LinkedIn Goes Full TikTok : Job Seeker Confidence Collapses

0:00I will never do the grift of like, just start your own business. Starting your own business is really freaking hard. It is hard. And as more people do that, it becomes harder because more and more people, like there's more influencers and more like the more there are, the harder it is. You're bringing me back down, Joel. Which is why my only fans hustle never quite took off because there's too much competition in that space. 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.

0:33Complete with breaking news, rash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast.

0:44Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Nashville hot going in. Toxic waste on the way out. Hey, boys and girls. It's the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Village Idiot Cheeseman. And I'm your co-host Maureen, a.k.a. Mo. These are definitely not meta glasses, Wiley Cluff. Yeah, we'll get to that on this week's episode of HR's Most Dangerous Podcast. A tale of two economies, job seeker malaise, and Madonna stirs up controversy like it's 1992 all over again. Let's do this. Just us, huh? Just the two of us. We can make it if we. So you recovered from Nashville. You've got, you've got like the morning after glasses on.

1:30I just wanted to match your energy, Joel. I just, you know, we're talking about glasses. I thought the eyewear game is tight on this show. Sorry. If you're listening, I don't know. How would you describe your glasses? Kind of like Golden Girls meets Golden Girls, but like the 2026 version. Yeah. It's kind of a Lisa Loeb meets Betty White. thing you got going there. I agree. Yes. I think that's, that's fair. I'm more on the Lisa Loeb side. I would say she was, she was so hot back. I had such a crush on her back in the day. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So good. Yeah. This is this musical episode of I'm not bold enough, but I appreciate it.

2:12So yeah, the glass game is the glass game is tight. Uh, Wreckfest you recovered. Um, any final takeaways that we missed on the show? Just what a cool community. That's what I have to say. I mean, like I've been part of other tech sort of adjacent communities in the past. And let me tell you, you guys are a lot cooler than the accounting community of which I was unfortunately a part for quite some time. But yeah, no, it's a SaaS community, right? But it was just an incredible time. Like I had so much time. I met so many wonderful people, people that I think like I will continue to know in the future, which is great.

2:48And you know, it's just I loved what Jamie and his team were able to bring together. It feels so different than any other conference. Like it truly does. Well, so you, you ran, uh, was it innovation? Yeah. So JT and I were hosts of the innovate stage, um, which was awesome. We had some really, really great presentations up there. And, uh, yeah, I mean, I just couldn't get over how great everybody was. I don't always say that about conferences or people that I meet at these, but I just was like continually bowled over by how awesome these people were cool is not a adverb that you don't know you hear very often no you don't but they were were there were there like any takeaways what was the vibe of the the employers slash the like were you impressed with the end of the innovation that you i was i was i felt like it was very candid i really appreciated how like real talk everybody was.

3:44And, you know, I just thought that it was more interesting than a lot of the other presentations I've seen at other places along the course of my career. And people were just kind of like more open to saying what's really going on. And there were a lot of audience questions and people seemed pretty engaged, which was, which is great. I mean, we've all been at conferences where people like sit there and their eyes glaze over the entire time. And it really didn't feel that way. It felt like, and nobody was kind of untouchable. Folks seemed like they were really down to just go and mingle with everybody else there were no people who had like airs that they were putting on i just interesting it was good vibes what did you think you you say open and engaged i say uh confused and desperate uh i felt i felt a lot of overwhelmed under resourced people oh really throughout the conference oh fascinating i did not feel that help somebody give me a goddamn easy button so i can just uh figure all this stuff out because i I'm confused and I live this stuff every day.

4:44The whole what's old is new again blows me away. There was someone on stage that talked how cool it was that they had an AI agent go out, scour the web for jobs and bring them in to their email or wherever. I'm like, that's an email alert. That's like since the dawning of job boards, they've had that. And somehow because it's an AI agent, it's now cool. And now I'm on it. Like AEO is the new SEO. Maybe that's why they weren't at the innovate stage. Cause that's, there was, we're gonna talk about it in who'd you rather, but like everyone, like there's new ATSs, there's new job boards. Like what is going on?

5:25We're going back. It's just, yeah, it's kind of a time warp for me, but to your point, it's always about the people for me. Yeah. You see old friends again, you make some new ones. Like people don't leave this industry. uh to your point it's cool so people people sit around and and speaking of cool speaking of cool mo uh betta's listening to our show apparently because they launched a bunch of stuff but most notably for you uh you hate you hate the meta glasses and the cameras and all that so so they're they're launching a bunch of stuff but what i wanted to get to was your your take on no more like cameras we're gonna have the audio which in all in all in all honesty because i wear these things and i have for a while the audio is probably 80 of the usage it's probably 80 of i want to listen to podcasts i want to listen to music i want to like watch tiktok in private that's the thing i won't tell you why i want to watch in private but and then i'd say probably 15 is the ai at this point okay the ai is great i have conversations okay with the with your glasses yeah so you talk to yourself yeah okay well it's it's not my voice that comes back to me it's a very pleasant female that talks to me can you select a different voice but it's it's really good it sounds like a person okay it's not more it's not like, well, shall you, shall we play a game?

