Pod Insights The Chad & Cheese Podcast LinkedIn's Trust Tree About this episode This week, the gang kicks things off with LinkedIn’s shiny new 100-million-strong verification army, because nothing says “I’m a real human” like flashing a blue badge that apparently gets you 60% more profile views and 50% more love on posts (fake LinkedIn influencers are sweating bullets right now).
Then the trio dissects Findem’s mysterious acquisition, wondering if it's a path to riches for job boards or a one-way ticket to obselescence for the agent phenomenon. Walmart sneaks in as the dark-horse employment hero, proving even the retail behemoth can out-innovate and outsmart the market while competitors are still trying to get their own employee engagement strategies from hallucinating.
Additional fireworks come when Chad, J. T. and Joel tackle AI-generated content—specifically OpenAI’s Sora. Joel wonders if we’re about to drown in perfectly polished, soulless videos, JT argues creators can finally clone themselves (hello, 48-hour workdays!), and Chad just wants to know who’s actually going to pay for all this sci-fi wizardry instead of, you know, real revenue.
And, naturally, it wouldn’t be Chad and Cheese without Chad recounting his house-selling saga like it’s a Greek tragedy and Joel dropping holiday nostalgia bombs that somehow make like worth living again. Too much?
Chapters
00:00 - Introduction and Podcast Overview
02:01 - The Impact of AI on Creativity and Content Creation
05:00 - Personal Updates and Life Changes
07:56 - Nostalgia and Tribute to John Candy
10:59 - Women in Corporate America: Challenges and Changes
14:01 - Engagement and Feedback in the Corporate World
16:06 - The Concept of 'Enshitification' in Platforms
21:07 - Recent Layoffs and Corporate Decisions
22:39 - The Impact of Layoffs and Economic Trends
24:26 - LinkedIn's Verification Program and Its Implications
29:01 - Findem's Acquisition of Getro and Job Market Dynamics
34:11 - Walmart's Transformation and Employee Investment
40:24 - NFL Talent Management and Corporate Parallels
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 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.
0:20 Speaker 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.
0:54 Speaker 01 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, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast.
1:17 Speaker 02 Oh yeah, this pod ain't for everybody. Only the sexy people. What's up, kids? It's the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Aforability Cheeseman.
1:30 Speaker 00 This is Chad. Don't shit on my parade, Soash.
1:33 Speaker 03 And this is JT. I need cinnamon mint, O'Donnell.
1:36 Speaker 02 And on this episode of HR's Most Dangerous Podcast, LinkedIn verifies, Find 'em buys, and Walmart shows us why. Let's do this. Boom. It's commercial time.
1:50 Speaker 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 transforming it.
2:14 Speaker 04 Hell yeah.
2:15 Speaker 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?
3:00 Speaker 00 Cool. Just go to jovio.com. That's J-O-V-I-O dot com. It's showtime.
3:11 Speaker 00 Are those called Altoids?
3:14 Speaker 03 Well, I mean, it doesn't have to be Altoids.
3:17 Speaker 00 Okay, okay.
3:17 Speaker 03 It doesn't, but this, I don't know, this time of year, hear me out. This time of year, you're talking to all these people, like, all the time. And this is when I get super self-conscious, because people get up in your face. And if your breath smells, it's bad, like, it's a memory. So, I mean, I'm packing the cinnamon mints everywhere I go, not necessarily Altoids, just saying.
3:35 Speaker 00 Telling you, personal space is important.
3:37 Speaker 02 Many uses for Altoids. I'll leave it, I'll leave that, I'll leave that right there.
3:41 Speaker 00 That's a good idea, Jeeves.
3:42 Speaker 02 Lots of things you could do with the Altoids.
3:44 Speaker 00 We'll leave it there.
3:45 Speaker 02 Big moves in the news, gang.
3:47 Speaker 00 Yes.
3:47 Speaker 02 Today, Disney, Disney a billion dollars in OpenAI, and they license all their characters to Sora, the AI, I don't know, TikTok?
3:56 Speaker 00 Just video creator.
3:58 Speaker 02 JT, you as the creator. Kid.
4:00 Speaker 03 Yeah.
4:01 Speaker 02 I mean, Sora's been around a while. You got vibes at Meta. People can make social media now without even being on social media. Does this impact the creator community? Does it create like competition, opportunity? What's your take on on all this slop out there?
4:16 Speaker 03 Yeah. So first of all, I've talked about the the second Renaissance. To me, this is digital artisans. You're talking about people being able to do fun things with their characters. I'm just, once people get into it, you know, they're obsessed. They're nerding out on it. And I think it'll be really interesting to see what people build. We've already seen what people can do with Sora, adding characters to the mix. I mean, it's gonna be insane. It's really gonna be insane. I see it as a good thing in the sense it's gonna drive creativity.
4:41 Speaker 00 I've shared some some videos with you, Joel, from Sean over at Arkham Talent, where he's literally done scenes like Titanic scenes, but he's made it about the recruiters versus like, you know, kind of like the things that they go through. And then also Sesame Street, where they have the Sesame Street puppets.
4:57 Speaker 02 Yep.
4:58 Speaker 00 So I mean, they're already doing this and there's some really funny content that's coming out of it. To be able to then start throwing all of these characters into the mix, it's great. The biggest problem, though, I have with this whole Sora thing is I think it's great from something to talk about, right? But from a revenue standpoint, they need to be focusing on, I mean, really hitting the ball out of the park. And the ball is on the large language model and getting to Gen AI, superintelligence, whatever the fuck they want to talk about. This to me feels like a distraction. It does feel like, oh, we're gonna be able to make money off of this. Yeah, but that's fucking pennies on the million dollars that you should be chasing. So it is, it is cool. It's fun to talk about, but I'm not sure that this is gonna save OpenAI, to be quite frank.
