Metaview Raises, LinkedIn Hunts, & HCA Gambles on Palantir

0:00You didn't win, but you might win.

0:02Joel Cheesman: Not like bringing that up. Everybody's a winner. Show it to all the losers, baby. Well done. I mean, being Scottish, you're kind of used to that. Yeah, yeah. Wait, whoa. We're going to have to stop filming while I fight a cheese. There's a lot of windows around here. It's a long way down. Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Soash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, rash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast.

0:44Oh, yeah. Straight out of the red light district, this is the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel. No weirdos and no beardos Cheeseman.

0:54Joel Cheesman: As Chad, the Mexican sun hits much different. So watch. I'm leaving the Red Hat District. I like that. I'm Stephen. Would I get bound in here for wearing meta-glasses? McGrath. Stephen McGrath is in the house. And on this week's episode of HR's Most Dangerous Podcast, LinkedIn bans, MetaView raises, and we're live from the e-recruitment conference in Amsterdam. Let's do this. What's up, guys? Guys, now when you say the sun hits differently, I'm guessing you're saying S-U-N and not S-O-N. Yes. You don't have a bunch of illegitimate children in Mexico. No comment. Yeah, no. Because you did a tour in South America, so who knows?

1:37I did.

1:37Joel Cheesman: Thanks for reminding me. But going back to that in a different way. No, I just went to Cabo for my buddy's wedding, Chris and Marin. Yes. Congratulations, guys. Congratulations. um yeah but it's funny because i'll be in portugal out on the beach i don't have to worry about yeah getting burnt i just don't you go to fucking mexico you're that close to to the equator i mean much closer let's just say that yeah i got burnt i haven't gotten burnt in a long time i walked for that train station to here and i'm this red it's a 20 but it won't it would have been yes there would have been combustion happening there yeah but uh yeah the sun hits a little a little different that's cool then went to dallas stayed inside the entire time sia thanks for having me guys uh but yeah good times and now you're here and then you go back we'll cover this in travel but you're you're far from done i am we are yeah well we'll hit that travel how did how did we wait this long to get steven on the show which actually happened by accident so the listeners out there we actually did a show and dry run they screwed up the recording dry run so we're doing the show again but we were meeting with steven and and see i mean the podcast god said steven needs to be on the show technically it's only my first time with you i have been on the show with leaving and chad before in the europe show yeah so i don't listen yeah i was going to say good to see that you're good You're doing politics in my first time.

3:14We have people. Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Fall Vacation. Yeah, we're going to see a lot less of Chad in the next few months. Don't worry. Don't worry about that. Well, I'll be gentle because you're my first time.

3:26Joel Cheesman: I think he actually paid Steven to give him some time so he could get on. Yeah. Who paid Steven? It was conspiracy theory. He dressed up for the show. I did. If you're not watching on YouTube, you're missing out. I was going to wear a kelp, but the camera's right there. And, you know, we don't want anything. I just love you go real dark to show off the whiteness. It's because if I'm walking about in the nighttime, I need to find my way home. You're glowing. If you're listening, if you remember Mike Tyson in the 80s coming onto the ring, that's kind of what Stephen's talking about. Except Stephen's complexion's a little different.

4:02I did actually go, what? I have heard him say he could take Tyson in a few scotch notes. Nice. What's up, Levin? Is something up? Are you overwhelmed? Where are we? Where are we? Think about. This is your time to shine. Let's talk about the Congress. Think about it. Congress, we've been working on this for over two years. And now we're here. I know. And you're here. Yeah. Don't be so humble. You've been working on this for two years. You make all this happen.

4:29Joel Cheesman: All by myself. Yep. I have to say that I think most events are missing kind of like a trick because I really miss this event? Probably because it takes two years. So the scarcity, I'm like, oh, when can we get back there? So what can we expect? You guys always throw some curveballs. You guys always get innovative. I think one year we had digital leave-in on the screen, talking to your boss. Remember that. So can we expect anything new and interesting? That's right. Two years ago, we had an avant-premiere of my avatar, which was linked to chat GPT and I was like answering everything. I already forgot about it.

5:09That's cool. I knew the answer to everything. This year we're going to be talking about of course AI, but also about physical AI. So we, the first robots have just arrived.

5:18Joel Cheesman: We saw them. Yeah. We were going to have all that. His name is Joel. So we'll be having some humanized robots. He's the smartest of the robots and the sexiest. And these robots will actually be working at the Congress doing whatever they can I think handing out gift bags or carrying boxes to wherever the boxes need to be carried to. They won't be podcasting. They won't be podcasting. They won't be DJing. Kibu's not here this year. No, no, no. You got to bring that up. Kibu was cool. I'm still a big fan of Kibu. His car's still broken down on whatever highway. His van down by the river. State Road 22.

5:57People have no clue what you're talking about but it was fun. That's okay. We got an American audience. This guy's speaking, right? What's your discussion? I'm going to be talking about how AI agents might be ready, but your recruitment process probably isn't. That's a very good point. Shit in, shit out, basically is what the gist of it is. We call that dirty data here on the show. Or Teesman's weekend after Taco Bell. Or my night in the red light districts. Yeah, so just talking about how people actually need to be ready for that. It's all good and well, these things, getting distracted by all the shiny lights out there.

