Pod Insights The Chad & Cheese Podcast VONQ Goes Hollywood & Indeed Builds a Death Star About this episode Strap in, kids — this week on The Chad & Cheese Podcast, the gang returns from skiing, globetrotting, and loudly judging their Spotify Wrapped to break down a blockbuster week in TA.
First up: VONQ drops its biggest launch in years, rolling out its shiny new “Echo” platform like they're gunning for an Apple keynote. Did they finally build something the industry actually needs? Did they actually stick the landing? And is this the opening move in a coming acquisition play? We’ve got thoughts… lots of them.
Then: Indeed pulls the ladder up — again. Anonymous job alerts? Gone. New walls? Higher. Data grabs? You bet your ass. We’re diving into why job seekers are about to get screwed and why employers should be panicking yesterday.
We’re also hitting Instagram’s five-day RTO mandate (spoiler: it’s not about “saving employees from depression”), Australia’s crackdown on under-16s on social media, and one of the most creative protest videos to hit Home Depot’s parking lot.
Plus: whiskey, fantasy football standings, union-staffing détente, and enough holiday chaos to make Santa call HR.
It’s spicy. It’s snarky. It’s peak Chad, JT, and Lieven. You’ve been warned.
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.
0:50 Speaker 01 Who wants a cheffy?
0:53 Speaker 02 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.
1:16 Speaker 00 Welcome to the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm Chad Feliz Navidad Soash.
1:22 Speaker 03 I'm JT. Elf is my favorite movie, O'Donnell.
1:25 Speaker 04 I'm leaving. I might have a cold, but I'm still hot as ever. Funny when I'm not.
1:30 Speaker 00 On this week's show, VONQ launches and indeed builds walls everywhere. Let's do this.
1:37 Speaker 05 It's commercial time.
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3:00 Speaker 00 Hello, guys. We're cheeseless today.
3:02 Speaker 03 I know. I know.
3:04 Speaker 00 He's taking the kids to LA. So, and that's not a metaphor. He's literally taking the kids to LA for the weekend.
3:12 Speaker 03 Okay.
3:13 Speaker 04 Is he going to bring them back also?
3:14 Speaker 00 I don't know. That's, that's not for sure. That's not for sure. It might be for a college visit, though. You never know. You know, he's got one getting ready, one in college, IU, another one that's getting ready to go to college, and she has, she's incredibly smart, which means, you know, not sure that she might be the milkman's. But at the end of the day, they're looking for the prospect of law schools. So, pretty, pretty stoked. Yeah. Yeah.
3:38 Speaker 04 Aren't you supposed to go to Harvard then if you're in the United States and do law?
3:42 Speaker 00 I mean, Stanford's out there. I mean, I, there are plenty of, plenty of good, good law schools. Yeah.
3:48 Speaker 04 So it'll cost them a shitload of money.
3:51 Speaker 00 Always. Yeah. Yeah. That's, yeah, it's, it's all about, it's all about money here in the United States, Leven. You, you should know that. That being said, where the hell have you been, Leven? You've been gone for a while. What's been, what's, what's up?
4:02 Speaker 04 Yeah, I've been copying you. I was traveling. I was talking at congresses, making myself useful as usual.
4:09 Speaker 00 Oh, that's good.
4:10 Speaker 04 I was in London. I just came back yesterday for the Staffing Industry Analyst Conference, what's it called? Executive Forum Congress in London.
4:18 Speaker 00 SIA.
4:19 Speaker 04 SIA, something like that, yeah, SIA.
4:21 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah.
4:21 Speaker 04 And that's actually one of the better ones I know. So there are so many of those, but SIA is actually good. They have lots of numbers.
4:29 Speaker 00 Yeah.
4:29 Speaker 04 Number crunchers, that's how you say it, yeah.
4:31 Speaker 00 Yep.
4:31 Speaker 04 But it's sometimes almost boring. It's very dry, but very interesting. So no show at all. It's in a very old, nice hotel in London.
4:44 Speaker 00 Oh, that's not bad.
4:45 Speaker 04 The landmarks, it's amazing, actually. Just, yeah, I love it.
4:48 Speaker 00 Very nice. So no trips to the Alps? Is that what I'm hearing? No trips to the Alps, no skiing trips? Are those coming up?
4:54 Speaker 04 They're actually opening, opening in a week or so. So I'll be in the Alps the first time in January. I'm looking forward to it.
5:01 Speaker 00 What about you, JT? When are you hitting the slopes?
5:03 Speaker 03 Um, hopefully this weekend, believe it or not. I am very close to moving into a cabin that's taken me eight years to build.
5:09 Speaker 00 Oh.
5:09 Speaker 03 So, yeah, so we've released eight years, yeah. Bought the land eight years ago. It's in Sunday River, Maine, which is a big ski resort in Maine. I skied on Thanksgiving. And, uh, yeah, so we're starting moving this weekend and I'll be skiing through the holidays.
5:24 Speaker 00 Leven's looking it up right now.
5:25 Speaker 04 Jealous.
5:26 Speaker 03 Yes, you can come anytime. And I mean, if you like skiing on ice, Leven, you're not going to think it's skiing, but that's okay.
5:32 Speaker 04 I like skiing everywhere. Ice powder.
5:34 Speaker 03 Then I think there's a Chad and Cheese Podcast Mountain Moment coming. That sounds phenomenal.
5:39 Speaker 04 With a fireplace and some hot wine.
5:42 Speaker 03 Done deal. Done deal.
5:44 Speaker 00 Mold wine? Oh, love me a little mold wine.
5:46 Speaker 04 I'll keep you on your works.
5:47 Speaker 00 Well, and while we're there, we can start to share Spotify playlists. Uh, I don't know if you both have had the wrapped come up.