5:42 Speaker 02 JT, on the day that someone takes your commentary from work at Daily, like, switches it around a little bit, and it's Elsa from Frozen giving job advice, that's your advice sort of rewritten? Is that a problem for you? And is that is that coming? Because I think it is.
5:59 Speaker 03 Joel, it's already happening. I mean, every single day, no, no, every single day for years now on social media, my loyal followers will send me a link and say, this person verbatim stole, like, Literally took word for word and copied it and produced it. And so they go after those people for me. But what it proves to me is that there's a flavor for everyone. You know, somebody may need to hear Elsa give my advice for it to sink in. Fine, because there's still plenty of people. You don't play scarce. You don't play scarce. If you're gonna do what I do, you get out there and doing it.
6:29 Speaker 00 I mean, shouldn't you be doing that?
6:31 Speaker 03 Yeah, with all my free time, Chad. Maybe somewhere down the line, but I mean, I'm pretty busy now, but as AI evolves, probably.
6:38 Speaker 00 Well, I mean, you and I'm, I'm, I'm using the royal you as the royal we. You have a team. You have people that do kind of this kind of stuff. So I mean, to me, it sounds like if there are different opportunities and you see on TikTok, people have many different channels and they, they have different, different content for different channels. And in this case, it wouldn't be different content, it'd be different characters with the same content. I don't know. It seems, it seems really weird and sloppy.
7:03 Speaker 03 Yeah, I don't know. I mean, if somebody wants to invest and have me do that across multiple channels, bring it on. But you know, there's just enough for everyone. Yeah.
7:09 Speaker 00 That's what it's about. Invest, people.
7:11 Speaker 02 I think it's a slippery slope. What else? Big moves. Chad, you've, you've sold your house officially.
7:15 Speaker 00 Yes, we're, we're in the final throes. We're in the final throes. Been through the, the, the hard stuff, the inspection, that kind of stuff. We're actually looking at buying another place in Cabanish as well. So a couple of places there, two or three.
7:28 Speaker 02 Two or three.
7:30 Speaker 03 Wait, is that for us?
7:31 Speaker 02 What are you, the Beverly Hillbillies now? Geez.
7:35 Speaker 03 Gonna come do the podcast from there.
7:36 Speaker 00 Yes, of course.
7:38 Speaker 02 The Clampets are coming to Portugal, everybody.
7:40 Speaker 00 Definitely would love to have that happen. That would be fricking amazing. Can you imagine doing some of the shit, some of the clips and stuff like that on the beach? Oh, it'd be awesome. It'd be awesome. Anyways.
7:49 Speaker 02 I have to say, totally jealous. This, this is only, this happens to you, Chad. Like, everything works out for you. And little insider baseball. Chad's getting to sell his house furnished. So he doesn't even have to like worry about selling his shit or goodwill or trash like, oh, we'll just pack a few bags and go to Portugal. It's all good. Like, that's, that's how life works out for Chad So Wash all the time, all the time.
8:11 Speaker 00 And it just makes sense in this situation for, our house is really close to an elementary school, right? And more than likely, you're gonna get. Younger families moving in, they're upsizing their house. Well, they're not gonna be able to fill a house this size with their shit. And to be quite frank, I remember when I was that age, I didn't have nice shit. So we have nice shit. So I remember actually talking to the prospective buyer and he looked at me and he's like, is this true? We're buying the house and the furniture. I'm like, yeah. And he's like, yeah. Cause I remember the plastic plates that the kids had that we all ate off of when kids were growing up and that kind of stuff. And then we didn't want to buy really good furniture because you know, you get like spaghetti sauce and shit all over it. Now just like, oh, okay. That's cool. So anyway, that's how we spun it and that's how it was sold.
8:56 Speaker 03 Love it. Is it time for?
8:58 Speaker 02 Enough of that Chad life. I'll start off with shout outs. It's the holiday season. I'm wearing my Christmas. Factory fixmas sweatshirt. And this is always, always a time for nostalgia for me. Always a time to get sort of, sort of mushy and think about things. And I want to give a shout out to John Candy.
9:14 Speaker 00 Yep.
9:15 Speaker 02 People of a certain age won't even know who John Candy is, which is a, which is a crime.
9:20 Speaker 03 Shame.
9:20 Speaker 02 There's a new, the new documentary on Prime called John Candy, I Like Me. And it just talks about his life, just a grand figure, a real human being, you know, so many of the comedians at that time were sort of out of reach or untouchable, the Chevy Chases, the Eddie Murphys, guys that were funny, but not really relatable, at least to someone like me. And John Candy was just sort of an every guy, you know, the guy next door that was just funny as shit and could talk, you know, make you feel important and listen to what you're saying. So.
9:50 Speaker 00 It's amazing.
9:51 Speaker 02 I've got to ask everyone's favorite John Candy movie, which I'll, I'll get to in a second, but this guy runs the gamut of comedy. We've met him in Stripes, Uncle Buck. Everyone's going to watch Home Alone during the holiday season. The, the polka band that saves the mom. I mean, he's, he's in JFK as a dramatic role, which I think is one of his best roles.
10:11 Speaker 00 Had range.