6:36But actually, it used to be the same if you switched ATS back in the 2000s. You'd be like, oh, I've got to bring a million people over. But actually, 900 ,000 of them were dead or retired, and you should probably clean that data. So people doing that with anything as part of the process causes a bit of trouble down the line. So we'll talk about that. So do you come to Amsterdam much? Do you have a funny Amsterdam story? I've never been to Amsterdam. Was there a war back in the 1200s? You've never been to Amsterdam. This is your first time? This is my first time. You weren't here last time. I know you were in Austin.

7:06No, you didn't invite me last time, but thanks very much for bringing that up. I'm sure I'm going to tell you everything. We'll take him to the district tomorrow. But you've been speaking at a conference four years ago then. Yeah, four years ago. In Austin, right. Yeah, that was the last one for me. Now, have you been to Glasgow? I've been to Edinburgh. Which is almost the same.

7:29Joel Cheesman: I've never met two cities, two cities, an hour away from each other. This is a weird thing about Europe. Everyone thinks Europe, I think in America, like you guys are just going to every country every weekend. And it's not true. No. No, of course not. No, I mean, you're an hour flight away from one of the iconic cities in Europe. I mean, I've lived in Bolivia and stuff. So I think the difference is that I've done those things rather than they come. Stay close. I've hit a lot of the kind of highlights of... It's like me saying I've never been to St. Louis. Yeah. It's just weird. I know. It's kind of weird.

8:02You've never been to St. Louis? No, I have. Most Americans haven't been to St. Louis, right? But if they're within an hour or two, I would drive most of them. Anyway, let's do shout outs. Who are you going to like that? Shout out! There we go. That's what I love. He's on a contact high, everybody. As you know, Chad, our shout outs, sponsored by ProvenBase. because of Proven Bass, we're able to send out Chicken Cock. And you know who loves Chicken Cock? That just was a genuine reaction. Oh, I love it. Why do you have to queue him up on that one? Oh, I love Chicken Cock. So Chad and I sent out a bottle each to a lucky listener.

8:38You got to go to chadcheese.com slash free to win. And that's from our friends, Proven Bass. Proven Bass. Chad, give us a shout out.

8:47Joel Cheesman: Oh, yeah. Shout out to our friends at SIA, that's Staffing Industry. Industry. Analysts. Yeah, nice and easy. Nice and easy. Ursula, Brian, and the team did a great job in Dallas. I was able to be on one of the Shark Tanks and roundtable there. So it was a good time. Did you dress like Mr. Wonderful? Or did you do a Mark Cuban thing because you were in? No. It took me three turns of you telling stories about that at lunch to realize that you weren't actually talking about Shark Tank. The Shark Tank. Yeah, I was just kind of like, it's weird that you were on that and you never even said to me. But no, I've got the context now, so that's good.

9:24Joel Cheesman: Yeah, I wonder if there's like a trademark infringement. There probably is. That's why we're a firing squad in the Shark Tank. We didn't want to get those cease and desist. Shout out to those guys. So who won the contest? Who stood out? Company name First Work, which I thought was very interesting, was innovative. Another one that is incredibly innovative, way ahead of its time. but when tech is moving this fast, five years ahead of its time, back is now like 18 months. So not too much ahead of its time. Michael Bagelman has been in this industry for a very long time. But yeah, really, really diversified startup.

10:08I think we're related to the Bagelmans, the Cheesemans and the Bagelmans. There's some lineage there somewhere. The Cream Cheeselmans. Yeah. Cream. Cream. Anyway. Getting way out of here. I'm going to give a shout out to Gabriela Garcia. We hear a lot about automated bots applying to every job, multiple applicants, too many to control. So Gabriela is the chief people officer of a company called Warp, which no one's ever heard of. Colton may be well at some point. And she has enlisted her employees to post content onto LinkedIn, driving people back to the jobs and the company. And some of the numbers are pretty impressive for a startup.

10:49They've had 30 new hires in the last quarter, and all of them referenced LinkedIn as the reason why they applied and found out about the company. So there are plenty of tools, Chad. We know JobPixel, but there are others out there that can help you leverage your employees and video and great content on social media that people are consuming. So shout out to Gabriela. I think that's pretty good stuff. That's cool. Solutions driven. Yeah, Nikki. They literally did an incentive for employees, like a thousand pounds in cash or something. And it was like, just post more. Yeah, I forgot to mention there's a drawing every month or something.

11:25That was a direct result in people seeing their name more. And the next six months or something were all record-breaking months for them just because their people were more present and more active online, more visible. So now we just need you to vibe code something on Lovable where people can manage the posting. I think I'm already out there on my 10s, so maybe it needs to be something else for me.

11:47Joel Cheesman: Yeah, but I think the user-generated content, like we've been pushing forever for employees, not listening to the CEO, not listening to head of HR. I mean, nobody gives a shit what they have to say, but listening to actual people doing the work. And that's good stuff. I mean, it's authentic. If it doesn't sound like it's read off a 3x5 card. Yeah, so that's good stuff. And the beauty is the algo now, it's all for you. I don't have to follow somebody to get their content. So if someone's talking about Python jobs in Toledo, and I live in Toledo, there's a good chance I might see that content. There's a joke in there, Python jobs.

12:20Joel Cheesman: Python in Toledo, yeah. That was a good Friday night. Yeah. Did you have a shout-out leaving or no? No. Just the Congress. The Congress. I think it's shout-out enough. e-recruitment congress. Is there a version without the hyphen in the URL? Do you own eRecruitmentCongress.com? No. Okay. Do I need one? You should, yeah. It's easier for podcasters to promote. You don't have to say e-recruitment. We want to be very exclusive. You have to know someone to get at. Do you have a shout-out? I know we're last second. No, I don't have any. You sure? You had an award ceremony recently or something. Do you want to mention that or no?

