to and their employees.

23:53Chad Sowash: So this is a prediction. You're throwing down a prediction. It's what Pete does. Anyway, I'm sorry. That was very long. We have about 10 listeners that were on the edge of their seat the whole time. She was talking about that. Everybody else is trying to go, what the fuck is he talking about? Where do you go? So my two questions, the future of the agency. We're moving to a world where brand, what does that mean? Agents are interviewing agents. Companies are just trying to get their hands on the flood of candidates. I think people apply to jobs. without knowing what a brand is, what a company stands for.

24:30It's just a mass, it's just a shot kind of. So I don't, I question the future of the agency. Now, I say that in an agency booth that looks like they're doing very, very well. And I think that that's attributed to their relationships with companies that trust their expertise. And not trying to buy a ton of technology. Six years, right?

24:50Joel Cheesman: Not buying a bunch of technology, too.

24:53Chad Sowash: Aren't agencies a bunch of fortune tellers? Isn't that really what you're doing? isn't that what you're buying in an agency is i think to some degree you want that agency to tell you this is where you're buying where i feel better and i'm giving i'm passing this on exactly people that are it's mad men a little bit it's a little bit of a agency is never going away i think it gets more interesting though i think there's room in our space right now for some new agencies

25:17Joel Cheesman: to like blow up there's going to be some new people maybe i think yeah i don't see recruiters doing i mean they're way too much on the the technology side you're either a niche agency or like a big i i think i think that you have the the two the two differences so we watched um we watched radency which was uh tmp get sold because they turned into a tech agency a tech player right not an agency really anymore um and they're i mean they're just not as prominent as they used to be uh then you've got recruitics who bought krt right to be able to be for that portfolio but they're still a tech company and they're still going hard on the tech side of the house when you've got an when you have an agency like shaker and i mean this we are definitely biased but we've seen this fucking happen you have a tech you don't have the tech debt you don't have the the constant trial of looking at buying shit all the time like you just said you think there's

26:18Chad Sowash: gonna be a lot of turnover thank you and I know when that turnover happens they want to go to shaker and say we trust you to know what's going on who do you recommend and that's the value of the agency it's not make me a pretty display ad for the Chicago absolutely not I think you help me help guide me through this journey you know all this tech and everything and I say this we're in their room so I get it but not sponsored by them I will say that this is where shaker wins right in this moment there's an opportunity but i think you're going to see some like out of the blue players brand new startups in the agency space that are going to hit the scene make some smart moves and do some not a ton but a couple to me this is bared getting acquired by apcast it's like a lot of clients a lot of big clients enterprise people with money if we can transfer those over to our technology then this deal is worth it well it's not because there's a

27:12Joel Cheesman: future in banner i think that they did that mainly for the 15 that they were losing to indeed because indeed wasn't paying um they weren't paying uh programmatic companies right they were paying agencies but not programmatic companies which is a good reason to get a 15 bump real quick

27:29Chad Sowash: i still think agencies are you ready to break some new ground on the chad and cheese podcast Okay. We have our first ever sponsored news announcement. Dun dun! We're bringing it in for the first time ever. It's freezing! This is our friends at Find 'Em, and they dropped a big announcement here at the Wreckfest conference. So first of all, everybody welcome Joseph Cole. Joseph! What is your title, Joseph? VP of Marketing. VP of Marketing, okay. So what do you think about the agency game as a marketer? Is there value here? I think there is, right? Because with AI becoming ubiquitous with everything, I think this concept of critical thinking and being able to actually deliver on creative and strategy is something that's really important now.

28:20He agrees with me. Okay, everybody agrees with you. All right, without any further ado, give us the news there at Findem. Yeah, so we just launched Findem Studio. So that's basically our agentic AI layer, right? So think about it as people intelligence built for AI. So the way that it works is Findem has this history of all this amazing data behind people, the context, all the information about people, company, the market. And it brings that intelligence into what we're going to say, like a proven methodology. So we've got all these agents that are endorsed by experts. And then it delivers an artifact where it could be something like succession planning, It could be like market mapping.