6:57It's not even sort of a cheesy telemarketer. It's really good. And it's, it's, it's great. So I would say maybe five to 10 % is actually me taking a picture of my kid playing soccer or like I've done videos with us riding a bike and it's cool to like be on a bike, videotaping him on a bike. Yeah. So I get, I get the whole like sports thing and the GoPro angle of it, but uh i i don't think the cameras are a huge part of my uh activity although they're a huge part of other people it is yeah yeah i'm sure i'm sure you're happy about it and more importantly will you be buying a pair of metas without the cameras absolutely not absolutely not i i still don't even completely understand the function of them like i'm i'm fascinated to hear like why you would purchase them what you would do like can't you just bring your phone out if you want to record can't you just talk to your phone can you talk to alexa like there there are all these other options and i just and sure like listening to music on your eyeglasses let me tell you my husband had a pair long before met i even entered the scene he had a pair of sunglasses or eyeglasses i forget what they were and they had some sort of like speaker in them and he would just like be listening to music while going about his day around me and i'd be like hey babe you know blah blah blah blah and he like wouldn't respond and be like hey babe and he'd be like oh yeah yeah and then he'd be like no i can totally hear you and i'm like oh my god this is gonna make me murder you like he just you know he's like no i i can absolutely participate i'm like oh my god no you are you were off in the la la la if you're listening to that shit but yeah i just don't i don't completely get it but um i'm utterly thrilled to have the removal of the cameras i think they are beyond creepy and they go in the wrong hands very easily um i don't love the idea of being able to record anyone without their knowledge either but that's you know and Another thing we have to deal with is we're always being surveilled.

8:50So whatever. Everything's listening at all times. That's a great point. How many flock cameras are in your local community? I can tell you, if you're in public, you're being watched. Exactly. Totally. And increasingly in private, too. That's the part that freaks me out. Funny side story for you. My wife, her car was broken into a couple of years ago. And it was in a parking lot. and she knew it coming out and they they had a camera in the parking lot so they knew basically the car that pulled up they like pulled up and then got out took her purse and shit and then like drove up so the cops got called so the cops did like a reverse engineering of what time did they leave like what is the radius of escape and they had they had they have cameras everywhere so they were like based on the time here in the car in the description like they were able to basically trace, I think, the criminal.

9:50And I would have not have known that was going on. But they actually did? Because where I live, they can't. It was like 50 bucks that they stole, and they were like, we got better things to do. But if they had kidnapped a kid or done something really serious, I think that they could have totally caught these people. Or if you're looking for a lost dog, as they told us in the Ring commercial on Super Bowl. I was like, oh my God, come on, people. That's not what they're doing here. Not what they're doing here. Well, I will continue to lobby for these things. And the good news is I can wear them and you don't have to.

10:26Absolutely. It's a free country. Until the government says you're all wearing headgear that we can track everything that you do. I don't like it. It's all good. It's all good. So the little, the stuff also from Meta, the little, was it Yamaguchi, Tamaguchi? I'm too old. Like a surveillance Mabubu. like the no thank you like that's the little muse guy he does look like the little boo boo it's wild but yeah he looks so friendly give me all your data tell me your bank account information all good no problem nothing to see here i mean mark zuckerberg himself was the one who made fun of people for being so trusting of him taking everybody's data i don't know he was like 19 at the time come on yeah i don't think he's grown up much um if anything i think he's doubled down on that but yeah i'm like that is you know i've heard that it can be good you know i've heard some people say that it's it's great whatever i just i don't know i have another friend in ai specifically and he's just like do not fucking put your shit in muse do not do it he's like it is the worst idea and um because i don't have the level of acumen as to like how ai works as this guy does and he says that i'm like okay duly noted i mean i wasn't going to anyway but i'm doubly not going to now that I know that that's his perception.

11:45But I see why people are drawn to it, the utility and the ease of having one place to go. But I also got to tell you, if Muse is anyhow related in any way to what they put on meta for their AI, I have a problem with that because it is hallucinating the shit out of stuff. I was just searching. I was on Instagram the other day. And I think I pulled... I tried to pull up Mike Pedito. Shout out, Mike. We love you. But I tried to find Mike Pedito's profile to just go look at his profile. And it for some reason returned, Mike Pedito was just at breakfast, like this whole AI thing about Mike Pedito. And I was like, damn, that's actually really specific and actually good.

12:25And he was at breakfast. That's so weird that it's picking up all this stuff. And then I was like, oh, I'm going to search myself and see what it says. What it returned me was something that told me that I was the CEO of Work It Daily and that I I had a daughter named Skylar who lost her Instagram access and all this stuff. And I was like, oh, my God, it thinks I'm JT. It's like Maureen W. I'm like, what? Like, how did it hallucinate this? Like, it didn't even that had to have been pulled from a different place altogether. Maybe a transcript from one of our episodes or something. But I was like, where the hell do they get this info?

12:57So do not trust AI, you guys. It's like double check shit. It was so off. Can you really ignore it, though? I don't ignore AI. I'm not saying to do that. You just, if everyone's doing it, Mo, can you, can you be the outlier that, can you, can you be the, the Luddite who doesn't get on board with this stuff? I mean, I guess, I don't think what I'm saying is suggesting that I'm not on board with it. I think everybody has to be to some degree, but I think just go in with like some, you got a line judgment, you got lines, you won't cross, use your noggin and don't just blindly accept stuff i mean i think i told you guys that grok made like a obituary for me like with my face and obituary like insane like i'm alive hi it's just it's weird it's weird it it's amusing uh as someone who's still is old enough to remember the smoking thing and joe camel and trying to get kids on board with the cool cartoons that if we just put social media and ai into like a fun uh chubby what you call it that's so well put a surveillance labubu and i can't remember where i heard that but i was like that's that's out of my uh that's out of my age range but yeah it's like it's joe camel for a new generation it's a new addiction it's a new addiction for a new generation cute and innocuous you just want to cut out nearly as cool as smoking not nearly as cool as lighting up yeah not not even not even close not even oh my gosh but they know what they're doing like that's the insidious part like the company that just had a what 17 billion dollar settlement for harming kids is now like oh here's our new ai little boy come on they just need better pr it's crazy oh don't get me started on how they responded to that i saw some of the executives just having the most smug obnoxious response in it oh god just it's horrific and now they have vr that looks like sunglasses kind of nerdy sunglasses i assume you don't think those are going to take off.