5:54 Speaker 04 Yeah.
5:55 Speaker 03 Of course.
5:56 Speaker 04 Yeah, my kid showed me that it was there, so I had to watch.
6:01 Speaker 00 So it's, it's interesting because every single year Spotify comes out with this rap to be able to show all these, these different statistics. And I asked just for three from you guys, but I think it's interesting that Spotify literally is playing Big Brother. They're watching you and you know it and they've packaged it so nicely that you can't wait to show, show your friends, hey, look, look at what Spotify gave to me this Christmas.
6:28 Speaker 04 I never even thought about it like that, but you're totally right. They're keeping an eye on us and then they're presenting it like it's something nice.
6:35 Speaker 00 It's all about the packaging, man. It's all about the packaging. So first and foremost, JT, give me the hours listened, your, your top artist and then your top podcast.
6:44 Speaker 03 I think it told me that I have like nine days worth of listening. So that's a lot of hours, obviously.
6:50 Speaker 04 Rookie numbers, rookie numbers.
6:53 Speaker 03 Yeah. So I think I did a pretty good job there. My favorite artist was Jordan Davis. So country singer.
7:00 Speaker 00 Okay.
7:00 Speaker 03 In fact, all of my top songs were like top country artists. I feel like I'm going to send the screenshot to them on social media and tag them and go, you're welcome.
7:07 Speaker 00 Yeah, exactly.
7:08 Speaker 03 Right? Like, I feel like I should do that. But then my top podcast was Alex Hermosy's The Game Podcast, which is all about building and scaling businesses.
7:16 Speaker 00 Cool. What about you, Levin?
7:17 Speaker 04 Uh, I listened for 29,380 minutes, which is
7:21 Speaker 00 Holy shit.
7:22 Speaker 04 20 days, in fact.
7:24 Speaker 00 Wow.
7:24 Speaker 04 But I have lots of long commutes and then I listen constantly. So, and also I just like listening to music. And my favorite singer was, the singer was Leonard Cohen. I know it's very old school, but apparently while cooking, I always listen to Leonard Cohen. I kind of cook a lot. And the album I listened most to was American, a three from Johnny Cash. So I have something with Americans, apparently.
7:48 Speaker 03 Okay, wait. Question though. Did it give you your average age? Did you all get that too? Cause it told me the average age. What, what was your average age?
7:55 Speaker 04 56 or something.
7:56 Speaker 03 I was 21.
7:57 Speaker 00 21, 56. Okay.
7:59 Speaker 04 Wisdom apparently comes with age and they think I'm 56, but uh, I mean, I'm not even close.
8:05 Speaker 03 Choice wise.
8:05 Speaker 00 So, yeah, it's a podcast.
8:07 Speaker 04 It's a local podcast from the Belgium National Radio about a series of history. It should have been, I know, chat and cheese, but it actually was something about Napoleon.
8:16 Speaker 00 Ah, very nice.
8:17 Speaker 04 I'll give you a spoiler. In the end, he loses.
8:21 Speaker 00 For all you kids who didn't know, yeah, he loses in the end.
8:24 Speaker 04 He loses.
8:25 Speaker 00 All right. So my hours, I thought I was kicking ass taking names till I heard Leavens. I had 19,393 hours, which is, I think it's like around 13 days. Top artist is Miles Davis. Top podcast Pivot. And
8:40 Speaker 03 Good podcast.
8:40 Speaker 00 I'm going to attribute this to my Miles Davis and my, my listening to jazz music. My age, guess my age.
8:48 Speaker 04 75.
8:49 Speaker 00 84.
8:52 Speaker 04 Are you serious? I was just joking with 75. Oh my God.
8:56 Speaker 00 I'm like, Jesus, man, this fuck. And the funny part is that like, they show you all the genres that you listen to. And you've got like jazz, I've got hard rock, and then I've got 90s rap. At the end of the day, it was 84. So I was like, okay, yeah. Julie thought that shit was funny.
9:11 Speaker 03 The takeaway from this is that I need to start sending YouTube boys playlists so we can get these ages down. You need to start listening to my music.
9:18 Speaker 04 You keep our average down. That's right.
9:20 Speaker 00 I'm good with that. On you, yes, I definitely want to hear some of that. But you know, I'm good. I'm good with my playlists. I enjoy my playlists. What I, what I'm really good with is the first.
9:30 Speaker 01 Is it time for shout outs?
9:32 Speaker 00 What you got JT?
9:33 Speaker 03 Well, um, my shout out is to Sherm. You all asked me about my Turkey. But I gotta go back because I never dreamed that that would be the video of the year on the Chad and Cheese podcast that would get that many people contacting me. Out of the woodwork, everyone going JT, you were kind of wound up there. Like, I guess I don't come across that angry, but thank you to all of you that reached out and agreed with me. Sherm, do better. Two words, pretty simple.
9:59 Speaker 00 Not happening.
10:00 Speaker 03 Not, yeah. Yeah. But anyways, that was kind of crazy. So I love you all for reaching out. Thank you.
10:04 Speaker 04 Actually, it happens a lot to me also. A great story. A few days ago, I was sitting in a meeting and a guy very seriously asked, by the way, do you know the podcast Chad and Cheese? And then he was referring to Chad and Cheese as the absolute, the guys who knows best and the absolute reference in the business. And I affirmed, yes.
10:22 Speaker 00 I know, because I'm on the damn show.
10:25 Speaker 04 I kept humble. Yeah, but that was fun.
10:29 Speaker 00 So on the SHRM side, there's actually new news. And this is actually back to Business Insider. Yes, listen to this. The world's largest human resource trade group argued in court that the plaintiff shouldn't be allowed to portray SHRM as an expert in HR during the trial. That will begin with jury selection on Monday. SHRM literally, I shit you not, SHRM literally said, "Look, we can't be seen as an expert in HR because of the shit that we did." Right? So, yes, this is amazing. Johnny Taylor, nice suits, the rest of it, he's really shit at.
