Out-LinkedIn, LinkedIn?

0:00Joel Cheesman: So I walk in, it looks like, and again kids, we're in Vegas, it looks like we're getting ready to shoot porn. There's the bed, there's the lights, there's the cameras. I mean, don't get me wrong, there's a beautiful view out the window and whatnot, but it was fucking hilarious. I'm like, Cheesman, you don't turn me on enough to be doing this shit.

0:25Joel Cheesman: Hide your kids, lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Soash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, rash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast.

0:48Joel Cheesman: Where's my Guinness? Holy shit, dude. Yeah, so a man in a bar without a Guinness. I'm getting the Guinness. I'm getting it. Don't worry. Welcome to the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm Chad. Meet the Jetsons. So wash.

1:02Chad Sowash: And I'm JT. Is it Apple's 1984 all over again? Oh, Donald.

1:06Joel Cheesman: I think it is. And on this week's show, Paris is burning. Cars are flying and everybody's trying to out LinkedIn. LinkedIn. Let's do this. Oh, I love chicken cock. I do. I love it. I haven't heard that enough, so I had to hear it. How you doing, JT?

1:26Chad Sowash: kids old okay it's been like been it's been a beat since you and i were at rec fest it has it has

1:32Joel Cheesman: been a beat we we were on the couch in nashville together thanks to shaker for that great backdrop i love amazing amazing gina and the team over there they really know how to do really good pop in style uh so so so i love that way so you're down in florida what the hell are you doing down

1:51Chad Sowash: there i'm in fort laudy uh i am down here doing a little biz that i can't talk about but eventually i will okay uh so thend going on yeah yeah uh so down here doing business but also i have a daughter that lives in the area so you know double duty it's all good but today i am in the co-work

2:08Joel Cheesman: in fort lauderdale yeah in the flow so do they know you there is it jt kind of like you know coming into cheers?

2:16Chad Sowash: Yeah, no, not at all. Not yet. Pathetic. No, no, no.

2:22Joel Cheesman: Aren't you going to be down there for like months or something like that? Because you're like practicing your amateur pro-am. Right, right.

2:30Chad Sowash: The goal was to be down here a lot more. Some exciting things are kind of happening in the business that's making me think that travel is going to pick up here a bit, but hopefully some of it will be here. um so when all is revealed it will be revealed folks but uh yeah otherwise i'll be i'll be a traveling gal through at least at least through january so we'll see i'll keep you posted on my golf game what about you it's not pickleball what's the thing you play out there in fortune

2:58Joel Cheesman: paddle it's paddle it's kind of it's kind of like if if tennis and racquetball had a baby uh it would be paddle yeah it's a you're in an enclosed area you can play off the back walls but there's a net in the middle. So it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's really cool. And it's one of the hottest sports in Europe, big in Spain, big in Portugal, starting to catch a little bit in the U S but I think the pickleball has like taken over pretty much all the spots, which is a wiffle tennis.

3:30Chad Sowash: The big question is, does paddle make that annoying pickleball sound?

3:33Joel Cheesman: No, it makes another annoying sound. Uh, it doesn't have that, that little wiffle ball pop because they've got those little cheap ass rackets with the like the wiffle ball we actually use their they're pretty much tennis balls and then the the paddle is it's it's thick uh so it's but it's shorter but yeah it does make it does i would say have an annoying sound but definitely not as annoying as pickleball got it okay well that's good or this guy passing by yes again guys i'm in a bar it's gonna be a lot of noise get used to it okay i tell you what let's go ahead we've got a busy busy show let's go ahead and hit uh is it time for shout outs yeah so shout outs are brought to you by proven base jt everyone loves free bourbon you know that improving base is spreading the love with two bottles of chicken cock whiskey one from chad the other from cheese and uh give them delivered right to your doorstep but you can't win if you don't play.

4:32Joel Cheesman: So you have to head out to chad cheese.com and get some of that bourbon brought to you by proven base proven base, the AI powered, you're going to be hearing a lot of this kid, the AI deep search that helps recruiting and sourcing teams uncover and engage specialized, hard to fill talent beyond traditional platforms across thousands of sources at proven base.com. Thank you, Alex. My shout out is a little different, a little different. did you see the flying cars? I did.

5:03Chad Sowash: Tell me more. Oh, God.

5:05Joel Cheesman: So what did you think about it first? Because when I first thought it, I thought it was AI when I first saw it because it, I mean, it was pretty unbelievable.

5:14Chad Sowash: Yeah. I mean, okay. I always go back to the Jetsons. I feel like you can go back and anything you saw in the Jetsons is pretty much going to come true. So you're not really surprised that, you know, the Jetsons called it. You're going to have a flying vehicle. Beyond that, I just, I'm biased. I just, I think I just watch the, like, I understand that he's a smart man. There's a lot of smart people in the world, but just, I don't know. I don't, I know what's coming. I just don't know how I feel about all of it. If it makes sense, just kind of watching it unfold.

5:47Joel Cheesman: I get it. I, you know what I mean? How I felt. It escalated quickly. It escalated quickly. So my shout out goes to ring master, supreme elon musk for building a car that was good for less than a 30 second demo don't get me wrong i did fly i did fly at least the reports in our eyes say it flew but i asked gemini which you always do about the viability of using gas thrusters cold gas thrusters for a sustained five minute flight because this was really short you know it was under 30 second flight i was like you know you're gonna fly for at least five minutes so what would that be and this was the answer.

