Indeed just pulled the ol’ bait and switch. You used to waltz in, search for jobs, and ghost them like a bad Tinder date. But now? Nope. They’re making you log in like it’s some kind of exclusive VIP club—except the bottle service is AI-powered rejection emails and the bouncer is an algorithm that judges your resume harder than your in-laws.
Why the sudden shift? Is Indeed tired of job seekers window shopping? Are they secretly morphing into LinkedIn’s evil twin? Or is this just the latest step in their long, illustrious history of slowly locking down the job market like an overzealous mall cop?
Chad, Joel, and JT are breaking it all down—plus, the latest AI layoffs, deepfake drama, and Elon Musk toe sucking? WTAF guys?
Buckle up, kids. The job market’s getting weirder, and we’re here for the chaos.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
Joel (00:24.558)
OHHHH
Joel (00:29.678)
Yeah, the future's uncertain and the end is always near. Hi kids, it's the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Morrison Cheeseman.
Chad (00:41.574)
I'm Chad, trying to get back to my roots. So watch.
J.T. O'Donnell (00:45.041)
I'm JT, is it Friday yet? O'Donnell.
Chad (00:47.43)
It's not, it's not.
Joel (00:48.758)
And on this episode, Indeed just rolled up in an unmarked van and a big lollipop. AI just rolled up with pink slips. And a little buyer sell. Bring on the unicorns, Chad.
Chad (00:52.848)
you
Chad (01:00.933)
Yes.
Joel (01:03.304)
it feels so good. It feels so good. Let's do this.
Chad (01:10.214)
my God, we talked about this. Listener, know, you, you, you, we've talked about this though. Deep fakes are, are happening already and listener, if, if you're listening to the audio version, we'll try to talk through this. Not too much. Cause yeah, not much, not too much. but yeah, go ahead and run that beautiful deep fake footage there, Cheeseman. It's only nine seconds.
Joel (01:13.56)
The first month is over, everybody. The first month is over.
Joel (01:21.059)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (01:26.352)
Will we try to vomit through it?
Joel (01:33.61)
Okay, okay, you want to set this up while we're looking at it here?
Chad (01:36.836)
Yeah. So says long live the real King and it has Donald Trump kissing two left feet of, of, Elon Musk. yeah. Sucking on the toes, sucking on the toes. I mean, we talked about deep fakes. we thought it would happen more on the election side of the house, but, this was actually, this video was put up, by in HUD, right? So people.
J.T. O'Donnell (01:36.969)
eyes. No.
J.T. O'Donnell (01:44.861)
Is it over? Just tell me it's over. It's over? Okay.
Joel (01:45.742)
Kissing is being charitable. French kissing at least. French sucking toes.
Chad (02:06.106)
people fired, you got a bunch of people who have pretty good, you know, skills. And next thing you know, they're hacking into systems and they're pushing deep fakes like this. So that was fucking crazy. Yeah, why not?
Joel (02:16.958)
MSNBC had a lot of fun with this one that I watched. But it doesn't end there, Chad. What else on the deep fake spectrum did we see this week?
Chad (02:24.422)
So this one, this one even has kind of like a recruiting twist. Go ahead and play this bad boy. We'll talk through it. This was real. Yeah. So this is a, this is a, an activist actually posting a sign that says goes from zero to 1939 in three seconds. And it shows Elon giving a Nazi salute on the top of a swastika. That's right. Um, so for me, yeah.
Joel (02:28.569)
Not a deep fake by the way, this one was real.
Joel (02:44.974)
The swastika.
Joel (02:49.26)
The Tesla SS, if you will.
Chad (02:51.182)
I was, dude, I was looking at this, I'm like, holy shit. First and foremost, Tesla stocks in the dumper, BYD is kicking their fucking ass all over the place. I mean, it just blows my mind that Chinese cars, BYD is beating the shit out of Tesla. And how's this hurting their recruiting? I mean, when you see something like this, do you want to work for a company that's known as a Nazi car company?
Joel (02:56.429)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (03:15.534)
Yeah, we don't. haven't. I've heard no anecdotes about recruiting and retention and what's what's happening at Tesla. We could certainly try to look under some rocks and see what's going on. But yeah, it's.
Chad (03:20.176)
Hoo!
Chad (03:28.914)
I posted it on LinkedIn for Tesla. We'll see if we get a response. doubt it. Very doubtful.
Joel (03:32.928)
Yeah, yeah. At what point does he care? It's just amazing. He doesn't care. Yeah, too much money.
J.T. O'Donnell (03:34.546)
don't think you're gonna hear back. I don't think he cares. He doesn't care. He doesn't care. He's busy.
Chad (03:40.41)
Now has too much money to care. This isn't about him though. This is about all the people that work for him. The stock goes down, they can't sell cars, they can't make more cars because they don't have the money, right? So therefore what happens? I mean, that's the thing that fucking sucks.