10:12 Speaker 02 Total range. Great guy. SCTV. If you can see the old SCTVs from Canada, when we had SNL is a treasure. I'm going to go Uncle Buck as my favorite John Candy movie. What do you guys think?
10:24 Speaker 00 Love it. I, I'm a big, I'm a big Planes, Trains guy. I mean, it's always falling back. Back to the, those aren't pillows. I mean, it's just, it's just the funny little moments, right? That happened and they, he was able to create them with a mate like the Bill Murray's, Steve Martins. I mean, he was, he was also surrounded by amazing talent as well. But the thing is, it almost felt like he was amplifying them and vice versa.
10:50 Speaker 02 And so human in that role. Although comedy, there, there are moments where, you know, Steve Martin is rail, you know, just sticking him and you see the humanity. And when he's sort of alone, he has no home. I mean, it's just, yeah, really great. Plane Trains on a Wheels is a great one as well. How about you, JT?
11:06 Speaker 03 Yeah, I was torn between the two, but I got to lean towards Uncle Buck.
11:09 Speaker 02 Yeah.
11:10 Speaker 03 I just, there's so many good scenes in that. I like the one where he's dancing, right? The, the dancing scene, like I can't, he was just a classic, you know? And, and you're right. He was so lovable. Like you, you were rooting for him the whole time, even though he was such an F up, you know?
11:23 Speaker 02 Yeah. A co-owner of the Toronto Argonauts Football Team, little known fact, with, with Wayne Gretzky, by the way. Anyway, yeah, but the scene with Macaulay Culkin, where he asked consecutive questions, like, what's your record for most, like, that's a great scene as well. Anyway, shout out to John Candy, kids. Take, take a break if you haven't. Watch the John Candy movie.
11:43 Speaker 00 It's the holidays. Enjoy yourself.
11:45 Speaker 03 Oh, wow. So I feel like I'm getting a little serious then. I'm gonna give a shout out first to leanin.org's 11th Annual Report, kind of state of women in corporate America. It was partnership with McKinsey. It came out this week with some pretty dismal stats.
12:00 Speaker 00 Ouch.
12:00 Speaker 03 Everything's sliding back for women in corporate America. Probably one of the most significant one was, you know, 88% of companies were focused on these initiatives in 2017. It's coming in at 56% right now. And, you know, it's just reflective of the climate. But, you know, I want to give a shout out to News Nation. They had me on this morning to talk about this. And the one thing I did say is that, you know, we don't get progress in a straight line. I expected a setback. I think most people should expect a setback. What'll be interesting to see is whether we bounce back or not. But bigger is this tipping point. Women are done. They're done trading time for money. You can't win a game where the way you get rewarded is working 78 hours a week. So they're stepping out in droves. I am watching women leave in droves and go from a Traditional paycheck, time for money to acknowledge paycheck.
12:43 Speaker 03 Hey, if I can solve your $10,000 problem in 10 minutes, pay me. And women are now leveling AI, doing the work at 10 people. So I kind of think this kind of data just fuels women to say, I'm not going to play a game that is rigged for me to never win. I'm going to go create my own game and I'll be excited to see what comes out of that. Cause already the, the comments on LinkedIn, since I posted this morning have been pretty positive from women, which you never know. So, but that leads into a perfect example. So last week, y'all let me get on there and talk about Von's unveiling. They did that big.
13:13 Speaker 02 I had that at a doctor's office once, a Von unveiling.
13:17 Speaker 00 You had a shot. I think a series of shots, actually.
13:20 Speaker 03 This, this shout out is to Retu Mohanka, the CEO of Vonk, because she literally messaged me on LinkedIn afterwards and said, I'd really love to chat with you. I'd love to demo this for you. We took your feedback seriously. I want to hear how we can improve. Guys, I'm on your, your platform all the time. And when I'm honest, I usually get snark, usually get somebody from the company making a snarky comment or wanting to tell me whether or not that, this is the first time in all of 2025 that a CEO, same day came and said this. And again, a woman, just saying, just saying. Pro, pro move.
13:55 Speaker 00 That's a pro move. That's a pro move. And, and we've, we've said that it's about CEOs in the past where we, I mean, we get snark back and forth because we always give snark and, and if we get it back, that's great. It means you're listening, you're engaging and that's all well and good. But you got to remember, especially right now, you got three people that are on actually giving advice and recommendations, what they like, what they don't like, those types of things. There's value to that, right? So you either take it and you use it or you, you kick it away and you don't. That's entirely up to you. But in, in Retu's, Retu also reached out to me. Bill Fisher, the CTO reached out to me and just a great group. I don't know if that's because they're, they're European for the most part, but a, a great group who I believe are moving in the right direction.
14:36 Speaker 03 Yeah, agreed.
14:37 Speaker 02 Bill Borman showed up at my door. I wouldn't let him in. That's, that's, that's, that's all I got.
14:41 Speaker 00 Most hotels won't let him in.
14:45 Speaker 02 Get that hobo out of my yard. JT.
14:47 Speaker 03 Love you, Bill.
14:48 Speaker 02 Curious on your first point. I don't know if you talked about this last week because I wasn't around, but the women professional categories being deleted from the government documentation. Did you guys talk about that? Or do you have an opinion on like nursing? I think is no longer a professional category.
15:03 Speaker 00 Categorized.
15:04 Speaker 02 Yeah.
15:04 Speaker 03 We did not talk about it. I think it's, you know, it's, I would love to get into it maybe on another show, but I think what we're not understanding is we never started at the same starting line. So you've got to start to think about the fact, the reason we're asking for these things is just to try to get to the same. I'm not trying to get ahead.