14:57I mean, the metaverse certainly. So I don't know. They changed their name for that. And it's, it's, it's not happening people. That's not happening. All right, let's get the shout out. Is it time for shout outs? So, you know, our shout outs are sponsored by proven base. Everyone loves free bourbon. They love, they love the cock, obviously. Oh, I love chicken cock. I do. I love it, but you can't get it unless you play, unless you sign up most. So you got to go to chad cheese.com slash free sign up. You get two bottles, one for me, one from Chad, but it's all made possible by our friends at Proven Base.

15:35Give us a shout out, Mo. All right. My shout out goes to the broligarchy who was out in full force yesterday after having a meeting with Trump and talking about how they basically were going to self-regulate AI. So that is the answer that they came up with. um i'd like to remind everybody that you know facebook like to self-police right and let's say bowen had a little problem like asking mcdonald's to uh to monitor the slaughterhouses precisely it's like the you know the fox guarding the hen house kind of thing and it's just like watching the footage of these guys walk out and all dudes like almost every single person like the the pictures were staggered man and it was wild um but watching them walk out afterwards and having reporters come out and say like do you think this is safe do you think this is your self-regulation is the way to go do you think blah blah almost none of them had anything to say but you know who had a little too much to say alex carp from palantir man that guy needs i'll have what he's having okay like that guy is so off his rocker he's so heavily medicated it's insane like that he should be institutional how are we like i i just i can't believe that this is this is how this is going to go um but yeah he's either not on the meds or he's on some meds that we should be taking but it was just like oh man but the the level of disdain for the reporter asking a very simple question was i mean not at all surprising for that particular character but still stunning right stunning the the problem is the broligarchy is becoming an extension of trump which is the media sucks and they lie and it's fake so it shouldn't be any surprise that all these guys get on board with like the media's hoax and everything is bullshit um but he he you know i was gonna say like you expect more from a ceo but i expect more from a president and it's all out the window so uh so who cares basically anything goes is what i'm learning from this and you can be anyone or do it yeah we were able to track down uh zuckerberg for a quote uh here's shall we play that's zuckerberg there you go and his comment uh so my shout out goes to uh linkedin going full tiktok if you follow linkedin i know everyone on the show listens does so linkedin has done its best facebook impression for about 20 years they kind of dipped into Snapchat world for a while when they had stories, then they got rid of the stories.

18:05They had stories. I didn't even know that. Yeah. They had like the little stories that you see on Facebook, like the little circles with the person you could go. Now it's just video and you like scroll through the video, but here's, here's, here's what they're doing now. So TikTok made the for you Eric section popular, right? Which, which was great because it meant you don't have to have followers. You just have to have good content and we'll serve your shit up to, people on the platform. So the one, the one holdout for LinkedIn was you got to have a network. You got to have the thousands of people that are following you to get any kind of traction.

18:41Well, to hell with that. Uh, they're testing apparently in the wild. Some, some people saw reporters saw that they're having the for you page default to with another tab of your network, which you can tap into. So personally for me, 20 years of building a network, thousands and thousands of people like i this sucks i'm not happy about it but i guess if for the young well yeah because i built this a really nice network a really nice network and it means nothing now i don't think that's true at all i think your network means the world i think there's a very huge difference between not for my feed not for my funny shit you can just go from for you to network no one does that no one's gonna do that how many times how how often on tiktok do you leave for you and go to the people I follow?

19:29I actually do not use TikTok other than to post on TikTok. All right. All right. Higher than now. What is your social media choice? Is it reels? Instagram. Yeah. Reels. But I also try not to consume too much there because I'm trying to like put stuff out, you know? So, but I get it. Like I'm not, I'm not holier than thouing. I'm just like, I have limited time at this point. Like if I am going to put something out in the world, I can't be sitting there scrolling without numbers in front of me or any day i feel very confident that very few people go to like who i'm following but it's all like just just feed me the content just give me what i want and now it's going to be just feed me the content linkedin and you know i i'm of two minds about this because on one hand i'm like hey they probably know me better than i know myself and they're going to serve me up stuff that i really want but that's the same slippery slope that gets us into data issues and surveillance, math surveillance.

20:23So, but I personally, as someone who creates content, I'm kind of happy that there's more distribution based on like interests, right? Because there's a possibility that someone will discover me who otherwise might not have. So I like that part. But I will say that the network aspect for me and where LinkedIn will always have utility and function and be super valuable is the fact that you can go see who you know and where they work like that's number one right so if i want to go and dive into that i just hit the network button so that's i guess if you want to kiss ass on people who can pay you or give you a job like you will go to the network because that's directly who that would be smart if you yeah i mean if that's the move that's what we're going for if they can start serving up if they can start serving up a praying mantis versus a scorpion then i'm all in i'm all in it'll get there by the way i was hoping to use this as an opportunity to tell everybody to go follow chad and cheese on linkedin do it but who knows what the hell is going to happen with like company pages and organizational pages oh i hadn't thought about that so yeah so well then just follow you and you and chad and you know jt and emmy and me it's it's a triple threat it's chad and she and me and you can get the company page too that's true that's true our newsletter is up to like 3 000 readers i'm proud of that let's go all right let's go to events events where are we going boys all right so chad is uh not on this week he's in dallas uh for the sia conference he's doing some cheesy shark tank competition that sounds so fun i want to do that someday dallas or the shark tank competition definitely the shark tank competition dallas not so much no it's fine all right then uh next week we're headed to amsterdam very cool the uh e-recruitment conference gonna hang out with levin and uh steven mcgrath say hi for me all the other europeans drinking belgian beer and uh eating eating very good food that's not uh it's not loaded with preservatives and all the shit in america my poop looks much better when i'm in europe well that was tmi yeah tmi i know and then then we come back and go to vegas we do a total one 180 on uh on europe head to vegas by the way amsterdam or not amsterdam nashville is more vegas than vegas now i feel comfortable saying that nashville vegas now is good food shows yeah business stuff vega or nashville is get drunk make bad choices and not really know what time it is anymore Like you could be at bars and next thing you're karaokeing and it's 2am.

