Deel’s Cash Cannon vs. Remote’s Slingshot

Eight years. 1,428 episodes. Countless bad takes (but never in doubt). The Chad & Cheese Podcast is still standing—somehow.

In this episode:

✅ AI in hiring? iCIMS just discovered chatbots—welcome to 2015, guys. Meanwhile, Remote and Deal are in a cage match over who can cram more features into their already bloated platforms.

✅ Ghosting is so 2023. Gen Z is taking job-hopping up a notch with career catfishing—yep, accepting jobs and then… never showing up. Who needs confrontation when you have anxiety?

✅ Amazon’s AI is back. Will Alexa finally get you a job? Or will she just ghost you like recruiters have for decades?

✅ Plus, the guys take a booze-fueled trip down memory lane, reflect on their first-ever sponsors and unbox a surprise shipment of Chicken Cock whiskey. 🥃 Because nothing fuels corporate snark like free booze.

🎧 Buckle up, kids. It’s unfiltered. It’s unapologetic. It’s The Chad & Cheese Podcast. Hit play—if you can handle it.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Joel (00:33.288)

Frequently wrong, but never in doubt. Hi boys and girls. It's the Chad and cheese podcast. I'm your co-host Joel to legit to quit cheeseman

Chad (00:42.36)

This is Chad. Wow, it's been eight fucking years. So wash.

J.T. O'Donnell (00:46.971)

And I'm JT. I'm not really Irish, O'Donnell.

Joel (00:51.528)

Happy St. Patrick's Day and on this episode, deal goes shopping again, iCIMS goes chatboting and job seekers are going catfishing. Let's do this.

Chad (01:06.814)

Hey, here's dude. And okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. We got it. We got it. We got it. We got to do this. Play, play the intro to our very first show. This is, this is number one kids go.

Joel (01:08.52)

It only feels like 80.

Joel (01:18.63)

All right, all right, taking you back to 2017 everybody.

Chad (01:21.41)

You

Chad (01:44.014)

And those sponsors, again kids, that was eight years ago. We are today on episode 1,428. Yes. Oh, approaching 1,500. But those sponsors were America's Job Bank, Acquired, Webclip Drop, which I believe became Zap Info. Yeah, yeah. Acquired. And then Beyond.com, which still out there today. Next. With two X's, not the triple X.

Joel (01:47.229)

Yep.

Joel (01:54.876)

Mm-hmm.

Joel (01:59.559)

Wow, yeah.

Zap, Zap info. Yeah, doggy.

Joel (02:13.832)

and this is when they were beyond. Yeah, which I don't know if Bed Bath Beyond are even doing anything with that domain anymore.

Chad (02:15.692)

Yeah, yeah.

Chad (02:19.502)

They are not. I think they're dying.

J.T. O'Donnell (02:21.033)

Right?

Joel (02:22.79)

What do you remember from that day, Chad? Do you remember anything?

Chad (02:26.838)

I remember not knowing a fucking thing. I mean, when you go into things like not, well, that's a very good question. That's a very good question. With the, the amount of research I think that we do, and I'm sure you do too, for a weekly show is hours and hours of research. I read these things and then I just after reading them came to, to, to the show, just ready to talk about them. Right now it's more.

J.T. O'Donnell (02:30.921)

How's that changed?

Joel (02:32.656)

shit

Joel (02:43.549)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (02:54.782)

in-depth research for these things. yeah, instead of taking 15 minutes to read three or four articles, I'm taking hours to read the articles, research the articles, dig deeper into those. just, yeah, it's different.

Joel (02:56.87)

Mm-hmm.

J.T. O'Donnell (03:08.435)

For all your new followers though, what made you two decide to do this?

Joel (03:14.82)

Wife pressure slash get off the couch and do something slash what the hell slash reason to drink slash.

Chad (03:21.91)

So he just started, he just started, he just had a startup and that he was starting that up. I had just gotten out of Ronstadt where I'd had my head down for two years, hadn't really been on stage at all. was like, we need to get our fucking voices back out there. This is a great branding exercise, but we treated it as a business on day one, hence having three, three, three sponsors. And then about six months in, because nobody was doing what we were doing in the podcast arena. We exploded and then we.

created that obviously it's eight years ago so.

Joel (03:52.644)

Exploded is generous, but yeah, it took, it took off in a way that I don't think that we, it took a while to get there. took a little while. Yeah. Sorry. My my Midwest humility is kicking in on this one. I remember being so scared and then thinking, no one's going to listen to this. And which is what I thought. I thought maybe 50 of our closest industry people.

Chad (03:56.536)

Dude, it's your full time fucking job. It has exploded. We have been all over the world on stages, all over the world. It has exploded.

J.T. O'Donnell (04:05.865)

Exactly. Exactly. I love it.

Chad (04:13.281)

Yeah?

Joel (04:20.796)

friends would listen and like that would be it. It's amazing that we're where we are now. But yeah, I'm in for another eight. How about you?

Chad (04:21.966)

Which is why it took me a year to get him to fucking do it in the first place. Yeah.

J.T. O'Donnell (04:29.575)

All kidding aside, congratulations. It is.

Chad (04:31.906)

Why not? Why not? I'll be on the beach in fucking Portugal. That's right, baby.

Joel (04:34.728)

Yeah, yeah. It may be one week a month or one episode a month by then, but who knows? We'll still be talking, talking in the microphone.

Chad (04:39.886)

You

J.T. O'Donnell (04:42.641)

No, I think I speak for everybody out there, boys, that it's really great what you've done. you know, we're very proud of you. And it's great to see at eight, you're acting your age. It's awesome.

Chad (04:52.202)

I'm not crying, you're crying.

Joel (04:53.32)

You sound like a paid consultant, JT. You sound like a paid contractor. Chad, you weren't here last week. Where were you? What's going on?

J.T. O'Donnell (04:55.75)

I am.

You're welcome.

Chad (05:00.468)

It is. All right. I know, I know, I know. Well, first off, I had to jump over to DC, which I want to talk about. then, we talked about on the Europe show that's coming. but then I had a chance to go to that's right. the Netherlands for a week and a half. Yep. I was lucky enough, Keith Sonderling invited us to come to DC for his congressional hearing, right?