Joel (03:46.797)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (03:54.966)
And there's no board of, there's no board of, with any power. like no one can rein this cat in it's a, yeah. You just had to, you just had to do that, man. I just, you had to,
Chad (03:58.382)
No, they all suck his toes like Trump does.
J.T. O'Donnell (04:06.664)
He snuck it in.
Chad (04:08.394)
but as a, from the job seeker side of the house though, JT, mean, you have to be talking to, to, to job seekers around good companies go to bad companies to go to and hearing that kind of stuff. What's your thought?
J.T. O'Donnell (04:21.534)
Yeah, yeah, it's fascinating right now. So, you know, 2008 was when I launched my company for job seekers because of how bad the recession was then. This is way worse. This is just way worse. And you can tell by the number of people that are reaching out, their confusion about the market. They don't understand the unemployment rate. They don't understand what's happening. They don't know how to look for work. I mean, it's just a hot mess, you know, and then
Chad (04:30.084)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Joel (04:35.031)
Chad (04:41.776)
Yeah.
Chad (04:48.635)
Wow.
J.T. O'Donnell (04:49.82)
you see things like this and it's incredible to me. just, I'm dumbfounded. think I told you all just the whole, the whole way they're treating the federal workers, which I know we'll talk about and you know, those are corporate tactics, right? So that a lot of people don't understand.
Joel (05:06.264)
Just wear a wedding dress in your LinkedIn profile picture. That apparently is very favorable, unbeknownst to me. People are into the wedding dress profile pic.
Chad (05:13.222)
You have an issue with that for some reason. think people don't care. I think you care more than everybody else does. That's the thing. It's like, don't give a fuck what they're wearing. Well, no, you're bringing this shit up more and more and more, so it's like, you obviously have an issue with it.
Joel (05:21.196)
I'm just curious. I'm a curious person, Chad. I got a new one. I got a new one for you. It's, it's, it's, it's not a, only my undergarments with that's just for me. That's just for me, JT. I got, got, I got a new one for you. It's not a poll, but I'm curious. non-alcoholic beverages are kind of a trend. The young kids like the non-alcoholic. Is it okay to bring a non-alcoholic beer to a kid's soccer game?
J.T. O'Donnell (05:26.366)
Are you wearing your wedding dress in your LinkedIn profile? remember seeing that, Joel.
Chad (05:32.23)
You do you. Okay.
Joel (05:51.278)
Can you just pull out a non-alcoholic beer and just sit back and drink?
Chad (05:55.204)
Like a soda, right? JT or no?
J.T. O'Donnell (05:56.286)
Yeah, why not?
I think that's fine. Yeah. Yeah.
Chad (06:00.048)
Yeah, yeah, mean, why not?
Joel (06:00.202)
Okay, see my default would be like, that's gonna get some looks, that's gonna be, cause not everyone knows it's non-alcoholic. It just, it looks like a beer. Anyway, all right.
Chad (06:12.838)
This is this is where I can't believe because you're you're gen X and we give zero fucks Why do you care go go take take it take it? Do it? Again, why do you care? You're about dresses you care about the non-alcoholic just fucking do it
Joel (06:19.502)
It's not that I don't. I wonder if other people would. Like I don't. Yeah. I just, I'm a, I'm a purse. I'm a people person, Chad. By the way, speaking of the kids, I have a, I have a funny, I'm speaking of Gen X. I have a funny, a quick funny story. So my, my seven year old had his buddy, another seven year old come over, uh, spend the night. They did, you know what seven year olds do and my, my buddy's kid who came over.
J.T. O'Donnell (06:28.882)
when they show up when child protective services shows up at your doorstep claiming they saw you drunk at a soccer game and you're like, right.
Chad (06:38.695)
Yeah.
Chad (06:42.084)
Mm.
Joel (06:49.102)
went to the bathroom, got out, went to the sink to wash his hands and we have a bar soap. He picks up the bar soap. He shows it to me and says, how does the soap come out? I just, laughed and then I thought, damn, this, this kid has not seen a bar of soap before. So I emailed my buddy or messaged my buddy and I was like, has your kid ever seen a bar of soap or are there any bars of soap in your house? He's like, well actually no. As I do an inventory, that's all like pump or whatever, or like squeeze it out.
So that's my Gen X moment of the day. was like, Holy shit. There's a whole generation of kids that don't know what a bar of soap is. yeah. Those videos are great. By the way, they give a rotary phone to a teenager. Like, what the fuck is this? Call mom, call mom. All right. Shout outs from our, from our good friends at Kiara. Kiara simple texting made easy for recruiting. All right, JT.
Chad (07:24.442)
Think of rotary phones. Nobody'd be able to use a rotary phone. mean, come on.
J.T. O'Donnell (07:27.294)
or the 28 chord.
Chad (07:31.482)
Yeah, like call mom. Yeah. All right, shout out. Come on.
J.T. O'Donnell (07:32.862)
Over.