13:01You didn't win, but you might want to.

13:03Joel Cheesman: Not like bringing that up. I'm going to win. Everybody's a winner when it's... All the losers, baby. Well done. I mean, being Scottish, you're kind of used to that. Yeah, yeah. Wait, whoa. We're going to have to stop filming while I fight cheese with. There's a lot of windows around here. It's a long way down. Yeah. Oh, our travel is sponsored by Shaker Recruitment Marketing. That's right. Go to shaker.com. Check those guys out. We are going to Vegas next for Paradox slash Workday. Frontline hiring event. That should be a blast. It looks like, I didn't think it was going to be that big. Usually they have the smaller events.

13:44Joel Cheesman: Looks like there's going to be 200 plus people. And it's going to be mainly their customers. And if we know anything that Paradox has done well over the years, it's put together these love fests where they just like to share. Love fests. It is. It's like how much they not, it's not just love paradox, but all the other companies that are there because it's like they feed off of each other with like best practices. To your point, it feels exclusive. It feels like a club event and all the other customers. It's almost like it's an invite only. Yeah. Yeah. And you leverage Workday in Vegas and hey, it's a recipe for success.

14:20Joel Cheesman: Yeah. For sure. Yeah. So we're going to that. Unfortunately, it's in Vegas and we're in Amsterdam and that's a long fucking flight. But we will be there. It's only because we love you. He does it for you people. It's only because we love you. I've never been in Vegas. Oh, Jesus. I don't think I should be alone in Vegas. You've been to Vegas. I've never been to Vegas either. I think Nashville is like the new Vegas. Nashville is more Vegas than Vegas. Vegas is more expensive food, go to a show. You can find that. Nashville is my job. Nashville is lose track of time. Almost kind of like my fantasy football team, Chad, which is kicking ass this week.

14:57Now, we're recording on a Monday for a Friday show, which means that OpenAI is going to acquire Indeed on Tuesday. So we'll miss that news. But it means that we won't have our fantasy football update. But I do want to thank Fantasy Fix or Factory Fix. Fantasy Fix. For our Factory Fix. You should have that URL as promoting. Anyway. We don't have a hyphen. No hyphen. No hyphen. No hyphens. Factory Fix, thanks for helping out and supporting our unhealthy activity fantasy football. Unhealthy activity. Stephen, what time is it? It's time for Topics. That's right, baby. But that's not the soundbite for that.

15:39No. What do you mean? It's just Topics. Is it time for Shoutouts? That's why I got confused. But it's just Topics. The Topics are... But I like it. What's the soundbite for Topics? Just Topics. Yeah. It's just Topics. Just me shouting. Topics. Topics. Let's get to Topics then. MetaView, an AI-powered agentic recruiting platform, has raised 60 million big ones in a Series C round. This brings total raise to$110 million and comes on the heels of acquiring Rebel. Clients include the likes of Deal, Affirm, and Replit. MetaView was on Firing Squad in May of 2023, where Chad gave them the guns. Chad, three years hence, do you still give them the guns or have you changed your opinion about MetaView?

16:24What's the hot take on their new raise?

16:27Joel Cheesman: Well, first and foremost, congratulations on the raise. And also, congratulations on pivoting that shitty model they were in in the first place. They were a note taker. And again, we had talked about how note takers were going to be commoditized. That's why I got the guns. One thing I do like is I like charismatic founders, CEOs, ones that are out there. The Ed Sheeran type. Yeah, yeah. Well, him specifically, yes. But he's very much very charismatic. He's out there. Didn't like the model. This is the model. There's no question. And for them to be able to turn that into literally agentic workflows, that's what's sexy and hot right now.

17:11Joel Cheesman: We saw what happened with smart recruiters. They didn't even have an MVP built. They flipped that. They have and had a great team. and started talking about agentics, started pushing Winston. I mean, all of that before it was even built, they were acquired by SAP, right? If you have the right people in place, if you can prove that your agents are working, you've got this great workflow, yeah, it makes sense. In a pivot, when you're in a startup, a lot of times it does make sense. And this time it did make sense. One thing I do want to say is to see companies like this, because I just talked to Ritu and Vonk earlier today.

17:53Joel Cheesman: They somewhat pivoted, right? They were really recruitment marketing, somewhat programmatic. And then at the end of the day, they did a huge pivot and they went directly into owning top of funnel. Yeah. And this is very agentic as well. So we're seeing companies like this either pivot or really add to what they're doing with agents. And to me, this is incredibly smart. So this is a big applause. Right now, I gave them the guns the first time. This is a big applause. Yes. And it's not only a pivot, Chad, it's an AI pivot. Yeah. So if you look at the likes of Handshake, Mercor, none of them started out doing what they do now, or at least what the moneymaker is now.

18:33They're all making money on AI and, in their case, training data. Yeah. So what this problem solves is the influx of candidates, automated applies that are killing companies right now. Oh, yeah. From their own PR, MetaView noted that applicants per recruiter has surged 412%. Jesus. So it's a big problem. And they're able to go to investors and say, look, AI is causing this issue. Yeah. We have a solution. And certainly some of the proof is in the pudding with their clients. So my only concern would be the amount of money that they've taken. I'm not sure in today's environment you need to take$110 million.