15:19 Speaker 00 Yeah.
15:20 Speaker 03 You know, just get me there to the same starting line. That's why those things were put in place. And so, you know, like I said, women are just jumping out. They're done. They are done. They're going to build their own game. They're going to play their own rules. And I honestly believe there's never been a better time to do it.
15:32 Speaker 00 I think it's interesting because I did post about that on LinkedIn and I got a bunch of white dudes responding back to me saying, it's not a big deal. No fire here. You know what I mean? And it for me, it's just like, dude, no one to shut the fuck up and sit down. I mean, seriously, just seriously, when somebody's trying to advocate for a primarily female workforce, which is getting hammered right now because of return to office and a lot of other things, right? Just know your fucking place. I mean, seriously, either be an ally or shut the fuck up and sit down.
16:05 Speaker 03 Amen.
16:06 Speaker 02 Lead, follower, get the hell out of the way. What you got, Sowash?
16:09 Speaker 00 My shout out is to enshitification. Yes. A word coined and a book written by Cory Doctorow. The term is used to describe how platforms progressively worsen user experience and take advantage of their customers as a model. Cory often uses Facebook as an example, and there are three phases to this. First and foremost, they give value to their users to grow that user base, right? Then phase two, they start giving value and shifting it to the advertisers to target the user base. And then phase three, the platform starts prioritizing its own profits over everything else. Horrible user experience and also not providing the value to its advertisers that they used to. Well, this week, friend of the show, Mark Dries.
16:54 Speaker 00 From recruitmentmatters.nl, use the same framework to highlight our friends over at Indeed as the company who has enshitified our industry. We're Phase 1, remember? Indeed was free for everybody. Free jobs, get all their jobs here.
17:10 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
17:11 Speaker 00 Free for users, and it was easy. No friction for users at all. You clicked on a link and went directly to the job on the applicant tracking system. You applied directly to the company. Wow. Phase 2 of that, the value started to shift to the advertisers. Jobseeker experience degraded with horrible job matches, and hiring companies would pay for better placement of their jobs. Didn't make it relevant, they just were able to pay to get up higher, right? Then Phase 3, Mark says, Indeed's prioritization of its profits over experience and outcomes totally degraded free and organic jobs, right? Disposition, data grabs, and increased friction for everyone, just for starters.
17:52 Speaker 00 So shout out to Mark Dries for making us aware of the enshitification in the talent space.
17:59 Speaker 02 Shame on you, Indeed. Shame on you. You know, if they would just give away free stuff, we might forgive all of this. I don't know.
18:07 Speaker 00 Yeah.
18:08 Speaker 05 Hi, everybody. It's me, Stephen McGrath. And I'm here to tell you all about how you can grab some free stuff from ChadCheese.com. Now, you might be wondering why I'm sitting here topless.
18:18 Speaker 00 Yes.
18:19 Speaker 05 And the answer is really simple, because I've not grabbed my free t-shirt from Erin App at ChadCheese.com yet. Let me fix that. Right, that's better. So I'm sporting a slightly vintage model here, but of course there are new and updated designs every year, and those are super soft, breathable, and some might even say huggable.
18:41 Speaker 05 Now, what else can you get? Of course, you can get some craft beer. It's not just any regular rubbish beer. That's craft beer, brought to you by the data geeks at Aspen Tech Labs. And if you're not into beer too much, then...
18:56 Speaker 05 Two seconds, just go and get that. Then, of course, you can always go for Chicken Cock, baby. Two bottles of Chicken Cock from the good old people at Van Hat. Now, you're not going to get any of this stuff unless you go to ChadCheese.com/free and try and get yours today.
19:15 Speaker 00 Amen.
19:18 Speaker 02 I want to, I want to add to that Chad Van Hack.
19:21 Speaker 00 Oh.
19:21 Speaker 02 Has graciously allowed us to rekindle the premium bottle giveaway.
19:28 Speaker 00 Oh, nice.
19:29 Speaker 02 Old listeners will remember.
19:31 Speaker 00 Yeah.
19:31 Speaker 02 We used to give away really, really nice bottles over the, the holidays and we've been able to acquire three quality premium bottles of chicken cock. Yes.
19:40 Speaker 00 Hello.
19:40 Speaker 02 You know, the three wise men will have about the three cocks, the three cocks are coming to Chad and cheese.
19:45 Speaker 00 Fucking love that.
19:46 Speaker 02 We'll be putting that up, promoting that heavily here very soon, but a big shout out to Van Hack for helping us to rekindle the, the premium giveaway, who won't be getting anything this holiday season, however, is our friend Jeremy Roberts, who, who should never play fantasy football ever again.
20:08 Speaker 00 Still winless.
20:09 Speaker 02 Although he has one more chance to win a game and I would not want to be playing him this week because if you're the one team that like loses to Jeremy, you're in trouble. Anyway, here's a, here's almost playoff time fantasy football, our friends at Factory, Factory Fix, wearing my holiday sweater. Rankings haven't changed much. We got Courtney Nappo, Mackenzie Maitland, David Stiefel making a big push at the end here for the, to, to repeat as champion. I'm in that four spot just making the, the playoffs barely positioned. Stephen McGrath at number five could still win the consolation prize in that second bracket, followed by Jada Wyler, Chad Sowash. He might be facing you Chad, in the consolation bracket.
20:48 Speaker 00 Possibly.