J.T. O'Donnell (07:46.879)
Can I kick this one off? Yeah. I'm giving a shout out to Apple who claims as of this week, they are going to hire 20,000 people. They are going to build facilities here in the US to offset so that they don't have to pay the tariffs. so random places across the country are going to yeah, 20,000. 20,000. Let's hope it's true because given the numbers we're seeing right now in the layoff world, anything we can do to offset it would be a good thing.
Chad (07:59.684)
Mm.
Joel (08:02.328)
More back to the toe licking, more Trump licking.
Chad (08:04.934)
You
Chad (08:14.456)
Remember when Intel took all that money and shit didn't happen? Remember that? Yeah. mean, so until it actually happens, till they break ground, until they start the, the hiring fairs and all that other fun stuff, I call it bullshit. I, Tim Cook, I hope you do it my friend, but until then I call it bullshit.
Joel (08:36.846)
Alright Chad, what you got?
Chad (08:38.692)
Yeah. So my shout out goes to asshole of the week, Starbucks CEO, Brian Nichol. And, and this means something, this is pretty big because look at all the assholes in DC right now. He had to do something bad. What did he do? Okay. So this weekend, I had a horrendous experience at two, count them two different Starbucks locations. we're headed to our niece's competition this weekend. Julie wanted a cup of coffee. So I'm like, Hey, let's go ahead and jump into Starbucks.
I wanna see how this new grassroots thing is going with them. First place I go, we park car, roll up into the door, and there is a sign that says, drive through only. Drive through's packed. I'm like, fuck this, we're going to the next one. So it's about 10 minutes away. We go to the next one, pull up, go back, same thing. This one says, drive through only in mobile orders, right? So I'm like, what?
Is this the new experience? mean, if so, it's it fucking sucks. And then yesterday I see Starbucks fired 1100 corporate workers and closed hundreds of positions. Now this is happening while new CEO Brian Nicol has personally shoved over $100 million into his own damn pocket. Cutting heads, calling it efficiency when
I visit a Starbucks location, more than one Starbucks location, and there aren't even enough people to open the damn dining rooms. That's not efficient. That's shitty leadership. So Starbucks CEO, Brian Nicol, you are the asshole of the week.
Joel (10:09.646)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (10:17.582)
you
Joel (10:19.822)
Chad, I will not have you muddy the name of a former Chipotle CEO. just, can't, I can't sign off on that. I'm sorry. All right. well all this feel good podcast talk has me a little down. And I think we could all say that the world needs a little uplifting story and what better place to find an uplifting story than, than, than fast food. Am I right? What better way to feel good than that? Now I'm sure I'm assuming both of you.
Chad (10:26.278)
Too bad. It's happened.
Joel (10:48.748)
have seen Sunday morning on CBS. It's a series of usually feel good stories or insightful stories. So I came across this one somewhere in Minnesota and it is the most Minnesotan story that you'll see today. I'm just going to let it roll. It's about three and a half minutes. If you don't want to listen, just fast forward. But a lot of people, think, will enjoy this. Have a look.
Chad (10:50.896)
Yes.
J.T. O'Donnell (10:51.59)
it.
Chad (11:02.392)
Okay, let's do it.
Chad (11:10.512)
They wanna feel good.
Joel (11:19.982)
Land of 10,000 stories.
Chad (11:31.779)
every day.
Chad (12:10.502)
It's a fucking pocket gopher! shit!
Joel (12:12.012)
No clue.
Chad (12:40.806)
Wait a minute, other family.
Chad (12:48.121)
Okay.
Chad (13:03.206)
Well that's awesome.
Chad (13:27.868)
wow.
Joel (13:29.708)
The crown's great, right?
Chad (13:40.955)
Old girl was wearing her headset.
Joel (14:00.846)
He's having the Happy Meal party at BK for his 90th.
Chad (14:04.729)
aw
Joel (14:48.63)
I promised myself I wouldn't cry. His last meal killed me. Nuggets, some nuggies, some fries and a shake. That was good. That was good.
Chad (14:50.17)
I'm not crying, you're crying.
J.T. O'Donnell (14:51.737)
Yeah, that's awesome.
Chad (14:54.79)
I'm not crying, you're crying.
J.T. O'Donnell (14:55.836)
Amazing.
Chad (14:59.372)
jeez.
Chad (15:06.928)
my God, okay. Yeah, thanks, Cheeseman. Yeah.
J.T. O'Donnell (15:07.012)
We gotta like regroup now. Thanks a lot, Joel.
Joel (15:09.452)
Yeah, thanks. I'm sorry. Let's let's let's Stephen bring us out of this. All right, let's move on from shout outs and talk about some free shit.
Chad (15:15.59)
Well, no, it's free stuff. You just got a bunch of free tiers from Joel Cheeseman. But if you want more, you go to ChadCheese.com slash free where you can prospectively get a new Chad and cheese t-shirt sponsored by Aaron App. Look at Joel's shirt, little slothy action. App. Burban barrel aged syrup from our boys up north at Keyura.
Joel (15:24.238)
You're welcome.
Joel (15:46.878)
It's a happy week in Canada, by the way, beating the US in hockey.