19:14But they are going to bulk up. They talked about going from 80 employees to 250 physical offices in New York, London, San Francisco. So they're going to write some checks to build this thing up, go global. And I don't foresee the issue of automated applies going away anytime soon. and if they could be one of the players or biggest players in that, I think it's a good move.

19:39Joel Cheesman: Yeah. I think Stephen has something to say there. No, I just, I think raising that much money in today's world is just as much about marketing as it is anything else. It's just the ability for you to - Spending on marketing or just saying, okay. Yeah, so you, both, sorry. The actual raise itself is a marketing play, right? You being able to say, this is a sea of people trying to do this thing and we're one of the ones that people believed in. Boom, stamp. I think MetaView nailed it Hi everybody, here's free accounts Everyone used this They got a whole bunch of TA people talking about it Before it was anything You could actually do the same thing on Teams That you could do with MetaView At that time And then it's quick pivot, raise a bit of money Quick pivot, raise a bit of money And they keep going And now we've arrived at something Several years down the line And some of the other ones that you mentioned have done that exact same thing And I think that kind of like either raise money or sell to somebody, in smart recruiter's case, is all part of the marketing.

20:38It's just as much about that than it is about financing anything because people then believe in you because somebody's believed in you enough to part with the check. So now they just need to up Eightfold's 800x800 booth at HR Tech.

20:52Joel Cheesman: Don't do it. I mean, that was so thirsty. But everyone knew who Eightfold was after that. Yeah, that was so thirsty. Everyone spoke really positively about it. They could get a lot more value out of sponsoring the chat cheese podcast yeah don't you think star review group in congress there you go so i do have one problem with this whole move is it's it's an old pe move where you get money and you automatically have to slam headcount i mean and i don't know how many founders they're idiots they're idiots pevcs they're idiots when it comes to this because we're in an age now and that's an old playbook back in the day you gave somebody money well the only way that you could grow is if you actually had headcount, right?

21:34Joel Cheesman: Now we're scaling today without headcount. And we are talking about MetaView. We're talking about a company that is a tech company. They should be scaling without headcount. So going, I mean, doubling headcount is fucking stupid. That is burn that nobody needs, right? But yet these, I mean, it just blows my mind. So I'm glad MetaView with the money, but when you get the money, you're beholden to PE and what they want you to do. So now they're going to have to slam that headcount. But again, PE playbook is out the window. This is a new fucking age, man. And then they'll reduce that headcount in two years.

22:10Joel Cheesman: Sorry, you don't have engineering in the US anymore. They're not going to know what to do with those. And even back in the day, so back in the day when Indeed and Simply Hired popped out, Indeed had maybe like, I don't know, 20 people. Simply Hired had like 100. And you'd go to Simply Hired, which was right across from Google in the valley, right yeah and you'd be looking around and you're like what does that guy do i don't know i mean i mean it was just it was for it was for nothing a lot yeah anyway old pe play playbook didn't work then in many cases sure the hell won't work i think it was stalin who said quantity is a quality all its own right something if you're if you're calling them bullet catchers yes yeah i mean it's easier to get that next round when you talk about head count increases it's harder to say in the old world yeah in the new world if you can actually say look we were able to do all of this With this headcount and this is our burn, I mean, we are being fiscally responsible versus being idiots.

23:07But again, the Indeed's example, Indeed took$10 million, I think, total. Simply Hire took a lot more than that. So once you take that money, which goes back to my comment about, like, was it too much? You're beholden. You're in the wheel now. You're in the gerbil. You're in the wheel now. You've got to keep running. That's what his internet at home works on. Let's take a quick break. Guys, LinkedIn is on the warpath again. They're in the news. Word has the company recently kicked off PIN. That's P-I-N, in case you didn't know. GEM and Neuroscale off the platform for molesting their data. Molesting.

23:44Who could possibly next? Who could be next? Look at you, Juicebox. Speaking of LinkedIn, a recent study also came out where over 140 ,000 profiles revealed that 58 % of users do not describe their current role on their LinkedIn profile, and a whopping 50 % leave their about section completely blank. Chad, what's your take on all the LinkedIn news this week? I hit the first one up.

24:07Joel Cheesman: The second one up first, where the data in LinkedIn, in many cases, is insufficient. It's old. And you've got companies over the years, they've got into this behavior and spend money, spend money, spend money. and then they're actually driving candidates into their applicant tracking systems where they're actually getting more fucking data. But yeah, and I get it, back in the day, 15 years ago, the search apparatus within the applicant tracking system suck. A lot of them would literally just die out and you couldn't actually search the record in your database. That's not the case today, but we're still working under the old behaviors of, well, I don't go to my applicant tracking system first, I go to LinkedIn first.

24:48Joel Cheesman: Well, kids, the LinkedIn data is shit. in the first place. So if you're going to pay, and again, this is more of a leadership conversation because recruiters are just going to spend your money. And I told them to get that, right? They're just going to do that. Leaders need to get a fucking backbone and say, look, you've got to start utilizing your database first. Not only that, we need to put different types of frameworks in place to be able to engage those individuals that we already see are qualified, but they didn't get the job this time to try to keep them warm and ready for the next time, right?

