2025 Wrap-Up Show

2025 didn’t just shake HR and recruiting. Nope, it yanked the curtain back and lit the place on fire. This year-in-review isn’t about press releases and keynote fluff. It’s about what really went down when the doors were closed: job boards locking down your hiring data like it’s nuclear codes, HR tech rivals apparently confusing “competition” with espionage, private equity strip-mining legacy platforms,and founders playing 4D chess while employees got stuck paying the entry fee. From Indeed trying to own the entire hiring pipeline, to the Rippling vs. Deel spy thriller nobody asked for, to Monster France shutting its doors while exec bonuses stayed warm, to Job.com’s bankruptcy unfolding like reality TV — none of this is theoretical. It all happened. Add AI agents ghosting resumes, Slack messages turning into courtroom exhibits, LinkedIn becoming a credibility minefield, and recruiters caught in the blast radius wondering how the hell this became their job. Welcome to 2025's Wrap-Up Show. HR’s messiest season yet. 🍿

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Meet Dave. Dave's resume says he's customer centric, a point of sale systems expert, and a people leader. Reality check, Dave's resume was written by AI and AI applied to thousands of jobs while Dave was on his couch binging episodes of Jackass all day.

• 0:20Speaker 00

  How can you insert trust back into your hiring process? One word, Tatio. Tatio cuts through the BS by using real world job simulations, testing candidates so you can actually see how they perform the job before you waste a single minute interviewing or onboarding a fake. Insert trust back into your hiring process with Tatio. Check out Tatio today at T A T I O dot I O. That's T A T I O dot I O.

• 0:53Speaker 00

  Welcome to Chad and Cheese's 2025 wrap-up show where we choose the top five listened to episodes and pull nuggets of fun and goodness from said episodes. The first one is not going to be a surprise to Chad and Cheese's diehard fans as Indeed goes evil. Enjoy. Well, Joel. Indeed has been busy, kids. Healthy budgets enforced. Hyams is out, or he decided to leave. He decided to leave. Killing agency XML feeds, forcing them into APIs, focusing on how to force hiring companies to give Indeed's disposition data for their ATS. And then Jim,

• 1:36Speaker 00

  the Indeed Whisperer Durbin, sends us this. Go ahead and roll that beautiful bean footage.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  Hi, it's Jim Durbin, the Indeed Whisperer, coming back with yet another story on Indeed as they dropped their shareholder report for the second quarter of 2025. The big news...

• 1:54Speaker 01

  Is their new plan to simplify everything and make it faster. And Indeed's come out with their plan, which is they think that the global time to fill is 43 days and they want to on their own, cut that in half by 2030. When you go through everything that they're pitching, they've decided automation, speed, and Indeed is the center of it all. It explains what's going on with some of the single source feeds being cut, the plans to move into direct staffing and temporary staffing, and a new category called internal automation, which they count as $80 billion, including ATSs and background checks that they're adding into as things they can show how they saved money and did a better job. It's a fascinating change from the world's largest

• 2:37Speaker 01

  job board recruitment marketplace, decided that they know how they're going to hire, and we're doing it wrong, and we have to change what we're doing. Definitely check out some reading about that. It's gonna be a spicy, spicy six months.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  Spicy.

• 2:51Speaker 00

  Spicy.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  Where was the cowboy hat, Jim?

• 2:57Speaker 00

  Next.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  I only know Jim with a hat on.

• 2:59Speaker 03

  He's off-brand, isn't he?

• 3:00Speaker 02

  He's off-brand. That was the kind of buttoned up, Jim.

• 3:05Speaker 03

  I love, I love the Indeed whisper, though. He's, he's always on that. He's, I think he's still single. I wonder if he uses that in the, in the bars there in Texas.

• 3:14Speaker 00

  God, I hope not. I hope not.

• 3:16Speaker 03

  Indeed keeps us busy on this show. That's for sure. I mean, they're not going to get accused of not innovating, at least trying some stuff and innovating in air quotes. Look, I can't hate on them for swinging for the fences. You know, whether this becomes the new monster type screw up, like, be known, and it fades away, and they don't have the core competency to pull it off. I guess that's left to be seen, but they are full on, full court, we're going to own the process, we're going to be in your, in your ATS, the background shit, like all that stuff. They want to own the whole thing. I can't hate on them, hate

• 4:00Speaker 03

  on them for that, but I can kind of hate on them for, I guess, the bully. Way that they're just saying, we're going to do this and either, you know, get on, follow or get the hell out of the way or get run over. What I've, one of the things I found funny was Jim posted this on, on LinkedIn and Megan Radigan, a friend of ours over at Marriott's had a quote, something like, it's not a time to be lazy. It's, you know, it's, it's a time to be sort of focused on this. And I thought that's funny because people in general lazy. People in HR and in town are lazy as well.

• 4:31Speaker 00

  Megan's not.

• 4:32Speaker 03

  Ultimately, Megan is, it's an 80 20 kind of thing and Megan is in the 20%, but 80% of the people of the companies are going to roll over and they're going to let Indeed do this. And I'm sure whatever pencil net geek at Indeed said, look, if we lose 20% big deal, the money we're going to make on the 80% that agree to do this, we're gonna, we're gonna come out, come out on top. There is some historical relevance.

• 5:00Speaker 03

  So, so Google, um, back in the day, tried to sort of do similar thing. They were doing pay per click. They wanted to, they launched an analytics solution. They wanted to be in your code. They wanted to know when everything that you sold, how much you made. They wanted a piece of that. They wanted to monitor everything that was going on, which made sense. Cause hey, if you, if you saw a hundred dollar pair of shoes, we're going to get 10, right? What happened was all the webmasters, all the companies were like, no, you're not going to do that. You're like, you, we'll pay you for the traffic you give us, but we're not going to let you in and, and open the kimono and have you control everything. My fear is that Indeed is doing something similar in trying to overtake the process.

• 5:43Speaker 03

  We'll see if there's a revolt similar to how Google saw a revolt back in the day. But again, I think laziness will rule the day and 80% of companies will just roll over and let Indeed do this. And I think it'll be successful.

• 5:58Speaker 00

  So cutting down time to fill, they don't control. I mean, that's nothing they control and they're, they're talking about a lot of things that they don't control, which is, it's weird. Um, so to have those expectations over things that you have no control over, like hiring. I mean, they don't hire people. They, they don't do that. Hiring managers hiring people, right? And if they take three additional days or two additional weeks, Indeed does not have anything to do with control over that. I jumped into the, the business report. So on page 40. Quote, "To achieve the goal of simplifying hiring," which is what Jim was talking about, Recruit believes it is essential to further strengthen the collaboration between all HR-related

• 6:40Speaker 00

  businesses across the Recruit group and operate them in a unified manner. They're looking to pull these together and call them the HR matching markets. Okay, it goes on to say, "Recruit aims to leverage the vast amount of data available in each service combined with AI and machine learning technology to simplify the hiring process and deliver greater value," yada, yada, yada. And then on the very next page, "Additionally, by expanding integrations with ATSs," what does that sound like, disposition codes? "Recruit aims to improve matching by bringing outcome data," disposition, "from external applicant tracking systems into the Indeed platform."