11:14 Speaker 00 But it's going to come out in court. So it'll be, it'll be interesting. It'll be interesting. Whew, enough of that. Okay, Leven, so your shout out.
11:21 Speaker 04 Okay, my shout out goes to Dimitris Theodorakis. Excuse me. He's, you've probably never heard about him. He's the director of Uni Europe, which is the European Trade Union. It's a federation representing seven million service workers. And I happened to be yesterday evening, when I came back from London, in a panel discussion from WEC, the World Employment Confederation. And we were supposed to argue or to have discussion about AI and how this will impact the world of work, et cetera. And normally, the unions and the staffing industry don't get along too well because we are into flexible work and they're just not flexible. So we mostly are into fights. But now, during the session, we came to the conclusion that we totally agreed with each other.
12:05 Speaker 04 So he thinks the workers should be protected from getting stupid work because of AI, where AI is making the decision and they just have to push some buttons and they're losing all, you know? And I think we should totally fight AI and robots replacing humans because I'm not in the robot selling business. I'm in the human selling business. So we're totally pro-humans. So in the end, we agreed, whenever the AI takes over, we're going to be in the trenches together, fighting those damn bots. So the unions and House of HR won't fight, won't struggle.
12:35 Speaker 01 There might be a wee problem, boys.
12:37 Speaker 00 When we start seeing eye to eye, Leven, this is, this is, this is a little bit much.
12:43 Speaker 04 Yeah, I know.
12:44 Speaker 00 That's great. That's great. But it's the small stuff. I would, I would say that more than likely, the other organizations in staffing probably aren't seeing it the same way that you guys are. And I know you guys think much differently, come at the market much differently than the Adecos or the Ronstad's or what have you, but they don't give two shits about people, especially Ronstad. So you know that they get more EBITDA if they have less headcount. So I would assume that the Ronstad's of the world would be focusing on trying to use robots wherever they can, which makes them literally less human.
13:17 Speaker 04 I'm not getting into that because as a member of the World Employment Confederation, I'm supposed to support our industry, but I take note of whatever you just said and I'm going to look into it.
13:29 Speaker 03 Wow, that was very, very politically correct.
13:31 Speaker 04 Politically correct and not like that. Rika will be very happy.
13:34 Speaker 00 It was very politically correct and professional. And that being said, I'm going to add a little holiday spirit to this. So my shout out is coming to you in a video. That's right. It's literally holiday carolers at a Home Depot. Check it out.
13:51 Speaker 06 Feliz Navidad, Feliz Navidad, Feliz Navidad, próspero año y felicidad. Feliz Navidad,
14:07 Speaker 06 Feliz Navidad, Feliz Navidad, próspero año y felicidad.
14:14 Speaker 00 Sing it.
14:16 Speaker 06 We don't want no more deportations. We don't want no more deportations. We don't want no more deportations at the Home Depot parking lot. We don't want no more deportations. We don't want no more deportations. We don't want no more deportations at the Home Depot parking lot.
14:41 Speaker 06 We don't want no more deportations. We don't want no more deportations. We don't want no more deportations from the bottom of our hearts.
14:55 Speaker 00 So Leven, yeah, you might not know Fleece Navidad, that's a Spanish.
15:00 Speaker 04 I know it, it's a Christmas song.
15:02 Speaker 00 There you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so the reason why they were having it in the Home Depot is because Home Depot has been, at least the news has been, they've been coordinating with the US government with regard to coming and actually doing mass deportations. Because many times, there will be contractors that actually come to the Home Depot parking lot and there are immigrants that are there that are available for work. So those immigrants are usually en masse and you know, the guys will come and they'll pick and they'll throw them in the, in the back of the truck and they'll take them to work for the day and so on and so forth. But in this case, ICE shows up and throws them in the back of a panel van
15:41 Speaker 00 and deports them. And this is, this is a very smart and I think wonderful way to literally protest what not just the US government's doing, but also what Home Depot is doing.
15:51 Speaker 04 It's, it was sad to look at, but you know, in Nazi Germany, the companies working together with the government in that time got in very big troubles afterwards for collaborating with fascist government. So what was the company called? Home Depot?
16:06 Speaker 00 Home Depot, yeah.
16:07 Speaker 04 Home Depot. And they should be aware that when times are changing again, people will remember, I guess.
16:13 Speaker 00 Exactly, exactly.
16:14 Speaker 03 I just love the social media aspect of it. You know me, I'm a social media girlie. I love the creativity of it. Right? I like that. That's the right way to make something go viral. So it was beautifully done.
16:24 Speaker 00 It was, it was. What else is beautifully done is, well, we'll let Stephen McGrath tell us about it.
16:30 Speaker 01 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. And the answer is really simple. Because I've not grabbed my free t-shirt from Erinapp at ChadCheese.com yet. Let me fix that.
16:50 Speaker 04 Oh my God.
16:51 Speaker 01 That's better.
16:52 Speaker 04 Ah, my favorite Scottish man.
16:54 Speaker 01 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.
17:03 Speaker 00 Super soft.
17:04 Speaker 01 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. If you're not into beer too much, then, oh, 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.
17:37 Speaker 00 Love it, huh?
17:38 Speaker 03 First of all, I couldn't get that doing that right once this year. So the fact that he nails it. But secondly, I'm going to overshare. I am such a sucker for an accent.
17:47 Speaker 00 Oh, yes.
17:47 Speaker 03 Accent is like, it's like the best. I can't take it.
17:50 Speaker 00 It is.
