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Evergreen Podcasts

Everything people and workforce—recruiting, marketing, technology, talent management, and workforce economics—delivered with biting sarcasm and unapologetic snark. Industry misfits Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman bring their no-holds-barred opinions to dissect news, trends, and the occasional dumpster fire. If you’re a hiring company, staffing firm, or vendor looking for insights (and a thick skin), these two won’t just tell you what’s happening—they’ll tell you why you’re probably doing it wrong. Buckle up, buttercup.

The Chad & Cheese Podcast

Buckle up, kids, the boys are comin' in hot this week. Personio just chopped headcount and abandonded its U.S. strategy. Chad sees defeat; Joel sees a standing ovation for the competition. The bloodbath is real. 📉

Indeed's dropping its new Connect offering. Chad calls it a "shakedown with jazz hands." Joel warns there's something darker going on. 💸

What's more, Indeed has a new KPI! ARPJ - don't worry, you'll learn what it is - is up 15%, but maybe the magic trick is in the numbers, and the boys have the inside scoop on how Indeed is throttling the system. Wall Street claps, Main Street bleeds. 📈

Teen Vogue's HR chief gets ambushed on camera, and fast food is dying, along with the rest of everyone not in the 10% of the richest among us. It means more than just Joel mourning his Frosty, but maybe 50-year mortgages can save us. Not! Death, taxes, and Indeed screwing you over, same as it ever was. Enjoy!

Indeed Stranglehold Gets Tighter and Tighter

The Shred is a weekly roundup of what’s making headlines in the world of employment. The Shred is brought to you today by Jobcase.

Shredded: Ridepanda, Planbase, Boostie, Scribe, LinkedIn, hireEZ, GigRadar, & More

LIVE from the Recfest USA stage in Nashville!

David Weinstock is a modern Talent Acquisition leader who actually unlocks value by fixing how companies hire, not just adding more process.

As VP of Talent Acquisition at New Story, he leads talent strategy across 16 very different companies. Before that, he built and scaled TA at Hopebridge, one of the largest ABA providers in the country supporting 7,500 hires a year across 125 locations.

David’s specialty is taking messy, scattered recruiting operations and turning them into high-performing, data-powered machines. He’s led major ATS + CRM implementations, rebuilt TA org structures, refined recruitment marketing spend, and made analytics a core part of how decisions get made.

Outside of his day-to-day work, David advises multiple recruiting tech companies helping shape product and go-to-market direction from the point of view of an operator who’s lived it.

5 Must Have Agents for TA w/ David Weinstock

In this episode, we ask if SAP + SmartRecruiters and/or Workday + Paradox can go FULL Amazon and collapse candidate friction into instant conversion, while LinkedIn and Indeed go to war over who actually owns the hiring assistant era.
And Handshake? They’re pivoting into AI trainer labor like Mercor because the real money is in feeding the machines now.

Watching business models shift where conversational AI becomes the UI… and the revenue engine.

Hold on. This one’s bumpy.

Will SAP and Workday Go Amazon?

Shredded: VeroSkills, ADP, Pequity, Personio, Waymo, Deel, Upwork & More

High-volume recruiting is officially in its “everything is on fire” era. Applicant fraud is exploding. Screening is eating recruiter calendars alive. And scaling sourcing without torching your team? Good luck doing that manually in 2025 and beyond.

So we’re bringing in the people who actually lived it… not analyst fantasy land.

In this session — leaders from Rippling, Phantom, Foley and more break down the pain they actually felt, the bad solutions they tried first, and how they finally got ahead of the chaos.

You’ll hear exactly how the speakers have taken a native approach in catching fraud before it infects pipelines, shrink screening overhead, and put recruiter time back into outbound sourcing where it actually moves the needle — not “spreadsheet archaeology.”

Speakers include:

 
Vijay Mani — Co-Founder & CEO, Covey

 
Jay Patel — Sr Director Talent, Rippling (ex DoorDash)

 
Laura Stapleton — VP People, Foley (ex Engine)

 
Derrick Gellidon — Head of Talent, Phantom (ex Lyft, Instacart)

 
And yes… Chad & Cheese stirring the bourbon into the chaos.

Fighting Job Seeker Fraud

Another full serving of red meat on The Chad & Cheese Podcast. Joel unleashes the layoff bloodbath: Amazon axes 14K corporate jobs for automation, Target cuts 1.8K amid sales slumps, GM drops 3K+, Rivian 600, UPS a brutal 48K. Military.com? DOA via Valnet. Chad blames UPS pain on automation, ditching Amazon volume, and shrinking wallets; ties GM to the EV tax-credit cliff—“Trump economy killer!” Joel says companies hate chaos, froze post-election, now tariffs (⅓ each: importer, company, consumer) drip inflation, crushing spending and jobs. Amazon’s BlueJay bots are coming for warehouses. Emi (Europe) confirms global instability fuels automation through ’27; Target may need holiday humans, but HQ already slashed layers.