• 7:22Speaker 00

  Okay, so you can easily see that Recruit's wants and needs are going to move everything into the old staffing company cost per hire model. That's what they want to do, which is why they're using Indeed to try and force disposition data from the ATS so badly. This feels like newspapers attempt to conform job boards into their old newspaper models, forcing column inches on hiring companies and getting a job posting as a gift with purchase or maybe a small up sale. It didn't work. The model died in the same way that cost per hire is an old and tired model. Every recruiting platform today should be focused on getting more revenue. How do you do that?

• 8:07Speaker 00

  New models. You get every qualified candidate, you get paid for them and you give them what they're asking for, right? We're so used to just loads of candidates, qualified, unqualified. And Meghan from Marriott actually said, "We got 10 million candidates. The fuck do we need you for?" I'm paraphrasing. At the end of the day, last but not least, they kept saying over and over and over, quote, "As a leader in the global HR matching market," end quote. Global HR matching market? This is something they literally just made up. This does not exist. We've been talking about matching. There's no market. I mean, it's like

• 8:49Speaker 00

  they're trying to create all of these things out of thin air and it's really weird. I do like that they're trying to swing for the fence. I don't like that they're using their powers for evil and I do with the bullying and I don't like that they're trying to force everybody into an old ass model like Cosper Hire when they could make more money on CPQA or CPQC. That's all I got.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:17Speaker 03

  It's hard to imagine that they don't see a world, sorry JT,

• 9:20Speaker 02

  No.

• 9:21Speaker 03

  where it feels like they want a world where someone joins Indeed as a job seeker. They put in their resume, what kind of job they're looking for, and then the Indeed agent just 24/7 applies to jobs based on what they're looking for. And then companies in a similar way say, hey, I need a PHP developer or whatever, and then it creates a job posting. It goes to the same, like it interviews. Like, I think they envision a world where agents talk to agents and a lot of this stuff, you go to Indeed once or twice and they do the rest for you 24/7.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  I agree with that. In fact, you're, so here's the way I look at it is they've got this house that's very old, has no more market appeal. Do you raise the house and start over or do you try to rehab what you have? And so I'm glad that they're trying to swing for something, but it still feels very much as Chad was talking about that they're rehabbing as opposed to just building something brand new and improved, which those are strategic business decisions. That's fine. What I truly see and believe is that we will, there will be no resumes. There will be no job boards. You will not apply on a job board anymore. You will get on and talk to a virtual agent that will ask you questions and every day you'll go on, kind of like your, you know, it's like your career therapist. What'd you do today? What'd you work on? What skills? What technologies did you use? You'll document yourself. It'll all be sitting there. And then when a recruiter needs

• 10:44Speaker 02

  somebody with that, it'll go out, it'll listen to all that, which is far more comprehensive. And quite frankly, it can be far more inclusive if you're looking to switch industries, switch skillsets. You can talk about a lot of things and prove you know something, whereas opposed to your resume is just a history of your past, which is lame. We shouldn't be basing it just on that. So the potential for candidates to just get in there and Authenticate themselves, provide the data, provide the evidence all the time, ongoing basis. And the AI can go and find them and match them. You might believe that's coming. I mean, if I learned anything this week in building an app in four hours, it is so coming. And so someone's got to do it. The question will become, and this is where I think it's like an arms race. This is really interesting. Is it an Indeed who can push their weight around and has the money and can get through it?

• 11:26Speaker 02

  Or is there somebody out there right now with four people that's going to build the next unicorn? Because they can, right? Like this is the

• 11:33Speaker 00

  Question. It's always

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's fascinating.

• 11:36Speaker 03

  It feels very paradox when you look at demos of what Indeed is building. Very chatty, very, although paradox, it's still a person using the chatbot. And in Deeds world, I think it's agents talking to agents, robots hiring robots.

• 11:53Speaker 00

  So to JT's point, I think she's 100% correct, but the there will be assessments and simulations. So when you're talking to the computer, you're actually using whatever it is, the AI. There will be standardized assessments and simulations that you have to prove that you can do those jobs. Because I think there's going to be a lot of hallucinating happening on these profiles.

• 12:20Speaker 03

  And fraud.

• 12:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, which are the same thing.

• 12:23Speaker 02

  Exactly. The technology is coming there to authenticate them, to build the constraint, right? So that we know that will be solved for, but every, both sides want it. Does anybody want to post a job anymore and get 10,000 applicants and then get yelled at because somebody didn't get an interview? And does any job seeker want to apply and sit in a black hole and get rejected six months later? Like the whole system is just a joke on both sides. So

• 12:45Speaker 04

  60% of the time it works every time.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  It's commercial time.

• 12:50Speaker 00

  Okay, face it. Recruitment marketing is broken. 70% of paid recruitment media goes wasted. 93% of candidates bounce off your job ads before they even apply for the job. And this is not a talent problem. No, it's not a data problem. It's a targeting and experience problem. The beauty of this is companies aren't trying to fix it. They're trans Forming it.

• 13:14Speaker 03

  Hell, yeah.

• 13:16Speaker 00

  With up to 80% more high-quality applicants, 40% reduction in spend and 50% less recruiter time spent. They're realizing what's possible with recruitment marketing that actually works. So how'd they do it? Well, they chose Jovio, an AI-led, high-performance recruitment marketing platform built to eliminate waste and drive more results. With Jovio's AI agents, your job ads reach the right candidates while your career site, conversational AI and application process drive better candidates and conversions. What about those qualified candidates you've already bought and paid for and they're wasting away in your ATS? Well, Jovio also re-engages them. Want to learn more about Jovio?

• 14:01Speaker 00

  Cool, just go to jovio.com. That's J O V E O dot com. It's showtime. In 2025, we were all given the gift of Rippling suing Deal over corporate espionage? You heard me, you heard me right. Corporate HR espionage. Check it out.

• 14:22Speaker 03

  Bitter rivals Deal and Rippling are embroiled in a legal spat. Rippling sued Deal on March 17th, also St. Patrick's Day. Alleging Deal planted a spy, Keith O'Brien, who's from Ireland. I don't know if there's any connection on that or not, but anyway, Rippling's Dublin office trade secrets were being stolen, allegedly. Rippling claims O'Brien conducted over 6,000 Slack searches, targeting sales data and was caught via a fake hashtag D Defectors channel on Slack. Two days later, O'Brien allegedly destroyed his phone during a court-ordered seizure in Ireland, locked himself in the bathroom, I believe, which is great.

• 15:07Speaker 03

  Deal denies the claims, hinting at counterclaims and pointing to Rippling's own issues like alleged Russian sanctions violations, which Rippling shockingly disputes. It's a messy, ongoing showdown.

• 15:23Speaker 03

  And we're going to love talking about it. Chad, what are your initial thoughts on round one of Deal versus Rippling?