17:51 Speaker 03 Yours as well, even. I am an accent girlie. I do, I love a good accent. So he's selling it. That was a 10 out of 10.
17:56 Speaker 04 His Scottish accent actually is, is cool. That's right. And what was the, what was the whiskey called? It was a chicken cock.
18:02 Speaker 00 Chicken cock.
18:02 Speaker 04 Chicken cock. I heard it correctly.
18:05 Speaker 03 You did.
18:06 Speaker 00 Chicken cock. The unofficial official, official unofficial whiskey of the Chad Cheese Podcast.
18:11 Speaker 04 Chicken cock.
18:12 Speaker 00 And then we have the official fantasy football Chad and Cheese League sponsored by Factory Fix. I'm going to go down one through 12. The leader is still Courtney Nappo. She's kicking ass, taking names. Mackenzie Maitland, number two still. Then we've got Joel Cheaton Cheeseman on number three. We've got, um, David, the returning champ Stifle, Stephen McGrath, your favorite Scottish man, Jada Wyler, Chad So wash in the seven position. I'm moving on up. William Carrington. That sounds really proper. Sir William Carrington. Number nine, we've got Jason Putnam. 10 Megan Radigan. 11 Ginger Dods.
18:52 Speaker 00 And rounding up the whole thing is Jeremy Roberts, who is still winless. He is O N 13.
19:03 Speaker 00 Thanks, everybody for playing and it is time for.
19:08 Speaker 00 That's right, baby. God, this has been a, this has been a really good week. It's been a really good week. Okay, so we're going to talk about a company that we haven't needed to talk about in a long time, and that's VONQ. VONQ had a high production product launch of their new platform called EQO, spelled E-Q-O. Why can't we spell things right? I don't get that. EQO. And Leven, since your colleagues at the House of HR were pretty prominent during the presentation, do you have any thoughts? Did you get a chance? Because you've been all over the place. Did you get a chance to look at it?
19:41 Speaker 04 Problem was, it was actually my agenda. I was desperately looking forward to watching it, but I was speaking at the Congress in London, and I couldn't. It was at the same moment. So I got a link to watch it afterwards, and I checked for like 10 minutes or something right before the show, but I didn't have time to watch it totally. So please enlighten me, what are they up to? Are they going to improve their products? Are they going to launch something amazing?
20:06 Speaker 00 They better. JT, what are your thoughts? I'll jump into mine. I've got, I've got a long set of shit to say.
20:11 Speaker 03 Well, I mean, at 51 minutes long, clearly they're going to change the world. That was my first issue. It did not need to be 51 minutes long. No. I also, the production value for me, and I know I'm getting a little nitpicky in that, like the stage, but you could tell it was on a stage in a, you know, like, I know what they were going for. I'm not sure that landed the way that that was filmed, which for me then makes me distrustful. I'm just going to be honest. Why do you need 51 minutes? Why all of this like hoopla? You showed customers somewhere in there, but it, that kind of push immediately puts me on the defensive. And now I just want to see the proof as opposed to assume that
20:53 Speaker 03 by default, this is the greatest thing ever. So I know I'm a cynic, but that's how I took it.
20:57 Speaker 00 Let me dig in real quick. So, and I totally get that. I mean, it was funny because Julie and I actually sat down, watched it on TV last night because we were done with the day. And I'm like, I gotta watch this thing again. I've watched it once already, and we gotta watch it again. And I started it. She's like, holy shit, this is, this is almost an hour long. I'm like, okay babe, let's just go ahead and chew through this. But anyway, if you've been paying attention over the last, you know, four to five years, you'll know that VONQ has been a roller coaster ride of an organization. In short, they acquired a programmatic player, they invaded the US and they built a legit leadership team in the US. Then they got rid of them all. They, they, they, they pretty much retreated from the US. They hired Retu, their current CEO, after a relative short
21:39 Speaker 00 amount of time. We now have Echo. Now, Leven, this is, this is pretty cool because you didn't get to see this. I believe that the event Bill Fisher actually was referring to in the presentation during kind of like starting the Echo journey was at the e Recruitment Congress in 2024 in Amsterdam, which we were all there.
21:58 Speaker 04 He was on stage there, yes?
22:00 Speaker 00 He was. And, and this is, this is part of what he was talking through. This is before Retu was hired as well. We, we saw Bill Fisher, the CTO of VONQ onstage to show us the, the first and, and quite buggy at that point, versions of what they were building and playing with. And since that event, Bill and the whole team have been doing what they call building in public to test and gain valuable feedback from everybody who's watching on, on YouTube, on, on LinkedIn and so on and so forth. But my two cents about this entire launch is this is exactly what VONQ should be doing. I, I've been incredibly critical and, and anybody over VONQ knows that and anybody who's listened to the show knows that I've been critical of VONQ,
22:43 Speaker 00 but this is exactly what they should be doing. The top of the funnel is a fucking mess and major players like Indeed are not, I repeat, they are not going to help hiring companies figure it out. I especially like the screening candidates in piece. And what I mean by screening in is that the system digest your CV. It performs a gap analysis against the job you're applying for and then starts asking you questions chatbot wise, um, specific to the actual requirements associated with that job. So this interaction takes only a few minutes and, and somewhat validates whether the candidate is actually qualified or not. Now that is a fucking revelation with regard to the actual product launch itself.
23:27 Speaker 00 Which you were talking about 51 minutes. Yeah, there's no question. It can be condensed. It wasn't perfect, but it was damn near perfect for a launch in our space, probably better than 99% of the product launches we see in our space. It was much like smart recruiters did with Winston and that launch. VONK had, and they tried to get their Apple moment, their unveiling of Echo is their iPhone. And I was more than impressed. And all of this shows to me that they're actually paying attention to the market. Did they take too long in certain areas? Could they have actually had a better showrunner in there, I think, to be able to try to pull things together? I do, I do.
