ZipRecruiter Financial Gymnastics

Get ready for a jam-packed episode of The Chad & Cheese Podcast as hosts Joel Cheesman, Chad Sowash, and Emi B serve up their trademark mix of industry news, corporate earnings, and unfiltered banter. The episode kicks off with personal updates and shout-outs, covering everything from Chad’s slippery "Charlie Brown" beach wipeout in Portugal to a Harvard report on workplace outcomes, the rise of late-night interviews for night owls. As the episode shifts into corporate strategy, the hosts put the latest financial filings and major market moves under the microscope. You will hear them break down the Q2 earnings, cost-cutting strategies, and future outlooks for ZipRecruiter, Recruit Holdings, and Indeed. The team then brings back their signature "Buy or Sell" segment to grade recent consolidation in the space, evaluating MetaView’s acquisition of Reval (and its autonomous coworker "fillmore"), CareerMinds picking up Jobrapido, and the big transition of a long-time leader at LinkUp. Finally, the episode tackles the serious side of hiring tech with a look at global regulatory compliance and vendor transparency involving Maki People, Mochi AI Assessments and Recruitics, before winding down with a nostalgic debate over the unexpected relaunch of MySpace. To find out who gets a "Buy," who gets a "Sell," and exactly why the hosts are skeptical of the latest AI trends, you will have to tune in to the full episode.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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

• 0:20Speaker 00

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

• 0:50Speaker 01

  You both summed up what I was going to say and it's like, I totally agree. I mean,

• 0:54Speaker 02

  You're welcome.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:55Speaker 02

  Just read it back in a British accent. So we sound smart.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  Let me preface smarter. I'll preface. Yeah.

• 1:03Speaker 03

  Hide your kids, lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman 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.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, we're not sick, but we're not actually very well either. Hey kids, it's the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host Joel, not the MyPillowGuy Cheesman.

• 1:38Speaker 00

  This is Chad. First impressions Sowash.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  And this is Emmy. I'll be whoever you want me to be today because I forgot my middle name.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  Hello. And on this, on this episode of HR's most dangerous podcast, Indeed is living large. Metaview is living la vida loca and Gen Z is just living in the past, man. Let's do this. It's commercial time.

• 2:01Speaker 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.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  Hell yeah.

• 2:26Speaker 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.

• 3:10Speaker 00

  Want to learn more about Jovio? Cool. Just go to jovio.com. That's J O V E O dot com. It's showtime.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  Are you, are you getting the election results there in Europe? The, uh, the Michigan MyPillowGuy running for governor?

• 3:26Speaker 00

  No, I can only imagine how funny that one is.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I didn't see any of the, uh, political commercials, but I'm sure they're pretty entertaining. Uh, yeah. Mike Lindell, the MyPillowGuy. Do you know who that is, Emmy? You probably don't.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  No idea. No.

• 3:40Speaker 02

  There's a guy here in the States. He's got this product called MyPillow and it's a pillow. Shocking. And then he has other stuff that he sells. But anyways, he's a big time Trump supporter and he, he ran for governor, I think of Michigan.

• 3:52Speaker 00

  Bushbag.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  A Republican and lost. And now he's of course suing, uh, suing for wrongful election, whatever.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Oh God.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  So yeah, it's a, it's a whole, it's a whole thing here, but yeah, he's such a joke. He's such a, he's such an absolute just wanker, if you will, in my best English accent.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  He's a wanker.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  He's a wanker.

• 4:12Speaker 00

  Onto fun stuff. Let's talk about Mike, the MyPillow asshole. Um, it's, it's so.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  Bite my pillow.

• 4:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, bite my pillow.

• 4:23Speaker 00

  Sounds, the bite my pillow episode of Chad and Cheese Podcast. Um, this morning, so we connect with people on LinkedIn all the time and, and you do it and you find these kind of like weird connections sometimes, like you grew up in the same area, you went to the same school, same company, but you literally never crossed paths while you were there and you never met this person before, but there's no reason that you hadn't, right? And back in June, uh, Diane Viagash, Matt, I'm gonna screw her name up big time. Sorry Diane.

• 4:58Speaker 00

  Michonne, uh, connected with me on LinkedIn and mentioned that, uh, hey, I see that you're living in Tavira. We have a family home in Onlao, about 30 minutes away from me. About when I'm there in August, we come and you know, have a, have a little coffee. So I did that this morning. It was amazing. She had worked for Indeed, I think for a little over 14 years. She'd been in the industry for like 15 plus, worked, uh, at Handshake for a little while, um, but had great conversation about an hour and a half over coffee and the whole first impressions thing. You're gonna love this. Uh, so I'm, I'm going down. I'm like, we have a bunch of people that we know in common. I'm like, let's go take a picture. We'll send it to them. So we're walking down the steps to the beach and the tide has just gone out. So the steps are a little wet and you know, there's

• 5:43Speaker 00

  a little algae on the steps.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  I like where this is going, by the way.

• 5:47Speaker 00

  I totally Charlie Browned that motherfucker. You know, when he's kicking, he's kicking the football. Oh yeah. I'm like, up in here.

• 5:57Speaker 00

  Oh yeah. That's the only time you want to have those falls. You want everybody to see a fall of that magnitude you want everybody to see. Um, so anyway, she was okay. We went back up the stairs so that she didn't have to do that, but it was a great time. And again, anybody that you're connected to on LinkedIn, if you get a chance to go out, have a coffee, a beer, dinner, go do it. Life is too short. The world is too, is not small enough, but when you get a chance, make it happen. And thanks Diane, really appreciate it. Sorry about, uh, almost falling on you.

• 6:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, so were you, were you like, uh, oh, the, the only thing that can cure my embarrassment is like some insider knowledge on Indeed and Handshake. And did she, did she spill some dirt? Did she, uh, did she let loose?

• 6:41Speaker 00

  If she, if she did, I'm not going to divulge any of my sources, Cheesman. That's not what we do around this joint.

• 6:46Speaker 02

  That's a good point.

• 6:48Speaker 00

  But yeah, I personally, I think like when I was in my twenties or thirties or something like that and I fell, I got up and I was like totally embarrassed. Now I just laughed my ass off. It's like, what a dumbass I am. That was funny, right?