Joel (05:10.056)

Mm-hmm.

Joel (05:17.522)

football

J.T. O'Donnell (05:18.953)

I

Chad (05:29.022)

and, I was lucky enough to go. So was, was pretty awesome. We did a, we did a day trip. Congrats to Keith. It was really hard to watch what he was signing up for in that congressional hearing. mean, it was. And let me qualify real quick kids. I've actually testified in Congress. I used to travel back and forth to DC for years. started.

when we were starting to build out the National Labor Exchange and I was working directly with the National Association of State Workforce Agencies who were in DC and also the federal government. So I was in DC every other week for years. So I understand how the sausage is made, but after this visit, I was literally sick to my stomach. It was like watching kids fucking food fighting, grown ass adults.

grown ass adults acting like fucking kids. I mean, we're talking 70, 80 year old fucking dudes. Congrats to Keith. Sorry. Sorry, sorry, Congrats to Keith, but for what he signed up for, dude, you couldn't get me to do that for any amount of money. Done.

Joel (06:21.83)

Yeah, very adult. Yeah, got confirmed this week.

J.T. O'Donnell (06:28.787)

Yeah.

Joel (06:32.633)

It sounds like you think DC hasn't changed much, Chad, but I'm here to tell you things have changed, Chad. I don't know if you saw it this week on the, the white house lawn. There was, there was a show, a showcase of Tesla's let's, let's look at the daily shows. Take, yeah. Take on what happened this week at the white house. Here we go.

Chad (06:35.783)

dude, change so much. yeah? Tell me.

Chad (06:47.15)

Is this a used car show? Yeah.

Chad (07:11.948)

Here's the prices!

Joel (07:13.382)

Right,

Chad (07:19.53)

Everything's computer!

Joel (07:20.391)

You

Chad (07:35.477)

my god.

Chad (07:39.798)

So it was funny in the green room. We played it in, in JT was like, that's not real. We're like, no, no. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, that actually happened kids. Tesla's in front of the white house for sale. Donald Trump talking about the pricing. even had the payment methods. I mean, it's fucking crazy.

J.T. O'Donnell (07:41.993)

Here comes. I knew you were going to say it. like, that AI? It's like, where'd you get that?

Joel (07:45.96)

Is that AI?

J.T. O'Donnell (07:53.213)

Thank

Joel (07:53.576)

Mm-hmm. Yep, that actually.

Joel (08:05.608)

What's up with Elon's kid? He's got like 80 kids. Why is this the one that he brings around? Maybe. Yeah.

Chad (08:11.534)

He's probably the one that's most mobile, he's probably the most quiet, and I mean he makes a perfect little baby human shield. yeah. Yeah, it kind of distracts from Elon's quirks and glitches and stuff.

Joel (08:18.012)

He does. He's very cute. He's very cute kid.

Yeah, picks his nose occasionally. That's always fun. That's always fun. JT, how about you? Do you have an uplifting funny shout out to drop on the listeners? boy.

J.T. O'Donnell (08:33.097)

Absolutely not, absolutely not. No, I am the downer. I am the downer. Okay, so you remember the great quit?

Chad (08:34.286)

Absolutely not.

J.T. O'Donnell (08:42.407)

In the great quit, my TikTok feed blows up with everyone recording quitting on their social, right? So let me show you getting quit, right? This week I got on the side of TikTok with everybody recording getting laid off and subsequently, know, bawling their eyes out. The thing that scares me the most is how quickly you get desensitized when you just see person after person doing it. But there's a guy right now who's going viral because all he does is get in his car and scream about it.

It's like the same video every day. He's just like in this car screaming about it. Why is this already live? You know, just in like full on screen and it's unbelievable that this is my feed. So yeah, there's probably something going on out there right now, but the tears man, the water works. It's intense. It's intense.

Joel (09:25.404)

And, and you.

Chad (09:28.866)

Wow.

Joel (09:28.988)

You've been doing this for a long time. Is this unprecedented? This kind of meltdown and...

J.T. O'Donnell (09:32.457)

But I mean, I don't think we have social media to document the way we do. Just it's unbelievable to me how much people want to document everything. You know, everything. And, you know, really quick sidebar, people can be all the time and say, Hey, should I do that diatribe on LinkedIn where, I got laid off today and here's my whole story and hey, I'm looking for help. I'm like, actually, no. And let me tell you why. Because when it goes viral and 50,000 people see it, all your friends go, well, I'm sure they're all set because it got 50,000 views. So someone else is going to help them. So nobody helps you.

Chad (09:59.502)

Yeah. Yeah.

J.T. O'Donnell (10:01.735)

So you go back and watch those people, 90 days later, they're still not employed. So I don't see the power, and think cathartically people want to do it, but yeah, it's pretty bad right now.

Chad (10:12.92)

Woo.

Joel (10:13.958)

Is it a positive that they can go online and do this and get feedback from people, get the support or no?

J.T. O'Donnell (10:14.141)

Mm-hmm.

J.T. O'Donnell (10:19.913)

Is it, I mean, does it feel good to let it out? I think, I think of course you would, you know, first thing I tell my clients is feel it, feel your feelings, sit in it for 24 hours, 48 hours. And then guess what? We got to move forward. We've got to work it daily. We've got to move forward. And so if they're doing that great, I just don't know why we necessarily need to do it on video.

Chad (10:20.476)

cathartic to some extent, right? Yeah.

Chad (10:28.654)

Mm-hmm.

Joel (10:40.099)

Well, JT, that's good advice, but I have some advice of my own. If you will humor me.

J.T. O'Donnell (10:44.403)

That's good.

Joel (10:49.498)

All right. Everyone knows, chicken cock are recent one favorite bourbons. go try it. If you haven't, we talked about chicken cock, I think last week on the show when you weren't there, Chad, and I, I went, I checked LinkedIn on, Sunday and I had a note from the VP of marketing at chicken cock saying, I heard the episode. We'd love to send, send y'all something like even the y'all was in there. And I said,

I said, there is a God, can't like this, this only happens to big time podcasts. And I, so I gave him my, gave him my address. like, here's my size, Chad size, whatever. I get the FedEx alert and it's like two boxes are coming to your house. And I'm thinking one box full of cock is, is good, but two boxes full of cock could be even better. So this stuff shows up last night, Chad, got six bottles. Here we go.