28:58It could be like basically any HR or TA use case that is validated by an expert, but also validated to make sure that the output is accurate. And I think that's more important now with AI, right? Like just making stuff up. Yeah. And what was the catalyst for this? Were clients asking for it? Was it something you saw coming in the future and you wanted to have a product for it? Like talk about the genesis of this. Yeah, so I think, you know, Hari, our CEO, who you probably know as well, he's pretty much a visionary in terms of like, you know, the HR tech space, the recruiting tech space. And I think it was just a natural evolution because, you know, you've probably seen in the news and LinkedIn everywhere, there's like an MCP for this, an MCP for that, right?

29:36So he launched the MCP ages ago when it first came out. But then the fact is, you need more. You need something that's proven, something that's validated, something that's easy to use and, you know, has a lot of utility. and I think it's just the practicality wasn't well you know just the evolution of what was in the

29:51Joel Cheesman: market yeah so so big question yeah got these huge models that are out there everybody's building their own shit and whatnot right how do you how do you how do you play against that because you have companies like I was listening to Ace Hardware today and it's like they have like their team going in and I mean I don't think they're literally building models that they're using but they're building models to be able to get used to you know ai yeah building agents whatnot so how do you battle against that the the we'll build our own kind of kind of methodology yeah i think it's interesting um there's an analogy that the team has been using is uh like all these other things like these mcps give me they basically are like a library card giving you access to information but then they don't really give you the context behind that information or behind the data right They don't know what they're doing.

30:44They don't know, exactly. And the thing is with findings, we've got the data, but the metadata about the data to inform, right? And that's so critical now with AI becoming more and more, I guess, intrusive. Definitely intrusive. Yeah. Joseph, we're hearing more about companies building content exclusively for agents. Agents coming to visit sites. There's more robot traffic on it than there are people. And now we're building content for the bots. Do you think that plays into employment and how so if you do? You know, I think it can. You know, like agents are also like collaborating with each other.

31:21Which is kind of scary to me. Well, yeah, yeah.

31:23Joel Cheesman: You mean hacking into German websites and creating forums? How are you going to stop that? I know AI is becoming too smart for us. But I think the key is like making sure, you know, human is always in the loop. Right. And that's the fundamental aspect for us. especially with like our hr ta practitioner customers um i don't know how you can you know truly combat it right i think it's like almost like a macro thing okay yeah so who who is this product for like the people listening what what's the demographic that you're looking to attract what problems are those um so icp agnostic so any industry any type of company really yeah um we've got because of you know our history in HR and TA naturally it lends itself very well to HR leaders, TA leaders, staffing, we even have a lot of VC and PE customers as well using it.

32:17Really the limitation is you know imagining or like what kind of question can I ask right? So I think anyone can use it if they you know need any information. Everybody's a potential client. Everyone's a potential customer. Everybody. So good. So where can they go to learn more? Where do you send them? Oh, so studio. Look, I've got Findem Studio up here. A lot of people just listen, Joseph. It's a podcast. Okay, there we go. Studio.findem.ai. Awesome. Yeah, super easy. Well, thanks for joining us, Joseph. That's awesome. Sponsored news release, everybody. Thank you so much. Enjoy the rest of the conference.

32:54Joel Cheesman: All right, I've got some comments on this real quick. I listened to your podcast last week. While I was gone. While I was gone. And this is the Jack and Jill. The Jack and Jill. We only have so many terabytes. We've already had to endure your history lesson. I'd like to say JT's right.

33:16Chad Sowash: Wait. Stop that on the record. On the record.

33:20Joel Cheesman: So no, seriously. Because I mean, I get what Joel was saying. And that's why I was asking about the big boys. Yeah. Is like somebody's going to go build their own shit. but we've seen this with throughout the ages, right? So this was the Jack and Jill money versus, you know, who would you rather? And I'm not saying that I would pick over Boomerang HR. What I'm saying is I think that definitely HR will not build their own shit. No, and they shouldn't. They're not going to. Well, and two things, big companies, Google, Facebook, Twitter, a lot of them have literally crashed and burned in our space because they don't have the fucking expertise to do what we do, right?

34:03Joel Cheesman: Thank you. So they can't crunch like we can crunch. They can't build the stuff like Find a Mez. And I mean, so listening to that, I was like, no, JT's got this right. I really think that the small models, the small models will win in the expert space and in the niche space over the big models. But yeah, that's beautiful. So what I hear you saying is you agree on the side that's recruitment related. But I think the job search component of Jack and Jill, I think, is not. No, I think at all. Because you've got to remember, because take a look at Google for jobs. That's shit, right? Facebook has tried to do it.

