Jobs Utopia or Fiasco?

0:00But my shout out goes out to personally my favorite porn star and part-time industry expert.

0:07Joel Cheesman: I have. There we go. Hung Lee. Hung Lee. All right, Emi, follow that. Follow that. Come on, Emi. I don't think I can. You know what's actually going through my head? Just like hung like a donkey, you know? Yeah, it is. Yeah. Yes. Pretty much. I mean, terrible. What goes through my head is hung like a donkey. Yeah. Come on, just slam an iron brew and let's do this boys.

0:50Joel Cheesman: It's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast.

1:00oh yeah too much riz aura and drip for one podcast yet here we are hey kids it's the chad and cheese podcast i'm your co-host joel i'm ready for some football cheeseman this is chad

1:14Joel Cheesman: screw the iron brew i'm slamming a guinness so wash and i'm emmy just call me the carnival queen Barrett-Tighe. Ooh, that's good moves. And on this episode of HR's most dangerous podcast, the state of labor, the state of jobs, and the state of Holland. Wait a minute. Is that a state? I guess we'll figure it out. Let's do this. Okay, dude. The whole Clippers thing I've been seeing from outside the U.S. The L.A. Clippers NBA basketball just for the international. NBA basketball. We know Amy brings a lot of internationals when she's on. That's a good call. I don't know much about what's going on other than like you know they're trying to feed kawai leonard money under the table that kind of stuff but what what i was interested in is i was in my threads and i saw this news and i saw this old commercial of steve ballmer now steve ballmer is the owner and he is actually banned he's banned from the nba for a year they got they got nailed with five first round draft picks with they can't have anymore but this i i wanted i wanted us to have a little nostalgia.

2:21Joel Cheesman: So show that video, Cheeseman. Yeah. By the way, I love that your threads, Algo, is giving you Steve Ballmer videos while mine gets, you know, busty Latinas and bugfights. All right, let's watch some Steve Ballmer, everybody. This advanced operating environment is worth. Wait just one minute before you answer. Watch as Windows integrates Lotus 1-2-3 with Miami Vice. Now we can take this Ferrari and paste it right into Windows Right. Now, how much do you think microsoft windows is worth don't answer wait and see windows right and windows paint and to listen to what else you get at no extra charge the ms dos executive an appointment calendar a card file a notepad a clock a control panel a terminal principal or ram driver and can you believe it reversi that's right all these features in reversi all for just How much did you guess?

3:11Joel Cheesman: Tell me, Steve. $8 ,000? $8 ,000? No. Even more? No, it's just$99. That's right. It's$99. It's an incredible value, but it's true. It's Windows from Microsoft. Order today, P.O. Box 286. Oh, my God. P.O. Box 286. DOS. Except in Nebraska. I fucking love that. Now, kids, Steve Ballmer, if you don't know Steve Ballmer, look him up. But he was one of the first, I think, 30 employees at Microsoft. He worked his way up. He was CEO for a long time. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, hold on a second. He was actually a CEO. I thought he was just. CEO or CEO. I mean, he was basically running the show. Oh, yeah. He was the face of Microsoft for a long time.

3:56I thought he was a hired actor.

3:57Joel Cheesman: No, no. And if you watch any of the old videos of them launching things on stage, it'll be him, Bill Gates, and some of the other executives. There's the most nerdy motherfuckers known to man. And they're dancing. And there's one where he's sweating out of his clothes. I mean, he's just a sweaty mess. Yes. And Gates is there dancing? Can you imagine being interviewed by him? Are you like, no, no, no. I mean, there's also a great interview when the iPhone came out and how he talks about how it's going to be a massive failure for Apple, which is historically been fun for him. That's what the Blackberry guys thought, too.

4:41Frankly, as a Browns fan, the Deshaun Watson trade is arguably the worst deal in history. This mess up is pretty up there. So I'm glad that he's taken some spotlight with football season coming and Deshaun being named the starter this year. The Clippers are getting a little heat from the media.

5:01Joel Cheesman: It's sports season. I love it. Sports. I love it. love it it's september october is the best time for me like you get college footballs back premier league which i'm embracing we got i know you're not a baseball guy but you got the playoffs in october you got the weather a little chill in the weather uh yeah it's us open time man i love me some us you're the tennis guy what's going on fucking love it so last night francis tiafa was down two sets came back it took it was four hours and 39 minutes that's how long the match lasted And then Ben Shelton, another American, played number two Carlos Alvarez.

5:39Joel Cheesman: Everybody loves this kid. He's just fucking amazing. He beat him. Shelton beat Alcarez in four hours and 28 minutes. It ended at 3.30 a.m. in New York. I got up this morning. I had coffee here in Portugal, and I watched the end of the match. Oh, my God. Fucking crazy. Four hours of just playing tennis. Yes, I got up. I looked at my phone. I noticed that it was still going live. I'm like, holy shit. I turned it on, had a coffee, watched the rest of it. It was amazing. How do you keep playing for that long? That's a sport. I mean, that's what you do. I mean, you know, netballers don't have that kind of, you know, resilience.

6:21Excuse me? I'm sorry. I'm an athlete, my dear. I am an athlete. We have speed. We don't need endurance.