• 15:29Speaker 00

  So we got to rip this apart piece by piece. First and foremost, case number on this kids is 325-CV-2576. That is People Center Inc. Doing business as Rippling, a Delaware corporation, is the plaintiff in Deal, Inc., a Delaware corporation, go figure, and does one, yeah, okay, and those are the, they are the defendants. Get through that. The complaint outlines, number one, violation of racketeer influenced and corrupt organization. This is a RICO case. Now, if anybody has watched any movies in the United States, RICO always comes up with mobster and gang films. RICO, okay, so number one's RICO. Number two, conspiracy to violate

• 16:14Speaker 00

  RICO. Number three, misappropriation of trade secrets under defined Trade Secrets Act. Number four, misappropriation of trade secrets under California Uniform Trade Secrets Act. Number five, tortuous inference with contract. Number six, aiding and abetting, breach of fiduciary duty, and last but not least, seven, unfair competition from the California Business and Professional Code. So, as you'd said, Joel, the spy was named, and was not named in the document, but the Irish Independent ran a story entitled, "Irish Employee Accused of Spying and Corporate Espionage by Software Giant Admits Destroying His Phone at Center

• 16:58Speaker 00

  of Claim," and title, that's a long fucking title. And in the story, the publication made the name Keith O'Brien as the Rippling employee that turned spy. So, the first thing I want to talk about is how they caught him, okay? And the evidence, because I think that's the biggest key. So, let's talk about the events real quick. So, number one, and we'll chunk this out, digital forensic evidence from the Slack logs, quotes, and this is directly from the case, "Rippling Slack Logs Show That O'Brien Began Searching and Accessing Rippling Slack Channels at an Unprecedented Rate Beginning in or Around Early November 2024."

• 17:43Speaker 00

  Notably, O'Brien searched the term, quote unquote, "deal."

• 17:48Speaker 00

  Approximately 23 times a day and I was on page 17 for anybody who was looking.

• 17:53Speaker 03

  Nothing fishy about that at all.

• 17:54Speaker 00

  So yeah, um, to me, this is crazy because we've been hearing how companies are already monitoring Slack and all these different channels, just to be able to see who actually has activity going on. You would think basically that anything that you were doing to search history, monitoring or anything like that would be seen within the system.

• 18:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, we don't know if they were monitoring it or not. As I understand it, it was, it was kind of fishy. He was, he was kind of, they were a little bit suspicious of him for whatever reason and then started looking at his shit and seeing stuff like deal searches and 6,000 searches everywhere. So then they, they, they made up this hashtag, it was a honeypot. They honeypotted his ass.

• 18:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:46Speaker 03

  The virtual, the virtual equivalent of like a bottle of Guinness. I don't know for an Irishman, but he, he caught on and things they were putting in this feed started like showing up in real life. So they knew that he had to be the one that was doing it and, and got himself pinched. But he was basically on the sales process, they were saying everything that they were like, it's very, very tracked what goes, what goes on in the sales process. And this is kind of a negative around all this intelligence that we're collecting, recording phone calls, recording everything like it's very easy to find out.

• 19:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:23Speaker 03

  Who's in the funnel? Who's close to being sold? Like what's going on? And he was telling deal sales team, hey, we're really close to this, like getting this company closed. You should focus on them and they don't like, like, so he was feeding us all back to sales. And I'm sure the salespeople were like, man, this is a weird trend where everyone we're selling gets a call from deal like that same week that they're about to sign with us. Um, and then, and then, uh, got himself trapped and caught.

• 19:49Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, in.

• 19:52Speaker 00

  It being in sales, you've, you've pretty much always had access to this kind of data in the CRMs. You can go into Salesforce or something like that and actually just look up history. In this case, I think it just made a stream of information. And what you're talking about, the honeypot itself, this, this is, this is the funny part. So Rippling's general counsel sent a letter to Deal's senior leadership, and this is how they know Deal's senior leadership is involved, identifying recently established a Slack channel called Defectors, right? So as soon as that hit Deal's senior leadership, then O'Brien went to go find the Slack channel. So

• 20:31Speaker 00

  that was the whole honeypot. So just hours after Rippling sent the letter, hours to executives and counsel, that's when O'Brien went after it. And that's when they suppose allegedly caught him in the honeypot.

• 20:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:48Speaker 05

  Running.

• 20:49Speaker 03

  And then, does the, does the, does the complaint talk about the bathroom, locking himself in the bathroom, deleting files from the phone?

• 20:57Speaker 00

  Destroying, destroying.

• 20:59Speaker 05

  Did he actually destroy it though, or is that allegedly destroyed?

• 21:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, he did. And he, he's even said that, that he did. The, the interesting thing is though, is he has been, I mean, okay, so this is, was, has been a poaching scheme, apparently or allegedly from Deal, where they've been calling many, many Rippling employees. And how did they get, how did they get the information to be able to WhatsApp individuals directly? Well, between January 29th and February 17th of 2025, at least 17 members of Rippling's global payroll operations team was contacted about similar jobs at Deal, and at least 10 reported receiving

• 21:47Speaker 00

  offers from Deal. So somebody had to have internal information around employees, personal phone numbers, and those types of things to be able to have Deal contact those individuals via WhatsApp. And again, all alleged, all alleged.

• 22:05Speaker 05

  I can't wait to see this fold out. I I think it's fascinating, you know, because when I first heard about it, it kind of, do you know like when you're watching like a Netflix movie? Yeah, this is, this is what this is. This is like, and I I really feel like, give it like five years, this is gonna be a Netflix documentary or a movie. And and I was thinking about it earlier today. I was thinking, what would it be called? You know, maybe the spy that searched too much, you know? And then you can manage, you see, I've been thinking about this for quite a while. You get that.

• 22:33Speaker 00

  Espionage in the toilet.

• 22:34Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, exactly. You know, you get the voiceover trailer. There's nothing bog standard about this bombshell lawsuit, you know? See, I I I think I'm hilarious. I was like, I obviously had too much time on my hands today. But I I I think it's fascinating. And like you said, there's so many questions out there. There's like how about how this happens? You know, how secure is this organization? Like you said, the CRM has so much data on there. And it did take a while. I know they did this kind of honey trap, but you know, how did it take so long? Why did it take? Um, why didn't Ripley notice earlier that there was a mole accessing their sales data? You know, because he said that that's twenty three times a day, you know, they waited a long time.

• 23:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, we don't know if if they know how long it was. I mean, I got a question. I got a question.

• 23:22Speaker 00

  Last year to February. That's where they, that's where they have, that's when they have tracked back to uh all of the search data that actually, again, is is is in the complaint. So it was, I mean, it actually happened pretty quick. I mean, we're talking about November of last year. Uh, not even six months.

• 23:41Speaker 05

  Still quite a, yeah.

• 23:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, but to be able to collect enough evidence. Like Deal, Deal doesn't have very good taste in spies. This guy is not, this was not James Bond in the in the halls of Ripley.

• 23:56Speaker 05

  And is this guy, is he working for Deal directly? Like, is he working for both, like actively hired by Deal or is he just rogue?

• 24:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I don't think he's on the payroll.

• 24:06Speaker 03

  It's interesting, it gets, because Deal, you remember we talked about.