20:49 Speaker 02 If that, if that happens. Jason Putnam, out of the, out of contention at the moment, Megan Radigan, William Carrington, Ginger Dodds, and oh my God, Jeremy Roberts. First ever to go winless, I think, in fantasy football, but big shout out to our friends at Factory Fix for making fantasy football a reality for us here at the Chad and Cheese Podcast, which now brings us to.
21:14 Speaker 02 Few layoffs to talk about, guys. UKG announced the closure of its operations in Uruguay, three and a half years after having landed in the country. Three hundred workers will be impacted, as in gone. Culture Amp laid off sixty people, or six percent of its workforce, as part of a strategic realignment focused on AI-powered products. Chad, any thoughts on the recent layoffs at UKG or Culture Amp?
21:41 Speaker 00 You couldn't wait till the first of the fucking year. I mean, seriously, we're in the holiday season. How else would you rather just fuck somebody the worst you possibly could? Let's do it during the holiday season. Let's do that. You couldn't wait until like, I don't know, mid, you know, Q1 or some shit like that. I mean, it's just, all this shit's gonna happen. A lot of it has to do with optics. And when you are a CEO and you need to start, you know, really focusing on optics of your brand, this is not the fucking way to do it. I don't know who thought this was a good idea. I know a lot of it probably has to do with, you know, closing out the year and those types of things. But fifteen days is not gonna make a fucking difference, right?
22:21 Speaker 02 That's it. Silver lining is, I think, everyone gets a leg lamp, the same one you saw in A Christmas Story. So that they'll feel a little bit better the holiday season with a leg lamp. Fragile. JT, any thoughts?
22:32 Speaker 03 Yeah, next week when more people lay off, these guys will look like less bad. You know what I mean? Like, it's still coming. You know, it is. I mean, yeah, I mean, it's gonna be way more next week because it's closer to the holiday. Like, hey, let's get them through next week and then let them go permanent vacation. You know, there's the mentality.
22:47 Speaker 02 The minute we blow up Venezuela, you're gonna see a lot of layoff PR because nothing in the news says, uh, layoff announcements more than war. UKG was an interesting one to me because they had acquired a company called Asentis back in the early 2020s, uh, which had a nice presence in Uruguay. And they had, they went from forty employees to three hundred. They literally announced growing to five hundred employees in a local magazine, a business magazine, apparently. So to go from, we're going to five hundred to, we're just shutting the whole thing down. I don't, I'm not a Uruguay, a Uruguayan expert. On certainly business in that area or anything in that area. So I don't there was
23:29 Speaker 02 something political locally, if there was competition that was something happened with UKG in Uruguay that just made them say, we're shutting the whole thing down. So maybe more will come to light on that one. Culture Amp, it's 6%. I think it's par for the course. It's just like AI is doing more of our jobs. Like, it's just, that's just the way that it is.
23:49 Speaker 00 Just timing.
23:50 Speaker 02 Nothing, yeah, nothing to say much about that. But yeah, I think you're right, JT, you're going to see a lot more layoffs.
23:55 Speaker 03 Yeah.
24:01 Speaker 02 And where do you go after getting laid off? LinkedIn, right? Am I right? LinkedIn has surpassed 100 million verified profiles through its free identity verification program launched in 2023, empowered by partners including Clear and Persona. The verification badge is now displayed on approximately 10% of LinkedIn's total membership with integrations such as Zoom and Adobe coming soon at no cost. Chad, we can finally trust the internet again. Am I right? Not so much.
24:31 Speaker 00 Yeah, this is much better than the faux verification you get on X on the Nazi porn bar we know as Twitter slash X. LinkedIn and Clear's partnership have actually, I mean, they're actually verified, background checked, over 100 million LinkedIn users as real people, unlike, obviously, the Nazi porn bar. This partnership is a clever way for Zoom to use LinkedIn's Clear partnership to catapult to the head of the class when it comes to interviewing verified candidates. And this is great for all parties. Great for Clear, as this means more people are gonna want to buy into the Clear to get verified. Great for LinkedIn, who has millions of fake profiles and need to demonstrate they're making an effort to clean up the platform. And last but not least, this is fucking great for Zoom, who gets
25:15 Speaker 00 to use the advantages of Clear verification through a Just Add Water partnership with LinkedIn. Then you add the wrinkle of Zoom's Bright Hire acquisition, and this all comes together quite nicely, especially since Zoom is already the number one video conferencing system in the world and holds about a 55% market share. They're a market leader who is not getting complacent. And I love, love, love this partnership.
25:44 Speaker 02 I'm so glad Chad's finally drinking the LinkedIn Kool-Aid. It warms my heart this holiday season. JT?
25:52 Speaker 03 Yeah, you know, all of that. And for someone who works with job seekers every day, I am really excited about the push to verify recruiters.
26:00 Speaker 00 Oh, that's good.
26:00 Speaker 03 Because there's just as many recruiter scams going on right now. And this, if you think about it, where they win right now is if they get recruiters verified and job seekers verified, that solves a major, major friction point that has been crushing us in ATS systems, you know, the AI bots, all of that. So knowing you're talking to a real human being, then job seekers ask me every day. They literally message me, is this person real? All right, how am I supposed to know that?
26:24 Speaker 00 Right.
26:25 Speaker 03 But if they, if they can force recruiters to do that and give preference to this is a certified recruiter, I mean, that's a big, big one.
26:31 Speaker 06 60% of the time.
26:33 Speaker 00 Applicant tracking systems should start doing this, too.
26:35 Speaker 02 Can we bury blockchain finally as an ID?
26:42 Speaker 02 Can we finally put that to bed to the chagrin of Sir Richard, I'm sure, but.