6:24Joel Cheesman: Quote, while a gas, a cold gas thruster is highly reliable and excellent for short explosive burst of force, like a zero to 60 mile per hour launch or quick directional altitude adjustment, it is completely unviable for a five minute hover. So from my standpoint, nonetheless, I see this as innovation. Sure. The car can't really fly for a sustained period, But would it actually be allowed on the road anyway? No, not really. And bringing the innovation of SpaceX to a car is more than necessary for Tesla because they've been getting their asses handed to them by Chinese EV makers for a few years now.

7:08Joel Cheesman: And it's getting worse for them, right? So a big shout out to Elon Carnival Barker Musk for a better demo and sleeker looking video than the Cybertruck. I mean, if you got to set a baseline, the Cybertruck is shit. This was better than shit. So shout out to the carnival barker, Elon Musk. What you got, JT?

7:30Chad Sowash: Well, OK, I feel like my shout out sets the tone of today because I joked about in my name. Is it Apple's 1984? All again, I would say yes, because we know what ATS is. We know what CRM is. But do you know what HRM is? That's going to be the new term stands for hiring reject machine. The hiring reject machine is out of control. We're going to talk about it today. AI powered recruiting could become a drinking game as we will see today as we start to play this. And I blame Jamie and the crew at Wreckfest for sending me down this rabbit hole, right? Because I walked the halls and met a ton of people at Wreckfest and came back and then started to do the due diligence.

8:16Chad Sowash: And it just kept coming and kept coming. And then as you look these people up on LinkedIn, what does LinkedIn do to your feed? Gives you everybody that's got the latest and greatest. It's going to change the world, solve every problem, AI recruiting tool. I sent you this screenshot yesterday. This one gal that works at a venture capital company and said, this is the tech stack, the AI tech stack we're using for all of ours. Who do you like? 80 comments later, I did an analysis using AI, 45 different new tools. Yeah. 80 comments later in her response, 45 different companies tagged AI group, 45.

8:53Chad Sowash: Oh, shit. So what the actual heck, honestly, the HRM is here. It's scary. It's 1984 all over again. And I know you and I are looking forward to, I hate to say it, the fallout, like this is not sustainable. You know, this can't be, this is not sustainable. Somebody made a great point on her comment. Maybe we can bring it up. They were like, why so many tools? Like a bunch of them are redundant. You know, and they started pointing out anybody that knew AI well enough was like, that does that. And so this to me is just pure craziness. And as you're going to hear today, you know, who's getting screwed in all of this.

9:28Chad Sowash: And this is where I'm going to get really angry. The job seeker, the candidate. Are any of these companies doing anything for the candidate? No, you're not. No, you're not. It's all because you're worried about who's going to pay you. You're worried about the businesses. And I am telling you right now, and I will die on this hill. The company that's going to win. We're going to talk about that in a second. Is the one that's actually going to do something for the candidate. That's who's going to win this game. That is my prediction. So.

9:50Joel Cheesman: Okay. We're going to talk about that. I promise. Definitely. We're going to talk about that because at this point it is crazy. It is. It is fucking crazy pills. And I think, I mean, so a couple of things to add on there. first and foremost in the u.s it is so easy to start a company everybody starts fucking company right and you do it out of delaware so you don't have taxes right so company delaware llc start out or what have you get to an s-corp later um it's just so easy so everybody starts fucking company and the money flows so much faster in the u.s as well than it does in europe because obviously in the u.s we have a single monetary system and we have pretty much you know one and a half languages definitely spanish is in there don't get me wrong um in in europe you have uh you do have the euro that that does reign supreme but then you've got you know the the uk uses their stupid fucking pound and they don't get how you know that would standardize and help out the entire economy anyway uh it's just easier in the u.s so we have this redundancy left and right because it's just so fucking easy and the money flows yeah the money the money flowing the seed round

11:02Chad Sowash: funding that I'm seeing right now. Insane. Insane.

11:06Joel Cheesman: I know. I know. I know. I know. Well, that being said, let's go ahead. We don't have events to talk about because my ass is staying home. I know you're going to be staying in that sunshine for a minute until business calls, but let's go ahead and do a little recap. A little recap of events. And remember, travel is always brought to you by those wonderful kids over at Shaker Recruitment Marketing. Head over to shaker.com check out those kids joel and i are done with business travel in 2026 so here's a quick rundown of what we just did we were all together uh other than emmy we missed emmy and we missed leaving at wreck fest at wreck fest joel and i were on the disrupt stage we've got we already had content come out with kayleen weaver from uh american senior living uh and patrick kelly from healing partners uh that's come out last week uh we were then on stage in amsterdam talking the future of work with some heavy hitters we're talking about rika ceo over at house of hr kiara with the european commission that's right kids on stage with the european commission mina with the world employment confederation and good old glenn we actually got somebody from LinkedIn on stage with us.

12:20Joel Cheesman: We suckered them in. Glenn was a sweetheart though. That episode dropped earlier this week. We also had interviews still to be published out of Amsterdam with Kobe from Heineken. That's right. Good beer, Heineken. Love that. Then Ritu and Bill Fisher from Fonk. And at least the last, but never the least, we were in Vegas for Workday's Future of Frontline event on stage with Mark from the Flynn Group, which is the biggest franchise owner in the world. Laura from Nordstrom, Mike from Johnson Controls, and Melissa from a little company you might never heard of called FedEx. Probably about four or five more interviews coming out.