• 24:11Speaker 03

  Making payments to companies that were, let's say, not on the up and up with their business models. And so does deal have like an under the radar way to pay people that this guy was getting checks from deal, but aren't tractable to deal? I mean, we don't, we don't know. I did hear that I did read that I think that he, there is some correspondence with one of the co-founders of deal and this guy. I think it's, it's really close to a smoking gun. Like this guy, without going to court, this shit happened like this, this definitely

• 24:50Speaker 03

  happened. And if anyone knows about, if anyone knows about like deceit, it's our man, you know, it's our man Parker. You probably remember Zenefits, Parker Conrad, CEO. He had an ADP defamation suit back in 2015, during my homework, which was, which was dismissed, apparently, but like this guy know, like, if anyone's gonna see that something's going wrong, or somebody's maybe doing spying on us, it's Parker Conrad, because this guy probably does it himself. Allegedly, allegedly, I don't need him to come out at me with any, anything. But like, this is incredible. Let me, I would say if this were like Uber and Lyft or Coke and Pepsi,

• 25:35Speaker 03

  it would be a Netflix special, but Rippling and Deal, I don't know, HR tech is gonna get its own show.

• 25:41Speaker 05

  HR tech is getting, obviously getting expicing now, you know?

• 25:44Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, they're bringing Russia into the conversation, right? So it, in Rippling saying this is a misdirection. O'Brien first searched the term Russia on February 12th, 2025. And from February, from February 27th, he had searched it. So the 12th to the 27th, he searched the term Russia 157 times on average. So about nine times a day. It's page 27 of the complaint. O'Brien first searched the term OFAC, which is the Office of Foreign Assets Control, a regulator responsible for sanctions controls. On February 17th through the 27th, he searched OFAC 42 times. So he was looking for things to dig up, to be able to see if.

• 26:31Speaker 00

  There was any trail that he could get gain access to around companies who were Russian companies who were sanctioned and they were getting paid through deal through deal operator. I'm sorry, through my bad. Rippling conversations and and Rippling is just saying this is a misdirection. They want you to think Russia, Russia, Russia, and there's nothing to see here. So they're going to be two, two sides of this. It's going to be incredibly, not to say they're not both right or wrong, but we'll, we'll sit back and we'll enjoy.

• 27:06Speaker 03

  Any guesses on how this ends? I was talking to somebody in Vegas that says this could be the end of deals business. I think that's a little dramatic. They've raised a lot of money. But any guesses on how this thing ends?

• 27:18Speaker 05

  Well, that guy's going to jail for a start. You know, I know that he said, what was it? He said, yeah, I think someone ordered him not to, the solicitor ordered him not to delete anything from his phone. And it said, I'm willing to take that risk. Is that you take that risk when you're going to jail? It's like, you're going to be the fall guy. So that's, I'm 100% sure that that's going to happen.

• 27:36Speaker 03

  And that's in real spy world. Like if you get caught, yeah, sort of, you're on your own. Like, we're not culpable for this. This case is deal has no connection to this guy at all. There's no, nothing in the records and he just, this guy's fucked. And deal, deal walks away unscathed.

• 27:56Speaker 00

  If they can find pay, if they can find somewhere in the Bahamas or something like that, there were payments. Yeah, there were payments. Just another reason why I fucking hate Bitcoin and crypto. Because it is, I mean, this is what this is for, right? That's what cryptocurrency literally will help you launder money and help you pay people. I mean, we're even seeing it, you know, in the, in the US government, for God's sakes, all these fucking meme coins and shit. It's, it's ridiculous.

• 28:25Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, this kind of thing happens all the time in history, like the KFC recipe. I know they tried to steal that. Coke recipe is under lock and key. And so this does happen to varying degrees of punishment. But I'd say worst case, if they can prove that sales were lost from deal and say like, the average customer is seven years old. So we lost this much per customer and you guys owe us this. Let me give you the numbers real quick. Cause I was curious if you, if you go head to head with these guys. So. So by the numbers, Deal is at 800 million ARR versus 570 million for Rippling.

• 29:05Speaker 03

  Valuations are really, really close. 13.5 billion at Rippling, 12 billion at Deal. Headcount, you've got 5,000 employees at Deal, 3,000 at Rippling. And currently, Deal is profitable with 21 million in profits and Rippling is still burning cash. So that's a little bit by the numbers. Does this make you feel less positive about Deal? As a consumer, do you think that's going to impact their brand? Or do you think this will go sort of?

• 29:37Speaker 00

  Here's, here's the hard part. And I actually talked to a couple of HR practitioners this week and about this. I'm like, don't you, this is crazy, right? And it always came down to, and I'm not, and again, this is very anecdotal. I had a handful of people that I really had deep conversations with about this. And they said, this looks worse for Rippling. And I was like, why? And they said, Parker Conrad. He's known as a guy who, you know, over the years, Zenefits, ADP. I mean, there's just this optics piece that he is shady. Whether he is or whether he isn't, from an optics standpoint, you can't deny what people are saying. And I was actually talking to one of those, those practitioners.

• 30:22Speaker 00

  And they said, yeah, they're currently actually talking with Rippling and they're going to break talks. Because they just can't trust what's going on. Now Rippling, again, they're the ones who are saying that Deal's in the wrong, right? But yet Rippling, and this, and again, literally half dozen conversations at the most. So not, not a huge sample size, right? Not a huge sample size. But when you start talking about this and it's just, it's weird. It really is. It's like from an optics standpoint, okay, yeah, we're just going to go ahead and shut down talks with, with Rippling. Wait till this happens or go in another direction.

• 30:59Speaker 03

  When I saw the headline, my, I went, I immediately went to what did Parker fucking do this time? Like, what did that shady motherfucker do now? And then I was like, oh, wait, deal is the one that fucked up? Like, holy shit. So if you just read the headline, Yeah. You could totally just say like, oh shit, the dude's, the dude's at it again. Rippling is doing some shady shit and they're the ones that get hurt in this? Yeah. That's really interesting. Hey, boys and girls. It's Joel Cheeseman here from the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Guys, I've seen pretty much every AI recruiting tool out there. I give my time and money to a very small few, and I'm here to tell you that I'm an investor in Alex AI because this

• 31:42Speaker 03

  tech actually delivers. Look, if you're still drowning in automated resume slop, ghosting candidates and wasting hours on first round screens, it's time to hire with Alex. Alex is the AI recruiter that's actually solid, which means it doesn't sound like a robot from a 1984 sci-fi flick.

• 32:01Speaker 03

  Alex interviews candidates on video or phone, asks smart follow-ups, takes killer notes and surfaces the best ones so your team can focus on hiring top talent instead of chasing ghosts. If you're scaling a team and tired of the same old pain, go check out Alex right now at alex.com. That's A-L-E-X.com and tell them Joel sent you. And right now, you can get a free copy of the book by Alex founder Aaron Wang titled The 10x Recruiter. Just go to alex.com/chese. That's A-L-E-X.com/cheese. That's right, a free book on the principles of AI and talent acquisition. And all you need to do is head to alex.com/chese right now. Guys, alex.com. Interview everyone. Hire the best.