6:30Joel Cheesman: Or ball handling skills. This is why penalty kicks should not be a thing. Let them play until somebody scores. Let them go, man. I do like to take the player off scenario. That's pretty cool. Take a player off every 15 minutes. I mean, penalty kicks I've learned to appreciate as I watch the sport more. I hate it as a strictly American sports fan but it keeps you on the edge of your seat though i mean it really does because anybody it's very theatrical it's very like that's the thing anyone yes but anyone can win and it's never usually the not always the team that should actually win which is just like it's just luck the team that should win i mean if you were the team that should win you shouldn't have been able to go all the way uh through and not score a fucking goal or this lesser team you allowed them to you know to score just as many goals as you did so that's your fault yeah i get it i get it it's like the hockey i like the hockey one-on-one that's pretty cool too sudden death historically some of the best games ever you know a team scores and it's over and these teams are just beating each other up the ice bowl green bay and like historically it's just been really really good we're talking about it let's do it now let's do the fantasy football grades now because we're right just fantasy football let's go right let's just go right i'm so excited even though i don't know what my grade was because i was sleeping while we were skipping ahead we're we're confusing the regular listeners we're confused we've split up shout outs okay uh all right guys it's fantasy football time so excited it's one of my favorite things we do each year uh factory fix year three or four that they've sponsored this uh fantasy draft was last night and we get grades we get our grades so 12 people are playing um chad auto drafts because he's he's asleep which he should be he's in europe but uh here's your here's your breakdown in the grades of where we go i'm going to start with the f's chad i'm going to start with the f grades and we're going to go up so the the worst grade uh bosco vujatovich got an f chad so wash also got enough everybody chad so wash which which is good for me.

8:46I mean, it's only up from here. Yeah. I think you drafted. I think you have Travis Kelsey, which is an instant F. Uh, if you go that way, finish Ben Kuntz got a D minus Desiree Goldie, another D minus Molly Sly D minus Nick Livingston. Nick Livingston got a D, uh, Dijon Amar, uh, D plus I got a C, which I thought sucked at first, but then I looked at all the D's and F's and thought, Oh, I'm doing all right. Scott Clark, C +, Nicholas Tiziak, C +, McKenzie Maitland, the defending champ with a B grade. And the only A in the whole bunch is Jarrett Joldersma. He got an A. He got an A.

9:32Joel Cheesman: Okay. Well done. Well done. We'll look back at this later. Yeah. Oh, this is never how it ends up. So I'm not sweating the grades too much. But when you looked at who you got, Chad, you auto drafted, you put who you want. Did you get most of the players you wanted? Was there a lot of players like, oh, how did I? What? A lot of question marks. My quarterbacks are shit. You know, I've got Kittle and I have Kelsey on the tight end side. Running back's good. You know, my wide receivers, but my quarterbacks are just dope. Who are your quarterbacks for those listening? I can't remember off the top of my head.

10:07Joel Cheesman: Football is it's fantasy football. It's a marathon. It's not a sprint. Yeah, it is. Your trades throughout, your pickups, your waivers, all that stuff throughout the season, that's what makes the end of the season really hum. And when we restructured and we shortened our benches and those types of things, that made it even more fun. So I'm excited. It's a chess match. It's not checkers. So, yeah, give me a D. Give me an F. I don't care. It's a tough leg. It's a 12-seats, full, narrow bench, like you said. there's not a lot of room for error if you get an injury or someone just stinks it up like it could be a really long season for you so do you know i have no idea what you mean by narrow or short bench i feel like i need to go away and google so so you so you can you can choose how many bench players you can have so the shorter your bench the less sort of reserves you have oh okay which makes it harder to have players that are that can fill in if there's an injury or a bye week Someone's not playing.

11:07Less options. Less options.

11:09Joel Cheesman: That's going to take a longer fantasy football podcast. But here are my quarterbacks. Drake May was my number one quarterback. That's not bad. And Baker Mayfield was my second quarterback. Okay. Baker just signed a big contract. Like$165 million. I've got Saquon Barkley. I've got Walker. Kenneth Walker III. I mean, just studs at running back. T. Higgins, Evans, Godway. So I've got some good players. So to see that I got something to work with. Yeah, I'm good. You got something to work with. I'm not sweating it. Well, Drake starts tonight, baby. So let's see. Let's start it off right. I know. See how that goes.

11:52All right. Let's get to shout out.

11:53Joel Cheesman: Is it time for shout outs? Chad, what you got? Okay. I think we all, to some extent, advise startups. And this week, I want to give a shout out to a couple that I advise and I see making pretty big moves. So first off, kind of set this one up. We all know that job seekers are moving toward large language models for job search. And a quick throwback for you out there. This is much like when Google started the job search back when we started indexing different companies back then, the SEO side of the house. And back then, you might remember that Indeed beat everyone to the punch and they owned Google results pages.

12:34Joel Cheesman: Many companies actually lost their brand rankings on these pages. They're actually their brands. They didn't show up for, for instance, let's say for jobs at Marriott. If a job seeker searched jobs for Marriott, Indeed would own that Google results page. So the candidate would click through and apply to Indeed instead of Marriott. then Indeed captured those candidates who were originally looking to apply direct to Marriott, then Indeed sold those candidates back to Marriott and their competitors at a premium. So very underhanded, but a very smart business play for Indeed because it worked. So today, job seekers are starting to use large language models for search away from standard search.

13:20Joel Cheesman: But here's the rub. If hiring companies don't start embracing job search on large language models, Indeed will keep capturing your candidates and selling them back to you for an even larger premium. So Sonic Jobs, one of the companies I advise, has created a couple of products. So first and foremost, there's a jobs plugin that allows companies jobs to be exposed in a search within ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. Secondly, they've also created a white labeled career GPT for corporate career sites. So companies can have their own large language model version, search version, instead of using some 1990s Boolean search.

14:03Joel Cheesman: Right. So I think this for me, this is a big move for Sonic Jobs. I'm happy. And then last but not least, Hack a Job is rebranding. Yes, they're rebranding. Why? Why? Because in six months, just six months after launching, their recruiting agent, Archer, was responsible for, they 3X their ARR in six months. They received enterprise adoption from companies like Barclays, Comcast, Oracle, Sainsbury, Accenture, and other small companies like that. Why 3X adoption? Because companies are hungry for getting ROI out of AI. They need results. Candidates introduced by Archer are five times more likely to interview more than 50 percent, five zero, more than 50 percent of candidates that Archer introduces are first time interviews.

14:58Joel Cheesman: That means their matches are better. They're actually, their discoverability is better. Plus, Archer has blocked over 30 ,000 fraudulent candidates a month since deployment. So when companies ask how to get away from spending money with Indeed, how do I build for the future? My shout out this week goes to Archer and SonicJobs. Keep kicking ass. And again, kind of self-serving because I advise these guys. But to see them make moves like this to me, I thought it was definitely notable. So before I get to mine, a couple of comments. I love it when a business changes its brand because what they've done is better than what they were doing before.