26:46 Speaker 00 Ask your crypto bros.
26:48 Speaker 02 What a gift for LinkedIn that they, that they could become the default verified person, human thing, not Google, not, you know, like it's not Facebook, not X. Like LinkedIn, what a position to be in.
27:00 Speaker 00 It's awesome.
27:00 Speaker 02 Good for them. Kind of by accident, like ID.me does this. I mean, there are certain, certainly ways that you can build some sort of trust here, but good on LinkedIn for kind of falling into this position.
27:11 Speaker 00 But if you think of Clear, people who travel, they, they want to use Clear in many airports, right? And that's, that's the next step up because everybody's using TSA PreCheck now, right? So the lines at TSA PreCheck are just as long, if not longer than standard. So then you go through the Clear line. So everybody wants, I mean, they're just the advantages of it, especially if you're in business. And then in this aspect of it, I mean, I just love it. And again, applicant tracking systems, there are other applications that are out there where I think there could be great partnerships where literally Clear could explode.
27:42 Speaker 02 The application is there, just not the, the index, the, the Rolodex of people. Now, Clear could, could partner with Meta, I guess, and you could clarify your, your Meta profile. But anyway, I love, I love it when Chad's privilege shows when he's like, everyone has a TSA PreCheck and everyone goes to the Clear line. As somebody who just traveled, no, Chad, everyone does not have a TSA PreCheck.
28:05 Speaker 03 I don't have it. I don't have it.
28:07 Speaker 02 When we come back, we'll find them if we have them.
28:11 Speaker 02 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 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.
28:44 Speaker 02 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
29:27 Speaker 02 now. Guys, alex.com. Interview everyone. Hire the best.
29:35 Speaker 02 Rolling on, guys. Findum, an AI platform built for talent decisions, has acquired Gettr, a job network used by venture capital, private equity and professional organizations, otherwise known as blue collar, blue collar job boards, everybody, aiming to combine Gettr's relationship intelligence with Findum's tools. In case you missed it, Findum recently raised $51 million back in October, bringing its total funding to $110 million. Chad, Findum, if you got them. Your thoughts?
30:05 Speaker 00 So Gettr, as you said, is a job board platform representing 800 VC, PE, Economic Development, Chamber of Commerce, et cetera, et cetera, just a bunch of professional networks. And I'd really like a breakdown of all of those. Because it would be nice to know how many actual professional networks are in there. There are a lot of VC and PE, but I believe the real value lies in the professional networks right now. And then think about it from the standpoint of, you know, Findum adding Gettr's site to deliver higher ready candidates to companies. I mean, Findum is already a sourcing
30:45 Speaker 00 platform. So now you're going to see value in distribution to job boards they now control, not to mention having access to those resume databases to match qualified candidates and invite them to apply, screen, and then schedule interviews. It's like ZipRecruiter on steroids. I mean, well, back when ZipRecruiter was worth a shit. This just demonstrates that job board platforms who go aggressively into integrating AI, automated workflows, and ApplyPass into their system have massive value. And this is nothing new. We've been doing this with job boards for ages, but the advent of automation and AI takes it to another level, especially when you are
31:29 Speaker 00 connected to 800 fucking job boards. So congratulations to, you know, Gettr, Findum, and our friends over at Akidian Ventures, who are actually a part of this deal. Was it the chat?
31:40 Speaker 02 The chat was great. JT, I'm gonna go next because I want to set you up for some commentary on my thoughts on this. So part of it is I think there's an arms race in agents. Like, everybody's got them. You know, it's sort of like when chatbots, chatbots are everywhere. I don't know which ones are good, which ones are shit. Ultimately, the market, you know, vetted that out. So what's interesting to me is you had a commentary, JT, about quiet posting. And I'll paraphrase it, but basically saying, companies are tired of robotic automated applies and they're sick of it. So they're not even posting jobs. They're just going right to the database, right to the source, and then trying
32:22 Speaker 02 to find people that way. So when I see an agent partner with essentially a job board, who I'm guessing is getting And for your job postings, it's like, how do we monetize our job board now? And Findum is this sort of easy button to say, okay, we'll partner with these guys to now and now create monetization opportunities in our job board. And then you have Findum partnering with like an association, which is also part of the news. So it's almost like the old, the old strategy of like, we'll put a jobs link on your association site and then you can search for jobs which are hired by us. This strategy, the more I, the more I peel it, the, the smellier it gets, but also the more intriguing
33:05 Speaker 02 it gets. I'm, I'm curious about JT because I think you have some insight into what companies are seeing and, and how solutions like Findum can help fill the monetization gap that's coming from fewer job postings.
33:17 Speaker 03 Right, yeah. So quiet hiring is huge right now, like you said, right? Then, then, and eventually we're not going to call it quiet hiring anymore. We're just going to call it hiring. And I say that because job boards are dead. I'll say it again, Gettrum, that's their name that just got bought. Smart, smart move. Gettrum, smart move. Because they know they have to evolve. But what I like about them is the 800 niche areas of expertise that they fall into, right? Like, these aren't general job boards. These are niche based job wars on skills. So if you can take that, that access to that audience, put them with Findum, and start to create that quiet hiring effect through that platform, that gets insane.
33:59 Speaker 03 Because they already have the niche content, the niche individuals to go and find. What they're going to have to do now is change the approach of how those people update themselves and make themselves, um, you know, kind of like their career library so that it's searchable and, and they can find them. But, uh, yeah, there's money behind this. It's niche based and it's going forward and I like it. I like where it's going.