• 32:49Speaker 00

  So in this next clip, I really don't believe we can bring enough attention to the greedy corporate welfare kings and queens over at Randstad. Let's go ahead and dig in.

• 33:00Speaker 03

  Monster France announced its closure in Europe this week, impacting 200-plus employees as shareholders of Randstad own 49% of the company and Apollo owns 51%. They withdrew funding for the post-2024 CareerBuilder joint venture. Despite a 2016 Randstad acquisition and a 2027 employee support agreement, no severance or reclassification has been offered with public funds covering costs. Randstad denies responsibility citing minority ownership status at 49%, while executives received $1.2 million in bonuses and 5 million euros in bonuses back in 2024. Employees demand ethical accountability criticizing the use

• 33:45Speaker 03

  of public funds and a lack of support. Chad, you've been reading up on this and have an opinion. What you got?

• 33:53Speaker 00

  So this is, there's so much fucking around on this one. And who people, who got fucked on this? And there were so many that my brain was scrambled this morning. I had to break it up into three sections. So the first section, we're just going to talk about the, the employees and in one chain. So, but first, let's talk about Randstad, who actually came out yesterday touting, reporting revenue of $5.8 billion last quarter, quarter, underlying EBITDA of 171 million euros and EBITDA margin of 3%. So it sounds great, right? Yeah. Well,

• 34:38Speaker 00

  that's amazing if you're a stockholder, but if you, but how is Randstad treating their actual workers? Like, you know, Monster employees that have worked for Monster for decades in some respect, some of my friends have been there for 20 years. And not just in the US, but as you had said, Joel, all over the, all over the world and even in France. So this lovely lady over at the job board doctor, she's the sexiest doctor ever. She wrote an article and the quote, "In documents reviewed by the job board doctor team effective June 22nd, 2025, Monster dramatically rewrote its terms of separation just days before slashing

• 35:21Speaker 00

  sales and marketing positions in multiple locations." So just before they got ready to do a mass layoff, this is what their change was. The old version prior to June 2022, or 22, 22nd, one and a half weeks base pay per year of service. Right. And the minimum was two weeks, maximum was 16 weeks. Okay. So you got 16 weeks if you were there and that was the max. New improved, let's fuck our employees version, two weeks base pay period. That's all you get. Doesn't matter if you were there for 20 years, doesn't matter if you're there for one year. Everybody got the same. So like, think about this listener.

• 36:04Speaker 00

  If you make $2,000 per week with the old policy, that'd be $32,000. And then the new policy is 4,000. Right. That many weeks.

• 36:19Speaker 06

  Not okay.

• 36:20Speaker 00

  Versus two weeks, right? That's a $28,000 difference. How would you like losing that amount of cash, right? Not just for you, but also for your family, right? And that's what they're going through. Just let that sink in. $28,000 lost because the company knows it's going to lay you and many others off in, in the next couple of days.

• 36:44Speaker 06

  So disgusting.

• 36:45Speaker 00

  That's the, that's the first segment. I'll let you guys marinate and talk that through before we get to the next segment.

• 36:51Speaker 06

  Doing something to my body, doing something to my body hearing about this. So I, I'm bracing myself.

• 36:58Speaker 03

  You know, this sounded very non-French. Uh, because Europe is very-

• 37:07Speaker 00

  This is mainly, this part right here is mainly on the US side. The French stuff in some cases even fucking works.

• 37:13Speaker 03

  Right. So they basically engineered an ownership, uh, setup where forty-nine percent means you're off the hook for all of this shit, uh, from public funding to treating employees like this. They've engineered it to where they can lay it on Apollo. Uh, US company, it's not our fault. Um, and I'd say a lot of people aren't falling for the banana in the tailpipe.

• 37:37Speaker 00

  No.

• 37:37Speaker 03

  Uh, I would, uh, does, how the French government doesn't get involved in this in some way, uh, would be kind of surprising to me. Um, but this is so hard because our, our industry is about people. Our whole thing is treat people well, retention. Uh, like that's what we preach all, all of our businesses, all of our customers. Like we, we repeat that in our sleep and then we do shit like this and it makes us look like assholes. It's awful for everybody. I know it's sort of like, oh, well, it sucks to be them, but this, this bleeds into everything. We're supposed to be the people business. We're supposed to be the take care of ourselves and everybody amongst us.

• 38:21Speaker 03

  And we fall flat every week and it just pisses me off.

• 38:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:25Speaker 06

  Beautifully put. Yeah. Assure your ire.

• 38:29Speaker 00

  Hey, okay, let's go ahead and dive into the next one because that was, uh, that, that wasn't bad enough. Meanwhile, how did Ronstadt treat monsters abroad? So here's a, a comment from Xavier Hamlin on Ronstadt's new numbers announcements. He actually made this comment on LinkedIn. There's something deeply indecent, Mr. Sander Van Schnoodle. I don't know how to say his last name and I don't give a fuck. He's the CEO of Ronstadt, uh, about posting this kind of publication, talking about the amount of money that they're making while hundreds of employees across Europe are being brutally laid off without recognition, without real support and not even-

• 39:11Speaker 00

  A word. Yes, your numbers are solid. Yes, your EBITDA meets expectations, but at what cost? At the cost of brutal disengagement of a rushed liquidation of teams who have been committed for 10, 15, sometimes 20 years. Monster, Monster France was a compass in the HR ecosystem at one time, a company that stood for much more than figures. You believed it, you brought us in, then sold us, and now it's a dry shutdown without regard. It's great to have the best team in the industry, but such a team deserves to be

• 39:47Speaker 00

  treated that way in the end. And we also have a video from Matteo Nicolò, who is the director, was a director of international EU sales at Monster. This is what Matteo had to say.

• 40:05Speaker 04

  Hi, I'm Matteo Nicolò, Secretary of the Workers Council at Monster France, where I worked for many years. Today, I want to expose a deep injustice happening at Monster in Europe. This is not just about that shameful shutdown. It's about powerful shareholders abandoning their social responsibilities. Until 10 months ago, Monster was fully owned by Randstad, which meant respect for collective agreement and protections for workers in case of economic layoffs. Then Randstad decided to reduce its pay to 49% by partnering with the private equity firm Apollo. And just nine months later, they are dismantling the company, pushing into Chapter 11 and shutting down the European business. Subsidiaries

• 40:47Speaker 04

  are being liquidated, shareholders refuse to pay salaries or legacy warrants, and instead rely on public funds to support workers left stranded. Meanwhile, global management from Monster has asked a US court for $1.2 million protection in transaction award plan for a few unnamed people. So, we have on one side the world's top staffing firm, on the other, a very successful private equity company, seeking European taxpayers' help to partially cover what they owe workers, as they will only get a fraction of what is due. Right now, we can pay you like salaries, but August wages are at risk in many countries. Randstad hides behind its minority shareholder status of forty-nine percent, refusing to act,

• 41:32Speaker 04

  all while promoting human forward values and boasting to be the most equitable company. And yesterday, they also announced record profit, solid profit. This is not just about money, it's about ethics. We are demanding Randstad to take responsibility because what's legal isn't always right. And there is a clear injustice we're fighting against. Thank you.