15:42The new thing is more adapt to the future and where the market is going. So I think of I think of Paradox and Olivia coming out of jobbing and that business. And I think that that's always really cool when businesses are willing to kill their old business in light of new opportunities. Unlike some pebble or something like, oh, this isn't working. So let's do some jazz hands and change our brand. And maybe people won't notice. So that's kind of a tale of two brand changes. And I like the one where it's a better business. On the AEO play, I find this incredibly fascinating where the world of marketing is going.

16:26And I try to keep my finger on the pulse of some of this stuff. But companies are now developing sort of meta content for agents because agents and robots on the web have now overtaken humans in traffic. And as more and more agents make travel arrangements for you, search for jobs, buy stuff that you're looking to purchase. companies are creating marketing just for agents and providing content that agents are looking for so there's going to be a whole new industry just like it was with seo or pay-per-click where companies are experts at making sure that when agents come to the site that you're providing content and information for them that they can make an agent a decision for the for the consumer i think that's fascinating and i think it will be a story somebody some vendor is going to come along in our space and do this.

17:17And I think it's very, very cool. Very cool. Almost as cool, almost as cool, Chad, as free bourbon. Oh, I love chicken con. That's right. I do. That's right. That's right. Well, thanks to our friends at Proven Base. Proven Base, fine talent others can't reach with Proven Base. They're providing free bourbon for our listeners, Chad. We're sending out two bottles every month, one from you, one from me. but you got to go to chad cheese.com slash free to get yours. Again, that's provided by our friends at proven base. Now to my shout out, Chad, you know, one of my favorite porn actors is also one of the most recognizable company.

18:00What are you doing? That is not what I thought you were going to say. My shout out goes, goes out to Hong Lee. Industry people will know Hong pretty well. He's been a friend of the show for a long time. He occasionally says really nice things about us. and his popular newsletter. And he was recently in Chicago, New York. I think LA was another destination for him. And it's always good as an American seeing how our administration is tearing shit up and taking dumps on countries all over the place. The World Cup was great because people came over and realized Americans aren't that bad. They're pretty cool.

18:38And American cities are okay. Like it's not so bad. And so to see Hung come in, do his walk and talks, talk about how cool Chicago is and how great New York is and the places he visits, it's just very refreshing. And I'm glad that he's enjoying his time. We're going to see him in Nashville in a couple of weeks, which we'll get to events here in a second. But my shout out goes out to personally, my favorite porn star and part-time industry expert. There we go. Hung Lee, Hung Lee. All right, follow that follow that come on emmy i don't think i can you know what's actually going through my head just like hung like a donkey yeah it is yeah pretty much i mean terrible goes through my head is hung like a donkey yeah donkey show like a donkey hung like a donkey there it is we say hung like a horse in america is it hung like a donkey it's hung like a donkey in the uk yeah little nuances um hung more i'm gonna stop i'm gonna get i don't know i don't know what is my shout out nothing to do with recruitment and i'll tell you why because i had an amazing week this week oh last week rather my week was uh music orientated it started for uk folks who know this um not in hill carnival so it's a big london celebration like celebrating Caribbean culture dancing in the street was absolutely amazing oh and that would have been my shout out but then then I went to Jay-Z I went to the Jay-Z concert Odyssey last minute no entire state of mind baby oh my god all the classics were there it was one of the best concerts I've been to I went to Jay-Z probably about 10 years ago when I over in the Middle East but it was amazing in London and what was even better is because it was on Queen B's birthday so she wasn't performing but they you know did a spotlight on her and the crowd sang Happy Birthday Idris Elba opened a show DJ Khaled was on stage as well but did he say another one yeah another one it was like do it again do it again but then then then when I thought it couldn't get any better fugees got on stage

21:01did they break lauren hill's great did they break up did they okay so they're back together like every other band uh from the 90s they're doing something in london so i knew they were in london i kind of saw an insta wasn't sure but when they popped up in stage you see hear her singing like killing me softly and la la la obviously it was amazing amazing so thank you thank you jay-z for an awesome concept so let's segue into events where i'm sure amy's going to tell us where her next vacation is am i right what do you mean i'll do work very good boys okay where's your working vacation emmy well my working vacation is going to be thailand okay stop you're done shut her down now shut her down are you jealous don't be jealous don't be jealous it's like good for you that's awesome quickly oh that is awesome i am gonna be taking meetings by the beach like sangria in my

21:56Joel Cheesman: hand if you can only see this water right now oh yeah i bet i live here that doesn't count yeah um okay so we're getting ready for travel uh and you know that travel is sponsored by our friends over at Shaker Recruitment Marketing. That's shaker.com. 75 years in business. That's right. It's a Shaker birthday this year, kids. Shaker celebration. Chad, I don't know if you know this. We have a secret device in Joe Shaker's office. Let's see what he's up to. I'm the best there is, plain and simple. I mean, I wake up in the morning. I piss excellent. That sounds like Joe. They're going to be at Wreckfest in Nashville.

22:33Joel Cheesman: We're going to be there. Also, we're going to have JT and Mo. So unfortunately, Emmy's going to be, I don't know, somewhere exotic. Why does she hate us so much? Why does she hate us? I don't know. I wish she would travel with us. I want to. I do. September 23rd and 24th, Wreckfest in Nashville. If you haven't got your tickets, it's probably too late. You should be crying in the corner, okay? Or you should just go to Wreckfest.com, see if they have tickets left. On the first night, we're going to go to Old Red's Rooftop. You can have a drink with the Chad and Cheese. meet it with the great sponsors that are there uh then i'm going to cabo i'm not going for the donkey show uh i mean although i'm still going still going to cabo um i did not have donkey on my bingo card for today's show but i should have then i'm off to this then i'm off to the staffing industry analyst collaboration x at the omni in dallas from september 29th through the october 1st where I'm judging Shark Tank, leading a discussion around maximizing ROI with recruitment advertising, then we're both off.