Mercor—those zygote founders roasted for bias-free matching—pivots to AI-model eval, grabs $350M Series C at $10B. 30K experts at $85/hr tell OpenAI why outputs rock or rot. Chad salutes the “picks-and-shovels” genius; Joel dubs it the mother of pivots. AuditBoard scoops FairNow for AI-governance; Chad smells PE acqui-hire for HG’s $180B empire, Joel’s skeptical—flat headcount, no terms, RecFest whispers “smoke.” Emi loves Mercor’s 500M ARR path, reserves FairNow judgment.

iCIMS wakes up: AI Sourcing Agent, turnkey I-9/E-Verify (backgrounds/assessments next), Apply Network adds LinkedIn/Veritone. Chad groans—5 yrs post-Opening.io, 3 post-Candidate.ID, rebranding old tech as “agents” in me-too panic. Joel sees ATS arms race: bundle sourcing/SEO or lose to SmartRecruiter clones. Emi hopes CTO Deepak Pandya saves the day; Chad/Joel want retention—“We’ve got agents too!”

H-1B mess: White House defends $100K fee vs. Chamber lawsuits over fraud/wage suppression. DeSantis bans H-1Bs at FL universities (13.6% biz faculty gone), citing Chinese nationals teaching U.S. policy. Chad recalls 2020 Chamber suit—immigrants power innovation/supply chains. BC runs Reagan ads during NHL, fast-tracks Trump-weary U.S. nurses: 1.4K+ apps, 113 registered, 100+ hired. Joel predicts Canada-wide poach; Emi: fee won’t spawn American nurses.

Bold (Monster/CB owners) drops 2007 cringe-video: wrinkled CEO, Trumpasaurus, resume subs, predatory paid services. Chad gags at “ick,” slams Jeff Taylor for cheering a flaming brand. Joel: ChatGPT could do better; Emi: euthanize the dead horse—trust gone. Trio signs off with Joel the Chicken & Agent Chad pitching iCIMS mascot gigs. Death, taxes, layoffs—baby. 

Chapters00:00 - Intro13:32- Layoffs21:44 - AI News30:29 - iCIMS38:23 - H-1B47:04 - Bold

iCIMS Awakes, Amazon Axes, and Monster Shambles On

Shredded: AuditBoard, FairNow, Amazon, Mercor, Eightfold AI, Greenhouse Software, UKG, & More

What happens when a global powerhouse doing 180,000 hires a year gets tired of lighting cash on fire? Gotta listen to find out. 

In this live RecFest session, the boys sit down with Shay Johnson, VP of Strategic HR Partnerships at Compass Group USA, who reveals how his team went from 2% conversion rates and duplicate job posts to building a hiring machine. 

Shay drops real playbook tactics—SMS conversion tactics, re-engagement automation, database recycling, spend control, and high-volume hiring strategy that every enterprise TA leader should be stealing by Monday.

This one has it all the maths, modern TA strategy, automation wins, and a guy with better hair than Joel. Grab a bourbon and listen up.

Shay's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelshayjohnson/
Dalia candidate conversion - https://www.dalia.co
ENJOY! 

0:00 – Meet Shay Johnson1:20 – 2% conversion + dumpster fire2:44 – 5 million candidates a year?3:45 – Hiring managers go rogue.9:56 – Stop buying new candidates—reuse the ones you already paid for11:35 – Dalia + Paradox = Batman & Robin of hiring16:17 – Hiring automation so good recruiters don’t know it exists21:33 – Spending smarter > burning budget on sponsorship confetti26:41 – In-house programmatic team = two nerds and a spreadsheet29:23 – Change management that didn’t suck

Supercharge Your Conversions w/ Shay Johnson

This week's episode opens with a layoffs avalanche that could bury a small HR department. Nestlé slashes 16,000 jobs—mostly white-collar, as AI now crunches numbers faster than accountants can say “chocolate river.” Meta cuts 600 from its super-intelligence team (the irony writes itself), Paycom drops 500 engineers (guess the bots finally learned to code), Handshake axes over 100 (pivoting to “AI-centric tech” = fancy talk for “we’re toast”), and even programmatic darling Appcast trims 32. The hot acquisition pitch? JobGet should buy Handshake and rebrand it Handjob.com—because nothing screams “career move” like a domain that triggers every corporate filter.