Chad (11:20.555)

Yes!

Chad (11:44.558)

Steven McGrath, what, what, Good one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. While you're showing, I told Steven McGrath, I'm like, Joel got six bottles of chicken cock and Steven said, I can only handle two cocks at once. I'm like, you're not Joel Cheeseman.

J.T. O'Donnell (11:45.161)

Joel (11:47.25)

We got the double, we got, go ahead, double oak. I'll bring these out and you talk.

Joel (12:01.244)

Ha ha ha ha!

J.T. O'Donnell (12:02.761)

Wait, that one looks strange. Wait, wait, wait, wait, that one's got some missing. Joel, well we are, okay, see, keep an eyeball on Joel. No cherries, he's not Joel.

Joel (12:06.342)

Yeah, I did open this one last night. Yeah.

That's all me. Yeah, here's an average night for me. There we go. That's the standard. Here we got the rye. Chad's a fan of the rye. He likes the rye stuff. And then back here, I think we have the private cask. This is for my romantic nights that I got here on the shelf.

Chad (12:13.025)

No, no.

Chad (12:20.133)

look at that. Wow. Yep.

Chad (12:27.938)

Nice. With himself.

J.T. O'Donnell (12:29.801)

So I feel like we're gonna make, think about this, we're gonna make the triple cock because it's gonna be the chicken cock cocktail for chow and cheese, right? I think there's like, we've got to make a cocktail with one of these. I know you can drink them straight, but there's gotta be something there.

Chad (12:45.486)

I think we're gonna work directly with Chicken Cock to make that happen.

Joel (12:46.876)

Got, we got the T shirts. Here we go. And we got, here we got the hat, which I'll be sporting. yeah, I'm going to have the cock out, for a long time. Everybody. hope, I hope you're okay with that.

J.T. O'Donnell (12:50.185)

Mmm

Chad (12:53.912)

And while Joel is showing all that free stuff, I just like you to know.

J.T. O'Donnell (12:54.27)

I love the hat. Love the hat.

Chad (13:00.526)

And the thing is nobody's going to notice. Anyway, you can go to Chadcheese.com slash free and you can get free stuff too, but you can get Chad and cheese free t-shirts from Aaron app. friends over at Aaron app, bourbon barrel age syrup from key. Yorra. The, the, kids up North craft beer. craft beer. love craft beer. that's from the data geeks over at.

J.T. O'Donnell (13:01.287)

If they're listening, we're...

Joel (13:20.808)

Good stuff from the Canadian.

J.T. O'Donnell (13:25.628)

too.

Chad (13:27.806)

Aspen Tech Labs and then whiskey from our friends at Van Hack. Great interview with Ilya and Professor Zeke which actually came out this week talking about immigration. And last but not least we have if it is your birthday you got to sign up because you want to win rum with plum. To do that get a ChadCheese.com slash free. Uh-huh.

Joel (13:33.64)

Mm-hmm.

J.T. O'Donnell (13:34.057)

Amazing.

Joel (13:36.335)

Illya.

Joel (13:56.498)

We didn't mention that our shout outs are sponsored by Kiara. Text recruiting made easy. yeah. Celebrating another, another trip around the sun this week, got iron Mike Schaefer, our buddy at factory fix. I know he's enjoying some, some bourbon. sent him over a Brown's bears bet. I think we were both losers. We were both losers last season, but he got, he got a bottle. Ashley Collins, Barb, Francilo, Hayden Hughes, Jeffrey Wagner, Isaac Picard, Greg Fiorentino.

Chad (13:59.639)

there you go.

Chad (14:13.004)

over a big loss. Yeah.

Joel (14:24.848)

James Beaver Cleaver, Remington Hampton, Deb Andruchuk, Craig Bloomin' Onion Watson, Bill Fanning, and Jasper, why did I buy an Aaron Rodgers Jets jersey, Spongebob. That's happy birthdays for this week, everybody.

Chad (14:26.658)

There you go.

Chad (14:35.576)

There he is.

J.T. O'Donnell (14:39.783)

Happy birthday, everybody.

Chad (14:41.23)

She just had beers with Jasper in Einhoven last week and he's doing good. He's doing good. He's, not crying about Aaron being gone. Got Justin Fields there. Who's going to be thrown to Garrett Wilson. So we've got the Ohio state tandem baby. And since I'm talking about being on the road, we're on the road again with Shaker recruitment marketing. Next week we'll be at Transform at the Wynn 17th through the 19th.

Joel (14:51.368)

He's all right.

Mm hmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Chad (15:09.398)

Monday night, we're going to be in the job pixel honeymoon suite for a relax and kind of chill party. Hope to see you there. then on Tuesday, right, right at beer 30, we're going to be on stage with Udemy's Rebecca Stern UPS is Matt Lavery and ThreadUp's Natalie Brees talking about agentic tech. Then next week after that, yeah, we're, going to be on the road again. Shit. We drive up to Chicago. Love that.

Joel (15:21.106)

Mm-hmm.

Joel (15:37.852)

Yes.

Chad (15:38.67)

for the RL 100 on March 25th at Pendry. We're gonna be leading a talk with the super fan, Jane Curran, head of HR Ops at JLL and our buddy, Matt Lavery. Again, can't get rid of him, man, can't, can't. Global director over at UPS. No recordings, nope. You gotta be in the room where it happens. The room where it happens is in Chicago, RL 100. If you're not there and you're a TA leader in your Chicago,

Joel (15:54.194)

Nope.

J.T. O'Donnell (15:54.215)

Nice.

Chad (16:08.056)

Google RL100, go ahead and register, get your ass in that room.

Joel (16:09.724)

Yep. Yep. By the way, Portillo's gift cards for everyone that's wearing a Chad and Cheese t-shirt at the Chicago event, everybody.

Joel (16:23.28)

so many headlines, this week. do, let's do kind of a rapid fire, quick, quick summary and we'll discuss number one deal. That's what two is acquired. Safeguard global's payroll division, combining, combining deals, tech and infrastructure with safeguards global payroll expertise. This acquisition will enhance deals ability to execute large global payroll projects. Chad, your thoughts on deal.