25:21Joel Cheesman: And if they are work ready, then we can go ahead and nab them and pull them in. This is candidate ID, right? From day one. So this has been the whole idea all the way through. I think this is hopefully just a wake up call for them to say, for companies to go, oh, oh shit, we've been spending money on outside and paying for the same thing that's over and over and over to fill our database and then not using the leads that we have or at least create incentives linkedin should create incentives for users to create more data put more stuff in their profile because in a world of quiet hire in a world where ai i don't know like hey like auto write it for me do my about for me and i'll just say yes um so so what you have is with quite quiet quiet hiring companies aren't even posting the jobs they just go right to linkedin so now you have this problem that just keeps snowballing where the only people I find on LinkedIn are people that really want a job or really care about their profile.

26:17And I'm just, we're all just searching and getting the same people again and again and again. And the needles in the haystack never get found, but they're there. So I think LinkedIn needs to get on, get their shit together and start helping these people write robust profile with AI. There's no reason why they show them. Yeah.

26:32Joel Cheesman: But the problem that you have there is what we're hearing from, um, we're hearing from employers today is no candidates stick out because all the profiles look the exact same. Yeah. That's what it is. So you're literally just... It's a dynamic team member that's excited to be a model of something. So it's all just going to be gibberish and bullshit, but it's all going to be the same gibberish and bullshit. So again... They're all going to be the same perfect candidate. I think it all comes back down to external is not the answer. You have to build your own and start being smart about this. And again, being fiscally responsible about it.

27:04Joel Cheesman: Now on the vendors getting kicked off side of the house, a very smart person said on Is it time for a history lesson? A WhatsApp. Not yet. On a WhatsApp chat, anyone building their business around that access needs a plan B. Remember who said that? Sounds like a very smart person to me. Steve McGrath said that. So this is where it's time for a history lesson. That's right. So back in, oh shit, it was a long time ago. Anyway, when Twitter was trying to become prominent. Becoming prominent. Remember that mess? Like hashtags? Yeah. Nobody had their jobs on Twitter or anything like that. A guy named by the name of Gary Zukowski built a platform called Tweet My Jobs.

27:48Joel Cheesman: And I was working at direct employers in charge of all alliances and that kind of stuff. And I was having a conversation with Gary and I said, dude, what happens if Twitter shuts you down? What happens if Twitter shuts you down? He's like, I'm fucked. Luckily, he went on to get acquired by QueerArc. But the moral of the story is, don't make your whole fucking business model attached to somebody else like that. I mean, Plan B, I mean, shit, they should be more than just focused on LinkedIn. But a lot of these platforms aren't. I mean, it's worse than renting a house because you at least get a year's lease on a house.

28:26Yeah, I mean, I think for me, what's kind of a bit bizarre about it all is it's all the same thing with the same data set with like a different wrapper on it. Yeah. Right. And actually, if anybody's using, so Levin goes in to use one of these tools and has a look and he uses one and goes, okay, well, I like that workflow, but that's six candidates. And then uses the other one and is like, okay, well, that lets me click and drag people. That's quite nice. Shit, there's the six people, right? okay and like that is my experience I have used some of these tools for business development, I've had to look at all of them just for the nature of my job and the reality is that like it's all different highways to get there but we've all arrived at the same part basically.

29:09There's a data house that I forget the name of it, I know I've heard it before but they all supply the same profiles when we talk to Zoom Info at Rackfest, I mean part of their pitch is ours is different We'll go in and find out for yourself. But, I mean, it's hard to imagine that your results are going to be that much different than mine. And I think, you know, when you had that, when I was an agency recruiter with, you know, with Adeko and others, was we're all in the CV library, we're all in Indeed, we're all looking for this type of job against hundreds of other people. And even then, the only people with the really good CVs are the people that are looking for the jobs.

29:48It's not David Smith who last updated it 15 years ago. Are you going to start there or are you going to start at the 100 % match? And I think that becomes the difficult thing. We're doing that all over again, but it says AI at the front, and it's a little bit shinier. So it's the exact same thing, just in a different type. Whereas going in and actually this crazy mental thing of building relationships with people and nurturing those relationships. Recruiters should be very happy about this because that's their... It's the one thing I wanted to do when I became a recruiter. I did not want to write job descriptions and do interview questions.

30:26I wanted to speak to people, give people jobs. And as many times as possible. And Chad, I'll see your Twitter jobs commentary and I'll raise you a Facebook commentary. Remember Branch Out? Oh God, yeah. So Branch Out built on the Facebook platform, spammed all your friends to show them jobs, which had a very short lifespan. I mean, you could look at it and go, this is not going to work. And Facebook pulled the rug out of them and the tens of millions that they raise all down the all down the tube. So it's it's always funny that people keep repeating this. I mean, we talked about IQ for a year plus who sued LinkedIn for the ability to get this content.

31:10LinkedIn drowned them in legal as and paperwork and lawyers. And here we are. And now we're just repeating that with - And it came down to terms of service.

31:19Joel Cheesman: It wasn't that it wasn't right that, let's say, for instance, the candidate doesn't own their own data. That actually just came down to terms of service. And I'm not sure that matters. They've got a bigger bank account than you do. If you can't go head to head with LinkedIn from a money perspective, it doesn't matter. But they did have, Haikyuu did have the rulings up into that last piece. And there would have been another appeal. Yeah, you only get so many appeals. So, Liva, when it comes to building your own database, I mean, because you've seen this on a much larger scale from a staffing standpoint.