24:07 Speaker 00 But most of the launches that happen out there today are pretty shit. And they did really well on packaging and delivery compared to the rest of the market. So I think this launch makes me feel like we're going to be talking a lot about VONK in the coming days, weeks and months. And overall, I think this presentation and the focus toward efficiency and cost per qualified slate is exactly not just what VONK needs, but what the entire industry needs. So I am a big, I'm a big fan after this. I'm a big fan after this. Can they pull it off? We shall see. But they had some pretty big companies in there. They had House of HR, they had a DECO, they had, I think it was a sort
24:52 Speaker 00 or Software One, they had a bunch of different companies. Now, they were all European companies, not US. So that is a huge obstacle that they're going to have to try to tackle. But other than that, I was a big fan of the launch.
25:04 Speaker 04 I'm very happy to hear it, in fact, because quite a few of our companies are using VONK as a multi-poster and for other things. So it's good to know that they're improving. And I kind of like those people. They're very engaging. Ritu, for example, is a very good CEO. She's constantly reaching out. She's trying to involve clients in a customer boards, etc. So it's good. I'm going to watch the video after all. I was scanning through it. And I must say, JT, you said something about the stage channel, but maybe it's a European thing. I liked it because it's better than. The average Zoom presentation where you share your screen and show something terrible. No, this was they put some effort in it and I appreciated it.
25:45 Speaker 00 JT is a hard nut to crack. That's the thing.
25:47 Speaker 03 I am. I am. No, it's true. I'm so bougie.
25:50 Speaker 04 Since I know she has a cabin in Maine, I'm going to. She's my friend.
25:53 Speaker 03 Yes, you are.
25:55 Speaker 04 Yes.
25:55 Speaker 03 We're gonna do a little retreat.
25:56 Speaker 04 About JT, never.
25:58 Speaker 00 That's awesome. Again, a big, a big applause back to the, the VONQ team in pulling off. If we take a look at the rest of the industry, how they launch things. And then I literally just want to take a look at, okay, so smart recruiters. This earlier in February 2025, they pivoted their platform. They threw away their roadmap and then they started to rebuild and repackage. It's the repackaging and it's the delivery that if you want to get acquired, you have to do right. Smart recruiters did it right. And who the fuck, who, who, who acquired them? SAP, right? So when you look at VONQ, it almost looks like they're trying to emulate some of the things that
26:43 Speaker 00 smart recruiters did, because you got to think that that's exactly what VONQ wants. They want to find an exit with a big sugar mama, sugar daddy, doesn't matter. And I think they're following the recipe.
26:55 Speaker 03 I like that. I actually really like that as an, you know, there's a blueprint there. We've seen it once before. So why not, you know, lean in. But I do think the, the US market, I mean, I would have loved to have seen a couple of customers here. So that validation, but I'm sure that's coming next.
27:09 Speaker 00 They're gonna have to make it happen to, to be able to get a big firm to buy into them. They're gonna have to make it happen. On the other side, we've got another company who's trying to make it happen. Maybe more in an evil way. We're going to talk a little bit about Indeed. We'll be right back.
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28:47 Speaker 00 Okay, Indeed, the platform that is usually just trying to find new ways to take your damn money, just dropped a massive fucking bomb on job seekers. Remember those anonymous job alerts job seekers could sign in for? The just add email and save your job search for daily job alerts by email? Yeah, yeah, those. That feature that's been on job boards for over 25 years. Yeah, that they're changing it. It's crazy. Anyway, millions of people, job seekers, people trying to find a job, will stop receiving those alerts in less than a month. Okay, JT, the walls are
29:26 Speaker 00 getting higher over at LinkedIn. Is this a good thing, bad thing? And how do you think job seekers will react?
29:34 Speaker 03 All right. Well, you meant Indeed, right? Not LinkedIn. Was that like a Freudian slip there?
29:38 Speaker 00 I think it was because they're both monopolistic as hell.
29:41 Speaker 03 Yeah. I mean, so first of all, job seekers are lazy. You know, like they're who I work with, but we've made them lazier and lazier and lazier. And in doing that, we've done a huge disservice because they don't know how to look for work. They don't know how to market themselves. It's a hot freaking mess that we that we create. Created that, you know, Indeed created and all those other companies that let's just give you alerts. The number one complaint I hear from job seekers all the time is they send me stuff that's not even a match for me. Why would I want this thing? So I think they're gonna have a rude awakening in how few people will do it. I think their reasoning behind it is the current market, right? There's just so many people looking for work. So now's your chance to forcibly get these people to give us this information, improve our large language model, get them updated, right? And take advantage of it.
30:26 Speaker 03 So I, I get why they're doing it. Again, I don't think they're going to see the adoption that they think they are, especially when people do bother to update and still get crummy jobs, right? Because quiet hiring is in its era, right? Quiet hiring is, I'm not gonna post a job on Indeed. I don't want 10,000 applicants, a lot of them from robot, AI-driven bots, right? Quiet hiring is, I'm going to go find them. I'm going to shop candidates and I will contact them if I'm interested. We're in the height of it. And what most people don't understand is that's not going to go away. People say, oh, well, quiet hiring happens when it's a bad job market. But the moment they need jobs again, they're gonna post jobs. They're not. The AI technology that we're seeing right now is going to change matching forever.
31:04 Speaker 03 And so, I mean, this last ditch effort, fine, but again, just it's frustrating to see people take advantage of job seekers who already don't know how to look for work. Rant over.
31:15 Speaker 00 Rant over. Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go ahead and hit mine up and then you can, you can go ahead and digest it all, Leven. Why is this happening? You just, you just nailed it. You just nailed it. Indeed, they have job seekers over a barrel. The job market is horrible. And instead of helping the millions of already registered job seekers by creating job matching that actually fucking works, what do they do?