Chad (16:24.927)

shit dude

Chad (16:49.838)

So I mean, continuing to boost down funnel portfolio, global footprint, most of all, Workday integrations is fucking brilliant. If you can become Workday's exclusive EOR partner, Workday's 2024 annual revenue was over $7.5 billion. And if Deal can push out competitors like Rippling, game fucking over, kids. Love it.

Joel (17:12.744)

Mm-hmm.

So deal has made 11 acquisitions since its founding. That's a few deals, everybody, whoever's their deal maker is pretty busy. Three of those were pay related or four of those actually with the new one. You had pay group, which was targeting Asia. You had pay space, which was Africa and the Middle East. And you had Atlantic money focused on Europe, surprisingly. And now you have safeguard global. I'm not a payroll expert, but why do you need that mini?

Chad (17:19.074)

Yes.

J.T. O'Donnell (17:21.266)

Ahem.

Joel (17:44.68)

I don't know if it's chat. It's that challenging payment systems across the world. Yeah. I don't want to think that the other, the other three have failed as payroll solutions and they had to buy another one. I'm going to go with, it's just a really hard problem to solve. And they've sort of wrapped their head around it and made acquisitions to do so that, so that was my only take. Like they've done a lot of payroll acquisitions. And that made me question that. The other thing you mentioned work day. Is there an acquisition in the works? I don't know.

The workday was part of the part of the press release. They'd never done that. I don't think talked about a partnership. Workdays, Workdays market work Workdays market cap is 68 billion deals is 12 billion. I mean, it's not out of the realm of possibility. This is kind of like a LinkedIn. This is a LinkedIn level 25, $30 billion acquisition. I don't know. I don't know. That's, that's, that's kind of my takeaways from this, from this acquisition, JT, you got any thoughts?

Chad (18:18.658)

Yeah, that's a lot of money though.

Chad (18:25.39)

Yeah? Yeah?

Chad (18:31.438)

Could be, could be.

Chad (18:36.782)

Oof.

J.T. O'Donnell (18:43.943)

You know, I appreciate listening to the journey of deal through you. That's been one of the things that I've paid attention to. And, know, just talking about, that's a lot of acquisitions, like you said, and I'm always curious, like, how is that? Are you just tucking them in there? Is it Aqua hire? Is it you're grabbing client, you know, market share? What are you doing? right. Yeah, obviously. but I, what Chad said earlier makes sense. They have been quite strategic. Sometimes you see things and you're like, it makes no sense. What was that?

Joel (18:58.32)

Yes. Yes.

Chad (18:58.702)

All the above.

J.T. O'Donnell (19:09.981)

But I think the way they've been choosing it has been very calculated. It's been fun to watch. They're impressive.

Joel (19:15.698)

Yeah, they don't buy the TJ Maxx clearance rack companies typically, which is usually a good move.

J.T. O'Donnell (19:18.289)

Exactly.

Joel (19:26.32)

All right, Remote Deal Competitor is also making moves. They've launched Recruit. The global employment platform has a breakthrough in hiring, according to them, that simplifies and accelerates every step of sourcing and securing top talent. Instead of me talking more about it, let's watch their promo video on what the hell this thing actually is.

Chad (20:33.368)

Jesus.

Chad (20:36.954)

Uhhh...

Chad (20:42.83)

free seven day trial.

Joel (20:43.25)

Chad, are you ready to start your seven day trial now? What are your thoughts on this move?

Chad (20:47.736)

So, mean, remote is a competitor to deal. And as we've said, see the ER EOR systems, the employee of record systems created creating solid foundations. Like I just talked about with deal and then turning up funnel toward recruitment. Why? Well, with a projected growth of 5 % in 2025, the staffing industry is expected to reach an impressive 650 billion markets according to QX global.

The lion's share being temp staffing at 550 billion global. So remote is trying to beat deal up funnel. The problem I see is they're building it themselves. The way that deal is actually growing, deal is acquiring, right? It already established companies already established tech. They plug and play. They've got the experts already on staff, right? Not to mention they talk about

outdated software in that video, that's exactly what this is going to become because they're building the shit themselves. They're not going to be able to focus on it themselves. So I love that they're moving up funnel trying to beat deal. The thing I don't like is I don't like how they're doing it.

Joel (21:44.786)

Mm-hmm.

Joel (22:00.252)

Yeah, traditionally you would have a marketplace and then the marketplace would have companies like hire easy and seek out and they would like, that's what they do and you'll have an integration. yeah, remote has said, Hey, we can do that. And they probably can. The problem with like what Chad said is like, nobody, you got to manage this shit. You build it, you bought it. Right. So you got to keep it up to date. You got to make it as cool as what you bought, you know, what you made six months ago. It's a real pain, in the ass.

Chad (22:05.09)

Dictate to some extent, yeah.

Joel (22:28.966)

My fascination is how all of these companies are all just becoming the same company. It's going to be like, everyone's going to do from like first contact to like, thanks for, thanks for playing. And who's going to have the best mousetrap for that. Who's going to have the best brand, the most trusted brand, the best pricing, like you like paradox is going to ATS, ATS is coming down to everybody else and everyone's just trying to be everything to everybody. I fear that's a, that's a, that's a bad recipe and a lot of companies are going to get.

Chad (22:42.894)

Yeah. Yeah.

Chad (22:51.938)

Mm-hmm.

Joel (22:56.584)

over it and remote might be one of them. JT?

Chad (22:59.63)

Well, JT has some insights because she was an advisor for remote. So give us insights. She was, she was.

J.T. O'Donnell (23:02.057)

Yeah.

Joel (23:02.278)

Yeah. Can we say that? She got a lot of money. they say keep your mouth shut? Did they say zip it?

J.T. O'Donnell (23:08.265)

Yeah, no. So no, I mean, if you think about when it was really originally built and then the first person that was building it came to me and asked me to be an advisor. He ended up not staying with the company and it got changed hands. And when it did, my advisory deal was such that they just sent me a check. Right. So and so what happened when I was like, oh, great, I got a check. And then all of a sudden out of the blue, people just randos were messaging me on LinkedIn like, do you still have your stock? Do you still have your stock? I I was like, what is going on? And then very quickly, I started to see remote had.