• 7:05Speaker 02

  And then my back aches for the next three weeks. Yeah, that's what happens. Have you seen the, the, have you seen the memes where like somebody in their middle ages or in middle age, not middle ages, like our age, like they'll dunk a basketball.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  I'm not your age, by the way.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  I'm not talking to you, Emmy.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Okay, just make your show.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  Like they'll dunk a basketball and then in their mind, they're like, yeah. And then they look back and their real person is like on the floor, like hurt from what they did. Anyway, maybe I'm the only one who's algo is, uh, serving up, serving up that kind of shit. Let's get some, let's save me and get to some shout outs unless you guys have any more banter. Nobody saw The Odyssey yet, right? No Odyssey pushback. All right.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  You said not to watch it.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  I'm waiting on that.

• 7:47Speaker 00

  I'm gonna watch it. Yeah.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  Yes. Please go see it. Of course. Go see it. So someone could say something.

• 7:52Speaker 00

  It's too long, but still.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. That's, that's the test. If you go see a movie and you go, I don't need to see it ever again. It's not that good of a movie. And I would bet that everyone who sees The Odyssey, very few are saying like, I can't wait to see that again. It's not good, fellas, people. It's not good, fellas. Emmy, what you got for shout outs?

• 8:10Speaker 01

  My shout out is actually all about privilege today. My privilege.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  Oh, how British of you.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  Oh, incredibly British. Now I'm just gonna like preface this because for anyone who's not watching the video, I'm gonna like paint a picture of myself.

• 8:24Speaker 00

  Did you say preface? Did you say I'm going to preface this?

• 8:29Speaker 00

  I'm sorry. Go ahead.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Don't call me out for like, like not saying it properly. God, I've lost my flow now.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  You are saying it properly.

• 8:37Speaker 00

  That was just like, I, I'm, I'm trying to get my European on over here.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  I've been working with Americans for four years. I've forgotten how to say certain words in the English accent. So.

• 8:48Speaker 00

  If anybody's gonna fuck you up, it's gonna be us.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 8:51Speaker 00

  Or Scousers. Scousers will too.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  Anyway, I'm gonna start this off. No, by describing myself. So if you're not watching the video, I'm gonna paint a picture of what I look like. Yeah. So I, I tried to tell people I kind of look like Naomi Campbell. That's a lie, but you know, we can go with that. But I'm black. I'm, I'm a woman. Okay. So.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  I'm black.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Paint any picture you want from there. But basically I said, as a black woman, we don't get many privileges. Yeah. So I'm gonna take this privilege and I'm gonna tell you where I'm actually coming from. Cause apparently I now, I now benefit from skinny privilege. Okay. And I said, yeah, yes, apparently. Yeah. And it's all down to my favorite drug in the world, GLP-1s. I love it. I've been doing, I've, I had been on GLP-1s for about two years and it's made me go, you know? And apparently I'm now benefiting because there's some Harvard report that actually came out and I'll say the serious side of things. Harvard report came out and unfortunately what it was saying now

• 9:56Speaker 01

  that all the people who have actually lost weight recently down to all the GLP-1s, they're actually benefiting in the workplace. Okay. So when people used to talk about pretty privilege before and all the other types of appearance privileges, apparently that gets you a leg in and out, you know? Doesn't actually benefit people like me who actually had a job beforehand because it doesn't translate into pay rises. But if you're in a marketplace, people are still judging you by what you look like. So, and they, and it's translating into salaries. So more people who are more overweight, for example, earn less than people who have the same skills, same industry as, you know, as good as, as the next person getting a job. But even if they do secure that job, they're getting paid

• 10:41Speaker 01

  less. So my shout out isn't, you know, like I said, GLP-1s fantastic. Thank you very much for helping me to lose the weight that I couldn't lose beforehand, probably because I booze too much. So I went down the cheating route. But like I said, I'm, I'm privileged. I'm a privileged person now.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  I think the shout out is more like Emmy's looking hot, everybody. That's what the shout out is.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  I don't take that.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  No, look, in all seriousness, I've always thought that overweight people are the sort of underreported, underappreciated group of people who are, you know,

• 11:17Speaker 01

  But it's sad, isn't it?

• 11:18Speaker 00

  Taken advantage.

• 11:19Speaker 02

  I mean, there's discrimination and it doesn't get reported enough. So it's funny that now that they're getting skinny, it's a thing now like, oh, they're getting jobs now. They're like, they're not getting that kind of treatment. But yeah, good, good for you. I mean, how long have you been on them?

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Well, I'm not on it anymore because I stopped in October, but I was on it for two years. And I'm telling you, it is the best drug I've ever taken. Botox is the second best because when I lost the weight, I actually realized I had wrinkles on my face, which I didn't know about because the fat was filling it up. But like I said, it was the best, best drug I've ever taken. And so, yeah, I'm the biggest advocate for it.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm naturally a size two, so I don't have any much comprehension.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  We have seen.

• 12:06Speaker 00

  Size two in Chris Farley.

• 12:11Speaker 02

  That's not very nice. That's not. Chad, what you got?

• 12:14Speaker 00

  Joel, so there are many people in our industry that usually work behind the curtain. They create great shit and yet they don't get any fanfare. And today I'm going to shout out a guy that's always one of the smartest guys in the room. That's Toby Dayton. If you don't know him, Toby Dayton, Link Up CEO, friend of the show and former co-host of the Chad and Cheese Data Show. After 25 years, Toby has left the building over at Link Up and Global Data. Listeners, you might remember that last, or actually November 2024, Link Up was acquired by Global Data. That could have had something to do with Chad and Cheese. I don't know. Which means Toby took a pre-internet employment guide

• 12:57Speaker 00

  company, brought it onto the internet, started indexing jobs, pivoted into a data company, and then 25 years later got acquired. That man did the fucking work. And that's one hell of a ride, guys. So shout out to, shout out to Toby Dayton. Congrats on one hell of a ride and good luck on whatever you do next.

• 13:19Speaker 02

  That's right. The big foot of big data, the Sasquatch of statistics is moving on shockingly, shockingly about a year after selling the company because that never happens, never happens a year after like say bye bye, bye bye now. So, uh, yeah, I guess he's going to do the Gen X thing and just disappear. Uh, just do have Chipotle bowls and listenerium records for the rest of his, rest of his days, I guess.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  That sounds like a beautiful life.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  It does, doesn't it? All right, guys. So, uh, my shout out goes, I guess to Night Owls. Uh, we talk a lot about automation and recruiting on this show. Some of it's negative, some of it's positive. One of the positive aspects I don't think we talk a lot about is that the flexibility that job seekers have is really something that we haven't known before. In the old days, if you wanted to get a job and you had to interview, if you already had a job, you had to sneak out during lunch, maybe you had to have a coffee before you went in, maybe a quick after, you know, after hours thing, happy hour. But new research is coming out. This is an article by Wired. So much, so much of the interviews now because they're automated are happening late at night. And there's some data points around there.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  Alex.com, which is a sponsor of the show, 62% of their interviews are after work hours.