13:00Joel Cheesman: So head on over to chadcheese.com. That's where you're going to find them. And last but not least, I got to tell you this story because you're going to love it. We were getting ready to do a little piece of content before we went to the Workday Show. And Joel was in charge of this because I was just traveling like a madman. and uh he said i just come up to my room uh and then we'll we'll go ahead and we'll figure it out so i'm like okay cool so i come up to the room and think that he's like in a suite or something because he's gonna go ahead and get everything set up in the suite oh no he's like in a regular room so i walk in it looks like and again kids we're in vegas it looks like we're getting ready to shoot porn uh there's the bed there's the lights there's the cameras i mean there was don't get me wrong there's a beautiful view out the window and whatnot but it was fucking hilarious i'm like cheese man you don't turn me on enough to be doing this shit but anyway it was it was a great time it was uh it was good fun and that is all we have thank god for travel for travel this year um you do you said you've got some some some business happening you got any uh yeah Yeah.

14:13Chad Sowash: Yes.

14:13Joel Cheesman: Anything you can say where you're going?

14:14Chad Sowash: Florida. I'm going to be in Dallas and Austin, New York, Boston. So yes, very exciting. More to come when I can talk about it.

14:24Joel Cheesman: Okay. Okay. I'm just trying to get it out of you. Well, since we're not going to get it out of you, let's go ahead and let's talk a little bit, a little bit of fantasy football. It's fantasy football time kids from our friends at Factory Fix. That's the number one recruiting platform for skilled trades in the manufacturing talent. You all want and need. And guess what they didn't say in there? They didn't say AI. They have it, but they didn't say it. But they didn't say it. They didn't have to.

14:51Chad Sowash: It's implied. It's implied.

14:54Joel Cheesman: So the top three places this week stay the same as last week. We've got Jarrett. I'm number one, Joe Dersma. Dijon, better than pretty good, Amare. Number three, Saginaw Scott Clark. Then Ben by six, Koontz takes over the fourth position. Nick laces out Livingston down to number five. Nicholas GoBirds-Tyshack moves up to number six. Chad, that's me, Sowash moves up two spots to number seven. I jumped Cheeseman. Joel shut the front door. Cheeseman stays at number eight. Bosco Baller moves up one spot to number nine. mackenzie mack attack maitland moved down from number six to number 10 that's a big move that's ouch that's a somebody put mackenzie on suicide fantasy football suicide watch kids and then we've got hail molly sly and any given desiree goldie rounding out the last of the 12 kids that is fantasy football brought to you by our friends at factory fix uh it's early times all you folks on the bottom it's early it's early mckenzie it's okay you won last year okay so don't expect to win two years in a row just because you went from sixth to tenth that i want to hear it i don't want to hear it yes okay good god it's linkedin it's linkedin while linkedin spends its time convincing 1.4 billion people to post and then punishes them for using the AI tools they handed them.

16:38Joel Cheesman: A fresh class of venture-backed startups are racing to drink LinkedIn's milkshake. Toss around nearly 390 million in funding, almost 400 million kids, slap together some agentic sourcing tools, and suddenly everyone wants to play talent broker. JT, you dug in deep on this. Tell me what you got.

17:00Chad Sowash: Like the rabbit hole on this. Absolutely. I, so, you know, story, as I said, thank you. RECFEST started looking at all of these companies, then started looking at the money and the valuation. And I went, here we go. Here we go. This is going to be an incredible race. There are so many new players. In fact, I found seven new players that have just been built in the last two years worth hundreds of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars, right? Like, you know, think of MetaView, think of Juicebox, think of Jack and Jill out of London. These companies are getting mad money thrown at them.

17:41Chad Sowash: So you've got to ask yourself why when there's just so much out there, you know? And the reality is this, you know, that I've been on LinkedIn for 20 years. I've been a top voice on there for 13. I've partnered with them. They've been a client. But every single day, multiple people say, what is the alternative? And I'm honest, there should be one. And the day that I see one, I will tell you. And this is what really got me because as I watch this all over again, watch this surge, you know, what's missing from the whole thing? Focusing on the candidate. Once again, everybody's focused only on that employer side.

18:15Chad Sowash: And so I wanted to do a history lesson. Time for a history lesson. I think what we all have to remember here is that when they started, you got an invitation from somebody who was lucky enough to have an invitation on LinkedIn. And then you were given so many invitations to give out to friends. Do you remember that? Were you like around for that phase of it? And it became this mad dash, right? So we were all trying to be the first on the platform. And it was genius. It was genius in that there was adoption so fast from the very people they needed on there to build the recruiting. It's different now.

18:54Chad Sowash: We can now see the technical debt. We can now see the challenge that their face is a very large platform, right? It's challenged. So all of these companies in front of us have a chance to do it differently. But are any of them looking at what they could offer the candidate this time? No. I know two right now that are claiming they have stuff for the candidate. Most notably would be Jack and Jill out of London who has an agent, right? Jack talks to you, Jack then tries to guide you and match you. But only two out of 45 that I found so far. And my question to you is like, this is crazy. We're throwing money at something and there's, even though it's AI slapped on it, they're still doing it the old way and it's not fixing the problem, right?

19:37Chad Sowash: This hiring reject machine that's so bad that you're trying to do tighter and tighter filters to figure out if a candidate's real, right? But you're not giving the candidates what they need to authenticate themselves and give you what you need. So guess what they're going to do? They're going to keep gaming the system. You're going to keep building stuff to outsmart them. They're going to keep building stuff to outsmart you. It infuriates me, Chad. It infuriates me. So all of you out there trying to be the next LinkedIn, I hear you every day. We're going to be the next LinkedIn. No, you're not because you're not addressing what needs to happen in order for you to become like that.