31:39 Speaker 03 Thank you.
31:40 Speaker 00 They're focusing on the data grab. They're telling job seekers, you need a job? Great, register, fuck off, right? So you get nothing. Lose. Good day, sir. But remember, Indeed is also forcing a data grab on the employer's side.
31:55 Speaker 03 I know.
31:56 Speaker 00 By mandating the use of their Indeed Sync API, which I predict will turn into mandating employers give their disposition data. So the job market sucks. So Indeed is using that monopoly power for evil once again. I mean, this is something that we should be used to. The claims that this will stop bots is hilarious. North Korean hacking centers will just have teams creating accounts, which they're already doing, and then they'll just set loose the bots inside the walled garden. Here's what employers need to understand, though. You already have paid for most of these relevant candidates already. Okay, they're sitting in your CRM or your applicant tracking system.
32:39 Speaker 00 If you're a company, if you're a staffing company, if you're an RPO, you've already paid for most of these, right? Here are two steps, I'm gonna give you two steps, on what you should be doing right now. Step one, focus on your career site conversion rates. All candidate traffic that's just bouncing off your career site, that's what it is, all that candidate. It's crazy, the amount of career site traffic that's happening today, that literally is just bouncing off. What can we do around that? Well, great example, Compass Group. They focused their career site conversion, and they went from 1% to 12%. And they saved $1.5 million on Indeed alone in six months,
33:24 Speaker 00 just by changing the conversion rate, just by adding Dalia and any other type of conversion capture. That's the best thing to do. That's step one. You can save money, conversion is key. Number two, start engaging your current database. Instead of going external for candidates, use the ones you've already paid for. Match recs against them and use the tools like Paradox's Olivia, SmartRecruiters Winston, or even Von's Echo that they're now putting out, and any tech that can reengage candidates and keep those candidates warm. Those are people that you've already paid for, ones that are in your CRM and your applicant tracking system. So for me, those are the two steps that companies can take right now to start literally dis-mediating Indeed so that you can get rid of.
34:11 Speaker 00 Those evil bastards. Leven?
34:13 Speaker 04 No, you're right. They are telling the job seeker there's no such thing as a free lunch. If you want our jobs, you're going to pay with your data. And now is the time to do so. They're going to get away with it because there's scarcity again, where the balance is again shifting from candidate-driven to client-driven markets. So people are actually looking for a job again and struggling to find one. So if they want to do it, they have to do it now. And I'm sure indeed theirself, they are struggling with the zero-click searches on large language models. So they are trying to figure out how to cope with that. So I think by putting these walls around their own candidates, which they got, by the way, by using our jobs.
34:52 Speaker 00 Yes.
34:52 Speaker 04 But I'm still angry about that part. Yeah.
34:54 Speaker 00 Yeah.
34:54 Speaker 04 Of course, they're trying to protect their business and their revenue and their model, et cetera. And you know, I don't even have problems with it. It's their decision, unlike some other decisions they made in the past. It's their choice, but future will tell if they were right. And I guess many people will just, you just have to add a phone number now. It's just one single step and then you have an account. But then they will start building that account, they will start hunting you, harassing you until you add your resume and they have all the information they want. But it's a strategy as another one. We'll see.
35:30 Speaker 00 I think it's amazing, though, that because I know just from being in this space for so long, one of the number one traffic sources, every single day, for every job site that's out there, anything that's starting with jobs or using them as bait, right? Is email. These actual alerts, these alerts drive generally, they're the number one traffic provider. And they're also low cost, low to no cost, right? So to me, this really because of the job market, it's like we have to do it now because we can't do it later. If the job seekers are in control, we're fucked. So they're taking a gamble. To me personally, I think the gamble is stupid, but we shall see.
36:15 Speaker 00 We shall see. Onto our friends over at Instagram. So this one is from Engadget. Instagram employees will be back at their desks full time next year. Wow. Beginning February 2, workers with the social media network will be expected to spend five days a week working in person in offices. Instagram leader Adam Mosseri announced the change in an internal memo where he told his staff, quote, "It's clear we have to evolve," end quote. Also, closing the note with, quote, "2026 is going to be tough," end quote. JT, there are so many job seekers out there that just don't have a choice. If you want a job, they're going to have to get back into the office.
36:59 Speaker 00 Is this a good thing, bad thing, or does it even matter?
37:02 Speaker 03 Well, you know, every company can decide what it wants to do. What I will say is this, the companies that I am talking to that are mandating five day awake RTO, their latest data point that they're providing is the massive increase in depression. So they're saying within four years in the US, it will be the number one illness. And they firmly believe, and whoever they're sourcing their data from, that that is coming through isolation. And so a lot of these companies I'm talking to, their HR departments are saying, we're doing these employees a favor by bringing them back in so that they are not at risk.
37:38 Speaker 00 That's a great spin.
37:39 Speaker 03 Of depression, right? And so
37:42 Speaker 00 We're talking about Instagram.
37:44 Speaker 03 I've heard this three separate times now, three separate times now. I don't know if that's Instagram's play, that they weren't one of them. But clearly that is starting to be, someone came up with that and everyone else is glomming onto it as the justification, right? So I think you're going to hear a lot more of that. We're doing it because of the health of our employees. They need to be in, they need to be connecting, you know, that sort of thing.
38:05 Speaker 00 Spin.
38:06 Speaker 03 Big time, big time. So unfortunate, though, for people who have built lives, you know?