• 41:54Speaker 03

  Is he at the Louvre?

• 41:55Speaker 00

  Thanks, Mateo.

• 41:55Speaker 03

  That looked like a nice location.

• 41:59Speaker 06

  Nice setup.

• 42:00Speaker 00

  What is legal is not always right.

• 42:04Speaker 06

  I loved that. That was a good mic drop.

• 42:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, I mean, and also talking about how, you know, French taxpayers are going to be holding the bag. This is corporate welfare that we see in the US all the time. It's one of those bailout situations when you knew, when you knew that you were going to run out of money. And the next piece and the last piece, kids, in my dissection of all this fucking shit that's happening, is what about the vendor community, right? Companies that provide resources and services that probably won't get paid millions of dollars back. Monster and CareerBuilder ran up bills they knew they couldn't pay. And here's a quick timeline of one vendor that I talked to this morning.

• 42:51Speaker 00

  On May twenty-second, email out, to the vendor actually emailed to Monster, looking for more insights, specifically whether it was going to, it was having issues paying its invoices due to merging overhead or deeper financial concerns. Monster came back, confirmed that everything was fine, they'll provide more clarity. They came back with more clarity, saying that they'll get the oldest invoices, and this is in May, December invoices, February invoices, right? So they're in the rears, not in a good way.

• 43:27Speaker 00

  And May 23rd, Monster provided an update to the oldest invoices and said that the other invoices would be paid in June. So this is late May and nearly a month later, they're in Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, right? They wrote checks their asses couldn't pay. Now, you'll notice during this entire block, Mateo mentioned it, but I haven't mentioned Apollo because Apollo is a PE firm that sucks companies dry from, from every industry. But Ronstadt.

• 44:00Speaker 06

  PE does best.

• 44:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. Ronstadt, they're a leader in our industry and they chose to fuck over taxpayers, vendors, employees, all over the globe to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. And until we see a CEO like Mr. Sander Van Der Schnoodle or Jeff Furman in an orange jumpsuit, the hardworking people of this world will continue to get proper fucked. Hopefully, Monster and CrewBoutter employees will continue sharing information and stories out there and get louder. That this all dies in the dark. So we got to make fucking noise.

• 44:39Speaker 06

  It's really true. So you get nothing. You lose. Good day, sir.

• 44:46Speaker 03

  Look, Rans has an army of lawyers. They knew what they were doing. They knew that they would probably be cleared. If it does, if there's a lawsuit, they'll probably drown in paper. If you want change, if you're a Ronstadt customer, if you're a vendor, employee of, of shareholder, you know, money talks, you know, go somewhere else, take your business elsewhere, sell your stock and buy something else. Like, that's really the only ammunition I think we have to make change. Yeah. Be a, be a pain in the ass if you're a Ronstadt customer and ask, why in the hell did this happen?

• 45:20Speaker 00

  So in 2025, job.com's problems took center stage as executives rolled around in expensive cars while employees worked their asses off. And, well, go ahead and just roll the clip.

• 45:34Speaker 03

  We learned this week, you might have to take some sensitivity training. You've ruffled some feathers because some of the things you said about job.com's bankruptcy last week, which I was not on, had their co-founder Aaron Stewart a bit distraught. After almost a year off LinkedIn, he posted, quote, "I don't condone the use of the company's challenges as a form of gaining views, likes, or attention. But podcast shows like the above," meaning you and me, "are here just for that reason," end quote. "You're such a whore for attention, Chad. You want those clicks and likes." You've had quite a few messages from the good folks at present and past from job.com. What you got?

• 46:18Speaker 00

  So it's really interesting because there are a lot of people that say like, you know, you're trying to sensationalize things. And in this case specifically, it's bankruptcy, right? And there are people that are going to be hurt. We talked about Monster and Career Butter and their bankruptcy. We talked about who they owe. There are debtors. There are unsecured debtors and there are secured debtors, right? So we talked about that on last week's show, Emmy and I did. And then we talked about the prospect of a buyer. And who would that buyer possibly be? Well, they're creating another company to buy job.com. So literally, you're going into bankruptcy to be able to scrub everything clean. And all the people that you

• 47:03Speaker 00

  owe money to are getting fucked. And more than likely, the people that you work for, right? Not all of them, maybe. Maybe you get to keep some of them, but they get fucked too. And then you get to buy the company assets back for cheaper and then just continue to do operations. To me, that does not feel right. So that's not sensationalizing anything. That's just telling the fucking truth of what is, at least what they're looking to from a stalking horse standpoint, happen. So, yeah. And I think, and this is where I really want to challenge anybody who says this, when it comes to attention,

• 47:41Speaker 00

  That was, that post was actually created to, to, to try to talk to us about gaining attention. Well, we should provide the attention where it's due and it's due here because this shit shouldn't happen. And when people are owed money, it shouldn't happen. Since then, since then, I have been on the phone, I have been chatting, I've been on Messenger. When we started this, I was actually on the fucking phone with somebody. Um, and so this is from, from Aaron's post, quote, "I'm here to console those that maybe feel, are feeling lost, frustrated, saddened by all that has happened. Whether you've worked with us, partnered with us, or just in the industry," end quote,

• 48:26Speaker 00

  right? So it's all flowery and it's all, but it says, it says nothing because it's, it's interesting because I have, and it's actually out there in public as comments, employees are asking for their 2024, last year, W2s. They don't have them. They can't file their taxes. They can't receive tax returns. They can't use that money or pay bills. Everything that he said in that had nothing to do with the actual people. He said family, he posted a picture of his family in an airport getting ready to go on vacation. These people can't fucking afford that. These

• 49:06Speaker 00

  people are looking for their tax return dollars, right? Um, and then you start to go down, kind of like the rabbit hole of, well, if they, if a company can't provide the W2, there's tax withholdings, right? So you have tax withholdings, you have 401k withholdings, right? You have HSA, you have child support, you have all these different things that can be withheld from an organization. Now that's the record of it to the federal government. So you can show them, "Hey, look, I'm paying my taxes. Can I get a return? Or maybe I need to pay a little bit, but this is something that we have to do," right? These people can't do that. And to me,

• 49:51Speaker 00

  making it about yourself. Posting a picture with you and your lovely little girls and your lovely family. I think that's really cute, but that is not the point.

• 50:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:01Speaker 00

  You're getting ready to go on a vacation where a lot of these people, they're not going to be able to fucking afford it. And they don't want to be under possibly the thumb of the IRS, right? And you know, a phrase that Aaron likes to say, uh, you know, is all will be revealed. Well, there are a lot of conversations and actually things that I've been hearing about happening. You know, behind closed doors.

• 50:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:29Speaker 00

  Um, that, that I've been able to actually listen into. Um, and I think all will be revealed. I think he's a, I think he's a hundred percent right. Um, just not in the way he might be thinking they will be revealed. So, you know, just in response, this is not about attention. When you see somebody, something or somebody doing something wrong in the industry. We talk about how indeed does stupid shit. We make fun of them, right? This is incredibly different. This is owing bankruptcy, um, prospectively hurting, uh, vendors in our industry, which we talked about with Monster and Crew Builder. Right? So this is not something where we're picking on job.com.