23:06And how did that happen? Oh my gosh. Yeah. 100%. Anyway, by the way, our Travelers guys. Sponsored by our friends at Shaker Recruitment Marketing. That's such a cool shirt. This is one of the better shirts that I saw. A marketing agency should have good shirts. Am I right? They should have good shirts. They had a great booth for us to all sit in last week. That was really fun. That's right, guys. Okay. I want to do more last shows. going that's the end of our travels for this year it's a lot uh vegas by the way will be at the workday uh frontline workers thing paradox uh that'll be fun for a day of that um what else we got here we got fantasy football though oh i know you're a huge fan of the fantasy and the football but not necessarily the fantasy football uh week three is in the books gang uh number one let's go from first to worst we got Jarrett Joel's Joel Dersma I asked everyone how to pronounce their name so this is good Joel Jarrett Joel Dersma uh Dejan Amare Nicholas Tychek then we got easy ones Nick Livingston Scott Clark Bosco Vujatovic me at number seven uh Mackenzie Maitland Molly Sly Chad in the 10 spot he's just begging to be at the bottom Then we have Ben Kuntz and we have Desiree Goldie in the caboose position.

24:32Big thanks to our friends at Factory Fix for making our unhealthy obsession with football possible. Have fun. Let's get to Topics. Topics! That's right, folks. You waited 24 minutes until we get to the actual meat of the show. Listen to us. Here we go. Mo, U.S. job openings fell to 7.08 million in August as layoffs eased and the labor market stayed sturdy. But conference board consumer confidence plunged to 81.9, its lowest level since 2014, as Americans grew gloomier about prices, personal finances, and jobs amid the Iran war, energy costs, and higher inflation expectations. Keeping up with the positive news intertwined with the negative stories, frankly, Mo, is getting pretty exhausting and even more confusing as the months go by.

25:29What do you make of all this economic yo-yoing, Mo? I think it's gaslighting, just plain and simple. It's a lot of gaslighting. I think there is a lot that's not being discussed that's right beneath the surface. It's like, you know, the unemployment rate sounds pretty good, right? They say like older people are employed at a high rate. They just gave up, guys. They're dejected. They walked away. And if you haven't applied for a job in the past four weeks, you're not even included in any of these figures whatsoever. And these things are tracked. It's just they're not necessarily the ones publicized.

26:03So the government is going to push the better sounding number, period. End of story. So like the U6 is the one that's going to actually capture people who are underemployed and who have quit, you know, searching for a while, who are dejected, or people, who have a couple of part-time jobs, but can't find the full-time job. But that doesn't sound great. So it's just, it's not going to be pushed. So I think it's infuriating. I talked to a lot of people who are in utter job search hell these days and to have them continually see these different headlines saying everything's great. It's just like, come on, man.

26:41We know what's happening here so it's really it's frustrating i saw another statistic recently it was a headline i think it was gizmodo it was like 71 of americans have like had it it's like dude that does not happen when everything's all hunky-dory like that's just you know this this consumer sort of confidence number and the way people are feeling is is for a reason and so i'm enough enough with this gaslighting is what I think. Yeah. Um, I think it really starts with trust. I think there's a real problem with the government numbers. Um, we all know like Trump has been strong arming that, you know, uh, offices of, of everything.

27:21Um, he wants good numbers. Who's to say that he's not sort of analyze or, you know, sort of pushing for different things. Uh, a recent poll, uh, showed that 46 % of Americans now distrust the economic data that's coming out of Washington. Kevin Wheeler, who, by the way, if you're not subscribed to Kevin Wheeler's Substack, you really should. He's just churned out some really good stuff. But he had a post earlier this month where he said, quote, when I talk with recruiters and even more importantly, the job seekers and recent graduates, I hear a very different story. This was following a good labor report.

28:01Hiring is slow. Finding a job is difficult. And many companies are reluctant to add headcount. So as far as Kevin Wheeler's concerned, he's not falling for the banana tailpipe. Now, I do think that there are some strong sides that's keeping a little bit of it afloat. Like health care jobs are saving everybody. How many vendors at Iraq Fest are like, oh, we're really focused on the health care sector. Right, you don't say. That's who's hiring. That's who's spending money because baby boomers are getting sick and we need to take care of them. The other side, I think, is construction, whether it's data centers or whatever.

28:43My wife works at Indiana, and they're building new facilities. And she had a discussion with the construction guy. and he said everyone is leaving him to go build data centers because they're paying so much for those jobs that they're pulling out a lot of construction workers. Also, there's not enough construction workers, so they're all getting sucked out by data centers. So there are parts that are strong. Obviously, AI continues to be strong. Also, I don't know if you heard, but Burger King has new nuggets now. I have not, but of course you have. Everyone's flocking to BKA for nuggets, So I'm sure that they're in a hiring spree as well.

29:22That's so funny. But there are three primary things that I've identified that are really sort of driving this whole narrative. Number one is the inflation trap. People still have jobs, but thanks to inflation, their money doesn't go as far. Nope. So I might have a job, but I can't buy the shit that I used to. I can't take my family on the trips that I used to or whatever it is. So yes, employment is low, but I don't feel so good about it because I'm not keeping up with inflation. The number two is the low fire or like low hire, low fire is real. But I don't think we talk enough about how that affects people.

30:04If I have a job, maybe I like it, maybe I don't. But I'm really scared to leave because I probably won't get a different job. I have so I have no there's no hope. I don't get paid enough to keep up with inflation, but I can't leave because I probably won't find another job. And in some cases, well, I've I watch Mo on on TikTok. You're on TikTok content wise, if you're not watching. Yes, I see Mo on TikTok. She's telling me once I get to like 32, I'm too old for the job market. So I have no I have no mobility. I can't go to like another city where like things are hopping. So I feel like if I quit, I'm screwed.