23:39The chat was great.

23:40Joel Cheesman: Then we're both off to where, Cheeseman? To the music about. That's right, bitches. October 6th. October 6th. In Amsterdam for the e-recruitment Congress. And they're going to have humanoid robots working the Congress. Only leaving can make this happen. You think a robot can replace me? Well, for this part of it, Stephen, you probably should. Yes. And last but never least, we're going to Workday's Frontline Hiring event in Vegas on October 12th. That's an invite only. I'm not fucking leaving. Only time we've gone to Vegas all year, kids. And why? Because Paradox and Workday said, can you be there?

24:20Joel Cheesman: And we're like, yeah, of course. If you want to go to one of these events, go to chadcheese.com slash events, register for the events and buy us a drink. We can't wait to see you. And you failed to mention that Stephen McGrath will be in Amsterdam with us. Oh, I can't wait. I have feelings. I'm sorry, Stephen. I'm sorry. Looking forward to seeing Stephen. I love him. I love him. By the way, I finally got tickets to the Anne Frank house. Oh, very nice. That thing is always like sold out. Of course. I got enough lead time. Really good. It is really, really good. Yeah. Pretty excited. Did you get tickets for the sex museum as well?

24:57Let's get to topics. A.K.A.

25:05Joel Cheesman: Joel's nightstand. Go ahead. A.K.A. Shut the hell up, Emmy. My nightstand. All right. Let's talk about labor in light of that comment. We celebrated Labor Day this week, everybody. So let's discuss the state of labor. Sure. U.S. unions enjoy a 71 % approval rating, yet membership is only 10%. The U.K. has roughly doubled that, and Europe as a whole fluctuates from 90 % membership in Iceland to 6 % in Estonia. Many of the developed economies struggle with immigration, deglobalization, and safety nets are struggling in light of shifting demographics. We haven't raised the minimum wage in the U.S.

25:44since the Obama administration. Holy cow. Oh, and the humanoid robots are coming as well. As for the developing world, AI is taking a bite out of the traditionally low-cost labor jobs. Hello, customer service and copywriting. Chad, I'm sure you're thinking a lot about labor while you're downing Omega-3s and pints of Guinness in Portugal. What's your take on the state of labor?

26:05Joel Cheesman: Do you have a camera in my home? Okay. One thing you didn't hit on was H-1B visas. So I'm going to hit this up real quick. But I dug into some economic research from George Mason's Mercatus Center, which showed that the restriction of H-1B visas had led to more offshoring of high skilled jobs to foreign subsidiaries in countries like India, China, Canada. They also they're thinking that there was going to be a massive loss of innovation because 41 percent of patents granted to U.S. headquartered companies involve at least one foreign born inventor. Immigrants get it done. Yeah. Which they only make up 16 percent of the U.S.

26:52Joel Cheesman: inventor workforce. Right. Forty one percent of ideas and innovation not reaching our shores. That's a huge brain drain. Then there's the impact on jobs overall. So high-skilled tech workers act as growth drivers inside of companies because their ideas and innovations create products. Without them, we will see a reduction in secondary hiring for support and non-technical staff to build, sell, and support those products. And overall, the U.S. became less competitive. Everything I just talked about makes us less competitive and more negatively impacting our competitiveness on the world stage. American strength has always been our diversity, have always been our diversity.

27:37Joel Cheesman: Plus, it makes it so much easier for countries like Canada and France to poach scientists, developers, great talent from the U.S., not to mention future great talent. Kids right now who are going into school who might have wanted to come to that land, that city on the sparkling, shiny city on top of the hill. Well, guess what? That shit, that city's not on top of the hill anymore. And it's a shitty city. They're going to another country instead. So unfortunately, and again, I wanted to focus on the H1B side of the house, but also the ability for countries to literally just come in and poach the fuck out of us.

28:17Yeah. If I step outside of my body and I look at immigration as an issue, I like, I can understand. I can understand people saying, Hey, you know, the immigrants come on over illegally. they're taking jobs, they're taking less money than I would take. Like I can, I can understand that. Yeah. The H1B stuff is hard to, hard to understand why we have said, Hey, if you're smart and able and a company wants to bring you over, we're not welcoming you anymore. That seems totally counterintuitive to what we do here in America. It makes me think that big tech having so much control and not wanting others to have those workers to have like how many companies have the 100k to bring people over an H1B visas?

29:04It's the big companies, it's big tech. So who's in the pocket of big tech? Well, it's this administration. So if I was having a conversation with Donald Trump, I'd say, hey, you know, let us have the H1Bs, but all of our competition, all the startups, the young companies that have been doing it, like don't let them have them anymore. There's a great Bloomberg story. I think it's Bloomberg that you shared, Chad, about a Texas town that was basically built on H-1B visas, right? I think it was India or South Asians coming over. Housing, the entire economy. Housing, huge boom in housing, services, healthcare.

29:37Like all these folks that come over and are demonized, they're creating jobs for everyone. They're creating growth for everyone. And it just baffles me how America has become this place of walls and stay away and you're not welcome here. And as a result, they're going to places like Canada and Europe. This is kind of what we get for that. The whole union thing has been a theme on our show. During COVID, it seemed like there was a renaissance in unions. Starbucks was unionizing. Like all these companies you didn't think of as unionizing. Google, for example. And ever since Trump won the Sean Faines of the world, you don't hear from anymore.

30:18Like it just, labor has taken a hit since then. And by by golly, labor's been taking hits for decades. Yes. And if you look back, if you look way before that, even I mean, if you look at why labor unions are impactful, it's because they are politically impactful. So laws were passed because labor got politicians into office. I trace this a lot back to media. As media became a thing, as TVs got into living rooms, as radios and, of course, the Internet became a thing, the ability to put a message in front of voters became much more efficient. The scalability of it was like it had never been before.