Chad (15:47.056)
Craft beer, yeah, I bet it is. Hey, not so happy for you and all the bourbon you have to give up. Craft beer from the Data Geeks over at Aspen Tech Labs. Whiskey from Van Hack. We had a great interview with Ilya and Professor Zeke from Wharton this week. And we'll get that out hopefully sometime soon. And if it's your birthday, it's time for a little rum with plum at chadcheese.com slash free.
Joel (15:52.844)
Yeah, I know.
Joel (16:07.918)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (16:16.74)
Win all
Joel (16:22.318)
That's right. Another trip around the sun for listeners, Kristen Urbond, Vishali Umriker, Evan White, your friend, Colin Parker, Adam Chambers. Everyone's always after his lucky charms. Christopher Cemento, John Turner, Martin Brewsterhoizen. Hope I said that right. Justice Abbey and Chad's boy, Boss Van De Hettard. I know I didn't say that right, but who cares? Boss, happy birthday to those listeners.
Chad (16:32.441)
Mmm. Love him.
Chad (16:39.974)
I doubt it.
Chad (16:45.816)
It had thread.
J.T. O'Donnell (16:49.298)
Happy birthday.
Chad (16:51.642)
Happy birthday.
Joel (16:53.89)
And Chad, you're going to DC tomorrow. Tell them why. Tell them why.
Chad (16:56.454)
I'm going to DC because our boy, Keith Sonderling is going through confirmation hearing. So we'll be there for that sitting behind him. Actually had to get on a list. Apparently they're not running background checks, so they wouldn't let me in. But then after that, we're going to be going to Vegas. So if you are coming to Vegas, come spend some time with the Chad and Cheese in Vegas, not to mention JT is going to be there.
Moe's gonna be there, we're gonna have the whole team, and if you don't have tickets, what the hell are you waiting for? March 17th through the 19th, go to ChadCheese.com slash events and we will see you at Transform. Our honeymoon suite party, already full, so if you snooze, sorry, you lose. And then after that, we head up to Chicago for RL100 on March 25th at the Pendry.
Um, that's recruiting leaders, 100. That's when you get a bunch of recruiting leaders, Chatham house rules in a room, lock the doors throughout the problems, throughout the solutions. These are my favorite kind of, uh, of events because we actually get to hear kind of like the non-filtered, no bullshit, uh, responses from recruiting leaders. Cause a lot of times they really have to have that filter on. RL 100 is one of my favorites.
Joel (18:06.968)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (18:20.108)
That's right, no teasing. No teasing at the RL.
Chad (18:22.244)
No teasing. Uh-uh.
Joel (18:27.064)
By the way, Chad, that Sonderling, Keith Sonderling thing is great. With all of the friends that we have in low places, it's nice to have some friends in high places. As we go to...
Joel (18:41.538)
All right, let's talk about the trend from the last couple of weeks. That's right. Layoffs. Okay. I'll try to make this quick. 800 Joanne stores, by the way, the only place I go from my fabrics and crafts, will close after 80 years as they failed to find a buyer affecting 19,000 employees. Ouch. they plan to sell all the assets and we'll continue accepting.
Chad (18:44.966)
Not good, not good.
Chad (19:00.612)
Yes.
Joel (19:06.029)
customer gift cards until February 28th, which means my Christmas stockings will no longer be filled with the joy and merriment that they usually are. More layoffs. I've heard some DC based Doge de based government layoffs. Let's make, all right. So we have 75K voluntarily out, took the package. A thousand Department of Veterans Affairs, 1300 people in Department of Energy, 700 in the CDC.
Uh, speculating that this will exceed a hundred thousand layoffs when all of a sudden done CNBC called it quotes, perhaps the biggest job cut in American history and quote, uh, blue origin, the penis that flies when it, one of your faves, Chad, they're laying off a thousand and you've already mentioned the 1100 at Starbucks. By the way, side note, poly work, uh, who was the, uh, the LinkedIn killer for the kids, uh, died quietly and back in December, uh, no.
Chad (19:41.734)
Cheers.
Chad (19:51.397)
Mm-hmm.
Wow.
Chad (20:01.967)
huh.
DED.
Joel (20:05.804)
No clue how many people asked their jobs on that one. But Chad, any thoughts on the layoffs? It hurts. It hurts.
Chad (20:12.678)
Well, we're doing these things and not understanding how it's actually going to impact the market. You're obviously impacting people's lives, but I mean, there's a much larger macro effect. And then you have a guy like Elon Musk, who he's always worked startups. He doesn't understand macro. He gets billions of dollars to blow shit up, like, you know,
$50 million per rocket that he blows up. So he doesn't have the understanding, accountability or responsibility or has never had the responsibility of something this large. And yet he's treating the U S government as a startup. And this is going to be, and I said it before and I hate to say it again, but fuck, this is not going to be a recession. This is prospectively going to push us into a depression.
Chad (21:06.202)
But JT, she's on the streets, she feels it. No.
Joel (21:08.184)
JT is not bringing us out of the gutter. I mean, JT is not happy. She's with the job seekers every day.