• 14:35Speaker 02

  Greenhouse had a report that said 24% of its interviews happened between 10:00 PM and 2:00 AM, which means obviously these are probably people with kids, have to do late night shit. And then like, this is the best time that they do it. So I think it's, it's, it needs to be said that, that automation, being able to adhere to people's schedules, real life things that are going on, I think is a really great thing that's happening with automation. So shout out to the Night Owls, the people with lives that have jobs and can't get to, to the phone easily. I think that the new technology is, is great, great for them. Shout out, shout out to all them. By the way, Chad, that episode, that segment of shout outs was sponsored by, by Free Bourbon. Who doesn't love some Free Bourbon? That's

• 15:18Speaker 02

  right. Our friends at Proven Base are making miracles happen as we send two bottles of Chicken Cock, newly acquired, by the way. Uh, Google that if you need to. Uh, Chicken Cock, two loyal fans of the show, but you got to go to ChadCheese.com backslash free. Again, thanks to Proven Base for making miracles happen. We love you.

• 15:38Speaker 00

  I love Chicken Cock so much, I bought the company.

• 15:43Speaker 02

  And I'm bringing it to Portugal.

• 15:45Speaker 00

  Yes, that would be fucking great. Uh, you know what's next, baby? It's events.

• 15:52Speaker 00

  It's Frango here. Um, events, baby. We've got Rec Fest and Party Time coming 23rd, 24th of September. Rec Fest, uh, you know what's going to happen. We're going to be on the disrupt stage. Uh, JT and Mo are going to be on the innovate stage. So we've got two stages, day one lockdown. Uh, and then on the first night, it's party time on night one at Old Red. We actually were, we're upping the ante on the actual, uh, party place this year. Bigger rooftop, better drinks, and that all comes from our friends at Job Pixel. At that point.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  Job Pixel.

• 16:32Speaker 04

  Pop ups there is. Play it simple. I mean, I wake up at four and I piss excellence.

• 16:36Speaker 00

  I'm going to jump on a plane, go to Cabo for a few days. My buddy's getting married in Cabo. Then I'm going to go to Dallas at the Omni Hotel, 29th of September through the 1st of September. SIA, we know staffing industry analyst, SIA, they've got this little event called Collaboration X and going to be there. Actually, we're having a Shark Tank, got some expert, uh, panels that are going to be a part of, bunch of fun. Go to collaborationx.com for your tickets. And then let's talk about the musique about real quick. That's right. The E Recruitment Congress in Amsterdam. That is always a party, Emmy. That is always

• 17:20Speaker 00

  a party. October 6th, if you're, if you don't have your tickets yet, Emmy, we need to talk. We need to talk about you getting a ticket.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  Amsterdam in the fall.

• 17:28Speaker 00

  Yeah. Guess who else is going to be there? Stephen McGrath. That's right.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  What? I did not know this. I'm, I'm coming now.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  That's all you had to say. Stephen McGrath is going to be there.

• 17:44Speaker 00

  All brought to you by our friends at Shaker Recruitment Marketing. 75 years in business, kids. That's right. Happy anniversary to Shaker. Go to shaker.com. If you want to know what you should be doing with this AI stuff, if you really want to take a look and get your, your tech stack audited, go to shaker.com. Talk to the best. 75 years. You'll, you'll thank us.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. And say hi to them when you're at Rec Fest in Nashville. They'll, they'll be out there. Really sexy, sexy travels there, Chad, but almost as sexy.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  As you know what? Fantasy football is back, baby. It's back. So we're taking signups now. If you don't know, Factory Fix is sponsoring the event. You gotta head out to ChadCheese.net/fantasy-football to sign up. We're sending out messages. Check us out on LinkedIn. You can sign up if you, uh, you know, we're everywhere. So sign up. We'll be selecting a few, uh, lucky winners. We'll have our last year's champion back again to see if they can repeat. Of course, Chad and I will be there. Emmy, I don't know if she's going to play football, probably run football for you, but.

• 18:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, has no clue what this American football stuff is.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just something I've seen on TV, but.

• 19:04Speaker 02

  She can't do anywhere, she can't do any worse than Adam Gordon.

• 19:07Speaker 00

  Welcome to Scotland Scottish. Our slogan is if it's not Scottish, it's crap.

• 19:14Speaker 02

  Stephen redeemed the country of Scotland, but otherwise it was not, it was not.

• 19:18Speaker 00

  He did a damn good job.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  It was not pretty. Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. All right, guys. Should we get to some topics?

• 19:29Speaker 02

  All right. It's earnings season, everybody.

• 19:32Speaker 00

  Woo.

• 19:33Speaker 02

  Good show fodder. That's right. ZipRecruiter's Q2 showed 118 million in revenue. That's a plus 5% year over year and 12% up adjusted EBITDA margins and AI-driven engagement games while cutting debt. Recruit Holdings, the owners of Indeed.com, uh, crushed Q1 with a plus 19% revenue boost, record profits and strong Indeed growth, then sharply raised full year guidance on AI monetization and efficiency. Both highlight AI progress amid a soft hiring market. Zip is up almost 10% on the news while Recruit Holdings spiked 30%. Holy shit on the news. Let the good times roll, Chad. What's your take on earnings

• 20:18Speaker 02

  season at Indeed and Zip?

• 20:20Speaker 00

  Let's start with Zip. This is financial engineering at its best and or worst. Call it whatever you want. ZipRecruiter owed banks roughly 295 million, but they paid them back early, only 229 million because the banks were worried that Zip might not be around. Maybe. I mean, that might be the, might be the reason, but they paid much less than they owed. And we know why banks do that. So ZipRecruiter counted that saved $65 million as profit. Without the one-time savings, ZipRecruiter actually, by my math, would actually lost money this quarter. Right? So this is all bullshit financial engineering

• 21:02Speaker 00

  and smart, smart from the people at ZipRecruiter because obviously people don't pay attention. They don't look at the numbers. They don't see what's going on and they're like, time to buy ZipRecruiter.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  Well, too bad for them. Chad doesn't fall for the banana.