• 51:10Speaker 00

  This is where we are shining a light and trying to add a little disinfectant to the fucking conversation.

• 51:18Speaker 03

  Amen. Uh, look, we're a couple of meatheads. Uh, you know, this is, this is an attention game, but we don't make up the news. We don't make up the court filings. We don't make up lawsuits and, and layoffs. And I mean, that's, you may or may not like what we say about it, but we're not making this shit up. Uh, we're talking about our opinion of, of what goes on. And, uh, you know, we, we have come across in our time, uh, quite a few from carnival barkers to shysters to straight out criminals. I'm not putting them in, in any particular bucket, but someone, uh, someone is probably going to do a deep dive on this operation. And reveal a lot of really interesting things. I think you've been bombarded, um, in the past.

• 52:03Speaker 03

  Week or so of of past employees, investors, people that have been acquired like there's a lot of shit going on here and it's not just smoke. There's got to be some fire and between bankruptcy lawsuits. Uh, who knows what's going to come down the pike.

• 52:21Speaker 03

  It's not, it's not for I have better things to do than investigate job.com. What's going on, but I can tell you we're not making this shit up. These are public records. These are things going on. These are things still in the court. Um, look, there's a lot of diversion going on. You know, there's a lot of like, don't look at this over here. Look at me and I'm I'm a he's Scottish, right? He's kind of like, I'm a fun Scottish guy. I got a great family.

• 52:44Speaker 00

  He's English.

• 52:45Speaker 03

  He's English. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. Scots didn't mean to do that to you. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Scott. I mean, look. Uh, this shit will be revealed, but I mean, from what we know in terms, I mean, in addition to the public record stuff. He's got another co-founder. Look, if you look, if you go to Glass Door, uh, Paul Sloyan, uh, who I don't think we've ever talked to, uh, is CEO currently. Yeah. He has, he has a 4% rating on Glass Door. For 4%, okay. Uh, only 8% of the of the employees would recommend working at job.com. Uh, a ton of comments about they don't pay employees, uh, commissions are not paid. Again,

• 53:29Speaker 03

  this, you know, this is on Glass Door. This is not us making it up. You can take it for what it's worth. But all the signs and Chad, you know, I've been around this game a long time. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, uh, it's probably a duck and there's some shit going on here. Uh, hopefully, hopefully it'll come out at some point. Uh, but look, I would, uh, I would, I would buyer beware on anything job.com that's going on, whether you're an employee investor, uh, looking to buy their services because this thing, this thing stinks to high heaven.

• 54:04Speaker 00

  And again, we're taking a look at all of this. And again, from, from the standpoint of just being able to ensure that companies, listeners, and hopefully the, the, the real information comes out. I'm getting information like, um, let's say case files and those things that are actually pushed to me all over the place. I'm getting more information. But I, I'm also reaching out to journalists so that they can do their jobs. And they have different connections to be able to do that too. Because it is most important to me that if there is impropriety, we don't know that there is yet, right? But if there is propriety, that is, it is sussed out.

• 54:47Speaker 00

  So that it doesn't happen again, because again, the employees, not the ones driving Ferraris, not the ones who are taking, uh, you know, vacations, uh, with their kids, the ones who can't afford that stuff, the ones who are doing the hard work.

• 55:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:04Speaker 00

  They deserve not to have to go through that shit. Right? The next round of people who could prospectively be suckered into something like that. Um, and again, all things will be revealed. Everything could be clean and great or not. We'll, we'll find out. We will find out.

• 55:21Speaker 03

  I suspect, I suspect when the lights are turned on, there's going to be a lot of roaches, uh, scurrying for, for safer, safer places. Uh, I mean, not since Jobster, if we're going way back. I mean, when I, when I did a little bit of, of stuff on Jobster, I mean, people came out of the woodwork. Um, it's kind of like when, when you have harassment cases, like once, one thing, it's just a house of cards and the whole thing comes down. Uh, and I suspect that, that we'll be talking about this for, uh, for a few more weeks because, um, there is, there is something there. I would, I would think. I think there's something there.

• 55:54Speaker 00

  Deep breath, kids, deep breath.

• 56:01Speaker 00

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  Ready to elevate your hiring game? Head over to veritone.com/hire and see what all the buzz is about. That's veritone.com/hire. Soosh out. Boy, that escalated quickly. I don't think it's a surprise that Gen Z hates LinkedIn, right? Are you with me? Okay, go ahead and roll that footage.

• 57:07Speaker 03

  Time to talk about LinkedIn, obviously.

• 57:11Speaker 06

  That's what we do. When we think LinkedIn, we get kinda hot. I love checking cock.

• 57:16Speaker 03

  All right, LinkedIn, this from Vice, and a story entitled, quote, "LinkedIn might be the worst social media app for Gen Z," end quote. Can you say clickbait? Anyway, social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok often spark envy by showcasing curated highlight reels of people's lives, making users feel inferior. Less noticed but equally potent, LinkedIn triggers what they're calling, quote, "LinkedIn envy," driving some to delete their profiles due to constant self-comparison with others' exaggerated professional achievements. Users report feeling terrible about themselves with the platform becoming "an egocentric

• 57:59Speaker 03

  breeding zone," quote, "full of cringe-worthy inflated job titles like someone claiming to be Director of Security when they're just a front Line support vendor Mo LinkedIn envy. It's a thing. Your thoughts?

• 58:14Speaker 06

  It's a thing. You're right. That was such a clickbait headline for sure. Because let me tell you, I think it's that way for every generation. And I think it's just like the job version of the envy, right? Like Instagram's like the curated, like this is my home. This is a day in the life. And this is just like professional version, right? But I can 100% attest to that feeling. Like I remember feeling that way often earlier in my career. So maybe that's sort of the Gen Z aspect is these people are earlier in their career. And now I know better because I'm like, yeah, that doesn't check out. Like you write your Harvard MBA, but then I go and I ask, this actually happens. This is a great story. I had a company that was acquired by a private equity firm and my new boss, I went on LinkedIn to look him up. And I was like, oh, who's this guy? Like, I'm going to have, you know, what's essentially a job interview for the job I currently hold.

• 59:00Speaker 06

  When I met him, I was like, oh, I'm going to talk about Boston because he went to Harvard and I went to Tufts and perfect. Like, we'll just chat Boston. I get on the phone with him. I'm like, so Boston, he's like, he got like really uncomfortable. And I'm like, what? And he's like, yeah, that was an online certificate. And I was like, dude, bro, like you can't write Harvard MBA. If you had an online certificate and that stuff is all over the place on LinkedIn. So first of all, it's things are not what they seem always. That was like such an amazing moment, by the way. But it also just encapsulated for me like you really, you don't know what people are saying on there, whether it's true or not. And people get to certain places and rungs on the ladder by a lot of different things, including luck and who you know. So it's just like, I don't really look at it in the same lens. I don't feel bad about myself anymore because I think so much of it is nonsense. But

• 59:46Speaker 06

  I think before you kind of have been around the block, like that could probably impact your worldview a little bit more. And it totally makes sense. Like everyone or a lot of people on there are just like, dude, I just got promoted and I'm making like a gazillion dollars and here's my hack to do it. And you know, it's just, there's a lot of that on there, but I, I personally don't think it's any worse than what you see on Instagram. It's just like in the professional realm. Oop, lost my air butt.