38:10 Speaker 04 Yeah. Leven, I'm sure they have lovely offices and they want people coming to those offices. But, and I, you know, I tend to agree partly with the depression part. I myself work a lot from home because I have a very long commute. I think I used to be in the office three, four times a day, a week, sorry, before COVID and then COVID came and I Was happily working from home and I have a nice place or everything is comfortable.
38:34 Speaker 00 Hmm.
38:34 Speaker 04 But when I was getting back to the office once a week, I felt it actually made me feel happier, even though I was used to commute before Covid and now I'm not used to it anymore. So I, I kind of, I, I don't like it anymore. Sitting in the car for two hours, driving two hours back, it's a long time.
38:50 Speaker 00 Yeah.
38:50 Speaker 04 I'm losing a lot of time and I hate it. But actually, when I'm in the office, I'm happy. And I know I should go more, but it's just, for me, it's just weighing, being in the office, talking to my colleagues, having a good time, or working efficiently at home and not losing so much time. You know, the, the part I'm struggling with, with the Instagram thing is it's demanding from people to be there. It's making them be there.
39:12 Speaker 00 Yeah.
39:12 Speaker 04 I didn't just use our common sense.
39:14 Speaker 00 Yeah.
39:14 Speaker 04 Indeed. Tell people whenever you need to work, very concentrated, work at home. And if you can work from the office, please work from the office. We would appreciate you being around us. Rika, for example, our CEO, she's like a mother duck and she's happy with her ducklings around her. If everyone is working from home, she's, she's feeling lonely. She is at the office. So I think um, some people actually have good intentions, asking people to come to the office. But making them, forcing them to be there, I don't think it's a good way.
39:43 Speaker 00 I have a quick video that literally sums up everything that I have to say, and she does it much faster than I can. So let's go ahead and, let's go ahead and listen to Beth.
39:51 Speaker 06 Do you think we have entered the era of do as I say leadership? So the pendulum of power has swung back over to the bosses. They are re-exerting their authority. It's much more sort of command and control, do as I say, demanding, less, less sort of cajoling and convincing. So I think Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan had a great example of this earlier this year. So he's made it no secret that he really does not like remote work. But in a town hall meeting with some employees, he had this profanity laced screed.
40:25 Speaker 02 And don't give me the shit that work from home Friday work.
40:27 Speaker 00 Remember that.
40:28 Speaker 02 I call a lot of people on Friday, they're not a guy.
40:30 Speaker 06 Get a hold of He did not want to hear any pushback about it. He didn't care how many people signed a petition. He didn't feel like he needed to provide any evidence about why, you know, the company needed to have everybody get back to the office. So I think this is just a great example of how, you know, it's not so much what he was saying, but how he was saying it.
40:51 Speaker 00 Yeah. So I really feel like it's, it's their opportunity. Again, it's kind of like Indeed. Yeah. It's the market and you have to do what we say, or you're not going to get your job alerts, right? Same thing. You have to do what we say. You're not going to get a paycheck. So is there depression involved? There could be. Can you alleviate that? I see, I see your little puppy in the background there, JT. I've got two that are around here. They're, they're the best help for depression ever, right? And you sit down and you pet the pup. But I mean, it's, it's one of those things where I think it's in, for the most part, it's total bullshit. And it's more about control than it is anything else. That's my thought and, but it's culture. It's culture. If you're going to go work for JP Morgan Chase, you know, it's going to be iron fist.
41:35 Speaker 06 Exactly.
41:36 Speaker 00 You know, it's, you know what you're in for, right? So don't bitch at me when you have to be at JP Morgan Chase five days a week. Now, if you're at Instagram and they said, oh, you know, you'll be able to work hybrid or home forever or what have you. And then next thing you know, it's back to this bullshit. That's a curve ball with regard to culture. What do you think, Levin?
41:55 Speaker 04 I totally agree. I mean, company culture and those investment banking situations, I can imagine, but this totally conflicts with the whole image. Instagram wants to, they want to present themselves as a different kind of company, I guess. But behind the scenes, they're probably a company just like any other.
42:12 Speaker 03 Yeah. And I just want to say Jamie Dimon's, you know, rant, I think really conceptualizes what a lot of CEOs are feeling right now, which is I want less employees, not more. So I'm going to institute command and control and I'm going to get my headcount down because employees are expensive and unpredictable and unreliable, you know? And so I'm hearing that same theme, you know, return to office, like it or not, don't care anymore. You know?
42:34 Speaker 00 Yeah.
42:35 Speaker 03 Won't have to pay unemployment, cut our staff, fill it with AI. I mean, like literally this is how they're, they're talking.
42:40 Speaker 00 It's a layoff.
42:41 Speaker 03 And openly, openly talking.
42:42 Speaker 00 Yeah. Yep. Totally get it. It's, it's a layoff instead of what it really, what they're saying it is, which is it was return to office. We have more social media to talk about. We'll be right back.
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43:56 Speaker 00 Okay, so this next one comes directly from Melbourne, Australia, and the Associated Press. "Social media platforms must report monthly how many children's accounts they close." They close. "Once Australia begins enforcing its 16-year age limit next week, Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X, and YouTube will face fines up to $50 million Australian dollars, that's $33 million USD, from December 10th if they fail to take reasonable steps to remove accounts of Australian children younger than 16."
44:38 Speaker 00 Live streaming services like Twitch were added to the list of age-restricted platforms less than a week ago. JT, how would your kids react if they got kicked off of their social media accounts? And do you think this is a responsibility of parents or the government?
44:55 Speaker 03 So fascinating, because when I heard this, it brought me to a study, and I'm mad that I couldn't locate it and share it with everyone, but they basically studied children Not given access to social media until they went to college.
45:07 Speaker 00 Okay.