• 21:15Speaker 00

  I try not, I try not. But I do want to do a history lesson when we start talking about Indeed here because

• 21:21Speaker 02

  History lesson.

• 21:24Speaker 00

  Well, first off, you'll notice that on the call, there was no mention of apply for me. The AI that was paused, right? They didn't talk about that. They didn't want to get into that. But the history lesson, I'm talking, I'm taking you back about 15 years when Monster and Career Builder were on the top of the mountain. Those companies were not innovating and yet they were still pulling in record revenues. Why? Was the product better than anything else out there? No. Were Monster and Career Builder offering better value propositions than years before? No. As a matter of fact, the value prop was worse because the prices kept going up for the same exact fucking product. So these companies

• 22:04Speaker 00

  were still riding high. Why? Why? Because human behavior. Monster and Career Builder were baked into buyers' behaviors. And then what happened? It wasn't Indeed. Indeed didn't kill Monster and Career Builder. Their arrogance, constantly raising prices. Yes, constantly raising prices and treating customers like shit. All because of the where are they going to go mentality. Customers don't have a choice. They have to use us. I remember that feeling and talking to Monsters, actually, and being when I was at Monster. So I believe we're well into that same where are they going to go phase with Indeed as their customers

• 22:46Speaker 00

  are looking for and finding ways out. Plus, hiring companies are starting to build systems that use the candidates they've already bought from companies like Indeed and have stored them in their CRM, in their ATS. God rest his soul, Matt Lavery from UPS had to hire, I believe it was like 150,000 people in six weeks and 30% of them came out of his CRM and his ATS. I want to kiss the man on the mouth when he, when he told me that. I mean, that is exactly what companies should be doing. Hiring companies are finally building these technical ecosystems where they own the primary source of candidates. As that

• 23:27Speaker 00

  happens, along with the where are they going to go mentality, Indeed becomes less necessary. Less part of the behavior, Indeed just becomes less, just like Monster and Career Builder. So the history lesson here, kids, it's not about competition. Yes, Indeed was there to take over the mantle. How did they get the mantle? It was all the things that Career Builder and Monster didn't do from an innovation standpoint, but they did do from an asshole standpoint.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  Sounds like you're going short on those two names, Chad. Sounds like you're going short on those two names. Zip, I mean, I agree with you. I think Zip, they want you to think there's some magic AI gobbledygook that's, that's driving profits at ZipRecruiter. There's no secret AI shit here. In fact, if anything, they've took a step back into the future. They got rid of Phil, the ridiculous AI job seeker buddy.

• 24:22Speaker 00

  How is that a step back?

• 24:25Speaker 02

  No, they got rid of him.

• 24:27Speaker 00

  I know.

• 24:27Speaker 02

  And went back to like traditional, put in a keyword. And so like, they thought Phil was the future. So Phil, Phil's out to pasture now. So they're back, they're back to the old school, search for a job, and then you got to register as a user if you want to actually see more jobs or apply to a job. So there's like fill in the bucket, fill in the funnel with job seekers so they can spam them via email. The other thing is that they've increased their spend on marketing. They've reduced their costs. You'll remember that they laid off 20% of their workforce a couple of years ago. So they've cut costs, they're spending more, and they've always done this treadmill thing where like, we'll spend more on marketing, we'll get more sales, reduce costs, like rinse and

• 25:11Speaker 02

  repeat and do this. Inflation has a big part of this as well. Like, we've seen how much inflation. It's pretty steady at 3, 3.5% last year. If I'm Texas Roadhouse and I have to deal with inflation, it means the meat that I buy costs more. What ZipRecruiter does isn't costing more, but they're able to pass increases on to their consumers because inflation, right? While they continue to cut costs. They have no transparency in pricing. If you go to ZipRecruiter's pricing page, it's a free trial. They're drug dealers now. The first hit is free. And then, and then they, they loop you in and I'm sure based on the results and they, they source their candidates, I'm sure they're pulling in whatever

• 25:52Speaker 02

  AI, and then they drop the price on you based on probably the results that you've gotten. And then you're, you're sort of paying who knows what. And we talked about dynamic shopping, pricing, surveillance pricing in the past. So all these things kind of go into, let's take what was old, kind of repackage it to something new. And the bottom line is, is, benefiting from that, but I would not, I still, I still don't think this is any kind of buy or long buy. I do still think they're going to hit 10 bucks this year. That was one of my predictions for this, for 2026. I thought they were going to go full meme, Chad. You might remember that. They just might hit it now that they've, they've done this. As far as Indeed goes, a little bit, a little smarter on the, the engineering,

• 26:35Speaker 02

  financial engineering, they have a lot of smart people there. But I, I think most of it is just, we're a duopoly. It's us and LinkedIn. People, from what I can tell, are leaving programmatic. They're leaving the vertical search, folks. And we'll talk about JobRapidO after the break. But people are like, where do we go? We can't do what we've done. Like 80% of our budget goes to Indeed anyway. And now we're just going to go all in because they're going to increase, increase prices. So we can't spend more on the alternative stuff. They're putting all these different ways, talent scout and, and results-based pricing. But I think this really is just a, we're cutting costs. Indeed had a lot of layoffs early this year. They've had every March for the last couple of years, they've

• 27:20Speaker 02

  had layoffs. Cost reduction, increased prices is all going to be a nice thing to the bottom line. I don't think there's anything secretive, nothing super AI awesome going on there. They're just moving the dials to profit. Good for them.

• 27:34Speaker 00

  Phil is the future.

• 27:38Speaker 02

  If you get to Phil anymore, man, that dude, that shit's gone.

• 27:42Speaker 00

  He's, he's sleeping. He's a Van fucking Winkle at this point.

• 27:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.

• 27:47Speaker 00

  What you got?

• 27:48Speaker 02

  Teasing me with Phil.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Do you know what? As I was listening to you, you both summed up what I was going to say. And it's like, I totally agree. I mean,

• 27:56Speaker 00

  You're welcome.