30:46That's incredibly detrimental to people's psyche. And then from a macro perspective, like, okay, we're at war again. We're in a terror fight with Canada. What? Social media, my whole feed is like how bad it is. It just feeds my already negative biases maybe. So you have inflation. You have low hire, low fire keeping me stuck. And then you have sort of these geopolitical issues that I think is driving so much of the unhappiness in the country. Absolutely. It's really it's heartbreaking. But I think I mean, I'd rather hear the truth. Right. And have people share what's actually happening than hear this BS PR stuff.

31:33Right. Yeah, I do think it will change. I do think that there will be silver linings out of this. I think there are going to be so many brand new businesses. Say more about this silver lining because I think our listeners. If the world continues to exist, which is a big conditional statement at this point. I forgot it was going to kill us all. If we don't all die, we will see a lot of these people who are laid off or get squeezed out of the job market who will necessarily have to go start something on their own. So we'll see a ton of new solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, creators, people that will be, you know, of all ages, frankly, because they they got to make a buck.

32:10Right. Like you got to do what you got to do. And we we don't live in a society where you can just be taken care of if you don't do something. Right. So you will see a lot of these new initiatives take flight. And I think that that's really hopeful and exciting. Hopefully they will be made in a new model that is better and less exploitative than some of those that exist now. But I'm hopeful on that front because you will have so many people who are swinging it, going out on their own for the first time. And hopefully that will create a brand new sort of offering and economy in and of itself. But I recognize also that a lot of that is sold to us as like hopium.

32:46Right. And it's like, oh, be your own boss, like, you know, contractors, you know. And and so I say all that, you know, two things can be true at once. Right. So I cannot just sit here and be so depressed about what's going on in the world because that does no good to anyone. And so I'm choosing to also focus on that fact that there will be a lot of new good coming out of this situation and things, the pendulum always swings. So I have hope that employers will be on much better behavior once it's less of an employer centric market. I think, you know, candidates will be able to call more of the shots.

33:19I think it just needs to come back more to the center right now. It's just insane. you know uh lost in all this you know go start a company go go hustle and do your own thing don't quit your day job though people forget you know what i don't know the exact number it's like 80 of small businesses fail in the first year and like 95 yeah in this second so just because you're telling people to go start a new business doesn't mean they're all going to be successful in fact most aren't which will start a whole new wave of depression and you know downtrodden I was trying to keep the vibes high, Joel, and you brought me right back down.

33:52But I will never do the grift of like, just start your own business. Starting your own business is really freaking hard. It is hard. And as more people do that, it becomes harder because more and more people, like there's more influencers and more like the more there are, the harder it is. You're bringing me back down, Joel. Which is why my only fans hustle never quite took off because there's too much competition. Too much competition. In that space. in that space all right i appreciate there's also a spike in uh franchisees apparently the kids are starting subway subway stops and uh i don't know portillo's uh franchisees i don't know i don't know so you're saying there's a chance 60 of the time we have to we have to keep that up right otherwise it's just too bleak yes keep it keep it optimistic mo uh let's take a quick break take a breath uh we come back that was a lot till then make sure guys make sure you're following us on your social media or your sorry i guess social media we're there too uh wherever you follow us make sure you subscribe and leave a review i want to get to 100 reviews by the end of the year we're like 10 away so whether it's good or bad just go to go to apple go to whatever leave us leave us for you guys we'll be right back mo i'm taking your silver lining and I'm flushing it.

35:10I got more more malaise for you. Gallup this week finds that 27 percent of U.S. workers now fear technology could make their jobs obsolete. That's up seven points over last year. And the highest is among those 18 to 44. while Indeed reports 46 % of job seekers now abandon applications because, shocker, the application process is too tedious with Gen Z and millennials most likely to drop off. They have no attention spans whatsoever. So, Mo, let's get in. We talked about the macro with the economy. Let's get into some of the micro. Talk about the pain the job seekers are enduring right now. I mean, some of these statistics out there are like something insane in terms of how many jobs out there are ghost jobs or harvesting your data, right?

36:04That sort of stuff. So I can see the friction that people are facing when they're in the job search process and they go to an application and they're asked to regurgitate something that they already uploaded in their resume or do anything that's kind of over the top because it's like, dude, is this even real? Like, what is this for? Right. And so, like you said earlier, you know, trust is just at an all time low. So I can see absolutely why people are like abandoned cart to that application. There's a sense that, you know, people are, you know, not even going to have any sort of real shot at these jobs.

36:36And, you know, it keeps getting bored out. It's always been the case that if you have some sort of warm introduction, some sort of referral, like you are much more likely to end up in a job versus like an application into the void online. So, yeah, I get it. And millennials and Gen Z are also like, dude, like, even if I get a job, which, which seems like a far shot at this point, uh, will they just let me go in a heartbeat afterwards? Like people have seen the system and what it's doing. So I can understand why you get to a certain point in this application process. And if it's too onerous or laborious, or it feels exploitative, people are just like, nah, I'm gone.

37:14So I get that. I do get it. Um, I hope it also means that people are just being more intentional with what they're applying to and how they're going about the job search process. Because like I said, it really is so critical more now than ever, especially for, I mean, poor Gen Z who doesn't have the connections that are going to come naturally with time, right? And the experience that comes with time as well, like they're kind of grasping at straws when it comes to getting their foot in the door. So I hope that the abandoning of these sorts of applications and whatnot indicates that they are, you know, going in real life and trying to make these connections with people and, you know, finding other methods by which they can get their foot in the door with these organizations because it's just grim.