J.T. O'Donnell (21:11.077)
Absolutely not.
J.T. O'Donnell (21:15.326)
Yeah. And I mean, when I just say federal workers in my inbox every single day, blindsided, people don't understand how to look for work. We already know the system's broken. So it's a broken system that they're trying to, you know, make work for them. I just, I'm with you. I mean, I knew it was going to be bad. I can always tell by the sentiment and what we get in the inbox. Um, but I'll just give you an idea. We, we opened a free resource center because we knew we couldn't physically work with everybody at our company.
Chad (21:24.518)
Mm-mm.
J.T. O'Donnell (21:45.759)
We've had 12,000 people sign up in 10 weeks. 12,000 people. And the only way they find out about it is I mentioned it at an end of a video on social media. There's no promo, right? 12 that we're averaging hundreds a day, just finding it and signing up. And they all say the same thing. Like, I don't get it. Nobody's calling me. I can't get a job, you know? And that we know, we know what's coming. And I, I did a rant yesterday about the Jamie Diamond rant because, you know, people want to see that fail so bad. And it's like,
Chad (21:48.633)
Wow.
Chad (21:53.712)
Mm-hmm.
J.T. O'Donnell (22:15.794)
But it won't. They're a big company. He can tell everyone to quit if they don't want to return to office because he understands there are so many white collar workers out there right now that will take the job. And you asked about when people go to work for Tesla. Guess what? There are going to be people that go to work for Tesla because they need the job. I mean, they'll get out of there when they can. But this is what they're forcing to happen is making people take the jobs they don't want to take to have a paycheck. You know, it's just it's crazy.
Joel (22:30.894)
other options.
Chad (22:34.971)
Yeah.
J.T. O'Donnell (22:44.668)
It's crazy. I wish I could pull this out of it, but I've just never seen anything like this in my 20 plus years of doing this.
Joel (22:44.856)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (22:45.01)
lower wages
Yeah, lower wages and they'll treat them like shit while they got them too. Cause they know they can keep them. Yeah.
J.T. O'Donnell (22:52.222)
Yeah, absolutely. And they don't care. And that's business. We can rant all we want, but they have no emotion in the game. so for me, it's like, OK, I'm going to teach you how to not have any emotion in the game. Take that job offer. Get in there. And if we have to leave it three weeks later, you're leaving it three weeks later. And I have recruiters screaming at me. And I'm like, I don't care. I defend the job seeker. I'm going to tell them what to do for their lives, not for your job.
Chad (22:58.331)
Yeah.
Mm-mm.
Chad (23:10.347)
Yup.
Chad (23:16.048)
Yeah. Amen. Amen.
Joel (23:19.34)
You had said before the show that it's worse than 2008, JT. And for those that do remember 2008, was pretty bad. think the question I have is, and like you mentioned, hey, when it gets better, the jobs will open up again. And I have real questions thanks to AI automation and other things as to if it will come back to the way that it was. We'll have to wait and see.
J.T. O'Donnell (23:22.366)
100 %
Chad (23:25.158)
That was fucking horrible.
Joel (23:43.478)
You mentioned, called it the, the MBAs, they're coming out of really elite schools, not finding work. was a story in the wall street journal this week about just that story about how long, these Ivy league MBAs and Stanford and Duke, cetera, just there for whatever reason. Those people were back in the day. They couldn't step out of graduation. They had the degree still in their hand and they were given, you know, big time jobs. So.
Chad (24:09.092)
And now they're going into the military because that's the only way they can get a job and pay for their fucking debt. Yeah.
J.T. O'Donnell (24:14.482)
Yeah, but can we just do a public service announcement right now? Because the other big thing they do in down economic times is tell all those people if you can't find a job, go back to school. So now people are going to go rack up $60,000 in debt for an MBA that will never be of value. That's another one we need to be preaching so that they don't do it. But they do because they can't find a job, so it makes them feel productive. Let's load on the debt, right? It's crazy.
Joel (24:17.122)
Sure.
Chad (24:22.714)
Yeah, no. No.
Chad (24:27.664)
Yeah. Yeah.
Chad (24:35.78)
Yep. Nope. Yeah. Cause school is a business these days, kids. There you have it.
J.T. O'Donnell (24:39.452)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (24:42.976)
All right. Well, the good news is the unicorns are back. I don't know if you guys heard companies are getting a lot of money and they're hiring people because of the money. So call up these companies and see if they're hiring. But let's play a little buy or sell, which we haven't done in a while because no one's getting money. And then all of a sudden, like big checks are being written. So, you know how the game is played or maybe you don't cause it's been a while. We talked about three companies, startups that have recently gotten funding.
Chad (24:48.57)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (24:53.786)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (25:03.227)
Yes.
J.T. O'Donnell (25:05.896)
Big checks.