34:23 Speaker 02 All right, all right. Well, speaking of money, let's talk about Walmart, shall we? A company out of Arkansas you might've heard of. In 2015, Walmart announced a $2.7 billion investment in its associates prioritizing wage increases, training and educational programs. This decision initially met with skepticism, has led to significant benefits for associates, executives, and yes, Wall Street. Here's Bloomberg with a deeper dive on the news. When Beckman Millen took over.
34:55 Speaker 06 Walmart was one of the most vilified companies in the US. It was accused of paying its people very little money, of putting mom and pop retailers out of business, of creating a culture of disposable consumerism. He really intentionally changed the company's image, and he did that by investing in people. So he was able, by increasing wages, by investing in training and education, to really turn what were low-paying jobs into potential careers. And that meant that people stayed longer and attracted more ambitious workers. And we now have the receipts from this experiment, and the company has returned something like 420%
35:37 Speaker 05 Hello.
35:38 Speaker 06 since it took over.
35:39 Speaker 01 I mean, I wake up in the morning, I piss excellence.
35:42 Speaker 02 JT, who buys Oliver Subway tuna melts with a macadamia nut cookie on the side at Walmart, by the way. Your thoughts on this move? You're an advocate for the job seeker and the employee. You love this, right?
35:54 Speaker 03 I do. Wait, how did you know I love tuna melts? Can we hit on that later?
35:59 Speaker 02 Bonding over tuna with JT. Our new podcast dropping in January.
36:05 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, you know I'm a fan of this. And anecdotally, I'll tell you a story. Before he took over, I remember being in a Walmart one day, packed, holiday season, couldn't find anyone to help you. If you walked up to somebody that clearly worked there, they gave you an evil eye and were hanging out and talking. I mean, the apathy that was going through that place at that time obviously made you not want to shop there. Fast forward to today, the stats are there. I mean, that is exciting, exciting stuff in a time where people are... You know, you can have a job, a career, or a calling. And the reality is, there's a lot of people that just want a job. Yeah. But when you take that job and you make it what it is there, I mean, that's crazy transformation. I mean, he is a comeback kid. That's impressive.
36:46 Speaker 00 He's definitely a comeback kid because he started working at Walmart on the warehouse floor. So the guy can get his hands dirty and he really serves as the living embodiment of, you know, the company's current promote from within philosophy. He has consistently championed championed internal development, elevating leaders like John Ferner, who's actually going to step into the CEO position in 2026. And that reinforces the pipeline first culture. We always talk about talent pipelining in our space. It's totally bullshit because we don't do stuff like this. McMillan's philosophy extends to valuing all associates. Recent reports even spotlighting cake decorators as among some of the highest paid hourly roles
37:29 Speaker 00 that they have. And I can hear you now, guys. I can hear you now. That's great, Chad. But what about capitalism? Under McMillan, Walmart's revenue surged from roughly 476 billion in 2014 to more than 710 billion today. A huge leap for a company at that scale. Walmart's market cap quadrupled with shares delivering 300 plus percent gains, easily outperforming the S and P 500 during the, you know, the time in the seat. And the company has also seen strong net expansion into a 4% jump in the recent quarter. So highlighting McMillan's ability to do all of this because they paid their people more. I do have a beef. I think
38:14 Speaker 00 he should actually not get paid as much as he does right now. But and start pushing that money back down to the people who actually had all of this and made this happen. But I'll save that for another day. I think this is great. This is amazing. Invest in your people.
38:28 Speaker 05 Time for a history lesson.
38:32 Speaker 02 Who remembers the 90s? Yeah, the 90s. I remember when Walmart was killing every mom and pop in your local market. I remember local grocery stores. I remember grocery or local appliance stores. Yeah. Like, so I remember when Walmart was the devil and killing every and every, every job that it was replacing was a shitty job that paid jack shit, had no benefit. Like so to see this transformation from what Walmart as a brand was to local markets that were seeing their economy destroyed, the businesses that they knew and trusted gone because of pricing. It's a fascinating turnaround and the fact that we're even talking
39:11 Speaker 02 about Walmart as yay Walmart is sort of surreal to me because they were this, they were Satan. They were like the worst brand in many local markets throughout the world. I am curious though, because we talk about brand and employment brand and holistic brand. And part of me thinks that the reverse can be true. If you have a strong employment brand, you can then become a strong holistic brand. We talk so much about big brands that have that attract good people. Sometimes good people can turn your brand around and we're saying that with Walmart.
39:46 Speaker 00 Yeah. So JT was just talking about a fucking instance where nobody fucking paid attention to her. Now they pay attention to people because they're actually making close to a living wage.
39:55 Speaker 02 Yeah. And when I see, when I see like a target struggle, it makes me wonder how they could follow this sort of blueprint and Starbucks and others that have labor issues that they can turn things around. But it's fascinating to me from a, from a branding, branding standpoint. But yeah, good for, good for Walmart.
40:14 Speaker 00 Dig it.
40:16 Speaker 02 And from Walmart to the NFL, Chad, you got your LinkedIn followers all fired up this week over a post on football. And I'm not talking about your seventh place current ranking in fantasy football powered by our friends at Factory Fix, by the way, everybody. What did you post on LinkedIn that got everybody so ginned up?
40:35 Speaker 00 Well, I'll talk about it after this ad break. We'll be right back.
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41:25 Speaker 00 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.