30:58It wasn't like I'm on the back of a train. I'm going to different towns and speaking like I could get that message to a ton of people. Well, media and money go hand in hand. So ultimately, whoever has money and can buy media is going to influence elections. So I have money. I can go to politicians and say, hey, I'm going to spend money and then get you elected. So the power of unions to get votes started to subside over and over and over. You had things like pensions were cut out for 401ks. That was in the 70s. So now, OK, why would I be at a company? I don't have pensions anymore. I could take my 401k wherever I want.

31:33We had automation. So labor unions have been just cut down to year over year over year. And I fear that the power of the worker, labor versus capital, just continues to get hit in the nuts. And I see no change in it. But I do see the young people really pissed off. And I do see like Mom Donnie getting elected. And I see politicians. This midterm is going to be really, really interesting to see if the kids come out to vote, who they vote for. If you don't have assets, the system sucks for you. And those folks are going to come out, whether they're in a union or not, and vote a lot of these people out.

32:08So I think it's the history of unions is fascinating. I'm not an expert. But as I looked back for this show, the decline of it is really almost thoughtful. It's almost like planned. This thing was piece by piece. We're going to dismantle labor and give the advantage to capital. And we're seeing some of that come to light. It's called trickle down economics. It's a lot of things. Scabby. Well, it's people in power. Who runs for office? It's people that went to college and go to elite universities. Well, where's the money come from? Those people that go to elite universities. So those folks know each other.

32:43The unions have always been on the outside. Their power has always been in numbers. And as those numbers go down strategically over time, they have less power. And this is where we are today. Labor is getting kicked in the nuts, and I don't see any change in it. although the the kids being pissed off is an interesting development in american politics and around the world that might be the trigger to start changing things kids are going to speak up a little bit more they gotta vote young people gotta vote man let's hope and i think they will i think they will because um you know people are pissed off the youngsters are pissed off you know they're not they're going out there trying to look for a job and their jobs aren't there you know they're finding the jobs that they would have actually taken being replaced by let's say AI or companies saying that, you know, we're just going to pause this role because we think we can get more efficiencies using AI, for example.

33:31So I think it will change this time around. And I'm actually looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to hear the reaction. But I mean, from my point of view, it's kind of like a bit of a depressing read, you know, just to see, you know, hear that people are still struggling. The US is still really expensive. People, you know, I read somewhere like a, you can tell me this is true, but I read somewhere like a burrito is like$20. And I'm like, who's paying$20 for a burrito? You know, it's like, that's ridiculous in this day and age. So if a simple burrito is that expensive, what about everything else?

34:06What about bills? And then they're going out, people are losing their jobs left, right, and center, even though some of the press reports are saying, you know, unemployment rates are stable. It's like, are they stable? Because what, what are you looking at? That's not real-time data. So even that's a little bit misleading. The people are going out. They can feel that there are no jobs out there. Even if they are in a job, their wage increases aren't keeping up with inflation. So in reality, year on year, you're actually making less money. So it's not a great world out there at all. That's why I said it's like a really depressing, really depressing read.

34:43But I do hope that the youngsters will get pissed off enough. Like I said, start complaining, start voting and say, look, we can't afford to live.

34:51Joel Cheesman: How would you feel if you lived in your mom's basement right now? Right. I mean, that's how pissed off. And it's like, you know, you hear people saying, well, you know, they're just living in mom and dad's basement because they're lazy. No, no. I have a job that pays enough to get a God. I mean, it is so. And what's so intriguing to me, I don't I don't hear either party really talking about raising the minimum wage. I don't see it as a platform for anyone. And you see the DSA movement and you hear interviews with like Rahm Emanuel, who's a very prominent Democrat, sort of an old school Democrat who does not embrace DSA.

35:27He says they're a different party. They're not Democrats, because I think he's worried about how MAGA kind of destroyed the Republican Party, as you know it. he's worried about DSA destroying the Democratic Party, as you know it. So you have the AOC part of the of the Democratic wing who is embracing it and how that sort of settles out in the election, I think is going to be fascinating. But I don't see either major party talking about raising the minimum wage or helping workers a whole hell of a lot.

35:53Joel Cheesman: That's an entirely different podcast. Either way, are we bullish or bearish on labor right now? Now, with Citizens United, you're going to be bearish. And so we get rid of Citizens United, either from a federal standpoint or a state standpoint, it's going to die because money is going to beat the fuck out of it. Yes, too easy. Money rules, which is why we're going to take a break and listen to our sponsors. Guys, there is no show without the generous contributions from our sponsors. We'll be right back. Guys, let's talk jobs. America's latest jobs report surprised to the upside. August payrolls rose$162 ,000 and unemployment held at 4.1%.

36:36Participation ticked up to 61.6%. Hourly pay was$37.75, up 3.1 % year-over-year. Hospitality and local education added jobs. Information lost some jobs. Prior months were revised up$55 ,000. The market looked stable after a soft mid-year stretch, said most analysts. Sunny days ahead, Chad, or is this another banana in the tailpipe?

37:03Joel Cheesman: I think that banana is going somewhere other than a tailpipe, to be quite frank. We beat expectations. Well, that's for everyone who isn't paying attention. We just talked about H-1B debacle that is leading to more offshore, which means more jobs created, but in other countries, not the U.S. But I have two fronts I want to talk about on this other than just H-1B. First off, the immigration front. The actual jobs that are being, quote unquote, created. Yes, I'm using air quotes are ones that Americans won't fill. They were previously filled by immigrants who were either deported or left the country.

37:40Joel Cheesman: So they really weren't actually created. They were abandoned. OK, and if Americans are performing those jobs, it's because the jobs they're qualified to fill don't exist anymore due to downsizing, offshoring or failing income. Right. 162 ,000 jobs created. What they're not saying is that over half of those jobs came from hospitality and construction, where immigrants have always had a huge role in that talent pool. Basically, we're creating jobs nobody wants, and they're not going to get filled. So on the tariff front, Volkswagen faces significant costs from U.S. tariffs on imports, from$4.7 billion to$5.8 billion this year, which will just be passed on to American buyers who can't afford a new car anyway.