31:55Joel Cheesman: Obviously, you guys use the LinkedIn's, the Indeed's, and so on and so forth. Do you have a bunch of siloed databases that you guys dig and use? Or how does that actually work from a staffing standpoint? The problem is House of HR consists of 52 different companies. Are they all siloed? Some of them still are. We would like to have one big community, but it just doesn't work out like that. So most of them still use their own ATS, for example. The biggest one all use Bullhorn, but there are still others. from a technical point of view it isn't that easy to share everything with everyone so yes it's siloed and i think some of the companies want to keep it that way because if you share a very good resume with all the others someone else might take it and then you are missing out and placing the candidate but that probably did not answer your question what was your question again it's just are you utilizing the the data in your databases like your tracking systems yeah or Are you guys mainly going out?

32:55No, we do both. So we are posting jobs, gathering the incoming resumes. But we also match our own databases and we should do it more. And sometimes it's just easier on the short term to just spread some vacancies all over the internet and sit back and enjoy and wait for someone to apply. But it's much more efficient if you use your existing database and keep people, keep those profiles alive and get in touch. And are you still happy? What are you doing right now? But that's time consuming. So we should automate that. I use an example. When I was at GE, I helped a team in Southern Europe. And I was doing recruiting for Southern Europe.

33:36And quite one of those things was like, it didn't really matter what technology we're using. Because we were that company, applicants always came in. They were never that great. You know, most of them, 80 % of them, You could put them in the trash can for all the American vessels. It was like your dating life back in the day. Yeah, yeah. See you later. Swipe right, swipe left. But it was just always more exciting for recruiters to go for NetNew. And when I got seconded there from a deco, and part of our thing was you're always taught as an agency recruiter, database first, keep your contacts, refresh them, specialist area, keep going.

34:16And we brought that into that environment. not that not you know we weren't the only people doing it but certainly we came in and we were like this is how we do recruitment you know and everybody was a bit like no no we don't go into the work team we just leave that have you ever used it and i'm like yeah don't get it's horrible to use but there's there's people in there um you know so i think that kind of thing of like it's easy just to sit back and let the applicants flow in it is but it's not it's not the best way it's not the best way that's why you have to be very kind to your recruiters because they only start actually being worth it after five years.

34:50Yes. And they know a lot of people. I mean, if one of the clients asks for, let's say, a commercial director in that specific industry, they immediately think of five names who might be available because they let them know that they're looking for something new. And that's when a recruiter becomes really valuable. Yeah. So that's why you have to keep them and not just after three years, let them go and replace them by someone who might be cheaper or whatever. Absolutely. So are you saying that humans default to what's easiest? Ah, yeah. No. Oh, that's weird. No, they wouldn't. That's a new one.

35:19Who would have guessed? That's a new one. The keeping the fresh part is the hard part. I can see the train station from here. I debated getting an Uber from there to here. I was like, I'll just walk. It's 20 minutes. Well, there's not a scooter in this fucking town. You can't go in. This is not 20 minutes. I mean, if this is 20 minutes, you walk too slow. It's because you have to go around. I take my car and I just park right in front of the building. You take a BMW and you park. It might not be. With somebody leaving his body fat percentage, it might be 10 minutes. But somebody, for me, it's a little bit small.

35:49How does a city with bikes everywhere have no e-bikes and no scooters? I was affronted to see that there was no scooters. I'm very upset by that. Very upset by that. Get a bike.

36:02Joel Cheesman: You're an Amsterdam. Can you just grab a bike? Yeah, you can. There's a bike rental place outside the hotel. You just grab a bike. Okay. I didn't know. I didn't know. Well, we've talked about Palantir on the show quite a bit, Chad, But this is their first time ever being in a news story. So I'm kind of excited about the commentary that will come after. The largest hospital chain in the U.S. is facing widespread backlash from nurses over an AI-powered automated scheduling software co-developed by Palantir. While management claims the tool cuts scheduling costs, eliminates favoritism, and maintains an optimal balance of skills, frontline staff reports severe systemic issues that they say threaten patient safety and drive nurse burnout.

36:45Chad, we talk a lot about Palantir. Here's our chance to rip them officially. Your thoughts on them getting into the scheduling software game?

36:53Joel Cheesman: Yeah, this is, you talk about, take 20 minutes, talk about Alex Karp and maybe a ketamine trip or something like that. Am I the village idiot? You saw that interview? Yes. That's great. Yes, you are. So for me, I mean, this is, we hear a bunch of, we hear a bunch about the bigger models, right? Palantir, obviously, which is really weird because they're in the surveillance side of the house. But we hear about bigger models all the time. We hear about Google. We hear about Facebook's model. We hear about open AI. We hear about anthropic perplexity, all those, right? And for me, this just demonstrates that these people don't understand our space.

37:34Joel Cheesman: They don't understand what's going on, whether it's talent acquisition, whether it's talent management, whether it's just scheduling. So again, you've got a huge organization, HCA, who is going to put a shit ton of cash into Palantir. Their CIO probably made that decision. I doubt HR did because they're probably doing other projects for them. And it's going to cost, much like an IBM or maybe a Deloitte engagement, it's probably going to run, I don't know, 10x what it was supposed to run. It's going to go a hell of a lot longer in building. And then you're going to get this type of deliverable slash outcome.

38:15Joel Cheesman: We need to focus on the people who actually know what the fuck they're doing in our industry and allow them to build for us. I think that, for me, is the big lesson here. Google's not going to save us. It didn't with Google Base. It didn't with Google for Hire. It didn't with Google Jobs. Facebook didn't with the Facebook social network bullshit. Twitter didn't. None of these companies did. MySpace got really close. And they're not going to, right? So as we think these big companies are going to come be our saviors, they're just not gonna. It's a slippery slope because you look at like Microsoft or Salesforce.