20:11Chad Sowash: I'm going to stop there.

20:17Joel Cheesman: I'm going to take this down a different kind of path because I think the models are changing and we're well within the convergence of want and capability. Okay. So back in the Resumex and and recruit soft days, employers wanted to build their own self-sufficient hiring systems. But early on, those applicant tracking providers had horrible internal database searches. So getting to the candidate you bought, the searches were literally timeout. So databases weren't really usable for enterprise customers. The apply process was also singular and horrible. High volume candidates go through the same hoops as senior engineers.

21:00Joel Cheesman: And on the other side, the lack of workflows made it harder for recruiters who were hiring white collar versus high volume talent, right? So TA teams created workarounds outside the applicant tracking system and became dependent on the likes of Monster, CareerBuilder, Indeed, LinkedIn, and others. And those behaviors became cemented in their daily work as the tech became more advanced to allow companies to build their own internal systems. It was already too late. The behavior had set in. The expectations had set in. The budgets were already locked in, right? If you think about the world we're in today, companies can choose from thousands of vendors, much like you're talking about, to create a better version of LinkedIn.

21:51Joel Cheesman: One that doesn't feed off clicks and likes, rather one that leverages the candidates in your system that you've already bought. Ones that focus on relevant engagement, they can weed out fake profiles and assess whether a candidate is cold, warm or high ready. So those systems and or stacks can and are built today. So the biggest problem, we have old behaviors and spending patterns which benefit vendors like LinkedIn. So what companies want is finally matched by the capability of systems in the market. For example, UPS hired 150 ,000 people in six weeks. 30 ,000 of those were out of their own internal database.

22:35Joel Cheesman: That was version one, right? Compass Group increased their candidate capture rate by 10%. They saved$1.5 million in six months. That was candidate experience, but that was also something they bought into. The key understanding, the capabilities of your stack, not the roadmap, the capabilities and the leveraging those capabilities. That's the key right now. And I don't think companies are doing it.

23:02Chad Sowash: I love that you bring this up because I, you know, I sent you the screenshot, super smart recruiter throws it out there and says, Hey, this is my current AI tech stack names them. And some people that really understand what AI is doing in our space pointed out in the comments, you do understand that three of those overlap. why are you paying for six things when you can be paying for three but to your point i'd say 95 of the people that are adopting ai tools right now are adopting them like you said for this silo for this silo for this part of my process and eventually they're going to realize they don't need to be spending that money but now they've are we going to see this all over again are they entrenched are they is it a long cycle sales cycle like it's all happening again and it it's frustrating to me because none of it, none of it really helps the candidate present themselves properly and get through the process successfully.

23:56Chad Sowash: And so you're not really solving the problem. You know, you're, you're putting a bandaid on, you know, on a huge gash. Like it's just, it's not, it's not right. But to your point, the egg, I shouldn't say that word. That's not a nice word. The lack of understanding that people have as they're grabbing, you know,

24:14Joel Cheesman: So they're just grabbing tools.

24:15Chad Sowash: And I get it. They're like, this is only$5 ,000. My old thing was 50. So in their mind, they're like, I just saved a half a million dollars in my old budget. And with 10 new tools, it only costs$10 ,000 a piece.

24:29Joel Cheesman: Right.

24:29Chad Sowash: But they don't understand what they're doing. And they don't understand the impact on the candidate. And so it is. I hope smart people pay attention to what we're saying here today, because you've got to be more careful right now.

24:39Joel Cheesman: I agree 100%. And it all comes down to, and one of the positions that I've seen a lot of lately is recruiting ops, right? Talent ops. And talent ops has to do with process methodology and then also building stacks into those process methodologies. I've talked to several smart companies that have literally imploded their process. And what they've done is they've actually come to it from both sides, the recruiter experience and the candidate experience, because they know they're getting shit tons of drop off, right? But the problem is this is happening onesie twosie companies. This is not happening at scale.

25:15Joel Cheesman: So candidates are out there going, this sucks, this sucks, this sucks. And I agree for the most part. But what's happening is a lot of the, I guess you could say horizon companies, they've been waiting for this capability for years. And they've started to institute it and it's working for them. And they are kicking their competitors asses. And that's a beautiful thing. And that's a beautiful thing. So I agree. Stephen McGrath has actually come up with, and it's, uh, it's a T if you go to TA tech finder.

25:45Chad Sowash: Yep.

25:45Joel Cheesman: Yeah. It came up in my search.

25:47Chad Sowash: It came up in my search.

25:48Joel Cheesman: You go to TA tech finder.com TA tech finder.com. And then you can click on check my stack, which is something he just created. Um, I talked to him about it, uh, last week and I'm like, dude, this is fucking amazing. Uh, so it's TA tech finder.com and just hit the, you know, the stack, the stack assessment it's it's crazy um but the thing is again you have to be ready to understand what the the overlaps that happen because they're going to be shit tons of overlaps and then look at re-engineering your process to make it better for your recruiter so they're not doing stupid shit like scheduling interviews and more importantly re-engineering it for the candidates so it's a great experience for them too because you the great talent isn't going to take the time.

26:37Joel Cheesman: They're not going to take half an hour.

26:38Chad Sowash: And I'm just going to throw it out there. I told you I did the deep dive. I have put together some really detailed documents. I'm not doing this for money. If you're out there listening and you're like, hmm, my company is starting to grab tech. Not only should you use Stephen McGrath's tool and check, but will you message me? I'll send you what I've put together so that you can just read it, understand it yourself. I will also show you, and I think this is important, if you choose these tools, how your candidates will be impacted. Because you know what? candidate experience is employer branding.