Chad (23:26.541)

Not bad.

J.T. O'Donnell (23:37.961)

pivoted and was doing all of this stuff. So I love to see that it's there. Here's what I do remember Chad. I don't know if you and I were on start at the same time, but I was there when Eric Vonk was running, you know, here. And I remember being in a room, a bunch of us, and he said, Hey, look, it's like 1997. And then he goes by 2030, half the world is going to be freelancers, independent, temporary. What do we want to call it? Like everything is going to have to move in that direction. And I remember everybody kind of laughing around the room. I'm like, I don't think he's wrong.

You know, and then you think what's happened now over all those years. So it doesn't surprise us that everyone you just said it, Joel Edmonds moving in that direction because it is where we're ending up now. It'll be fascinating to see which business model survives. I mean, I love watching this stuff. You don't know. You don't know who's going to make a move that just hits timing, right? And boom, you know, but yeah.

Chad (24:23.386)

yeah, it's cool.

Chad (24:27.918)

Well, it's the go-to-market too, right? I mean, there are two entirely different go-to-markets. Right now, you're obviously seeing remote go up funnel and dealers trying to fortify down funnel. And then how they're actually fortifying down funnel is they are acquiring. And then how remote is going up funnel is that they're building. So, I mean, the go-to-markets are entirely different.

J.T. O'Donnell (24:32.424)

completely.

J.T. O'Donnell (24:48.189)

very.

Joel (24:48.2)

The best thing about watching all this is it's not any of my money. All right. Let's talk. Let's talk about ice. Holy shit. I Sam's winter winter release is in the book. So they have a seasonal release. I don't know about, spring is coming anyway. we're talking gen AI powered candidate chat bots, expanded integrations with indeed and LinkedIn. What was monster not taking their calls and enhanced nurture channels.

Chad (24:55.31)

You

Chad (24:59.489)

Jesus, Jesus.

Joel (25:17.67)

With SMS, but wait, there's more Chad. I Sims, I Sims is laying off some people according to some rumors. The details are sparse. I don't know if you know anything, but some things are happening at I Sims your thoughts.

Chad (25:22.424)

Huh? Huh? Jesus.

Chad (25:30.786)

Yeah, there's a lot of layoffs going on right now that people aren't reporting, or at least they're not coming out and doing press releases. But I think we both believe that they're just trying to lean out for acquisition because there's no way in hell they're going to IPO. So they're going through the aligning process on the J, the gen AI side of the house. Def Leppard said it best. It's too late. It's too late. It's too late for love.

It's seriously at this point, competitors are running circles around legacy platforms like iCIMS. Even smart recruiters and gem were smart enough to say, Hey, we're pivoting to a full meal deal AI and agentic solution. Right. And then iCIMS follows that with guess what? We've integrated. That's right. That's air quotes kids integrated. Jen AI. mean, that's fucking 18 months ago, kids into our

Joel (26:11.784)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (26:25.582)

crumbling platform. Now, we both love iCIMS. We've known them. We knew Colin back in the day when they started this shit up. But come on people, you have to know when to pivot. You have to know when to rebuild. And you have to know when to change the fucking narrative. Paradox, Fountain, Smart Recruiters, Gem, and many others are coming for you. And you've turned into, I hate to say it, to Leo. Congratulations.

Joel (26:28.719)

Mm-hmm, we do.

Mm-hmm.

Joel (26:53.928)

Nice to see iCIMS come into 2025. That's nice. Yeah. Paradox was, paradox was founded almost 10 years ago and we're, and iCIMS drops a chat bot press release. Look, we do love iCIMS, the people who are still there that we know pretty well. There was just an iconic company in our industry and the wheels, the wheels have fallen off. CEO changes, layoffs, leadership.

Chad (26:56.984)

Jesus.

Chad (27:02.872)

Yeah.

A weak one at that.

Chad (27:18.158)

hate to see it.

Joel (27:23.688)

Uh, exits, et cetera. So it's, it's a mess. Now the, the only, the only give I'm going to get, get them on this is that they have a new CEO. He's a little over a year in the job and they have a new chief product officer, a guy named Eric Connors who has been there about the same amount of time. So I'll give them credit. Like at least in a year, they sat down and said, what don't we have that we need that everyone else is five to seven plus years ahead of us.

Chad (27:42.914)

Mm-hmm.

Joel (27:53.896)

And in that year, they've at least looked, it looks like they've at least sort of caught up a little bit on that. Now, my question is, what does the next 12 months look like? Cause in their, in their winter 26 release, they better drop some cool ass shit. Other else I'm going to take back the nice things that I'm saying about them. But yeah, welcome to 2025. Sims. hope your, your 2026 looks a lot cooler than what this was. JT.

J.T. O'Donnell (28:21.109)

You you guys followed this much, much tighter than me. They did a lot of acquisition, didn't they? am I, all right, there was, yeah. They did a lot of acquisition. And I remember at one point talking to somebody there and asking like, can you walk me through the choices? You know, how, was this all coming together? Are these all integrated together? And I didn't get a clear answer, but I see, I see where they were trying to do, I guess, is that a cautionary tale?

Chad (28:27.574)

Yeah, no, they had a good amount of acquisition. They did.

Joel (28:27.591)

Early on.

J.T. O'Donnell (28:48.713)

you know, to other organizations that go that route. And then all of a sudden is it integrating all the different texts, trying to get it to be rolling in the same direction, dealing with all the different personalities. Like, I don't know. We'll, I mean, we'll never know for sure, but it just sort of that runs through my head when I think about where they are right now. Were you so busy trying to fix everything you bought that, you know, everybody passed you by? I don't know. I think you were better equipped to share that or not, but it's certainly interesting because they were, they were it, you know, they were it. Everyone was talking about them.

Joel (29:14.472)

Well, text, text recruit they bought when? 18, 17, 16. Yeah. Forever going. And they're still releasing SMS stuff. It's, yeah. Kind of weird. It's kind of weird.