• 27:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. Just read it back in a British accent. So we sound smart.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  Do I sound smarter? I'll preface. Yeah. But I think it is a great, I suppose, a great show of kind of financial PR, massaging, moving money around, making it look like they're more profitable than they actually are, you know? And it's not. Like you said, there aren't many people who are going to look at their initial, you know, earning calls and dig behind the scenes and go, hold on a second. What happened before? Is this actually true? Not many people are going to do that, which is why they can actually get, get away with it. And you look at ZipRecruiter. I mean, ZipRecruiter, like you said, they are not a company that's doing well. They're not. They've massaged their numbers around.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  It looks like they're doing well. They're still struggling. Their products are still not innovative. They will still lean on this kind of AI route, but what they're churning out is actually rubbish, you know? So is that going to work in the long term? Yeah, it looks good for this, like kind of short-term period. Long term? No, I don't think so. I think they're still going to have to find ways to massage the numbers to make the books look good. So that's my opinion on

• 29:07Speaker 02

  You mean, it's not, it's not rolling in the Glassdoor brand into Indeed. It was, that wasn't the secret. Did you guys see, I think this came out today, that they're getting rid of the interview reviews on Indeed. Used to be able to like, like put reviews of how the interview process was. Yeah. Because guess what? That's going away. That's all going to be automated. So they don't need reviews for, that's my own take on that. But yeah, that's, that dropped today, I think.

• 29:30Speaker 00

  I saw that announcement coming, that came out with the Indeed, Glassdoor kind of like merger. And it's like, it felt like it was from 2018 or some shit like that.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, some kind of old school kind of thing. And, you know, Indeed, I actually think are, are terrible. Like I do, they're absolutely terrible. You know, the way they are screwing over the, the, they're screwing over the industry. And I think companies do need to wise up. I, I feel sorry for the kind of, the SMBs, the small and medium-sized businesses, because if they need to grow, they need to put bums on seats. They just think automatically, I'm going to go to Indeed. I've got no other way of attracting candidates. People don't know my brand name.

• 30:10Speaker 00

  Behavior.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So they lean into that. They know they can inflate their prices and people are just going to have to pay it.

• 30:17Speaker 02

  By the way, what was, what was their exposure at Rec Fest at London this year? It was like a single sign somewhere. They had a booth in the past, a lot of employees. This year it was just like a little sign. So

• 30:28Speaker 01

  Like a little postcard almost.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  Cutting those, cutting those costs. My bet is when, when Glassdoor stopped filtering in Google traffic to their jobs, Indeed was like, I just shut it down. It's just too much, too much of a hassle.

• 30:40Speaker 00

  No reason.

• 30:41Speaker 02

  All right, guys, let's take a quick break. We come back. Oh, we haven't played Buy or Sell in a while. So fire up for that. Hey, boys and girls. It's Joel Cheesman 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.

• 31:22Speaker 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

• 32:05Speaker 02

  now. Guys, alex.com. Interview everyone. Hire the best. All right, guys. This next segment is sponsored by our friends who supply free t-shirts to the, to the podcast. If you don't have a shirt, guys, you gotta go to Chadcheese.com/free. That's our friends at Aaron App, the freaks and geeks that are wearing the red shoes all over social media. Go check them out if you need some referral help now to buy or sell. If you don't know how buy or sell works, everybody, we read two companies that are in the news and each one of us will either buy or sell that news. All right, we can officially get to buy or sell. First up, we got Metaview. They acquired AI native recruiting firm Revel

• 32:50Speaker 02

  to accelerate development of Fillmore, not to be, not to be confused with Phil from ZipRecruiter. It's autonomous AI coworker for recruiting. The acquisition expands Metaview's engineering team and brings Revel's founders Seth Tillis and Aditya Gupta on board. Chad, firing squad alum, Metaview is making some shit happen. Are you a buy or sell on their acquisition?

• 33:13Speaker 00

  So I have been a long time sell on Metaview because they are, just being the note taker, it's just like anybody can do that at any time. But they need people to build agentic, an agentic platform. We need more of those specialized agentic platforms in our space. This is, I think, one of the smartest things they could do to, to hopefully divorce themselves away from just being seen as a basic note taker. I think it's very smart. And for me, this is an aqua hire, top to bottom. They, they need the people to be able to buy, to be able to build the new platform. It's, it's a buy for me. It's, it's a buy.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  Wow. I'm a little surprised by that, Chad. All right, all right, all right. All right. So about a year ago, Metaview raised $35 million. That's a pretty good sum of money. That's a pretty good chunk of change. Revel was founded in 2023, barely out of diapers. And not just as a company, but their founders are also barely out of diapers. I think, I think one of them like graduated last year from Duke, whatever, like smart dudes.

• 34:22Speaker 00

  That's a good school.

• 34:23Speaker 02

  They bootstrapped the whole thing. They clearly are intelligent, made some smart, you know, smart technology. Probably didn't know how the hell to sell this thing. Like a lot of people to get in recruiting tech, like this buyer sucks. How do we sell to them? Like, so to go to Metaview and sort of like offload the technology, get a job, I think is, is smart for them. I, but I also think like, is it that great if they sold already? You know, like the first, the first company that waves a million dollar check in front of their face, like, okay, that's it. We're good. You know, it's like, it's like when you're a teenager and you first up, hook up with a chick and you're like, that's it. I'm done. It doesn't get any better than this. Like they could, they should have waited

• 35:06Speaker 02

  a little bit, maybe, you know, gone on a few more dates. They probably could have got it.

• 35:09Speaker 00

  Really good. You never know.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  It might've been. Red on top. Anyway, how, how that goes. So, so Metaview has money to spend. Apparently they're trying to build this technology. These guys maybe have the secret sauce and brought them on. It's fine. I, I think it's not that big of a deal. I think, I think Revel could have held out. I think Metaview spending on this is probably some sort of sign that they need to add more money to the bottom line by acquisition. So I'm a little bit more on a sell on this one. I, I just, I don't, I'm not buying it. So Emmy, can you break the tie on whether buy or sell Metaview's acquisition of Revel?

• 35:52Speaker 01

  Do you know what? If, if you asked me even a month ago, anything about Metaview, I would have just sold because I'm not, I'm not a huge, it's not that I don't like the product. I actually think the product is, it's a decent product, you know? I don't think it's very different to any other note taker out there. However, what I don't like, what I haven't liked about Metaview in their part, in the past is their customer service. You know, I've been always very honest about it. I just don't think they treat well. They didn't.