27:06Chad Sowash: And if you don't think they're out there telling everybody the experience they had with your company, you're throwing together these AI tools. They're out talking about you. And you might think that's not a problem now, but we both know that it is. And so I would just love anybody out there putting your stack together. Let's check your stack and make it right. And also, would you let me just show you the impact it's having on your candidates before you make any rash decisions? Please. I deal with these job seekers every day. They're frustrated and they carry more weight than you realize. And you want to do right by them.

27:33Chad Sowash: If they are engaging and loving you, they're going to refer people. You're going to get the best talent. That's employer branding. One-on-one, this AI stuff that you're putting together is going to have a major impact on your employer brand. You need to be careful.

27:44Joel Cheesman: So please, man, and we'll put it, we'll put it in the show notes to you. Give a link to it and we can have it publicly available and it's all ready to go. While we take a little break we'll be right back all right we're going to get to the bullhorn news in a minute but i wanted to quickly talk about why france is burning so i i didn't realize i see all these memes of the french flag and burning and it just it's it's crazy especially the news so apparently france because they have a perfect storm going on right now with student-led grievances over school conditions and a broader nationwide backlash against rising cost, cost of living, high inflation, fuel prices, and a proposed government spending cut.

28:39Joel Cheesman: But the thing that caught my eye the most was 700 grocery store refrigerators were hacked. Hackers took over the refrigeration interfaces and they actively turned those units into heaters, driving temperatures up to 122 degrees Fahrenheit using the defrost mechanisms as heaters, which spoiled millions of euros worth of fresh and frozen food, leading to empty shelves and empty supply chain rerouting. And apparently Bullhorn, the AI recruitment ATS and CRM powering 10 ,000 staffing agencies, which says on their website, are running the same cybersecurity measures as those grocery stores. Because last Friday, they were hit with a successful cyber attack that took their platforms offline.

29:30Joel Cheesman: Crowd strike was called in to clean up the mess while recruiters were forced to stare blankly at walls while wondering if their candidate data had flown the coop. JT, it sounds like recruiters were able to relax and enjoy a cup of coffee, maybe a coffee break or two, de-stress and maybe finally plan that vacation that they haven't taken in years. Is this really a big deal?

29:53Chad Sowash: It's a huge deal. It's a huge deal. Okay. 10 ,000 staffing firms on their platform, two days fully down as a Tuesday, it was still broken. Do we know if data has been stolen? No, we do not. Do they claim they have 800 million candidate profiles? Was that data stolen? We don't know. But my bigger question here is who's going to notify the candidates. And this is where it gets interesting, Chad, because if you get an email from Bullhorn, right, as a candidate, you don't know who they are.

30:22Joel Cheesman: You don't know who they

30:23Chad Sowash: are, right? Because Bullhunt's behind the scenes. So what are you going to do? You're going to probably toss it or think it's not real and not understand what's at stake here. So, you know, this really, really, when you sent it to me, it's like, is it a big deal? I'm like, it's a huge deal. But again, from the candidates, the candidates are getting screwed in these scenarios and nobody's talking about it. They're more worried about their recruiters getting their capacity back. So, So, you know, I think this is going to get a lot bigger and a lot uglier than people realize. And again, you know, there's another page that I found can't justify.

30:59Chad Sowash: It was on Bullhorn that says they have one point one billion profiles. If that's true, I'm sure a bunch of them are duplicates. Yeah, that's true. This is enormous. And nobody's talking about it.

31:08Joel Cheesman: Yeah. Yeah.

31:09Chad Sowash: All I can say is, you know, you know, you know, you're teasing me.

31:14Joel Cheesman: You know, I mean, we're in a time that. That we're going, we just, it's really hard because as of yesterday, as you'd said, October 20th, five days, five days after the initial attack, all systems were running with degraded performance and only Bullhorn for Salesforce and time and expense systems were listed as operational on status.bullhorn.com. Now, I was kidding about the same grocery store like cybersecurity measures, but I wanted to make a point that even the inane parts of our daily lives are getting hacked like refrigerators. So maybe essential business platforms might want to double, triple or maybe even fucking quadruple down on their measures.

32:04Joel Cheesman: And I'm sorry, Bullhorn, you're definitely going to take it with both barrels on this one, not just from us, but from everybody. buddy. This is your job, especially since staffing companies drive revenue from placing candidates. And if you can't get your candidates, you can't drive revenue. If you can't get to your client lists, you can't sell more services. Plus, what level of data is held in these systems, right? So I did send five questions to Bullhorn. That was yesterday. I know they're busy. They've got really big issues going on right now but these are my five questions that i sent to them and i hope they answer them um what have the preliminary investigation shown with regard to who and how the platform was attacked uh when will customers have a fully operational platform restored was any sensitive data extracted if data was extracted what is the process and timeline of notifying those customers and candidates and will owen mehen not to be mean owen but will Will Owen Meehan, the current interim CISO, become the full-time CISO?

33:13Joel Cheesman: Again, they're very busy people, especially right now. But the people deserve an answer. And hopefully, we get answers back on that.

33:21Chad Sowash: They do. Not only do we deserve an answer to those, we need to know that all of their customers are properly conveying to candidates what has transpired once they know for sure.

33:31Joel Cheesman: Yeah.

33:32Chad Sowash: And that that is very visible because candidates' info is out there everywhere. This is what, again, what I mean about the hiring reject machine. We're going to see it in everything we talk about today. Everything. How out of control this has gotten overnight and we're not putting a spotlight on it. So I'm glad we're talking about it here.