45:07 Speaker 03 So, parents who actually took it away, you know, I'm gonna limit your screen time and do it like. They had such an addiction issue and they had no coping skills in their twenties that they all went doom scrolled and suffered in school. They had complete proof that the earlier you could teach them to self-regulate and understand this and figure it out, they would be able to control it better later. And so I think it's really interesting that as a government, they're planning to do this to all kids because, you know, not all kids are created the same. I think they are going to see some that probably appreciate it and understand the mental health issues. But I do think a byproduct of that is they're gonna find ways around it, or even worse, when they finally get their hands on it, it, you know, it's like.
45:50 Speaker 00 It's gonna consume them.
45:51 Speaker 03 Yes, yes. And I, I don't, I just, I think anytime it's just so severe like that, I worry about what it's going to do. But again, the study that I had seen before, I thought was fascinating. College, you get to college and you're on your own and you don't know how to use social media? Dang, now that's a problem.
46:05 Speaker 00 What do you think, Leva?
46:06 Speaker 04 Normally, I'm, I'm a liberal and I hate it when governments are restricting something, making something illegal. Even though it's for minors, I can imagine you don't sell tobacco or you, you don't sell hard liquor to, to young people. But making something illegal is the, the last thing you should do. But in this case, I'm actually pro. I don't think it's a very good thing. I totally believe the brain rot is real. And I grew up in a world without social media. I'm not fifty-four, like, no, I'm not, what was it, fifty-eight, like Spotify thinks. I'm forty-eight, but I'm very happy when I was young that nobody was constantly chasing me with cameras and putting things on YouTube, etc. I'm not against YouTube, by the way. If you are young and drunk, you don't want someone filming it.
46:52 Speaker 04 In our time, we got away with it. So all the social media, it's creating stress for people. And I asked my two kids, how would you react on a ban like this? And I was very surprised at first. They said, we'd love it. They should do it immediately. And then I realized, okay, they're supposed to become sixteen in two months and their sister is only thirteen. And that's why they thought, okay, but they were just. Ruining her over, but I think the addiction is real. I my kids are constantly, constantly, constantly watching their iPhone. They're moving around the house like a zombie watching their iPhone. We constantly talk about it, addicted. And then I say, no, I can quit whenever I want. But um, the only thing I wonder is how are they going to make sure people are not just creating new accounts with an older age?
47:37 Speaker 04 How are you going to make sure they're not just using, um, let's say, um, a VPN to pretend they're somewhere else? My boy would would hack the system in three minutes, I guess. So uh, you can make a rule, but then you'll have to reinforce it. I think Australia probably will reinforce it. They'll find a way, they're pretty hard. And I guess they will find those companies, actually, they will do it, they won't just threat. But I wonder how they're going to do it, and I think Europe will watch it. Europe is pretty strict as well, so they will follow it. And I hope maybe it'll come to a good solution to protect our children from algorithms which were created by China, for example. And they don't have the best intentions for us. So uh, we'll see.
48:17 Speaker 00 Got to say, there's one thing that Australia does is when they see something's hurting their population like guns. Um, they take action, right? And you take a look at uh, the the gun laws in Australia where uh, they had a mass shooting and they said this shit's not happening anymore. We're gonna protect our society, our citizens, right? Which is the exact reason governments exist, right? So I I
48:41 Speaker 04 Yep.
48:41 Speaker 00 I in in in that, in that realm, I've got to give them a a big applause. I do believe exactly what uh, what uh, you're talking about JT with regard to, you know, let's say, for instance, the Amish doing the Rumspringa, right? I mean, you've got the summer where you can go out and get crazy and do whatever you want. But then you gotta come back home or you leave, right? There's gotta be some way to be able to give them an opportunity to kind of have a a digital Rumspringa to to to some extent.
49:14 Speaker 04 Okay, that's a good idea, actually.
49:16 Speaker 03 I'll add one more thing. Believe it or not, social media is a skill and it's a skill that is going to be a skill you use in work for the rest of your life. So you're also talking about, to some degree, delaying their ability to, and if you think about some of the most innovative people right now in the space, there are younger people, early adopters, where a lot of this is intuitive and they're thinking about next gen ways of doing things. So we are also just saying, to some degree, slowing down their ability of understanding leveraging technology. So, you know, I'm with you, like, I would like to see some kind of solution that helps children and protects children. I just, I'm not sure being so strict is the way to go, but it'll be interesting.
49:52 Speaker 00 I think Europe is gonna find a way to kind of bring it back. They're not going to ban, I don't think, I don't know, France is actually talking about testing a ban.
50:01 Speaker 04 Yeah, absolutely.
50:02 Speaker 00 You'll see France do that, and I think the rest of the EU will take a look at it and they'll kind of, they'll kind of gauge from there. I mean, this is the point right now where, to be quite frank, social media companies do not care about bullying, shaming, catfishing, or anything that happens on their platforms. They only care about subscriber numbers and getting those kids hooked on the algorithm so that when they have access to money, or they finally turn into adults, they spend their money on Instagram and TikTok Shop.
50:30 Speaker 03 Or they sell on Instagram or TikTok Shop.
50:33 Speaker 00 Let's hope they can do that with the money that they earn, right? They can, they can buy stuff after they've started to learn how to sell stuff.
50:40 Speaker 03 Fair.
50:41 Speaker 00 And that being said, there's no dad joke this week, but what we do have, what we do have.
51:04 Speaker 00 Excellent, guys. Thanks Hannah for joining and for Chad, JT, and Levan. Come on, let me hear it.
51:12 Speaker 03 We out! We out!
51:14 Speaker 02 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.
51:58 Speaker 02 And, while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It's so weird. We out!
Previous Shredded: Tutor Intelligence, Jeeva AI, Helio AI , Pack, GoTu, Cyberr, LizzyAI, & More Next You're Doing AI Wrong with Charlene Li Page updated November 11, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