38:58So we've got our claws into this organization. They bought into us. They went through the due diligence. Now, how do we keep squeezing that money tree to get more of their budget? And Palantir has been creatively able to come into organizations as a surveillance software and all that stuff. So now, if I'm in, how do I now expand that into more of the organization's businesses? So to go into scheduling and employee stuff is a natural progression. You mean that's not surveillance? Do you want a surveillance company doing any of that? Yeah, that's what I mean. It's an extension of it. I mean, Microsoft, here's Teams.

39:42Or here, you know, like here, do you want this? Here, check it off. You've already got the relationship. You've already signed off. Your CTO already loves us. So now, like, let's just get things that they can check off. And to your point, it's like, we don't really know this business. We don't really know this side of things. But we're an easy button for you to add this. So there are going to be more of these trip-ups like this with Palantir. And I think, interestingly from the story, there are more instances, more and more every day about how AI gets it wrong. It makes a mistake. We have this impression that this is a magic wand and it's going to make everything great.

40:16Well, it's not. And we're learning that. And these are some of the growing pains that we're going to see. It's just unfortunate that we're dealing with healthcare and people living and dying and surviving illnesses.

40:26Joel Cheesman: Yeah, well, and then they received a comment on LinkedIn about this being manufactured and being just the unions coming up with this shit. And it's like, is that your best defense? I mean, really? Fucking, are you kidding me? There's two things I want to say about this. Can you say the three things it claims to solve for again? What does it say? Yeah, scheduling costs, favoritism, eliminates favoritism, and maintains an optimal balance of skills. So you could stop at scheduling costs, and nobody's having a fit. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, well, you didn't solve, we came over budget, you didn't quite nail it, right?

41:04It's the things that follow that. So making the claims that we're - Favoritism is very subjective. Favoritism and fairness into anything that involves real people data with real life stories and AI is very difficult to get right now. If not, almost impossible. So that's really, really hard. So we just stopped scheduling. We're probably not talking about this. We're not talking about it for as long as we talk about it. We talk about it and go, oh, that was fair, man. And let's be honest, most of the successful stories in our industry are, we got scheduling right. Yes. Right? So it's not kind of.

41:38And then I think the. Paradox. Yeah, exactly. Nailed it. They do more than that.

41:43Joel Cheesman: I know, but that's what they nailed. That was the hook. They got everybody loving Paradox. Well, you know why? Because everybody hates scheduling. I talked to Kobe this morning from, he's the head of TA from Heineken. 30 % of his team's time. 30 % on scheduling. I'm going to mention. Yes. Yeah. If you could, in Paradox, nail that. Yes, absolutely. And I think the next part of that is like in this, we've always had this build versus buy mentality, right? Yeah. You know, House of HR will see that every day with people saying like, oh, we've got this for this and it's going to solve this. But could we build it ourselves?

42:21But that's number one question right now on everybody's lips. All the tools that are available. Yeah. No. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Were you? I know you vibe code and you like to tinker quite a bit. Where are you on the Saspocalypse, people building the stuff themselves? Are you on that or are you on the no, they're not going to build the stuff? Experience tells me that no, they're not going to. They're going to give it a bash. They're absolutely going to try it. But we're going to come around full circle and they're not going to be successful at it. So my kind of philosophy of that is build a concept for something and then give it to someone that knows what they're doing with their data set to run with it and move forward.

43:03Because the expertise that they bring is their own company. They don't necessarily bring the build, right? The zero to 70, let's say. They don't build that bit. And we've seen that, you know, at Poetry, where I work, we have very large companies that have said, hey, we're going to circle back with you because we're going to go and build this. And then three years later, we're like, so how's that build going, big fella? And it's not going anywhere. And that's just the reality because time and resources and you're too busy trying to fix that fucking scheduling tool that is unfairly ranking everybody's thing fuck up.

43:38There's so much more. Not giving you resources. Yeah, exactly. There's nothing there. So that's the kind of like next bit for me is like, we're still going to see it. We're still going to battle with it. There's companies that will do it very well. But quite often what we're seeing as well, what I see from speaking to people is like the version of the thing that comes to fruition is nowhere close to actually see that company that we just spent.

44:02Joel Cheesman: Did you guys ever try to build your own applicant tracking system? We're still working on it. There we go. Ta-da! Wait, thanks very much, everybody. I'll see you later. It's been six months away for 16 years. Yeah, something like that. And then something happens, and then you have to start all over again. Yeah. I mean, when we saw this in the early to mid-2000s, companies were building their own applicant tracking systems. And then in five years, I mean, they just didn't get the resources. They weren't paying attention to it. It was a set it and forget it kind of scenario. And you can't do that with that kind of software.

44:40Joel Cheesman: This is the same thing. I mean, I don't give a fuck if you vibe code it. I don't care if it's AI and it's going to fix itself. No, you should have a expert in this space. And there's a couple of different reasons why. because first and foremost, you're not going to pay attention to it, number one. Number two, you have to make sure that the cybersecurity piece on that is fucking tight because if it's not, you're going to have back doors all over the place. I've been saying for a long time, one of your agents is going to go rogue and some company is going to get sued out of the office. Yeah, if you're building your own, but if you have a client or if you have a vendor doing that, right?