33:47Joel Cheesman: You dumbass. Next, we have sponsor of the show, Veritone. On Tuesday, they announced the launch of, get ready, career sites within the Broadbean by Veritone platform. Broadbean Career Sites are an intelligent talent platform that helps employers understand which recruitment channels, campaigns, and investments are driving successful hires. Second item in the news, this is a verified Veritone email. Quote, we are making a strategic infrastructure change across the Broadbean ecosystem by leveraging ClickCast as our backend programmatic DSP. That used to be Pando. OK, they're now talking about leveraging ClickCast.

34:31Joel Cheesman: Broadbean will continue to be the strategy, own the strategy, campaign management, optimization, customer relationship, while ClickCast provides a global distribution network. The plan is to move all clients and publishers over to ClickCast by November 1st, 2026. And last but not least, Veritone announced yesterday 15 million USD through 20 million shares offering on October 1st of 2026. That's a lot to digest, JT. What the fuck is going on? Yeah.

35:07Chad Sowash: Well, so I feel like I'm the resident guest on this show that has to research things and give everybody the fifth grader version. So everybody get ready for the fifth grader version of what we just talked about.

35:19Joel Cheesman: I need the fifth grader version.

35:21Chad Sowash: This is what I went through. So, okay. Veritone owns Broadmeat. Okay. And you want to look at them as the plumbing. They're the plumbing that pushes the job ads out to dozens of job boards. Okay. As part of the hiring reject machine. Plumbing gets cut when companies what? Stop Stop hiring. And that's the problem we have right now. Companies aren't hiring much. A lot of companies are going to quiet hiring because they can't take getting 10 ,000 applicants in a night. I don't know, sidebar really quick, but there was a recruiter going around at RecFest claiming that they put a business analyst position up at the end of the business day, went home, got up the next morning, came back, and the ATS was broken with over 93 ,000 applicants because these automated systems picked up the word analyst and business analyst and just sent everybody, right?

36:01Chad Sowash: So you think about this mess, right?

36:03Joel Cheesman: Yes.

36:03Chad Sowash: So I get it. They go to HR tech this week and broad beans launching a careers pages too. And I like this because now you're following from the ad, right? So to the application, to whether or not you got hired. So I get that they're going to conceivably say, Hey, that ad made you money or not. Like this is what the hire costs you. Okay. But what you're telling me in the same breath this week, what we're slipping in is parent company short on cash and selling off pieces to pay its bills. So it's, it gets very interesting there. Um, you know, I think, you know, the$15 million is going down to, to restructure convertible debt, right?

36:39Chad Sowash: Paying old bills, you know, funding growth. They Q2, they said 24.3 million in revenue, 22.1 million operating loss. So that's a little interesting, but the thing that we talked about you and I, before we got on the show, 150 million for Panda logic in 2021, 52 million for broad bean in 2023, right? Run the numbers, people. That's$202 million and the$150 million, they don't even use the company name anymore. Gone. Gone. Not even used. They kept Broadbean's name. But that just to me is like, what? There's way more going on in this scenario. And I really hope that it works for them because I see what they're trying to do with the innovation of, hey, this is where your money's being spent.

37:27Chad Sowash: But I also feel that we are at a permanent shift. There has always been only one kind of hiring. It's called loud hiring. You put stuff on a job board and people, you know, you scream it out to everybody. Quiet hiring has been on the rise for the whole last year. It's permanent. There are far more ways for people to go find the candidates that are a match so that they don't have to put up a job and get 10 ,000 applicants because it doesn't work anymore. And so for a company like Veritone, they have to make a change like this. They have to prove that that job placement. So I like that they're thinking that far ahead for the customer.

38:00Chad Sowash: But is it going to be a knock chat?

38:02Joel Cheesman: I'm going to need another beer for this. Can I get another beer, please? Oh, good fucking. So let's start with the good parts. Career sites are smart. Owning the top of the funnel is smart. Earlier this week, I was actually behind the scenes. I got to see this product. It's a sexy product. It's a sexy product. And being able to see these career sites, the lookbooks, those types of things that are actually created, it's just pretty amazing what you can actually build these days just so quickly. Right. But pretty much all of their competitors already have career site offerings. AppCast, Jovio, Radency almost invented them, for God's sake.

38:45Joel Cheesman: So this feels more like a me to move to protect their current client portfolio. But that's still smart, right? Because you're protecting your revenues and you've already landed those individuals. Now you're going to expand with a different product. You're creating more sticky, not so transactional products. And with today's tech, the service is almost non-existent. I mean, it is pretty, pretty easy, pretty quick. And you have the agentic CMS that's available. So you're protecting, expanding, becoming more sticky. And again, you're not adding to the burn. OK, now on the not so good side of the house, this is purely a model and burn play.

39:30Joel Cheesman: Panda Logic is gone. This is not about the company being gone. This is about the platform being gone. That's where the partnership with AppCast comes in using ClickCast. Right. We've heard from many pure play programmatic players that they're having problems with margin. So they have been going down funnel. The ones who've been going down funnel and owning the funnel for more than a few years, they're doing fine because they already have that sticky. They're already there because the margins for Pando obviously weren't there, but the ones for Broadbean obviously are. You noted that Veritone acquired Pando for$150.