• 36:21Speaker 00

  That's big.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, they treat their customers exactly. Yeah. And so that's why I'm always like, Metaview, no, sorry. I'm not, I'm not your fan. They know I'm not their fan, you know? So I'm never going to hide that. However, there's so many other vendors out there doing what Metaview are doing. They're now at a stage where they're having to differentiate themselves because they're now getting eaten alive by ATS vendors incorporating note takers into their platform.

• 36:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. Is it a future of product?

• 36:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's just becoming a point solution now. You know, that's the way that the market is actually going. And don't get me wrong. Like I said, good point solutions. I understand note takers. I understand the benefits. We use it in our organization. But in a few years' time, it probably is going to be a point solution. So then buying Revel, diversifying their tech stack, you know, apparently this is a first of many other acquisitions that's going to come down the line. I think it's a good, it's a good move for Metaview. It's going to accelerate their growth. It means that, you know, they, they can just right now start up making money, which apparently they have. So they have no integration issues and have only been like acquired in the last three weeks. So already it looks like they're getting value. So begrudgingly, I'm going to buy.

• 37:38Speaker 00

  You're saying there's a chance.

• 37:40Speaker 02

  That's a, that's a very, that's a very non-committal buy there, Emmy. All right, that's our first buy. So let's get to the next one. Career Minds has acquired JobRapido, looking to strengthen Career Minds' ability to help organizations navigate workforce transformation by combining career transition services with a large job marketplace. The deal brings broader access to career opportunities and labor market intelligence. Terms were not disclosed. Chad, buy or sell the Career Minds acquisition of JobRapido?

• 38:10Speaker 00

  So Career Minds acquires JobRapido. And what I'm hearing, this is a rumor, kids, probably for no more than a dollar. They're out of, they're out of Italy. It's really hard to get to, to be able to downsize your employee base in Italy. And from, from what I hear, I'm not an employment lawyer. And it's, it's been really hard for JobRapido. This feels very bold like, right? You buy more job seeker traffic to sell job seekers to your resume and coaching services. And you know, I hate those fucking predatory, try to get money out of job seekers bullshit scam stuff. So this is a big, big sell for me.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  So you get nothing. You lose. Good day, sir. So I first heard of JobRapido when you were at Job Central, Chad. I don't know, it was like one of, it was one of the sites you had your job. Yeah, as a partner, you were kind of geeking on them at one point. This was 2006 that they launched.

• 39:16Speaker 00

  Global traffic.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  So we're talking a 20 year business. So that was the first thought that went through my head when I saw JobRapido, because it's not like we get a lot of press releases from JobRapido. So I went back to 2006, which is always, always fun for me. And then the second thing I thought of was like, well, they're, they're based in Milan. Shit, I could have gone and popped in and like, you know, got a, got a tax break on my trip to Italy. So I was mad about, mad about that. Look, both these companies have seen pretty good organic growth throughout the years. It's not like there's been a big crash in any of them. JobRapido, the future of vertical search and aggregate job postings, like that is not a bullish industry to be in. I mean, everyone is going to like, you gotta have

• 40:00Speaker 02

  the profile. You gotta have the job seeker stuff. You gotta have, like, it's the data that comes together that indeed in LinkedIn have, that's going to be really hard for anyone else to compete with. Now that being said, I think Career Minds benefits from the data that JobRapido does have, which is what job postings and job data and historical data. So when they're looking to help their customers off board people consult, like having that data, I think is a good thing to have. I agree with you, Chad, that the price was probably right. This was like the career or the, the, the clearance rack of the clearance rack at the CJ Maxx. So, so if that's.

• 40:39Speaker 00

  It was in the back alley.

• 40:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, that, that being the case, I think that this is probably a pretty good buy for Career Minds. And after 20 years, JobRapido, you can go chill in Italy, which is a pretty good country to chill in.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Now, first of all, I was told that it's not Rapido by an Italian today. Yeah, it's Rapido. That's my best Italian.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  I think I went JobRapido.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  So Elisa, I know you're listening. JobRapido.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  I think that's Italian.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  We've made a career on mispronouncing names and companies. Like, it's all good. It's all good. Just plays into our dumb American brand.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Don't worry. So, okay, what do I think? I actually, um, gonna be the tiebreaker. I actually think it's a good sell, a good buy, a good buy. Sorry, oh my God. Okay, so I think it's a good buy because the way that the market is going, obviously, there's so many jobs going at the moment. You know, obviously, people's gonna blame AI, you know, taking over people's jobs, but the market is crap. There are more and more people looking for jobs. And unfortunately, what I'm seeing hasn't really changed in the last couple of years. I'm seeing lots of companies making redundancies, but not actually helping out their employees to get a new job. And the reality is, for some of the people, it's going to be hard to get a new job. Sometimes their job is not going to exist. There's going to be a downsized of certain jobs.

• 42:13Speaker 01

  So they're going to have to need, they need help to kind of re-candidate, rebrand themselves, look at another direction to go down. What, where can I upskill myself? What transferable skills do I have? So companies that actually provide that kind of outplacement support through companies like this one here that we're talking about. For them, they're going to look good. There is going to be great branding for them. So I think that, you know, I think that Career Minds understands that. I think them acquiring Job Rapid is a good complimentary service. If it's a cheap acquisition, even better. They're just rounding out their services that they can actually offer to employees and to actually candidates. So I think it's a good buy.

• 42:56Speaker 04

  I'm the best there is, plain and simple. I mean, I wake up in the morning, I piss excellence.

• 43:01Speaker 02

  All right, guys, that was what I would call a spirited buyer sell segment. Let's get to our next story. Bend over and cough, everybody. The job doctor is in the house and she's putting Mackey People on the operating table. The company that provides AI hiring assessments has not conducted adverse impact analysis on its Mochi outcomes based on disability or veteran status due to insufficient data. The doc, AKA Mrs. So Wash, if you're nasty, argues that this omission is concerning, especially given Mackey People's claims of fairness and inclusivity. Chad, as the doc's assistant, I'm sure you have some insight here.

• 43:41Speaker 00

  Maybe a little bit. I mean, first off, I gotta say, I gotta commend Mackey People for actually being transparent, responding. Julie had questions. They said they'd be more than happy to respond. They did not have a problem having those responses public. So, I mean, I've got to give it to the group over there. Because most companies that hear expert analysis, if it doesn't align with their current tech or business model, they literally just ignore it, right? They ignore the entire discussion. And in this case, Julie is like a damn forensic scientist in analyzing the practices, technology and compliance. And today, as her assistant, I'm literally just gonna go over certain aspects at very high levels.