Joel (25:12.014)
I read a short summary of the company and then all of us will either buy or sell the company. Are you ready to play buy or sell starting with Mercor an AI recruiting startup founded by three, not one, not two, three 21 year old Teal fellows that says in Peter Teal. Uh, they've raised a hundred million dollars in a series B round, bringing the total to $133.6 million.
and valuing the company. Any guesses? Any guesses at $2 billion? That's right. $2 billion. The platform which automates resume screening and candidate matching claims to remove bias from the hiring process. Chad, are you a buyer sell on Mercor?
Chad (25:59.878)
I'm impressed by these guys. They have big name backers and AI is the center point of their system. But much like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and other very big names with tons of cash, they have no industry experience. They don't understand that trying to contextualize an answer from humans all over the world is incredibly hard. They have no moat. They have no data compared to more mature systems that are out there. And they've taken
Too much money. That's my biggest issue. Too much money. I've researched and watched several videos of the founders. They are so bright, but at the end of the day, it's got to be a sell for me.
Joel (26:46.434)
That is a sale from Chad. look, let's look at the good news. they've grown head count a thousand percent in two years. the remote thing is still a thing. their valuation is basically the same as Upwork. So if I was trying to find a comparable work from anywhere in the world solution, Upwork came to mind. So there is some, some history to say like that's a fair valuation and not crazy. Peter Thiel is a pretty smart dude. He has a
Chad (26:51.526)
Let's get this.
Joel (27:14.456)
fairly good track record with young people. Zuckerberg in one case, if you've seen the social network, that worked out pretty well. By the way, I think with this new valuation, who's really winning this is Peter Thiel. Jack Dorsey is also an investor of Twitter and Block fame. So those guys probably have made out pretty well with the new valuation. They're working with OpenAI. They're leveraging a lot of sort of the need for AI jobs.
Chad (27:26.426)
Yeah. Yeah.
Chad (27:42.074)
Who isn't?
Joel (27:42.818)
Deep Seek probably wasn't great for that because we've realized we don't need as much money or maybe resources to do AI. So that's sort of the good news, I guess, that there is some track record there. However, I do not believe the trend of the business is this company's friends. It's a more polarized world. There are less remote jobs posted today than there was last year and the year before.
Jamie diamond says you're going, you're coming back to the office and a lot of CEOs are agreeing with him. More companies are going to opt for homegrown workers because it's a very geopolitical volatile world. There's a lot of uncertainty around the world in places that used to be pretty, pretty stable. And I mean, come on man, 21 years old, like fuck off. don't care. You do not know anything. Okay. You do not know anything. This one is a cell.
Chad (28:34.054)
you
Joel (28:41.004)
And I will mirror Chad's comment about they've taken too much money. It's going to bite them in the ass in a big way. JT, are you with us? Are you going to throw us a curve ball?
J.T. O'Donnell (28:41.886)
Thank
J.T. O'Donnell (28:47.528)
Yeah.
lot I think all your points are valid. I'm really deep into this. So as someone who's recently built an AI tool for the job seeker, the one thing that to me will determine this is the garbage in garbage out theory. I'm seeing all of these AI companies claim they can pull the right info out of the job seeker and they can't because they ask them the same old stupid questions about their past history and that's not the work they want to do.
Chad (29:02.246)
Mm-hmm.
J.T. O'Donnell (29:13.424)
So you go do a 20 minute interview and you just basically say, is what I've done. And all it's going to show you is jobs you've already done that you don't want. And I know this because we have tested this with thousands of job seekers in my platform. And that is their number one complaint. And so until they come around to listening to the job seeker and building an interactive tool around them, their wants and needs and educate them on why this job would be a fit for where they want to go, it doesn't work.
And to me, the ones they try this thing once and it doesn't work, they're not going back. They're just not going back, right? It's a once try and done. So I hope I would love to see the model they have and see if they're actually pulling in something decent out of the job seeker. But if they're not, then I don't see how this flies. But you know, hey, that's a lot of money. Some very well-known backers, they might just push that thing through to success, right? So for a lot of people, I'm sure it could be a buy for that front. without knowing if they've really cracked the code for the job seeker, it's a sell-off.
me.
Chad (30:12.942)
Nobody is.
Joel (30:13.726)
All right. That's three cells on Mercore. Peter Thiel is not happy about that. All right, let's go to the next one. Perfect. An AI powered recruitment platform has raised $23 million totaling 36 million buckos to help recruit or source and hire candidates more efficiently. The platform aims to automate. There's that word again, time consuming tasks and improve the overall recruitment process. Chad.
I'm sensing a theme out there about this whole automation co-pilot agentic thing. Are you a buyer cell on perfect or is this not so perfect?
Chad (30:43.206)
would say, yeah.