40:09Joel Cheesman: I mean, that's really fucking hard to swallow. I mean, your product's gone. Your headcount's gone. That's another piece of it, right? You've got engineers. You've got all that support staff. They're gone. So they're looking to really stem the burn. And then the$150 million is gone. And last but not least, the news came out yesterday about that$15 million registered direct offering while the stock currently sits at 59 cents US, to me, this means two things. They're obviously under a cash crunch. As of June 30th, Veritone only had 12.4 million in cash and cash equivalents. And number two, their burn rate was and or still is out of control.

40:54Joel Cheesman: So the previous news of cutting an entire platform and support staff are all focused on stemming the burn. Their Q2 net loss was$22 million and operational cash flow was negative$10.6 million for the quarter. Now, in closing, we've watched these companies grow up. Terry turned RealMatch into PandaLogic. Kelly and Dom made Broadbean, a UK and a US distribution powerhouse. So many friends worked there at both companies. Most still, many are still there. So I hope they do well. I hope they can focus and I hope they can pull this shit together because as I would tell my kids, stop doing the stupid shit.

41:38Joel Cheesman: Focus on the things that are making you money.

41:41Chad Sowash: Yeah. And I just want to, I want to end on a high note too about this because you said it correctly. I'm with you a hundred percent. When you own your careers pages, take it back, right? I mean, we still always talk about the day. I still remember the newspapers killed themselves when they gave their, their one ads to career builder, right? Nobody figured out. I never need to go back to the newspaper site again. I can go to CareerBuilder. Bring it back. Own your page. But can I make a suggestion, again, for the sake of the job seeker? You may not have a lot of jobs on your page right now, but you want them coming back.

42:11Chad Sowash: Imagine a world where we live in AI, where you can build an amazing career coach for them for free, where they could be coached on your careers page so they keep coming back. That's the kind of innovation that we're going to start seeing some of these companies do. That is not hard to implement. But again, you have talked about it so many times. We need them engaged. We need them coming back. We need them updating us, telling us what their new skill sets. And we need to do it and own our own data. So they have to start looking at this. I hope they're hearing me because I do think they have a real possibility now that they've got the careers pages.

42:45Chad Sowash: There's something there. But think about the candidate.

42:47Joel Cheesman: Would you please? Please. And next, we're going to talk about Eightfold. And, you know, we talked about them. tailpipe yeah that that happens a lot of times we'll be right back all right so i get a beer and i can't i can't show you but my uh my bartender usually they put like a um like a clover or something on it maybe like a heart no he put a cock and balls yeah that's that's my that's my that's my bartender don't think i'm not gonna drink it alex of course i am of course i am anyway okay so this uh let's get on the serious side this no we need a celebrity from the people he has no shit right this from the people matter site eightfold has appointed joe corn geibel

43:37Chad Sowash: i'm glad you said it first i'm glad you said i want you what i want you to do is i want you

43:42Joel Cheesman: to go to linkedin i want you to use that little translation record record my my my name my name thing yeah so people can click on it and they know how to say we're just gonna call him joey k just nick name him thank you joey k yeah he's former cto cto at workday uh and now he's the new ceo as uh co-founder ashitosh garg steps down after a decade of building the talent intelligence company joey k brings nearly 30 years of experience in enterprise hr software having held leadership roles at PeopleSoft, Workday, and Dayforce, all big companies. His appointment marks his first CEO position. JT, what do you make of this CEO change?

44:30Chad Sowash: Okay, well, let's start with the fifth grader version of what we're talking about here, folks. Yes, please, for me. In case you wonder, Eightfold makes AI, everybody drink AI, that reads job applications and guesses who will be a good fit for the job. Okay, already scary. We've already talked about the judgment piece. Okay. The guy that started the company just finally handed the keys to somebody, to Joey K. Okay. And he used to run technology workday, but he's not the first hire from workday. So what we had previous to that was the co, he came in as co-CEO with the founder. I'm going to say it hopefully say at night, Chano Fernandez, who left after 20 minutes.

45:11Chad Sowash: Now he was a revenue guy. okay okay yes exactly 20 20 months he made it 20 months yeah felt like 20 minutes right yes yes but meanwhile while this is all going on okay so we're going from revenue guy being in charge to tech guy being in charge yes two job seekers are suing a fold saying it secretly gave them a score that helped decide whether they got a shot and they never got to see the score so what we're saying now folks is and has to do with credit scores yeah is once again candidate doesn't know where their data is going and doesn't know how they're being judged. This to me, I don't know.

45:46Chad Sowash: This is, you know, so why going back to workday, grabbing workday talent two times in under three years. Yeah. Right. And one of the things that was interesting to me was a quote from the CEO, the first message that they said humans on the loop, not just in the loop. That was, that was a quote on the loop, just not in the loop. Help me understand. It feels like a ride. Someone walked me through it. You know, right? Right. Yeah. And I just, for me, for eightfold, what concerns me. So I stayed out of the AI resume land grab. If you all know that you're going to see, there are companies that realize really quickly, oh, let's, let's, uh, job seekers are not getting interviews.

46:25Chad Sowash: Let's tell them it's their resume. Let's charge them. Let's make fake resumes and let's stop ATS inboxes. That's what ruined us folks. I never bought that land grab. Could have didn't because ethically it was the wrong thing to do. Cause I love my recruiter brethren. Right. But this is where Eightfold worries me, right? Because they're talking about scraping the data and figuring out if a candidate's a fix where the candidates never had a chance to verify whether the data you're scraping is correct, be able to add to the data or even know how they're being judged. So I'm going to be very curious to see what this CTO now CEO, first time being a CEO does.