37:53It's grim out there. Well, fortunately for the kids now, they have the for you section default on LinkedIn, so they don't need a network to get noticed. They can just provide funny content. Not everybody wants to be a content creator, man. Like, trust me, there are many days when I'm like, what the hell am I doing? You're going to have to if you want a job, you're going to have to cut through the clutter. you're going to have to entertain be insightful i mean look it's like a billboard it's not that you had a post on wherever i saw it was you and it was just numbers oh it was like it was like how employees view you know 28 it was like 18 no thumbs down you're too young yeah and then it was like that magical window of i don't know what 24 to 34 or whatever it was and then it like got really bad after that um and this is so you gotta you gotta do shit like that you gotta like just copy your favorite uh influencer and and do your own version of that i don't know that that's the job search advice that i would give people but you know pay to each their own everybody's just screwed you can look at every demographic i guess the boomers are just the boomers are still running everything and own everything uh even though they're not too old to be doing it they figured out it's everyone else that's too old to do it so so there's they seem to be like the only happy ones the problem with gen x gen x now is oh shit we're too old okay well we're screwed again we've been screwed our whole lives what's what's one more decade um and and you at least have us knowing what it was how it was worse yeah you used to apply to a job there was no ai it was like an email or a letter or you applied and heard nothing like just just the black hole we don't hear about the black hole much anymore it's all about the ghosting and which is kind of the same thing but so i think when you look at millennials and and z's being the most unhappy because xers do remember when nothing happened when you apply to a job now you got people applying to thousands of jobs automatically and not hearing anything and not even knowing if a person is actually going to see it.

39:59Yeah. Right. And so it's a total mess. Like jobs get posted. Companies get hundreds of ideal candidates that aren't real. They're all automated. And then they turn the job off. Right. So real human beings don't even get a chance to apply because all the bots applied immediately after it was posted. So crazy. So then companies go, oh, these aren't real people. Like, how do we like, what are we doing? How do we find real people? Yeah. How do we find real people? And then, um so then more ai gets implemented to fight the bots yeah ai is always the answer to all this the the real carbon-based life forms that are playing by the rules just get screwed and then they're forced to go into this shitty ats you know that hasn't been updated in 20 years and now it's like the gen xers are still willing to go through the process because we've had it hard our whole lives But if you haven't, it's like, this is bullshit, man.

40:55I'm used to like the easy button. I'm used to buy now. I'm used to like Apple pay. What is this? What is this 40 minute shit about? And then, and then I have to do a new register for a new ATS every time I apply to a job. Like the whole thing is maddening. The whole thing is maddening. But you're right. There is that cultural aspect of like, we have grown up in the, you know, ease economy, right? Like everything's just so fast and simple. Like you said, the easy button, it's tough. Yeah. And I did like, I talked to probably a handful of startup founders when I was in rec fest. I, cause I asked, I would say all of them, maybe one did not, all of them said like they have been able to slash head count by 50%.

41:38Damn. Like actually slash head count. They're like, they're like the AI thing's real. They're like, I I've been able to cut half my staff and not miss a beat. Really? With their customers agree is my question. with not missing a beat yeah because i feel like it's a race to the bottom with the services just getting weaker and weaker for a lot of these these providers so so here's another one this is this is why you listen to the chad and cheese show so i was listening i was talking to um an insider uh that will remain anonymous but one of the things that's going on is so before companies got paid per click.

42:15Right. And you had click fraud, which was a thing. So if, if my, if indeed have jobs on, you know, Joey Bagadona's job board, like if it started getting like a million clicks, it could say like, Whoa, wait a minute. Your site only has a thousand visitors. How are you getting like a million? So there was some level of, of like click fraud. I'm sure. So there was some abuse for sure. But now because everything is like pay per applicant, they're paying like for nurses and high level shit, like a hundred,$150 per applicant. Okay. So my understanding is there's a ton of fraud going on right now where AI is applying to these, like, here's what's happening.

43:01I'm, I'm job board X. I get one nurse applicant. Okay. And then what I do is I take that one nurse applicant and I AI that profile and I apply all over the place to every healthcare system on the planet. Right. So I just made, let's call it$100 per applicant on that one person. So basically this hoarding of people and then like spamming all the job boards. And then of course the companies the companies are the ones paying 100 150 bucks or whatever per applicant so it's just this it's just this horrible ecosystem yeah that apparently is going on allegedly mo allegedly i think we're gonna need to tell people before they tune into this episode that they need to pop an antidepressant dude whoa this is this is grim well maybe we can turn around with madonna and let's go let's sex it up here we go all right all right mo let's play let's play some hood you rather uh guys if you don't if you don't know the rules of who'd you rather what we do is we talk about two companies startups that got money this week and uh i read a summary of both and mo and i both decide who we'd rather who we'd rather are you ready to play mo i'm ready to play.

44:20Lay it on me. All right. In one corner, we have Spot with two Ts. Spot raised a 21 million Series A led by Balderton Capital and Base 10, Y Combinator and Fortino to scale its AI native ATS and CRM for recruitment agencies. The 2024 startup unifies sourcing outreach and candidate data while keeping humans in control. They're expanding to New York and Sydney. That is spot. Sexy. Sydney and New York. And in this corner, Hiring Cafe, a San Francisco agentic job discovery startup. Stop me if you've heard this one before. Has raised$6.8 million in pre-seed funding led by Spark Capital with ZipRecruiter and Indeed.com angels participating.

45:12it's ai indexes company career pages matches resumes to live roles filters ghost jobs and lets users run 24 7 talent search agents for free mo that is at oh that's the wrong that's the wrong sound sorry guys let's try this again there we go we got ats crm ai oh my spot versus hiring cafe who would you rather I'm going to go hiring cafe. I want those ghost jobs out of there. I love, I love, you know, you got some big players in there as angels. You got indeed. You got, what was the other one? A zip recruiter, right? Like these are legit players in the space. They know what's up. And, uh, yeah, I don't know.