Chad (30:48.786)
I mean, the CEO goes from selling an AI parking platform, he actually sold it for 125 million, to the recruitment AI space. After hearing that, I was like, what the fuck? know, what the fuck are you doing here? But then I see the co-founders VP of Ops and People, Ronan Daniel, ran a company called Wojo, a sourcing and recruitment company. So I was like, okay, that kind of works. The hardest part is pretty much what you just said, Cheeseman, is that
Joel (31:17.944)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (31:19.226)
You've got to understand the go-to-market. There are going to be so many recruitment assistants, not just ones that are point solutions, but you're also talking about ones that are already baked in to systems. We have a bunch of chat bots who have turned into assistants that have a ton of data and they have a ton of connections within the market and partnerships within the market to actually bake themselves in already. I've already talked to them. This is going to be hard for any, any organization.
trying to start this up. And since AI is commoditized, it's all about the data, they haven't been around long enough to actually gather the data. I would love to see again, one of these companies actually just knock it out of the park. I don't think it's going to be this one though. So it's got to be a cell.
Joel (32:10.478)
Okay, I love the salesmanship on this company.
J.T. O'Donnell (32:11.26)
I'll dive in on that. Ditto, ditto. I think the person, I'm just going to say that the companies that have the existing relationships win right now. It's just not fair to integrate in. So companies are not going to want to start with a whole new tech. Has anyone here ever done a new tech integration?
That's a nightmare. So if you've already got an existing platform and they're saying we can just tuck it in, you know that's what people are going to do because they don't even understand the AI. So if they can get it for cheap with their existing provider, that's the way it's going to go. You're not going to go out on a limb and use something brand new. I'm with you. I think they have a huge battle ahead for me. It would be a sell.
Joel (32:30.478)
You
Chad (32:31.479)
It sucks.
Joel (32:49.74)
All right. That's a cell. She went, she jumped right in there. All right, kids, go to their site. love this. you go to the, like the main, the main text is you, you're perfect hire in seconds. You scroll down and you get recruit while you sleep. Like these guys are pitching, pitching the fastballs, for the sales, but, but in their defense, this is becoming a really crowded field. gotta like kind of stand out from the crowd.
J.T. O'Donnell (33:10.48)
Nails on the chalkboard.
Joel (33:19.022)
The headcount growth has been pretty organic. Chad, you mentioned the CEO has little to no experience in this space. Um, there isn't there an Israeli company touting, uh, headquarters in New York. That's not a big deal. Um, but times are kind of really weird in Israel right now. So I don't know if it's the best time to start up a company. However, Chad, you know, regardless of competition, regardless of lack of experience, you know, I love a good wave and I'd rather be a shitty.
Chad (33:31.334)
Hmm.
Joel (33:49.13)
surfer on a fantastic wave than I would a fantastic surfer on a shitty wave. And these guys are on the copilot agentic automation wave, push a button, easy button. got your person in seconds. People are going to buy this shit. And eventually they're going to check it off the, the, the buy list and someone's going to come along and pay these guys a couple hundred million dollars to, to, put them into their, into their system. So for me, I love a good wave Chad.
J.T. O'Donnell (34:07.518)
Thanks
Joel (34:20.206)
because perfect waves are great for boats and hoes and great for startups. All right, a little diversion there. get to our last, our last.
Chad (34:28.102)
Cheeseman's never served in his life. Go ahead.
Joel (34:33.046)
You don't know that Arizona has great surfing as does Cleveland, Ohio. All right. Let's go to Loke. So lock. So how are going to pronounce this? L O X O lock. So, okay. And Italian, Italian intelligent platform. they've secured 115 million growth investment, which promises to help them expand, market reach and accelerate the development of their AI powered recruiting products, including.
Chad (34:42.182)
Yeah. Lockzoo.
Joel (34:59.01)
That's right. They're coming for the ATSs and the recruiting CRMs. What could possibly go wrong? Chad, are you a buy or sell? Loxo.
Chad (35:08.112)
So right out of the gate, this is from the press release, quote, Loxo is a horizontally integrated suite of data driven and AI powered products designed to manage the full recruitment lifecycle through a single system of record software platform. End quote. What the actual fuck does that mean? I mean, it means, you know what it means? It means your PR and marketing has no fucking clue what the market needs right now. No TA leader out there is looking to make a wholesale systems change. No.
The ones who we've talked to, who have implemented AI automation know what they're looking for. They're looking for big wins in small ways. Literally automating a piece of the process at a time, showing wins and then moving to that next piece. And I think Lockso has the tech and the people to make that happen. But much like we've seen with many other companies who've flamed out in this space, they just don't understand what the people are buying. No TA leader is standing up in a meeting and saying,
We need a talent intelligence platform because they don't know what the fuck that means. Unfortunately, Lockso, you've got, I think you got the goods. The problem is you go to market, you're messaging and at the end, that all leads down to sales. It's got to be a sell for me.
Chad (36:25.83)
Sorry guys.
Joel (36:29.912)
JT, you want to take this one?
J.T. O'Donnell (36:31.772)
Yeah, I mean, I was saying this before we started. I was reading all three of these press releases about this and all that got through my head was, remember the peanuts when the grownups would talk on the phone? Wah wah, wah wah wah wah wah. That was what I was reading. And you just did that for me. What did that mean? And I just, cannot believe that. I they must really want to throw money at stuff right now. Like we need to put our money somewhere. Hey, these are great stories, but I'm...