45:19Joel Cheesman: That's watching that every day. I just think it's almost impossible to build anything today with this kind of straight line product idea that someone has from inception to completion. Those days are gone because three months into the process, you're like, hey, there's this new thing. Oh, what about that? And you're just throwing hot bombs. Which is why his application system is not done yet. That's what I'm saying. I'm sure if we dug under the hood there, there'd be lots more examples of that for lots of different use cases. But it's so hard to build anything unless that is your one track focus.

45:52If you're doing it amongst a hundred other things, good luck. Yeah. All right. Quick break and we got to talk about the jobs report. All right, guys. The US labor market hit a significant soft patch in September. We don't really do soft on the show, Chad. Adding just 29 ,000 non-farm payroll jobs, which fell drastically short of the roughly 84 ,000 to 90 ,000 new jobs that economists had projected.

46:18Joel Cheesman: Yeah. Unemployment rose to 4.2 % as well. Your take on last week's jobs report. It's the same as it ever was, kids. We keep shooting ourselves in the foot. I mean, not just once, but twice, three times, four times. Any growth that we've actually seen, we've talked about on the show before, any growth that we've actually seen, our biggest growth markets, two of them, construction and hospitality. Yeah. Well, I mean, two of the biggest ones. Healthcare does fit in there, but not as much as those two, because those are mainly, I shouldn't say mainly, those have a ton of immigrants that are actually working in hospitality and construction, right?

46:56Joel Cheesman: So they're talking about job creation. Kids, that's not job creation. That's abandonment. We had people leave those jobs. So there's not jobs being created, right? And these are jobs that Americans just won't do, like the hospitality jobs, construction jobs, and even some of the nursing jobs, nursing homes, those types of things. So, you know, whether it's tariffs or a laundry list of other things, we keep shooting ourselves in the foot. And when it does look good, you look under the covers, you're like, oh, shit, that's not that's not what I want to bet. Seasonal influx. You know, you woke up.

47:32Oh, Trump had Trump just had to do nothing. It's just so maddening. Like he could have done nothing. Biden, whoever was there that would have been there, could have been there, gave him like the perfect economy. And thanks for that was let's kill immigration. Let's tariff our allies. Let's start a war. Great idea, but bad for the economy. Right. So so not only that, we're looking at which is a bad idea. We also have slower wage growth and we also have unemployment trending up as part of that. So in addition to that, you have incredible uncertainty geopolitically domestically businesses don't know what to do because they don't know what the rules of the game are they don't know what the map is saying is in the future so because of that we're getting these numbers and i don't see any uh silver lining or light at the end of the tunnel on a global standpoint i mean these are u.s numbers how is it how is it in uh europe kids uh it's hard for the moment we are back like in the situation in 2016 so as many jobs now as we used to have in 2016.

48:34So the constant growth has gone away. And that's basically because of what's happening in the United States and also in Ukraine. Yes, of course. And we don't care about those immigrants going back to Mexico or whatever. But all the other stuff is like the taxes, Iran indeed, the oil crisis, etc. We have Putin back in the East. The good news is you can build up your militaries again. Like it's 1899. And this is happening. Is this a good thing? I don't know. I mean, we liked our education to be free. It's good for business. And healthcare. For some companies it is. Yeah. I mean, Scotland's a beacon of growth and innovation.

49:14Yeah, but I've left now, so it's neither of those things. Yeah. No, look, I think the UK as a whole is struggling. The new political regime is seeing lots of positive things. Are you saying Brexit didn't work out? That's exactly that. that you know what we got rid of we got rid of all the immigrants so to speak you know now now we're really paying the price for that yeah that's a good point years and years later you know we're still paying the price today um in service industries and farming industries yep um but but equally you know we do have a new labor government in place a fairly new labor leader in place and um that is making some shifts for the everyday person but nobody's quite figured out whether that's just smoke and mirrors on his LinkedIn post yet or what's kind of happening but there is also this kind of rise of what I guess I'm going to call the Trump playbook of political kind of right wing coming in that is trying to shake the boat and winning a lot more of the kind of the vote that's underlying and underpinning society and the young people that are coming up and I think it's quite a scary time for us because there's no jobs out there.

50:30If you're a professional in the UK that is applying for jobs, it used to be, I told people in recruitment, it takes you eight jobs roughly to apply to get three interviews and hopefully you'll get one of those. That was kind of the idea and I said that for about 10 years. Now it's 800. Now it is have a go and see what happens and then you might not get any. I've got friends that have applied for 16, 20, 25 jobs. And they're just not getting anywhere because they're up against so many other people. So I think it is challenging. I don't really know huge amounts about all the numbers behind it. I just see from what I see as a person kind of every day.

51:12And because you used to be a recruiter, lots of people come to you about the job stuff. It's not because of your personality. No, nothing to do with that. I'm a horrible person. You know, Stephen, you mentioned everyday people. and on the Chatting Cheese podcast, we like to pride ourselves of telling dad jokes for the everyday person. They've heard this one, so this one is for you. What is the best website to find a DJ? What is the best website to find a DJ? So bad. Wikipedia. I got water's cold. Good to see you, boys. Thanks for joining us, Stephen. We out. Thank you for listening to, what's it called?

51:54A podcast. The Chad. The Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology. But most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shout-outs of people you don't even know. And yet, you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one. Cheddar. Blue. Nacho. Pepper Jack. Swiss. So many cheeses. And not one word. So weird. Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Or wherever you listen to your podcasts That way you won't miss an episode And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese It's so weird We out!