46:58Chad Sowash: Joey K, we're watching you because you do have this, literally this lawsuit. And this lawsuit is no small lawsuit. I was looking at this. they're saying the FCRA statutory damages can run$100 to$1 ,000 per willful violation.

47:14Joel Cheesman: Per.

47:14Chad Sowash: Yes. So if you multiply that by every applicant in eightfold customer screening and exposure, that's some cha-ching. That's some money. So I think they've got to be paying attention to that. So, you know, again, the HRM in full effect.

47:31Joel Cheesman: Yeah. I mean, think about a class action, right? Right. Fikra and trying to get past that. And yeah, that's hard coming into an organization as a new CEO. I mean, and I personally have been down. I've given Eightfold a hard time for a very long time. For good reason. Because when they entered the fray, they were focused on candidate matching. Right. And they were really focused on that. And then I believe it was around like 2018 after they received 18 million in funding, they started becoming everything to everyone. And they just, that just doesn't happen, right? You don't move from being a focused niche player to everything to end to end hiring platform overnight.

48:18Joel Cheesman: And I remember being at an event when an industry veteran walked up to me and called Eightfold the Theranos of recruiting. And what they were pitching, he was not buying, right? He was not buying. And then a couple of years later at HR tech, eightfold went full thirsty mode. And what I mean by that is they didn't just buy and build the biggest booth at HR tech. They built the largest booth in HR tech, and then they built a very large support booth right beside it. And I'm talking bigger than SAP's booth, bigger than Workday's booth, bigger than ADP's booth. Literally companies that dwarf eightfold from a business standpoint were out boothed and it felt like a cry for help.

49:04Joel Cheesman: Hey, big boy over here, buy me, please buy me. Yeah. And then if they hadn't been thirsty enough, that's when they went out and they got Chano Fernandez, the co-CEO at Workday to become the co-CEO of eightfold, of eightfold, right? Yeah. It's like, That's not even close to a parallel move, right? I mean, or a lateral move. Not even, I mean, that's down easily. So where's that dude at now? He was there for 20 months or 20 minutes, what you said. It's crazy. And after all that, there's no doubt that Ashutosh, his friends call him Ash. And I've talked about him so much. I feel like I can call him Ash.

49:42Joel Cheesman: Ash deserves a break. Being that thirsty for so long, you deserve some time away. And now, and now we have a new guy, Joey Kay. And what I like about this move is that they, they're going away from the co-CEO territory. Number one.

50:01Chad Sowash: Agreed.

50:02Joel Cheesman: The co-founders aren't in control because there's a point when a startup is not a startup anymore. You hit, you, you hit those different phases and you need an adult in the room. Right. And hopefully that's what we're seeing here because a person with over 30 years of industry experience has to be better than a startup founder that caught a balloon startup. And good for Ash and good for those guys. The question is, how will Joey, the new face, change Eightfold's engagement, change their expectations? will they drop the Theranos of recruiting title because they're they are being focused and they are saying no to people which they didn't do before how will they handle community interactions I mean big boos and arrogance was pretty much the standard of before and we heard a steady stream of eightfold chatter for a couple years straight and now it's been nothing but crickets and I mean nothing.

51:02Joel Cheesman: So it's like they turn the marketing machine off. So personally, I'm going to sit back and watch because I'm hoping, and I'm really fucking hoping that Joey K here can turn this thing around for eightfold because I feel personally, they've been going in the wrong direction with the wrong leadership for a very long time. And it's not because I don't like Ash or any of the other guys. It's just because they, the company outgrew the leadership.

51:30Chad Sowash: Yeah, I know. And again, I know I'm a broken record, everyone, but when are you going to think about the candidate? We just don't. Everyone claims that they do, but they are such a beautiful example of the candidate literally has no control over their future. And this hiring reject machine is so out of control because of AI right now. And folks, they're going to rise up. Candidates are going to find a way. Things are going to get worse. But the companies that turn a corner and start investing in the candidates, every dollar you spend to help candidates trust you, want to give you all their information, want to be matched, want to be there.

52:07Chad Sowash: It is going to come back to you. Not eightfold, tenfold.

52:10Joel Cheesman: It's going to come back tenfold. and that's your dad joke kids because i don't need to have one after that one

52:17Chad Sowash: yeah yeah right no but seriously just i hope we end today's session on the note think about the candidate you can think i'm a crazy woman on here you know getting all wound up but you know i'm telling you right now go back to that original story who's going to win this race is the one that thinks about the candidate yeah sticking to it and you have the tech to be

52:39Joel Cheesman: able to make that happen we know that because because companies are already doing it they're already they're already lapping you and you probably don't even know it um and if you do know it then good because that's the first that's the first step now get get the fuck out there look at imploding your process and what would you actually build not just from the candidate side but also from the recruiter side and you know there's some compromises there there's no question not to mention you have all these different types of positions you have engineers you have high volume you've got all these things those are different processes this is going to take some fucking work but the beautiful part about it is you get to build it and that's fucking exactly exactly no more one size fits all right that's right it's so it's such an exciting time so use it this is a passionate one oh okay i'm i've got to finish my beer and i appreciate you joining me again from Florida when you could be, I mean, we could both be sunning, but still, you could be sunning or playing golf.

53:41Joel Cheesman: But that's another one in a can, JT. We are out.

53:45Chad Sowash: We're out.

53:47Joel Cheesman: Thank you for listening to, what's it called? A podcast. The chat. The cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology. But most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shoutouts of people you don't even know. and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one. Cheddar. Blue. Nacho. Pepper Jack. Swiss. 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.

54:37Joel Cheesman: Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. So weird. We out.