• 1:00:09Speaker 03

  That's all right. So I, one of the, one of the aspects of the story that I thought was interesting was that you, there's a sense that you can't delete LinkedIn. Because it's your professional footprint. Whereas I want to leave X like I'm out. Or real stupid. I'm not going to join like LinkedIn does have this. You have to be on it feel. So, so I do think that is a difference between between LinkedIn and other platforms. And so far, no one can dethrone LinkedIn. Like social media feels like every five years, there's a new, there's a new thing that everyone can join or join or, or, you know, change up.

• 1:00:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, I agree with that, though. You can't.

• 1:00:45Speaker 03

  Polywork like, yeah, Polywork we mentioned was a like kids, the, the kids needed a LinkedIn and they're, they're gone. They're gone. So for the, for the meantime, LinkedIn tends to be it. My sister, who's late to the game on LinkedIn, was hit on for the first time on LinkedIn. And I'm curious, I'm curious, because I, I've never been on LinkedIn. I'm sure that shocks you. But I also don't know any, I don't know any men who have, or at least have admitted to that. But it seems like a serious problem with women. Are you finding that with you and your, your friends that are female?

• 1:01:21Speaker 06

  Yes, I have had marriage proposals, or maybe they were marriage threats. Like I've gotten, I will marry you. And I'm assuming English not first language for this person, but like stuff like that comes and you're just like, like what, like, what are you talking about? Right?

• 1:01:38Speaker 03

  So it's more sarcasm, like shot in the dark thing, but like never.

• 1:01:43Speaker 06

  I don't, I don't know his intentions, but I was like this, if I will marry you, sounds like a threat.

• 1:01:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've never gotten that marriage proposal.

• 1:01:51Speaker 06

  Maybe, don't worry, don't sell yourself short. It could still happen. But it's, it's like, so, and I'm not the only one who has this happen, like other women that I talk to have this kind of stuff occur often. So it's, it's a thing for sure. But to your earlier point, like you absolutely need to have a LinkedIn profile. Like that's where I think it's like 90% of recruiters look to LinkedIn for jobs. Like I read that somewhere and don't quote me exactly, but it was something super high. And anytime you want to do any sort of networking, you, you have to go to LinkedIn to see where people are and who they're connected to and all that. And so you might not like it, but you should at least have like a shell profile. I'm not saying you have to go post every day or something, become a super user, but you should at least have something. And maybe if it makes you feel like shit, don't go on it a lot, but like you need to have something there.

• 1:02:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, it really, it really has become a necessity. I mean, I have a, I have an 18 year old son who's going to college. And I mean, it sounds horrible, but I'm like, dude, LinkedIn is probably not going anywhere. And people, people are lazy. People like shorthand. They like, they like quick sort of glance and get a sense of who you are. And so, you know, I really pushed him into a brand name school, which he is, uh, he's going to Indiana. So he's going to like a big 10 school. I'm going to try to push him into like internships with brand name companies because that's what employers want to see. They want to see a college they know. Um, they want to see interns and companies that they, they recognize.

• 1:03:19Speaker 03

  And to your point, I think people are really focused on padding, uh, their profiles and whether that's right out lying. Or I'm going to get that quick, uh, online certificate or whatever to say that I went to Yale. And have you and then, and then they put that in their top, uh, top of the profile. Like that's their main.

• 1:03:40Speaker 06

  Yeah, is exactly what this guy I was talking about today. And I was like, oh my, come on, man. Like,

• 1:03:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. So there's obviously a lot of pressure. Uh, yeah, you know, on Tinder, it's I'm six, three and you know, like, and here it's I went to Harvard.

• 1:03:56Speaker 06

  Yep. I'm the CEO, right? Of my own one person company that's in stealth mode. Like, well, you know, like that's the kind of stuff you see.

• 1:04:04Speaker 03

  Should LinkedIn crack down on that? Should LinkedIn have some sort of verification or to like, that's getting pretty rampant from what I can tell. It'd be nice if they had something.

• 1:04:14Speaker 06

  It would be. I don't know how, how exactly they do it, but you know, if there's a will, there's a way. It might be a good idea. At least, at least crack down on the scams, right? Cause there are enough scams on there. Uh, that's, that's the thing I see as more disturbing than anything else. The other stuff you can kind of filter out, like,

• 1:04:28Speaker 03

  Where there's a dollar, where there's a dollar, there's a way. I mean,

• 1:04:31Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 1:04:32Speaker 03

  Someone who went to an Ivy League school would pay LinkedIn to have like a check mark at their college at the top of their profile.

• 1:04:39Speaker 06

  Verification, verified Yale student. Like, uh, yeah, you're right.

• 1:04:43Speaker 03

  If you're, if you're paying to a quarter million dollars to go to school and get a degree, like you'll pay 20, a hundred bucks a year or whatever to get that verification.

• 1:04:50Speaker 06

  That's another money making move for them. Yeah.

• 1:04:53Speaker 03

  A new, a new frame around your profile.

• 1:04:55Speaker 06

  They're gonna crush.

• 1:04:55Speaker 03

  Little Ivy.

• 1:04:56Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:57Speaker 03

  You have Ivy.

• 1:04:58Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:04:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:58Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:04:59Speaker 03

  Oh, man.

• 1:04:59Speaker 06

  Super smart. Mm hmm. That's a really great call.

• 1:05:02Speaker 03

  You're welcome, LinkedIn.

• 1:05:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, there you go.

• 1:05:04Speaker 03

  I want fifteen percent. Fifteen percent of everything.

• 1:05:07Speaker 06

  For sure. But yeah, there is a lot of opportunity, I'll say, for Gen Z to get on LinkedIn because like a lot of people aren't in Gen Z. And my social media consultant slash video guy, like, he realized recently, he was like, holy shit, I need to be on LinkedIn. Like, why am I only on Instagram? And I was like, I've been telling you, guy, like, you should get on here because it's just there's, there's a dearth of voices in that space. So why not?

• 1:05:29Speaker 03

  And now that they have video, you're gonna see more of this sort of FOMO.

• 1:05:33Speaker 06

  Tik Tok-y stuff, yeah.

• 1:05:35Speaker 00

  Thanks again for listening, watching, and engaging with the Chad and Cheese in 2025. We're looking forward to even more of that in 2026. So for Joel, JT, Mo, Emmy, Levin, and from our sponsors, Happy New Year and we out.

• 1:05:52Speaker 05

  Thank you for listening to, what's it called? A podcast. The Chad, the cheese, brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of 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.

• 1:06:37Speaker 05

  And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. So weird. We out.