• 44:26Speaker 00

  But if you want the forensics of it, you want all the deep, dirty stuff, go to jobboarddoctor.com, dispel it out, jobboarddoctor.com. She does all the stuff.

• 44:34Speaker 02

  I like the new logo, by the way. Like the new logo.

• 44:37Speaker 00

  Thank you. That's, that's all her, man. She's killing it. Okay, so Julie asked Maxim, who is the CEO over at Mackey People, a very specific question around audits performed on segments of population like individuals with disabilities and veterans. Their response was, quote, "As of this audit cycle, we do not yet have sufficient voluntary self-identification data on disability status or protected veteran status to support statistically defensible adverse impact analyses on Mochi," which is the actual, or the product, "outcomes for these groups. This is not an omission by design. It reflects the reality of where we are in the US market entry

• 45:19Speaker 00

  and the voluntary nature of demographic disclosure," end quote. My translation of that, Mackey People and their partner, in this case, Recruitix, who is the US entity, are not ready to sell this product in the US. When a company says, quote, "We do not yet have sufficient voluntary self-ID data," that should send off warning signals. Plus, even worse, if the partnership scheme of things with Recruitix, who is a very well-known entity, recruitment advertising agency, they're programmatically distributing jobs which lead to this Mochi product,

• 46:02Speaker 00

  which is a part of the audit that did not get passed. So Recruitix knows better, but it feels like they became prey to kind of like this whole move fast, break shit dynamics of the current market. And we're going to see more of this. Startups without the expertise and or understanding of the new markets that they are trying to penetrate, in this case, the US. Mackey People's coming from France. They have an entirely different framework than we do in the US. Ours is all fucking Wild Wild West shit. Theirs is very formulaic and very focused on, yeah, government control, right? Which is, which is excellent, but it's two different worlds.

• 46:42Speaker 00

  But then you're coupled with a well-established vendor who's not, they're trying their damnedest not to get outflanked by competitors. So they're trying all these different things without performing the due diligence necessary that they should be performing for these little startups, right? So one of the reasons why I wanted to talk about this is that I'm seeing this over and over and over. Startups are coming into the US or coming from the US to Europe. They don't know what fucking playing field they're on. They have no clue. And then they're partnering with these bigger names and they think that that's literally just gonna make them legit.

• 47:21Speaker 00

  Unfortunately, it just, it doesn't go that way. So I just, I hope moving forward that more startups and more established players start not moving fast and breaking shit, because that's exactly what's happening now. And I don't want to see big brands being their clients getting audited and nailed for shit like this.

• 47:40Speaker 05

  60% of the time, it works every time.

• 47:43Speaker 02

  You're way closer to this than I am, Chad, so my commentary will be pretty brief. But I, I, I think that companies, particularly in the current landscape of America. Look, regulation is a happenstance today. And I think that more and more companies are putting in their, their, their calculations of, okay, it's gonna be cheaper to go to court than it is to like make changes and do business in a different way. So I think more and more companies with, with, with the administration that's currently saying no regulation on AI. And I don't think, Chad, we've talked about an AI regulation in hiring since Trump has been in office. I don't think there's been anything new or significant since that happened.

• 48:26Speaker 02

  So if I'm a company, it's like, well, hell, it is the Wild West. If the government's not gonna come and pinch me, then, then why do I care? And if companies take that lead and they don't care, nothing's gonna change. It's really, it's incumbent upon the customer to be educated and shout out to Julie for having some real journalism, which is pretty few, you know, few and far between and rare in an industry like this, that companies can now go to Mackey People or whoever their vendors are and say, look, we're concerned about A, B and C. Here's a story I read and here's some more research that I did. What changes are you going to make? Because it's not gonna be the government that slaps these companies. It's not gonna be, you know, the state, local or federal bureaucracies. It's gonna be the customer. So if you're a customer of these businesses and listening to this, like, do yourself a favor

• 49:12Speaker 02

  and ask some hard questions, because that's the only way that things are really gonna change.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  This is the kind of thing that I kind of suppose deal with on a day-to-day at work. You know, we're constantly looking at our vendors. We're constantly looking at new vendors. We're constantly, and I suppose in the last four or so years that I've been in my job, I've had to ask and think about how we implement technology in a completely different way, just because of the introduction of things like AI. You know, we're trying to be more inclusive. We're trying to have a fairer process. So we're looking at every single stage of our hiring journey and all the tools that actually support the different stages of the hiring journey. And we're having to ask questions like this.

• 49:54Speaker 01

  And I'm thinking about other organizations like mine who know they have to ask questions, but maybe don't know what questions they're supposed to be asking, you know? And I worry about those people. And I think that those organizations, particularly the smaller ones, particularly the ones that maybe don't have an internal employment legal team or a, or not working with their internal, like, kind of DEI team, who can actually give them that different perspective. They're just trying to wing it. They're just trying to figure it out by themselves. And then because they're not the experts in their own eyes, they will put so much trust into their vendors.

• 50:33Speaker 01

  They're, they go, oh, yeah, are you, how do you, are you screening people in a fair way? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, great. And they'll take their word for it. So I think a lot of companies are going to get caught out just because they don't know what questions they're supposed to ask. And I suppose the biggest takeaway that I can say for people is like, ask other organizations. Ask them what questions they are, you know, they're putting to their vendors. Ask them about, you know, when they say they're actually not biasing or not discriminating certain groups. Ask those other organizations, how do you actually verify that? Read the stuff like Julie's article to kind of upskill themselves in that particular area.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  Because what will happen is if they don't start doing it now, even if they're in an area like the US where there isn't that much regulation right now, I don't believe that's gonna be the way forever. It's already in Europe. Other organizations, other, sorry, territories will start kind of getting in line and understanding, right? Okay, tighter regulations need to be in place. And if you're not starting to do it now, you're gonna be way behind the curve.

• 51:37Speaker 02

  I think what Emmy's saying is you got it. You gotta go deep, Chad. You gotta go deep. By the way, you want, you want fear, Emmy? How about, can I introduce you in a story on the return of MySpace?

• 51:51Speaker 02

  We'll be right back.

• 51:54Speaker 00

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• 52:37Speaker 00

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• 52:50Speaker 03

  Boy, that escalated quickly.