34:43Joel Cheesman: That's shit. Everybody trying to do what we do. They don't understand much like he just talked about. The agent world is different. What he talked about was speciality in context. That's one of the reasons why we've always been able to create products in our, not just our space, but I think every other industry, they have their own niche. And I think that's why it's going to continue to work. Even if it's agents, because we still understand the speciality. My very London accent. I think it will be fun to watch and interesting to talk about. I had to get that out, Jesse. We haven't talked about this on the show yet, but Facebook has brought back their job postings.

35:24They brought back those to Marketplace. And when that happened, I was like, why the hell would they do that? They're going to do that with Muse. But then they launched Muse. So I was like, ah. So now Joel's going to be able to use his glasses. Muse is going to search the jobs on Facebook and apply for you. So watch. All the time. That's where it's going. Sorry, sorry, sorry. All right. Quick break, and then we'll come back and talk about Zoom Info. All right, guys. Here we go. Zoom Info. Zoom Info has launched Talent Autopilot, an AI-driven recruiting agent designed to automate candidate discovery and engagement.

35:54It combines Zoom Info's data with autonomous reasoning to find candidates that traditional keyword-based searches often miss. Chad, are you a buy or sell on Talent Autopilot from Zoom Info?

36:06Joel Cheesman: I'm going to tell you right now. I want to talk about their campaign. This whole autopilot shit, everybody's got this stuff. I want to talk about something that they did better than anybody that I've seen in the space. That's fucking marketing. Shout out to Shannon. Well, I talked to Shannon earlier. Not her. It was Alice was mainly big, big, big key, but Shannon. But so if you didn't see it, they're getting ready to go to Dreamforce. Pretty big conference, right? And they literally built their booth and spray painted over contact because they're a contact data company. They spray painted over contact just so that they could focus on the data.

36:49Joel Cheesman: They created an AI video of a guy coming in, an intruder coming in to vandalize that, to do it all, to be able to say old thoughts are out the window. And now they're a data company. And they used to be about contact lists, right? That's what we always bought. Zoom info was for contact lists. Exactly. Now it's about contact data, right? It's all around data and that is all what drives AI. So for me, the rest of what they were talking about, everybody's talking about, we don't talk about companies who do really good fucking marketing. And this is broad-based marketing, but it also tied into a really big conference, which was Dreamforce.

37:39Joel Cheesman: So I thought that was cool. So you enjoyed the marketing. Oh, it was awesome. So to me, this is a major push to get acquired. Oh, God. We've seen this before. Bring in people who know what they're doing. John Bischke is running the show there. He's from Intello. He knows a little bit about what he's doing, and he knows a little thing about exits. It's a public company. The stock has been sideways pretty much for the last few years. I think this is a push to get that stock price up, get the brand awareness up, and to sell it in 12 to 12 months. It doesn't look like a full pivot either, right? Because they already have the data in the first place.

38:15Joel Cheesman: So they don't have to say that this is like a data. It's more just a slight pivot into AI. They want to hit perfectly how important data is, and our data is different somehow. And that combination is going to have OpenAI, Google, whoever pick up the phone and make an offer. And I think that's what they're making a push to do. I agree.

38:35Chad Sowash: Makes sense. Interesting. I haven't heard Bishke in a while. When you were explaining it, when you were reading everything, it reminded me of the grown-ups on the Peanuts gang. Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. Like, I've heard the same thing. Do you know what I mean? Like, everything you were saying made no sense. That's normally what happens when he's talking about it. But then you talk about the marketing piece, and that gets me excited. So what they're doing is making people understand. So that didn't translate for me. That did. And I think, hopefully, that helps them. I would love to see that.

39:02Wow.

39:03Chad Sowash: Good point. They'll be acquired in 24 months. I don't think a lot right now. I think I need to go to bed. I think you need to go to bed. I think you need a dad joke. I think you need a dad joke. Oh, no! Dead joke. Dead joke. Oh, no. Why couldn't this sailor finish the alphabet? Oh, he kept getting lost at sea. I knew it was a sea. It's good. We out. We out.

39:33Joel Cheesman: Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The 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. 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. 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!