Chad (29:17.88)

That was for fucking ever ago, yeah. That was,

J.T. O'Donnell (29:18.919)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (29:25.426)

The thing that drives me crazy, Al, who used to be the CTO, guy's brilliant. They were doing some amazing stuff internally. The biggest problem that they were having with all those pieces, JT, was onboarding new clients and taking, you know, far too long to be able to plug new clients into different quote unquote modules, which were other companies at one time, into their system. So again, then you talk about today and how

Joel (29:29.98)

Love out.

J.T. O'Donnell (29:35.497)

Interesting. There you go.

Chad (29:54.722)

different that is from yesteryear, which is more of a legacy platform like iCIMS. The new tech makes it much easier. And we're going to talk about this here very soon. makes it much easier to be nimble and flex. That's the problem. This is a timing issue. This is the reason why gem and smart recruiters and all these companies are, are pivoting their tech to something that's more flexible and nimble because they don't want to become a legacy to Leo, which is exactly what iCIMS is becoming.

J.T. O'Donnell (30:03.625)

you

Joel (30:23.474)

Yeah. I sometimes had some, big swings as well that were misses. remember they had passport, which is they were like the consumer product that you could take your resume everywhere. And that didn't quite go anywhere, but like every new tech.

Chad (30:26.637)

They did.

Chad (30:30.798)

We're talking about, yeah. Yeah.

Chad (30:37.038)

Hahaha

Joel (30:39.624)

All right, let's take a quick break and we'll talk to some big players or talk about some big players in AI.

Chad (30:45.058)

Sorry, ISEMS. It hurts.

Joel (30:48.658)

Who's ready for some Amazon conversation? of this recruitment, none of this recruit tech stuff. Amazon is boosting its AI investment, focusing on agentic AI that decides and learns led by a new Amazon web services group. This aims to enhance consumer apps and enterprise automation competing with Microsoft and Salesforce, potentially revolutionizing tech interaction and productivity.

Chad (30:50.465)

Ooh!

J.T. O'Donnell (30:51.261)

What? Who? What? Is that a company? What?

Joel (31:16.806)

Let the arms race begin. Chad, your thoughts on the news out of Amazon.

Chad (31:21.954)

So short but sweet, we're talking about agentic. And as I said earlier this year is one of my projects, my predictions. This is the year of agents, right? Now what Amazon is doing is they're starting to put their NLP along with agents, right? They're, they're natural language processing. And now you can tell an agent to go do something for you. I mean, to, to me using an Alexa device in your home,

That is literally the bridge, the consumer bridge where you get a ton of individuals that are using it and you can get a really good base data set, big base data set, and then start to do really cool shit in other areas. So I think this is incredibly smart.

Joel (32:04.846)

Amazon is getting a bigger boat everybody

Chad (32:07.31)

Like they need one fucking super yacht.

Joel (32:11.698)

So the CEO says this is their next billion dollar opportunity. I say this is the rebirth of McHire. Remember Chad, we talked about McHire. You could talk to Alexa, get me a job at McDonald's. Before this was very transactional, like what's the weather? Here's the weather. This is more like, this is like a person helping you out. This is an agent, like Chad said.

Chad (32:16.888)

Yeah.

Chad (32:21.07)

It might work now. It might work now.

Chad (32:37.742)

Mm.

Joel (32:40.752)

So it's a lot more feasible to say like, Hey, I'm, I'm interested in jobs around my neighborhood. well, McDonald's is hiring. well really what kind of jobs we'll hear. Like you can have a conversation. this sort of, to me, gives some hope to the whole audio job search application thing. Like McHire's not dead. Everybody it's back from the like, like, grimacy on St. Patrick's day. McDonald's is back.

Chad (32:58.128)

yeah, yeah.

Chad (33:10.412)

The Shamak Shake is back.

Joel (33:10.76)

no, the shamrock shake is back and make hire is back. Everybody, Alexa plus this is cool. I think most of you probably seen the Gemini commercial on Google where they're like, yeah, I just, I just talked to it and they're like, yeah, but normal. you have conversations. This is kind of what, what Alexa and Amazon are doing. They were pioneering this. A lot of people have their Alexa still. They upgrade this shit. I think a whole new, a whole new generation of people are going to get into Alexa and start using this thing. So a good for Amazon.

We're all kind of winners in this with all the spending and AI. So I'm here for it. I'm excited. I'm excited.

Chad (33:45.624)

The coolest part, the coolest part though, we talked about multimodal probably two or three years ago, and now we're starting to see it actually happen. Text, audio, video, I mean, just all of it is starting to come together. So that's, again, it's fucking cool.

Joel (33:54.952)

Mm-hmm.

J.T. O'Donnell (34:03.111)

And it's cool. I just, have nothing to add because I agree with everything you're saying except the word agentic just bothers me for some reason. I just don't like the word. I don't know. hear it I'm like, yeah, I don't, I don't know. Just not that. I'm such a, I will. I'll think of something. In fact, audience, somebody throw, send, send the guys an alternative to the term agentic. probably be the highest performing one.

Joel (34:09.106)

You're like, what do you prefer?

Chad (34:10.84)

We need something more sexy. JT, it's up to you. It's up to you to come up with something more sexy.

Chad (34:20.664)

good call. Good call. Joel will do a LinkedIn poll.

He loves his polls.

J.T. O'Donnell (34:30.493)

Those polls rank, hey, they polled those polls.

Joel (34:34.088)

By the way, talk about some, some advancements in technology guys. Somebody, some of these chicken cock bottles actually have the shot glass built into it. Yeah. So take it, take it to a game, take it to a wedding, take it to the family reunion. Chicken cock can get you through anything.

Chad (34:42.734)

that is, that's beautiful. That's, that's beautiful.

J.T. O'Donnell (34:47.155)

So pretty.

J.T. O'Donnell (34:51.593)

My goodness.

Chad (34:52.814)

Jesus, he's on the fucking payroll. Okay, what's next?

Joel (34:53.992)

Sorry, just, got cock, I got cock on the brain everybody. I'm sorry. I got, I got issues. All right. Let's, let's talk about mannus. Thank God. Thank God there's an on that man.

Chad (35:00.486)

Get that cock out of your hands.

J.T. O'Donnell (35:07.068)

this is going to be good.

Hahaha

Chad (35:13.672)

Is it manis? Is it manis or manis? I don't know.