45:58It has cafe in the title. I like food. That's good. Um, but yeah, I think, I think that I'd go that direction personally. Okay. Yeah. That was all pro cafe stuff. Do you have any negative spots or just want to like, be totally one-sided. I feel like I'm going to be totally one-sided on this one. I just, no. The other one sounds lovely too. I'm just saying if I had to choose, I mean, I'd love both, but if I had to choose, I'd go with the established players in Indeed and Zip Recruiter putting their hat in the ring with this guy on High-Ring Cafe. And like I said, because they're helping match job seekers to openings, we just talked all about why that's so critical.

46:37And that's what I hear constantly. So I'm going with that. mo's at the cafe hanging out all right hiring cafe reminds me of cafe press oh which is where you can buy like shitty uh merch like custom yeah yeah so is this shitty well iron cafe works for you for me it's it's all automatic it's like uh it's off to a bad start it's a no just because of the name the cafe yeah now you're from seattle so cafe automatically uh sounds great sounds So we have two disruptors. One is looking to unseat Bullhorn, which focuses primarily on agencies. And the other one is looking to disrupt Indeed and LinkedIn.

47:25So Spot has$21 million so far to do that. And Hiring Cafe has$7 million. There's a disparity there. Does anyone listening think$21 million is going to do a damn thing to Indeed's market share? Job case for historical purposes had$100 million and couldn't make much of a debt. Couldn't do it. So there you are. So, oh, wait. Oh, but they have an agent. They have an agent, Moe. Everybody's got an agent. Which is really hot. So I want to show you something. This is a picture of Perplexity, who we all know. You mentioned Muse. Grok has something similar. everyone oh a open ai has dots did you see dots the dots announcement so dots dots is their new uh muse i guess oh my gosh whatever is it a cute little fuzzy thing like muse uh no it's not an actual keychain thingy okay but site funny side note uh elon owns dot.com so if you if you search dots or dot.com it goes to grok which is kind of entertaining but anyway so this so this is uh this is a picture of perplexity and you basically put in your LinkedIn profile URL and perplexity's bot starts to go to work.

48:44It looks at job boards, it tailors your resume, it basically does all that stuff for you. So the agent that Hiring Cafe has, do you think it's going to be better than what perplexity and meta and open AI create? I would sure hope so. You would hope so. See, everyone else is on this other side of the ledger. Everyone thinks like Jack and Jill and now Hiring Cafe is going to produce a better bot or better agent to search for jobs than all these big guys with data centers and billions of dollars. I say no. But anyway, so now hiring cafe has seven million dollars to take on not only indeed now they're going to take on perplexity muse uh anthropic etc so you see you see where i'm you see where i'm going i see where you're going i'm going i'm going on the other i'm going to the other other side of the ledger here uh so we could agree to so so basically spot spot is ollie versus patty the baddie okay it's a it's a tough fight but it you know it okay it's gonna last a few rounds hiring cafe on the other hand is like godzilla versus peewee herman i mean it's just gonna be it's just gonna be it's just it's gonna be brutal it's gonna be brutal so for that reason for that reason yeah i'm going what are you doing step bro i'd rather spot i'd rather spot I'd rather spot.

50:14I'd rather spot. Just make sure you clean up. I'll go to the cafe. You go to spot. Just make sure you clean up the wet spot when you're done. Oh, I don't know what that means, but I don't think I like it at all. All right. Let's take a break. We'll put this show out of its misery with some talk about Madonna and ageism. Well, Moher, like a virgin days are long gone. Madonna's 2026 VMA's comeback drew ageist attacks on her looks and sexuality at the ripe old age of 68. Critics called her too sexual and too intent on seeming young. The View, one of your favorite shows, I know, Mo, co-hosts blasted the double standard, saying women are shamed whether they age boldly or gracefully, and that living well at that age is a blessing and it shouldn't be a target.

51:06Not all women agreed, however, Mo. Here are, here's the podcast, Chicks in the Office, with their take on the whole Madonna issue. Don't know these chicks. Here's the thing. Madonna is an icon legend. She's all the things. Now when she goes on stage, she's not singing. Didn't really seem to know what was going on. There was a lot of rambling, perhaps a little bit of rehearsal for when you're going up there and you know you're you're gonna win the award because she does all love and respect to madonna she's madonna but like felt really out of place it felt like it didn't even make sense like artist of the year like i understand she put an album out but like even when she went with sabrina she it was fairly awkward her yeah she was like hey i i reached out to sabrina didn't hear back from her i was like okay shady queen like why are you shading sabrina right now like accepting the award for the both of you guys and sabrina was like um i swear my team responds.

51:58Yeah. So awkward. I don't know how they decided that it was going to be like the big Madonna night because it would have been literally anybody else with the music. Yeah. Get her off the stage. All right, Mo. Ageism is your account. Give us your take on the Madonna controversy. I mean, women just we never can win. That's the deal. There's no way, Especially when it comes to other women. No way to win. People just lay into you, no matter what you do. And to your point, I think sometimes women can be our own worst critics. But with this, I frankly had no idea. Madonna launched another album this year.

52:44So my bad. But I think it's sick. She's still out there doing her thing. As far as how she looks doing it, I kind of think that's her choice, right? And I think people are unduly harsh on women, especially over, frankly, like 35 on how they look. But you're damned if you do. You're damned if you don't. People would call her an old hag if she got up there and were gracefully aging or whatever the hell they want to say. And then calling her too sexy. I don't know. Don't men in their 70s and beyond have kids and stuff? How is she too sexy? It's just like, come on, people. Let's chill. But I more can't get over what I just heard about the awkward interaction on stage with this up-and-coming star in Sabrina Carpenter.