41:41 Speaker 00 All right. Let's, uh, let me see if I can share something here real quick. Cause this is, this is going to be helpful for all of the individuals that are out there who are watching on YouTube. If you're not watching on YouTube, you should be watching on YouTube. All right. So let's jump into this real quick. So I'm not a Green Bay fan, Packers fan. And if you are listening, what we're looking at is literally it's just comparing Green Bay Packers, Detroit Lions, Chicago Bears, and the Minnesota Vikings, and the number of quarterbacks that they've had since 1992. The Green Bay Packers have had three. Okay. Three. So now that's the setup. I'm not a Packers fan, but I am a fan of their development program. And using the, the quarterback position as an example where Green Bay has had three
42:26 Speaker 00 starting quarterbacks since 1992, and three of their conference rivals, and most of the NFL have had five to 10 times more quarterbacks starting in that position. Why? Most NFL teams treat top talent as disposable. And most companies and their talent organizations are doing the exact same today. And here's a great example. Green Bay drafts a top QB to learn from the QB that's currently in the position. They give him a clipboard and he sits on the sideline and he gets a chance to actually learn the game at the NFL level.
43:05 Speaker 00 Where most NFL teams, Cleveland, throw their rookie QBs into the fire the very first chance they get, generally the first season, their rookie season, almost like They're disposable. That is exactly how many companies view talent today. They go through the process of identifying top talent, what that looks like. They then target that talent. They recruit that talent. They onboard that talent and then they throw them into the fucking fire with no development whatsoever. So that is really my case. When we start talking about sports and we always make these analogies back and forth. For me, this is probably one of the closest analogies.
43:41 Speaker 02 You just had to throw my Cleveland Browns under the bus, didn't you? The only reason you wanted to talk about this was to trash the Browns, wasn't it?
43:49 Speaker 00 No, of course not. Of course not.
43:50 Speaker 02 You're right. Like from and the Packers, you could probably say they've had that many coaches too. You could probably say they've had that many, uh, you know, GMs and, and presidents. Like this all starts at the top and like executives that know what they're doing, people that know what they're doing, and then recruiters that know what they're doing. This, there's no difference in, you know, Jamie Dimon running, uh, you know, JP Morgan or other executives and in doing that. Now, what I do find interesting, by the way, the Browns are the exact opposite of everything I just said. They're a total train wreck on all of the fall, all of them. Different owners, different GMs, different everybody. But what's interesting to me is the, the backstory in some of that is like Brett Favre did not like Aaron Rodgers. He did not like them drafting Aaron Rodgers because
44:35 Speaker 02 he was the replacement and it takes a strong organization to say goodbye when it's time to say goodbye to Brett Favre. And I'm pretty sure Aaron Rodgers was not real excited when they drafted, uh, Love because he wanted more receivers and other people that he could throw to. I can think also, uh, Ben Roethlisberger in Pittsburgh, another really strong, stable organization. When they drafted Kenny Pickett, he had a lot of problems with that. Now, Pickett didn't work out because he wasn't, uh, Aaron Rodgers, but organizations also have to figure out when it's time to say goodbye to someone, how do we do that and do it strategically and, and do it in a way that makes sense?
45:09 Speaker 03 Not being heavily involved in football. The first thing that came to mind was, did that account for injury? I mean, you know, you're going to have turnover when you have injury and people leak out, you know, if, if you have, if they were super healthy and they got to play every game, yeah, sure, you'd have less. But you know, just a thought.
45:27 Speaker 00 It did to some extent. I mean, there, there were literally like the starters, right? And if they didn't play a few games because of injury, they didn't count that. So it was literally like the starters versus like the Cleveland Browns again, or the Detroit Lions or what have you, that literally they went through changing their starting rotation entirely. Not because of injury, but just because.
45:50 Speaker 02 It's a good point too, Chad. I mean, here in Indianapolis, we had a generational quarterback in Andrew Luck. And we didn't surround him with the people that he needed to be surrounded with, linemen.
46:01 Speaker 00 Still.
46:01 Speaker 02 To keep him upright. And he did have injuries like JT alluded to. So like all these things, you can have the best quarterback of a generation. But if you don't have the pieces around him, it's not going to work.
46:11 Speaker 00 Yep.
46:11 Speaker 03 Yeah. And I'm going to throw one more factor in there. Football's been played the same way for how many years? Football's been played the same way. It is the same game. Business is not the same game. So when you're staying at the rate of change and you've got to stay on top of it and you wake up one day and your staff doesn't cut it. I get training. I'm so, you know me, I want you to retrain. I want you to redeploy. But at the world we're in now, that's just not always 100% possible. So I don't know.
46:36 Speaker 00 Depending on the company, but I don't agree at all because football started off as just a running game and then there was a forward pass. Right? Not to mention now you've got RPO, you've got different types of offenses and defenses and those types of things. So I don't agree at all. We have to be smarter about how we, how we as an industry, develop talent and we're not doing that.
46:58 Speaker 02 Guys, you know, you know what never changes? The quality of my dad jokes. That's what never changes.
47:04 Speaker 00 Get it in, get it in.
47:05 Speaker 03 I'm ready.
47:06 Speaker 02 All right. This one's for Cameron Levy, who emailed me and said, bring the naughty ones back. Bring the naughty jokes back. So a little bit.
47:12 Speaker 03 No. Cameron.
47:15 Speaker 02 Why doesn't Santa have kids? Why doesn't Santa have kids? Because he only comes once a year and it's usually down a chimney.
47:25 Speaker 00 Thanks, Cameron.
47:29 Speaker 00 Fucking Cameron.
47:32 Speaker 01 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.
48:17 Speaker 01 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.
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