Joel (35:17.16)

I've got a burning sensation in my main us, man, man, us. And here you get ready for JT, an agentic AI from a company called butterfly effect, launched with huge hype this week, gaining 138,000 plus discord users and high praise from the critics built on models like Claude. promises autonomous task solving. Does the hype match the reality?

J.T. O'Donnell (35:20.745)

You

Chad (35:27.948)

Jesus.

J.T. O'Donnell (35:28.715)

See what I mean? Nails on

Chad (35:31.239)

my god.

Joel (35:44.796)

Some tell you yes and some say no. Let's check out a video on what this thing can do.

Chad (36:03.224)

Jesus Christ.

Chad (36:14.546)

It's a program.

J.T. O'Donnell (36:28.905)

Okay, really quick, did you see that in the little explanation that they type in, it says, my wife and I have a combined income of $50,000, but it's suggesting apartments at 1.8 to 2.2 million.

Chad (36:38.798)

I didn't say that. didn't see that. Was that, was that the budget or was that the salary? Okay. I have to, okay.

J.T. O'Donnell (36:45.031)

I don't know. There was no explanation of what they could afford. was just...

Joel (36:48.296)

I want to know if that guy talks that fast in real life. Like what, kind of cocaine are they giving their developers that this guy is talking that fast? Geez, they're, they're turning this shit out, man. They are, they are on good stuff. Chad, what are your thoughts on Manus?

Chad (36:53.774)

Maybe that's why they're doing so well.

J.T. O'Donnell (36:56.733)

I spent that.

Chad (37:01.784)

So it's basically stitching together Anthropix, Claude, and Alibaba's Quinn to perform these tasks. So the future of these bigger systems, these agentic systems, is using what's already available to create a Franken AI. And it's pretty fucking cool. Now on the recruitment side, this week, Sonic Jobs, who actually started creating agents back in 2019, it's one of the reasons why I actually started advising them a couple of years ago.

Joel (37:11.976)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (37:31.742)

everyone's talking AI and Sonic jobs was actually creating agents back then. Sonic jobs built the tech and now like Manus, not Manus, Manus, they're taking six years of knowledge of leveraging other platforms. And in this case, it's with open AI. So it's, this is actually what we should all be looking for. There are these great.

organizations like Manus. Their first demo was pretty much just going through resumes, to source and screen resumes, right? It wasn't really that impressive. Totally get it, not easy, but it wasn't that impressive. There are many better platforms in our space. But then being able to take a look at a company like Sonicjobs, and there will be other companies that will start to do this, who are actually doing candidate verification.

screening across multiple job sites, this is literally the answer to your lazy apply or your easy apply. This is more of like an easy apply with a brain, right? So it knows what you're qualified for. It will apply for what you're qualified for. And it can be used both ways from a company standpoint to be able to ensure verification happens, screening happens, and also from a job seeker standpoint.

I can just say, go find me jobs that I'm qualified for and apply to those jobs. This is like the antithesis of the easy apply and lazy apply. So it's pretty exciting stuff.

Joel (38:59.932)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah, Chad, you know, I'm a, I'm an advisor with Kerplunk and they have a similar sort of like, just go do it. you create a script, what are you looking for? And it just goes and does it. so yeah, to me, this is like the future of probably everything that we do, but, but job search in particular, finding candidates, like just basically like, tell it what to do. Go get some coffee.

a little chicken cock in that with the, with the shot glass and, you're well on your way to finding that next, that next, candidate. I, I really want to know what happens to Google in all of this. Like part of me says Google can come back and, Jim and I, and like, they're going to be fine. Don't worry about Google. but there was a Vox media survey this week. this is one for the kids. And I know you're talking to the kids on a regular basis, JT, but

They found that 42 % of their respondents perceive Google search as a less useful tool than what else is out there. 55 prefer a community-based resource like Reddit. Among younger demographics, 61 % of Gen Z and 53 % of millennials favor AI tools. Citing concerns, which I think are valid, of search quality, increased advertising, and shifting trust.

Chad (39:59.053)

It is.

Joel (40:21.724)

We just trust the AI bots more, at least for now. the perception is there. Some people, the old people like me don't trust it all the time, but the young people really do. This is all bad for Google. Like if your business is all about Google traffic and referrals and like, you need to start thinking about some other, diversification in that. But I'm just curious about what goes going to happen. We see organic and paid, click through rates are hitting new lows. Like this is, these aren't good signs for Google. JT.

J.T. O'Donnell (40:51.931)

Yeah, I mean, I never count Google because they own YouTube. When I think about everything going towards video and just the stats are there, there's some play they'll figure out. What's fascinating to me about the tech that you're showing is that it's still missing one component that I think is going to come very quickly. And I think whoever gets this component will win the game. And that is, I would love to be able to go in there and say, hey, here's what I'm looking for. Okay. But at some point that machine needs to come back and say to you, here's why you can't have it.

Here's what you need to, seriously, as a job seeker, here's why that doesn't exist for you. Here are your options. What are you willing to pivot on? Here's what it would take to get where you want to be. It has to actually coach. It has to be a co-pilot. And so I love that we're very quickly throwing together all of this and we're going to continue to see it because you can do it. Great. But until you can actually have a conversation and push back and get them to think differently,

Chad (41:23.246)

Yeah. Yeah.

Joel (41:23.368)

Yeah.

Chad (41:26.862)

Mm-hmm.

J.T. O'Donnell (41:50.067)

based on the data, that's going to blow their minds. That's where you're really going to see the impact. Because I believe that's why they enjoy it. They already like conversing with AI because it's more humanistic. Awesome. Then be more humanistic and coach me. Tell me what I need to know. Don't just present the data. Once that happens, that's when it gets really interesting to me, I think.

Chad (42:00.248)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (42:13.132)

Yeah, it's not a black hole either. And one of the things that I thought was interesting was that mainness, that mainness, they would go out and they would read, the system would read articles, right? There's so much shit that's out there. So you've got to be careful on your datasets. And when you're releasing large language models into the wild like that, much like you said, JT, you're going to give me recommendations.

Joel (42:18.664)

you talking about manus again? Black hole, what?