38:32Joel Cheesman: So while VW builds 200 ,000 cars at plants in the U.S. and 280 ,000 cars for Mexico. So we, the U.S., set the rule for trade. Remember Trump's U.S. MCA, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement? The agreement he negotiated and he put together and companies worked within those rules and then turned on a dime. And now they expect VW, in this case, to move operations to the U.S. Why would they do that? I mean, how could you trust someone after making those big, big changes in actual trade policy and tariff policy. So we're literally playing right into the hands of China. We're literally kneecapping our allies like China, who they don't sell cars in the US, by the way.

39:23Joel Cheesman: They have the opportunity to kill companies like VW because those stupid fucking tariffs, they're making cars unaffordable for americans because again you talk about we're wage depressed the economy's not not killing it so basically tariffs are killing jobs we've got tariffs we've got immigration and that's where i see this jobs report those are the two at least my two hidden storylines underneath that so i'm going to boil it down to uh it's the boomers fault um i mean you would be right so yes so where the jobs are coming roughly healthcare services, construction, and education. So let's dissect some of those separately.

40:08So boomers are getting older. Do you get healthier when you get older? No, you get sicker. Aging people means we need more healthcare workers. AI is not destroying radiology jobs. Robotics aren't replacing doctors yet. So until that happens, we need people in those jobs. There's a lot of turnover in those positions. So they're always hiring. This industry has survived many ups and downs because of healthcare, all the job boards and like, because of healthcare, we've kept a lot of businesses afloat and this is no different. So aging boomers means a healthy healthcare system. We also have boomers that have a lot of money.

40:43Uh, they're getting, you know, three, four or 5 % interest on their money month after month after month, they need to spend that money. They're empty nesters. They go out to eat a lot. They travel a lot. My feed is full of empty nesters like Chad, who now live in Portugal and go to Cabo and spend a bunch of money in Vegas. I'm still working. He's not retired yet. You're working, but you have a little bit more disposable income because the kids are out of their house. You're not a boomer. I'll put Xers in here as well. Xers are empty nesters. They're not retired. They don't have the boomer money, but they are spending money more, a little bit more liberally.

41:25Teachers, average age of a teacher is pretty old. The amount of teachers retiring is pretty amazing. So we need to fill those jobs with more and more teachers. We also have a seasonal effect, apparently, on some of these teaching jobs that aren't counted during the summer because they're not teaching in the summer. So that's sort of a replacement thing. Interestingly, government on the state and local side is growing. Federal, not so much. We know the story behind that. But as boomers want more services, they have more of a voice in giving money to candidates. They want more shit. So there's more money to go around and stay local government.

42:00So if you look at what's prospering, it all has to go to the boomers. If you have assets, if you have money in the bank, if you have dividends, you know, dropping in your account month after month, life is pretty good and you're spending money, those services. If you're young, not so much. Fast food restaurants are struggling. Everything that services younger people is is challenged right now. So I'm going to lay this on the on the feet of the boomers. I do think it's funny. Just a few years ago, these reports were like between 200 and 300 ,000 jobs. And we're getting a boner over 166 ,000. It's just it's just funny because relatively speaking, it's still really, really low.

42:39We shouldn't be that excited from it. I think World Cup and some of the hangover from that is impactful or with jobs. So there's a lot going on here. So many stories from recruiting friends, and you guys hear them too, about no one's hiring. It takes me forever to get a job. Everything's at a standstill. Like nothing anecdotally is positive. And these numbers, I think, are a lot of smoke and not much fire.

43:03Joel Cheesman: You talked about last week, there are a lot of jobs that are out there that companies are actually posting that they're not hiring for. I mean, more than we've seen ever. Well, these should actually be hires, not jobs posted. It should be. I think you should cover it. Do we believe the numbers is another thing. Do we believe the numbers? No, we don't believe the numbers. And that is the big thing. To be honest, I think it's really easy for HR professionals, you know, to just look at the headline and go, yeah, this is positive. Because that is the way it's written. It's supposed to be written in a positive light.

43:34And they rely on people just not peeling back, doing the research, trying to understand the kind of macroeconomics. And so when the numbers like this go out, generally speaking, people go, oh, yeah, you know, the market is picking up. It is amazing because very few people do their research. So that's why, you know, podcasts like this, voices like you two, who will actually go away and do the research and tell people what's actually going on. And like, you don't need to believe that this is all smoke and mirrors. That's why that's really important. HR professionals need to wise up. They need to understand what's going on beyond the headlines.

44:08Is this actual reality or is there something else going on? You know, like we said, with the unemployment rates, unemployment rates look steady. You know, it doesn't look like it's declining. Well, it's not declining because you have more mass immigration. That means there's less people looking for jobs in the marketplace. So the percentage stays exactly the same. And people are dropping off the rolls. yeah i mean they're both happy yeah yeah so that that is i suppose that's my biggest takeaway for people you know listening to this particular section in particular is that don't be fooled by a headline do your own research look at what's actually going on in the wider world because sometimes it's just smoke and mirrors yeah this is a very nuanced topic and people just look at oh 106 6 000 jobs 4.1 unemployment and like it's things are great but if you start peeling that onion, not so much, not so much.

45:02Joel Cheesman: Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Let's take it over to Europe, but maybe some bigger issues at hand globally. A Dutch privacy regulator has fined Uber 825 million euros for automatically blocking drivers over suspected fraud or low ratings with little or no human review and poor notice. GDPR bars such high stakes automated decisions. A representative for the government said, quote, a computer should not make decisions on its own that have major consequences for you. These decisions should have been looked at first by a human being, end quote. The algos are coming for your job.

45:43Will your government do something about it? Chad, your thoughts on the Uber fine?