• 52:53Speaker 02

  Time to get reacquainted with Tom, everybody. MySpace, once the most popular social media platform by far, is planning a relaunch, reflecting nostalgia for a more analog time when algorithms were less dominant in our lives. However, analysts caution that it faces significant challenges in an overcrowded market dominated by algorithm-driven feeds and short attention spans. Chad, I'll still be in your top eight friends when MySpace comes back, right?

• 53:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, just as long as Tom is my first connection. That's all that matters. That's all that matters. It was funny because I actually tried to go see if my MySpace was still out there. I think I like deleted everything. So I'm gonna have to start from ground zero, and that's fine.

• 53:37Speaker 02

  Really? It's gone? You have MySpace gone?

• 53:40Speaker 00

  No, I think I think I literally just deleted everything. I think I did. It's interesting because you take a look at just the trust, and this is what it's all about. Nobody trusts Mark Zuckerberg. Dude's a piece of shit. They literally, New Mexico, I think in total, it's close to a billion dollars that they're gonna have to pay in fines. That's one state. If that starts to roll up, state by state by state, this could start to hurt some of those social media platforms if they don't really start focusing on these these algorithms that have gone out of control. So yeah, I mean, we're looking for, we're looking for, shall I say it, the Gen X days, right? When it was, life was simpler.

• 54:24Speaker 02

  It's millennials.

• 54:25Speaker 00

  Things were easy.

• 54:26Speaker 02

  I don't think Gen X can can lay claim to MySpace.

• 54:30Speaker 00

  I'm saying, I'm saying, I'm saying Gen X from the standpoint of that we were home when the lights came on, we knew what the rules were, just all those things. And today, it's just so much fucking chaos, right? And I blame the millennials because the chaos came when they came. So it's all their fault. It's all their fault. I'll be on, I'll be on MySpace. I'm gonna check it out. If they still have, I mean, they went really heavy into bands at one time, and it was really like a band platform.

• 54:58Speaker 02

  Sure. Arctic Monkeys discovered off MySpace, speaking of British bands. Yeah. In 2006-ish, I wrote a blog post basically saying that there was no way that MySpace could be dethroned. Oops. Got that one wrong. That was, that was not good. I was, I was proven wrong in that one. I mean, like, I don't, I don't think a lot of people, when they use Facebook or Instagram, go, I hate Mark Zuckerberg, and I wish I wasn't using this. I think that, I think it's more like, I've lost control of my life. Like, the cars drive themselves, the algorithm tells me like what to watch, Amazon tells me what to

• 55:40Speaker 02

  buy, Netflix tells me what I should watch next. So I've, I'm losing control of my agency as a human being. And I think there's a desire, particularly interestingly with young people, to sort of connect with vinyl records, which I thought I'd never see in my life. Records coming back is a wild thing. Yeah. And like, let's, let's dress like, like we're grunge. Grunge is coming back in fashion. So people are trying to embrace having control and some sort of an organic feeling to their life. They're not gonna get offline, but if we can have some sort of balance, then that's great. If that's MySpace, I mean, fine. I don't, I think it's a novelty. I don't think people are gonna leave TikTok and the algorithm

• 56:21Speaker 02

  and big booty Latinas and bug bites to know like who my top eight friends are and like juggle those around. So I think it'll have a moment of a 15 minute moment of fame, but MySpace coming back in a big way unless they really change things. I just don't see it. Emmy, how about you?

• 56:36Speaker 01

  To be honest, I had to go back and remind myself what MySpace was.

• 56:40Speaker 02

  Oh, whatever.

• 56:41Speaker 01

  I really, I keep telling you, I'm way younger than you. Like, I never, I never went on MySpace. I'm like, okay, what is this again? I can't remember it, you know, from back in the day. Think I was in like in primary school back then. But yeah.

• 56:55Speaker 02

  I can't believe you're trying to play this, that you're too young to remember.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  I am too young. I am too young. Listen, I will show you my passport. I'm way younger than you two, honestly. Yes.

• 57:10Speaker 00

  I believe that, just not, not too young to not know what the fuck MySpace is.

• 57:15Speaker 01

  It was just a name that floated around. I never, I was like, like I said, I had to Google it.

• 57:19Speaker 00

  If we were talking about Friendster, I'd be like, yeah, no, she doesn't know who Friendster is. I totally get that. MySpace? No.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  No, honestly. But, but I got it, you know, I did it. I did my Google. I said, oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, right. I remember MySpace vaguely. But like, you know, all, all the things that were cool back in the, yeah, all the things that were cool back in the day are coming back. You know, I was walking down the high street, I don't know what you call it in the US, but you know, just like in the strip of shops last week. And I'm seeing all the kids with their low cut jeans, you know, Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears style. And I'm thinking like, pull it up, what you doing? You know, I'm seeing people with the mullets. I'm seeing people with their belly button rings. You know, I'm like, all of that is coming back. So I'm not surprised that MySpace is coming back.

• 58:01Speaker 00

  Are you wearing mom jeans? The ones that are like up to your like, you know?

• 58:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're cool.

• 58:05Speaker 02

  That's totally true.

• 58:06Speaker 00

  Those are the worst.

• 58:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're cool. They're fashionable.

• 58:10Speaker 00

  They're so bad.

• 58:10Speaker 01

  We might like kind of pull up socks. I was like, yeah, new balance trainers. I'm like, woo.

• 58:15Speaker 02

  Shopping with Stella, they have like dad jeans that girls buy now. Yeah, it's totally, it's off the rails.

• 58:21Speaker 01

  Everything is coming back. People want authenticity. You know, they wanna go back to the heyday, the good old days of authenticity.

• 58:26Speaker 02

  I remember stories, Chad, you probably do too, that of kids that would make backgrounds, custom backgrounds on MySpace, and kids would make a lot of money doing that. I also remember, Chad, you remember this, remember when Simply Hired partnered with MySpace to do the back, the jobs, the jobs tab of, speaking of, of back in the day.

• 58:43Speaker 01

  That could happen again. You never know, that could happen again.

• 58:45Speaker 02

  They did not, however, and this, this would have changed everything, guys, if they had dad jokes. They had dad jokes. And I'll give them the first one, all right? All right. Why did the motorcycle take a nap? Why did the motorcycle take a nap?

• 59:01Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 59:02Speaker 01

  Cause he, nah.

• 59:03Speaker 02

  It was too tired. Too tired.

• 59:11Speaker 00

  There it is.

• 59:12Speaker 02

  We out, everybody.

• 59:16Speaker 06

  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.

• 59:58Speaker 06

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