Chad (42:43.054)

And that could be totally founded on bullshit just because somebody can write a blog talking up certain areas or certain apartments or what have you doesn't mean that that's true. Right? So you need to have a trusted as Joel said, trusted and verified source. You have to have better data sets. And I think we'll get there. There's no question. These guys are literally just trying to knock the knock the cover off the ball and hopefully get acquired. I'm sure. But at the end of the day, data is what matters the most.

Joel (43:12.828)

They just need to wipe that data. Solving the black hole issue at Manus. Let's take a quick break, maybe a shot or two of chicken cock and talk a little catfishing.

Chad (43:15.406)

You

Chad (43:19.074)

Ha

Chad (43:24.27)

Hmm.

J.T. O'Donnell (43:24.914)

you

Joel (43:27.41)

This show just writes itself. you know, people think we're smart. No, just, it just writes itself. Do you guys remember the catfish show on MTV? Is that still around? it's a movie too. Geez. I'm, so uncool. Well, anyway, a new survey highlights career catfishing among Gen Z. All the kids are doing it. Who except jobs, but don't show up, driven by confrontation fears and workplace discontent. No surprise.

Chad (43:27.544)

Whoo, it does, it's too easy.

J.T. O'Donnell (43:35.689)

Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah the movie. Oh, yeah, it was great. It was a whole story of it. Yeah

Joel (43:55.164)

This worries employers about Gen Z's loyalty, though experts urge avoiding stereotypes and adapting to new trends. JT, I thought this was ghosting. I guess it's a new label. It's catfishing now. I got to be hip to this. What's going on?

J.T. O'Donnell (44:09.161)

I remember, well, so first of all, millennials started the trend where they would quit by texting. And I just remember hiring managers coming to me and going, look at this. They just quit that job. They're 25 years old. So that makes, now you wish you got a text that I wasn't coming to the job because now the next generation just doesn't show up. And it's that lack of, they don't want to have confrontation. And so I also just think that there's,

Chad (44:19.713)

Ha

J.T. O'Donnell (44:39.003)

really know they're not thinking about, this is going to affect my reputation, that this is going to come along with me. I'm so early in my career. There's so many more steps ahead of me, you know, no big deal. And so seeing a lot of that, also seeing a lot of, hey, it's my anxiety, it's this or that. And I decided that I can't go and do it. We've seen a big surge in that with this generation as well. And so it's an avoidance thing. I don't think it's going to go away. I don't think you're going to solve for it. I think what's all over time is they get older.

jobs get more important to them in a way and they've just realized, hey, that's probably not a good call. And down the line, I just think the low wealth, but I don't think this is going to change at all. Aren't you lucky?

Joel (45:12.882)

So you think they'll be more responsible as they age? They will, okay, all right.

Always the optimists. Chad?

Chad (45:22.174)

I say leave it to the 24 hour news cycle to rename something that already exists. it's ghosting. It's been around forever. Employees created it. Dad, I learned it from you. You know, it's, it's candidate learned. They learned it from employers. remember in 2016 when Adam Gonson, who's now the CEO of a paradox, he was, he was the product dude at Cielo and they were building systems for their clients because this was an issue 2016.

J.T. O'Donnell (45:32.777)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (45:51.993)

They were building systems that actually first they were testing. And this is really fucking cool. They were testing, having actually a phone bank to call people, to make sure that they were good to show up their first day. They were also doing a parallel program where they were texting people, right? And this was, this was an automated text versus actually having somebody picking up the phone. The automated text worked better. Right? So it's like, we need to put systems in place first and foremost.

Joel (46:16.84)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (46:20.886)

that ensure that we keep these people nice and warm, to make sure that they show up on day one, this is not a new problem. We just have to have the right tech in place. We have to have also the right people, the right humans making the connections. And again, you know, I learned it from you, Dad.

Joel (46:40.7)

I think we need a Stephen McGrath I'm Not Coming app.

Chad (46:43.97)

Ha ha ha ha ha ha

Joel (46:49.64)

Um, it could be a prerecorded message, you know, uh, I appreciate your time. I've decided to go elsewhere. He could be a little agent in your pot, a little agentic Steven. Um, I think that'd be great. Um, I didn't understand how this, this is one in four millennials have admitted to doing this. Uh, a third of Gen Z has done this compared to 11 % of Xers and 7 % of baby boomers. Um,

Chad (47:00.672)

in your pocket.

J.T. O'Donnell (47:08.947)

Mm-hmm.

Joel (47:18.248)

I thought it was going to be a story about the person you thought was coming to the interview was not the person that you thought it was. Cause I thought that's what cat fishing was. Like you say that you're something that you're not. And then when you, when you finally meet the person, when you, when you, when you drive to West Virginia from Chicago, you find out that it's not the same person.

Chad (47:26.306)

Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yeah.

J.T. O'Donnell (47:27.997)

That's true.

Chad (47:34.798)

You get a picture of JT and Joel shows up.

Joel (47:38.76)

Awwww.

Chad (47:44.43)

That was a better example, Joel.

Joel (47:46.088)

That's rough. That's rough. If you're expecting JT and you get me and everybody's upset, nobody's, nobody's good about that. Yeah. Look, I mean, send a text, send an email, uh, call them at 3 a.m. and say, like, leave a voicemail. Thanks for your time. I'm like, you don't, you don't have to do this kids. You don't have to do this. And I don't have to do.

J.T. O'Donnell (47:52.04)

You

Chad (47:53.42)

Her name's Mante Titeo.

Chad (48:06.382)

There's no loyalty. They don't care.

Joel (48:09.541)

No loyalty. They, they, but they don't have to do this. There are options. That's why we need a Steve McGrath, quitting app, but they don't have to do this. And, and Chad, I don't have to do a dad joke, but God damn it. I am, I am going to do a dad joke. Why, why did the sperm cross the road? Why did the sperm cross the road?

J.T. O'Donnell (48:15.145)

I like that.

Chad (48:20.706)

But you are.

Here we go.

J.T. O'Donnell (48:24.337)

I'm to brace myself.

Chad (48:34.862)

I have

Joel (48:36.636)

because I put on the wrong socks this morning.

Joel (48:42.834)

JT's confused. We out!

Chad (48:45.602)

We out!

J.T. O'Donnell (48:46.149)

Hahaha