45:47Joel Cheesman: Well, Europe is definitely going to do something about it because they have. I guarantee you this shit's happening in the U.S. and nobody's even checking it out. But this reminds me of the time when Amazon had its system fire people like women who were out on maternity leave because they hadn't shown up to work for a while. I mean, stupid shit like this will continue to happen as long as idiot leaders allow these systems to work without human supervision. And Uber will be lucky if they get away with only paying just 825 million years, right? I think it's their fourth fine for stuff like this. It is.

46:25Joel Cheesman: And they've been escalating. And this is a much larger fine. But I'm waiting for the next European country or, I don't know, maybe the EU itself to step in and have another go. I think they really want to use them as an example. And they should. I mean, because this is a huge infringement, not just on GDPR. But you take a look at the new EU AI Act, and man, that's going to smack some motherfuckers really hard. Robots? You think a robot can replace me? So a couple of thoughts on this. Number one is I'm convinced that companies just call in the accountants and crunch the numbers and go, OK, what's the largest possible fine?

47:09And frankly, Europe is kind of good about the maximum is this and the third count maximum. So they actually know the worst case scenario in terms of what they're going to pay for a fine. So they do the numbers and say, well, if we do this, how much are we going to save? What's the efficiency? Blah, blah, blah. And is that worth the fine that we're probably going to have to pay if we do this? And the accountants go yes or no. And if it's worth it, then they just go ahead and do it. So I think part of these just running over the law is part of the equation of business. And that's unfortunate. But I think that's what they do a risk analysis and go from there.

47:42The second part of this is AI is if you work for a company, AI is going to be a second by second, hour by hour, day by day, week by week monitor of everything you do. Part of the efficiency improvements of companies is the fact that everyone thinks they're being watched all the time. And I'd better be working all the time or else I'm going to put myself at risk of being fired. I agree with you, Chad. America will not make any laws around firing people because the algo says you should be fired. That's going to happen for sure. Just like you'll be hired without ever seeing a human being. So this is just the state of play in America for sure.

48:24Get used to the fact that algorithms are going to watch you all the time. They're going to be ranking you, grading you amongst your coworkers. And your job is at risk because an algo, an AI is watching all the time. The days of like sitting down once a year with your boss and going, hey, boss, how did I do this year? And kind of eyeballing it. Well, it was pretty good. We got some stuff done. Like I was pretty happy with your efforts. That's gone. There's going to be a data readout. There's going to be an LLM like telling your boss, this guy should be fired. This gal should stay around because we've been watching them every second for the last year.

49:00Joel Cheesman: You get readouts by the end of the day. Yeah. It'll be like your health. It'll be like your aura ring. Every day you'll get a score about how you get it. or just check your phone. Just check your phone. I feel okay. Yeah. Your last call was shit. Do it again. I don't like that idea. Like, you know, like I said, always said before, I'm a massive fan of AI. I know there's some negativities or things that we need to take into account in terms of kind of current job losses. But I don't ever want to get to a stage where it is totally automated. It is totally AI driven, you know? And particularly, you know, we're in a HR space.

49:39We're in a recruitment space. That is primarily a people-driven job, you know, people-driven industry. And so I really, really hope that we don't get to a stage where we're going to have performance reviews and totally done by AI or interviews totally done by AI. It's coming.

49:54Joel Cheesman: It's coming. I'm going to stay positive. Unless the EU says no, because the U.S. won't. But unless the EU says no. Yeah. And this is the thing. Like, you know, in Europe, and this is why I'm surprised that this has happened. And to be honest, I was I thought Ubole got fined twice. Twice is too much. Four times is way too much. You know, in Europe, we have a lot of legislation. Like I said, we have the EU AI Act. We have GDPR. We know that they're going to fine us and that fine will increase. And as AI become more and more integrated into personal lives, into work lives, those legislatures are just going to get stricter and stricter.

50:31that their fines are going to get stricter and stricter as well, or higher and higher. So it does surprise me to hear that this actually happened. But I think the wake-up call for organizations is that thing, if this can happen to Uber and this can happen to Meta, because I think Meta had a larger fine than this one for a similar type of thing.

50:50Joel Cheesman: $16 billion. Yeah, it can happen in your organization. So people need to kind of switch on. And this is the kind of thing, like the conversations I have in my organization. organization when we're buying hr the recruiting technology we're not just buying it and going hey yeah cool let's implement it you know the company says yeah you know they're doing their due diligence no now i have to actually understand where the data is being held now i have to understand that i'm dealing we're dealing with people so we're making people decisions so therefore it cannot be totally automated it cannot be totally left to ai at some point there has to be a human in the loop So even if that tool has an approve button, taking approve and saying, okay, a human approved this, that's not enough now.

51:35You need to now show evidence of a meaningful human review because if the regulators come down on you or want to do an investigation, if you've got no proof, you're the one who's going to be hit by the fine. And if you're not an organization like Meta, like Uber with deep pockets, that could tank your business just because you didn't follow legislation.

51:57Joel Cheesman: This is one time. 4 % of revenue is a lot. Yeah. And this is one time. They can come back and they can refer to the 4%. Yeah, because the fines just get bigger and bigger and bigger. So that's not a good business case. If they're really doing a thing that's like, yeah, I can afford this. Can you keep affording it? Can you keep affording the increase in fines? No. And definitely smaller organizations won't be able to either. What's the driverless market in Europe? Are there Waymos driving around? Are there? I don't know. I've never seen it. I've never seen it. I wouldn't even get in it, to be honest.

52:27It's not as prevalent as in the U.S. But it is. Some places have it, just not as prevalent.

52:34Joel Cheesman: If it would be anywhere, it would be cities like London and Paris. Like the U.K., right? Yeah, and I've never seen it in London. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if that's a labor thing, regulation thing. Possibly. Yeah. Again, safeguard and protections, which our Department of Labor are fucking us over whenever they get a chance. Shall we play a game? All right, guys, let's take a quick break. If you haven't subscribed to our channel, please do so. Give us a like and a follow. We'll be right back. Let's talk a little job board old media, shall we? The Guardian announced that it is closing its long-running recruitment platform, Guardian Jobs, after more than 20 years online and three decades of classified job ads.