53:30Who I don't know, by the way. Oh, she's... I mean, I'm actually a little bit surprised that you don't know her because you do have kids. But anyway, she's a big pop star. And I can't imagine the uncomfortable scene of your people didn't get back to me. Like, that's horrible. Yeah. Absolutely horrible. um but yeah we should never throw one another under the bus uh regardless of generation what can we learn from like in from the workplace perspective like that was was this a win for older workers particularly women is will it change nothing because my take was you had the women on the view are mature yeah i don't watch the view but they're but they're older yeah they're they're they're seasoned they're seasoned if you will and then and then like the the chicks in the office podcast obviously a younger younger a younger demographic so so i'm as a woman did that surprise you that the younger women sort of went after her and then of course and then she was defended but i didn't i wasn't surprised by the defense by the older like whoopi goldberg is going to defend madonna but the younger ladies did that surprise you uh Were you like, shame on you guys?

54:46What was your take on that? I mean, to me, I think what they were saying was kind of fair. Like I would probably not have assumed that Madonna would win album of the year based on the fact that I didn't even know there was one. Granted, I'm not like totally finger on the pulse of like everything that's happening in the music world, but I would bet she wasn't like top of the charts. And if she was, well, then that shirt, that was ageist and shitty of them. But if it were just like more of like, let's recognize someone who's been a legend for forever then maybe that's something different than album of the year right but i didn't necessarily think what they were saying was ages because i think what they were pointing out was like the incredible awkwardness of these folks being next to each other on the stage and not having a unified front like that seemed a little weird like it was it was more like she's she's out of touch um well that would be kind of i mean perhaps that's more what they were implying but i i maybe i was just so hung up on the concept of like how incredibly uncomfortable it would be to be on stage and have be like well your people didn't get back to me like what like oh my god don't talk about that right now you know um i think but you know it's a fair point if this wasn't like number one album like what are they doing make her the legend right like have the right award you know um i don't know i wasn't necessarily catching like the vibe they were saying that she wasn't singing and stuff but they do that for like young people too right like people get on stage and like not sing and i think that's always weird so yeah i couldn't quite tell i do think that you don't know what it feels like until you're older and so i suspect that were they in the position that like whoopi goldberg and the people on the viewer they might be like slightly less damning of madonna right um but yeah i think it's tough part of me says you know what the 1983 madonna is looking at the 2026 and like and saying yep i'm they're still talking about me like i'm i'm doing the things that get attention and but and i'm old enough to remember madonna's first appearance on the vmas like when dan akroyd and eddie murphy were doing the and she was in the she was in the wedding outfit oh wow and she was on something she was rolling around the stage like her panties were it was very very uh it's very out there for 1984 whatever it was and then she had a sex book in 92 you're probably even too young to remember this but she had a book she had a book called sex and it was her like in bondage and she was naked on the side of the road literally no idea you can still find this book i'm sure i can go pick up a copy so so her her brand has always sort of been sexualized show skin get people talking piss people off you know divide and get attention it's worked for her so part of me is just like she's just doing what she does she's just 68 absolutely and i mean rock so i think she's happy with all of it i don't think yeah i think she's the old the old women are talking about it great the young girls are still talking about me like Like as long as I'm relevant, like who gives a shit?

57:50I mean, and as far as like her appearance, I don't know. There's part of me that's like, dude, when I'm 68, well, I'd be just like so excited. Just like hang it up and not get a shit anymore. My whole thing is I'm watching the performance is like, she's going to break a hip, man. I can barely walk up the stairs without my knee sounding like a bag of peanuts cracking. You know, I love the representation. You got people doing all sorts of different stuff in their sixties now. And hey, one of them's being a fucking rock star. So that's like, no, no one would look at Paul McCartney. who's a lot older than madonna actually and say like oh he's too old to be be doing that i think i think because she's i think she got what she wanted i i think she knew if i put on a one piece and some fishnet stockings and laser out of my ass there was a lot of stuff we didn't show in that yeah i'm like i didn't see this so i feel like i'm kind of coming at this a little bit she will sell more tickets and more streams and whatever else because of that interesting side note because uh because we're we're we haven't we haven't done history lesson yet so does the band jefferson airplane mean anything to you yes okay maybe jefferson starship uh depending on how old you are so grace slick is the singer are they from seattle i guess san francisco anyway so grace slick in 1989 famously said that all rock and rollers over the age of 50 look stupid and should retire out and when she said that i remember when she's i was a teenager when she said i was like yes that's awesome you are too old to be rocking that's so so now that i'm now that i'm like you don't think 50 is old anymore right like that's the funny thing about getting older is you start it's that like gate keeps going up that that boundary keeps i appreciated her sentiment of like you know what let the young kid rock and roll is rebellious let the young kids do it we're all like rich and happy but we do all like but if you've like how mc jagger still goes out there with kung fu kicks and the that he does is pretty is he's gonna hurt and to your point he does not get for it does he or maybe he does i don't know now if madonna had come out in a pantsuit or something professional and professional in air quotes but if she had if she had come out in a more traditional 68 year old woman attire would we be talking about this she'd also get arrested for that probably like what happened to her she's let herself go you know it's like she would not have made it on this podcast if she had been wearing a pantsuit because she's in the fishnets because the lasers up her ass we're talking about her man i i did not see this performance.

1:00:32Well, you have some homework to do. And while you're, while you're thinking about that, let me give you a dad joke. Oh yeah. Give it to me. There we go. But what do you get when you cross an angry cow and a mad sheep? What do you get when you cross an angry cow with a mad sheep? You know, I like to think of myself as fairly clever. I can never come up with them. An animal in a really, really bad mood. Okay, there you go. That one I could never have done. Well done. Out. Thank you for listening to, what's it called? A podcast. The Chad. The Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology.

1:01:22But most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shout-outs of people you don't even know, and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one. Cheddar. Blue. Nacho. Pepper Jack. Swiss. So many cheeses, and not one word. So weird. Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. So weird. We out.