The bullshit meter detonates. Facebook resurrects its job board after killing it in 2023—rumor has it Zuck’s prepping AR glasses where “Starbucks is hiring” beams directly into your latte-fueled daydreams. X quietly buries its LinkedIn-killer tab (Elon’s too busy monetizing outrage). Adzuna unveils a “revolutionary” search that’s basically ZipRecruiter’s Phil minus the creepy spokesperson—half-baked, no employer-side matching, and it begs for your email like a desperate Tinder bio. Metaview’s Chicago billboard (“Who says hiring has to be fair?”) gets flayed: four-second glance, logo smaller than a South Park punchline, and DEI messaging dumber than a rock. Fix? “Effective AI. Giant Logo. Metaview.com.” Done. Stop torching $35M on ego art.

Funding fireworks: Findem.ai pockets another $51M, hitting $105M total (Intello 2.0, now with agent spice—same data warehouse, new flavor packet). Deel raises $300M, pushing its war chest to $1.3B at a $17.3B valuation—enough to buy a mid-sized nation and still tip the barista. Armstrong grabs $12M for AI dish-washing robots (Taco Bell’s drive-thru is about to ghost human order-takers faster than you can say “Doritos Locos”). Jack & Jill scores $20M for conversational job alerts—talk to your laptop, get emailed Indeed links. Groundbreaking… if it’s 2001.

Economy’s a K-shaped tire fire: Hamburger Helper sales spike 14% (flashbacks to salty 70s trauma: “Dad tried to fix it with more salt—burned my mouth and my will to live”). Freight rates up 20%, subprime auto delinquencies worse than COVID, Great Recession, and dot-com bust combined. White Castle flips fully autonomous in Ohio—farewell, drive-thru jobs; hello, robot flipping your sliders while you doom-scroll in sweatpants.

Finale: OpenAI green-lights erotic ChatGPT for verified adults starting December (the internet was literally built on the promise of pixelated nipples—Sam Altman’s just cashing the OG check). Age-gating? Cute. Show me a 10-ft wall, I’ll show you an 11-ft ladder and a forged ID. They also launch ChatGPT Atlas, an AI browser with a sassy sidebar—because Chrome’s 2:38 median tab time and 11.4 open tabs (recruiters: double that, easy) needed a drunk-texting career coach. Google infused Gemini; OpenAI counters by making browsing feel like your browser just joined a group chat.Buckle up—2026 will be wilder than a Meta glasses app that undresses your LinkedIn connections in AR.

Chapters00:00 Introduction and Recap of Reckfest02:18 Reflections on MTV's Impact and Evolution04:57 The Changing Landscape of Job Platforms07:36 Layoffs and Industry Shifts10:09 The Future of Recruiting Technology13:08 Meta's Job Platform and Advertising Strategies15:42 Critique of Adzuna's New Search Features18:04 Closing Thoughts and Future Predictions26:35 The Power of AI in Recruiting30:44 Funding Frenzy in the Recruitment Tech Space34:59 The Impact of Automation on Fast Food Jobs42:49 Economic Indicators and Their Implications48:06 The Intersection of AI, Browsers, and Adult Content

Facebook Jobs Rises While OpenAI Gets Dirty

Live from UNLEASH America, it’s an unfiltered convo with Steve Bartel (CEO, Gem) and Alla Mezhvinsky (VP, Talent & Workplace, Glean)—and it’s not your average kumbaya on hiring trends.

🧠 From AI-fueled chaos to tech stack therapy sessions, we’re diving headfirst into:

 
🤖 Resume spam and deepfake candidates

 
💸 Scaling dreams on skeleton budgets

 
🧱 Platform vs. integration: who ya got?

 
📊 Real data, real decisions—no BS dashboards

Steve even spills the story behind how he got the Gem.com domain (spoiler: startup fairy tales aren't real).

We’re talking transparency that actually builds trust, AI that actually works, and tech stacks that actually don’t blow up your budget.

If you're tired of hype and want honest recruiting talk from people who live it—this episode's your antidote.

🎧 Press play or keep clinging to that broken job description.

00:00 - In this Episode
0:49 - How Steve Got Gem.com
4:05 - Alla's & Steve's Elevator Pitch
5:24 - Steve's Sense on the Conference
8:51 - Balancing Limited Resources Amid Growing Demands
14:30 - Rethinking Job Descriptions
16:10 - Deepfakes, Resume Spam, and the Hiring Hype: What's Real?
19:29 - Bringing Transparency to the Hiring Timeline
24:04 - Tariff Talk and Client Reaction
28:39 - Platforms vs. Integrations in the AI Era
31:22 - Reassessing the Stack: When and Why?
35:07 - Leveraging Data for Change in Talent Acquisition
38:17 - What the Future Looks Like

Fixing the Candidate Pipeline with Alla Mezhvinsky

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