53:17In case you missed it, The Guardian is a major British daily newspaper with a global audience of 115 million monthly users. Emmy, you're British the last time I checked. Is this a big deal, little deal or no deal? Do you know what? For me, maybe because I'm just slightly older than people who are job hunting at the moment or entering the job market. Never older than us, Emmy. You'll never be older than us. Never. Absolutely not. No, only joking. But for me, this is a big deal. And I'll tell you why. Because I remember when I graduated, we didn't, I don't remember LinkedIn being around when I graduated.

53:55I don't think it was. But how did I look for jobs? I got a newspaper. And one of those newspapers was The Guardian, you know, and they'll have their, you know, graduate section. But then I was working, looking for sales jobs. So they had the sales section each day of the week. I think it was about three days a week. You know, you had that education and then it just targeted different industries. but it was how people got jobs and then obviously it evolved it moved away from prints and it went online but it still was how people got jobs when i came back to the uk i started relying on guardian because i was working in the charity sector so that was a great place to capture the kind of charity professionals and so for me it is really sad because now this is going away now this kind of niche platform, because it isn't necessarily really a niche platform, where people are going to go?

54:48Indeed and LinkedIn. And if they, you know, if all these kind of niche kind of job platforms go, that all that's going to happen is that what Indeed and LinkedIn are going to monopolize the market. They can charge whatever they want because organizations think that they've got nowhere else to go to go and find candidates. That's going to be really bad. So it is a sad thing for me. I do think it's a wake up call for organizations because they've got to start thinking if you then got the deep pockets to keep paying whatever Indeed and LinkedIn want to charge, then how else are you going to build your talent pipeline?

55:20Do you need to have a stronger employer brand? Do you have to have a better internal sourcing model, for example? They've got to start, they've got to pivot, they've got to adapt. Otherwise, they'll be spending way, way, way too much money to find candidates. Did Emmy just give us a history lesson, Chad? History lesson! is that my first history lesson i think it is congratulations congratulations jay-z and a history lesson you've peaked yes i have thank you chad you're kind of british adjacent what's your

55:52Joel Cheesman: what are your thoughts well i gotta double down on the newspaper side of the house and you gotta remember that newspapers especially today they're not great businesses whenever you go to the guardian which is a i i think a great a great just an amazing source of news they're always hounding you for subscribe, subscribe, subscribe, right? Because they didn't really understand back in the newspaper days that the classifieds were, that's what kept these companies going. That was the biggest revenue driver that they really had. They didn't evolve that. They didn't create new products other than literally just taking those classifieds, putting them online, right?

56:31Joel Cheesman: So when they didn't create job sites, they did the same thing. And from a post-mortem standpoint, they were niche. They should have increased their TAM. They're literally a global known entity. And they were a niche website. They should have increased the TAM. Their business model was very standard. They might have had some programmatic in there because they had some backfill jobs. Backfill, yeah. It wasn't their technology. No, man. They weren't providing the technology. No. And so there was no evolution that was there. So if you were a job board that's out there today, it's all about taking a look at evolution, which should be moving toward qualified candidates.

57:12Joel Cheesman: You being able to literally target individuals for your niche to be able to draw them in so that you can deliver them to the companies that are looking for them, right? And take a look at, we just talked about Hack a Job slash Archer earlier. they're delivering 50 % more candidates that companies never talked to before. Discoverability, they're using this new tech to be able to do that. I think the Guardian was on Magix, right? Which is an old job board platform. God, yeah. And they were bought by Wiley. And Wiley is a publication organization, right? And they did nothing with them. They've been stagnant for years, right?

57:50Joel Cheesman: But yet, but that's not Magix's fault. that's the guardian's fault the guardian should have actually switched platforms they should have innovated they should have done so much more so my whole freaking thought process around this from a post-mortem standpoint is they literally just did nothing yeah they said it and they forget it and then when that happens you die and that's you got to continue to move because especially now everything's moving around us and it's moving fast yeah 60 of the time it works every time I would venture to say that they're still on a duration-based advertising system where you give us about$600 for 30 days.

58:30They have a little gold level, which I guess means your dad's on top, like$1 ,200. So what do we talk about week after week about the biggest issues facing employers? It's automated candidates, right? Right. So if I pay a flat fee for 30 days and after one or two days, I have more than enough automated replies to drive myself crazy. But now I still have 28 more days of this ad being live. That sucks. Right. I've got that long to get automated replies like, no, I'm not cool with that. You can't even even like on a pay per click deal, which would be, I guess, innovation, Chad, in this example, which they never looked at doing.

59:15Yeah, I'm making less because people would cut off their ads. So the world is moving towards a what am I getting for my money and not it's online for 30 days or I get this many clicks. It has to be results based because of the way technology is expanding. The reason that they gave for the shutting of shutting down of the jobs section was that vacancies had reached a five year low. Vacancies reached a five year low because no one was posting jobs on the system because it was not made for recruiting and advertising today. So I agree with Chad. Look, I've said I've quoted Darwin many times. It's not the strongest or the smartest that survive.

59:56It's the one that's most able and willing to adapt. And newspapers that aren't adapting are dying. And the guardian is a study study case. Number one, unlike dad jokes, everybody who will never die all the time. Yes. And we'll never, never fail.

1:00:15Joel Cheesman: They're a dad joke. Of course, they're not getting better. That's not how they work. Why? Why did the banana go to the doctor? Why did the banana go to the doctor? He wasn't peeling very well. He wasn't peeling very well. I thought something might have given him the slip or something. Yeah, this is what I... When he talked about innovating or adapting, this wasn't it. I always get you. I always get you. I always get you. You know you're going to share it with your friends. You know you're going to tell that one today. I don't think I am. Guys, it's been fun. We out. We out. Thank you for listening to...

1:00:58Joel Cheesman: What's it called? A podcast. The Chad. The Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology. But most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shoutouts of people you don't even know. And yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one. Cheddar. Blue. Nacho. Pepper Jack. Swiss. 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!