Chad (36:36.294)
Mm.
Chad (36:40.486)
You
Yes! Yes!
J.T. O'Donnell (36:59.25)
for the exact reasons that Chad mentioned. Same thing, it's a cell. Plain and simple.
Joel (37:06.414)
All right, that leaves it up to me. How the hell this company raised $113, $115 million is crazy. They are from Texas, so they can spin a story for sure. I'm afraid this one is a whole lot of hat and not much cattle, unfortunately, for me. Their big spin is we're well-reviewed by recruiters in the UK and the US.
Chad (37:12.952)
a bunch of PE people who have no fucking clue.
J.T. O'Donnell (37:16.274)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Chad (37:20.102)
Again.
J.T. O'Donnell (37:22.11)
Cool.
Joel (37:35.864)
great. I know some QR code creators that have great reviews, right? Like, I mean, I'm not sure that's, that's a slam dunk. they're taking on the ATS, the CRM, they want to be everything to everybody. You know what happens when you want to be everything to everybody? You're nothing to no one. You're nothing to no one. And that's exactly where these guys are headed. I'll make this one and this one pretty easy. it's a, it's a cell for me. And that is the end of our buyer cell.
Chad (37:38.63)
You
J.T. O'Donnell (37:39.635)
and reviews.
Chad (37:52.451)
Exactly.
Chad (38:04.454)
Ooh! This is first. How do you feel?
Joel (38:05.41)
JT's first, how do you feel? You feel good about it? All right, well, if you need a break, let's take one and we'll come back and talk about Indeed.
J.T. O'Donnell (38:07.822)
Good, absolutely. Bring it
Chad (38:16.976)
Who's this Indeed company you're talking about? What's this?
Joel (38:18.872)
Yeah, no, this, this perky startup, this, yeah. so this is from our friend Alexander Chakowsky, who found this and posted, indeed made a sneaky major change in January by removing the job search input fields. They removed the search field. Imagine going to Google and the search fields are gone. Okay. the shift forces users to log in or sign up.
J.T. O'Donnell (38:20.638)
Is this a startup? What is this?
Chad (38:28.08)
Love this guy.
Joel (38:45.912)
to search for jobs, a move likely designated to boost account creation, no shit, and gather user activity data. The goal, according to Alexander, is to fuel indeed strategy of dominating staffing by improving job matching through dynamic profiles, AI, and data-driven taxonomies, ultimately reducing hiring times and increasing engagement. Alex argues it's, an eyeball catcher, end quote, because it's a bold, unnoticed pivot.
Chad (38:46.05)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Chad (38:55.056)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (39:13.71)
JT indeed is such a tease, but what is, are your thoughts on this move?
J.T. O'Donnell (39:18.8)
Yeah, I mean, this doesn't surprise me. actually shocked it didn't happen a lot sooner, right? I mean, the moment we started publicly hearing about them wanting to be a staffing firm, you knew that was going to shut off. But I'm going to throw a bold prediction out that I think is beyond this. I think indeed is watching LinkedIn. And I've said this for years. People do not understand the amount of mil. They made two billion off the job seeker premium model, right? They talk about making all their money off recruiting. They're making two billion office a product.
Chad (39:29.006)
Mm-hmm.
J.T. O'Donnell (39:47.751)
that people think is going to help them get a job. And so if you're Indeed, why aren't you thinking about your own monetization model for the job seeker? And the only way that's going to start is when you start putting stuff behind a wall that you can then charge for.
And so I don't think we're far off from a consumer product from Indeed and that that's how they're going to diversify their money. It's just they've got so many people in there. Nobody uses the job board anymore. Recruiting is down. The jobs aren't coming back. You're going to pivot to where there's cash and where there's cash right now is micro payments with consumers who need a job.
Joel (40:13.806)
you
Joel (40:21.006)
So you're saying it's a profit deal, All right. What do you think, Chad?
J.T. O'Donnell (40:23.326)
100%.
Chad (40:23.94)
Hmm, that's a surprise. Indeed, I mean, they're trying to make the walls of its walled garden higher, and it's time for a history lesson.
Joel (40:33.08)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (40:38.636)
Okay, kids gather around the fire. It's story time. So in November of 2024, Indeed started out just like Google. That's right, kids. They were a search engine, a job search engine, which called was called vertical search back then. Indeed called themselves Google for jobs. They pulled in jobs from wherever they can find it. Job boards, Craigslist, corporate career sites. I was the VP of direct employers where we scraped thousands of corporate career sites for jobs daily.
And we were the prime source, we partnered with Indeed, we were the prime source for Indeed's corporate jobs back then, which led all of the job seekers back to the applicant tracking system to apply. And then one day, Indeed fucked us. Anyways, Indeed promised sites like Monster and Career Builder, who were the biggest job boards in the world, free traffic, if they allowed Indeed their jobs, right? Until one day, they fucked Career Builder and Monster, that's right.
indeed shut them off and made them pay for traffic. Then since that worked so well, they did it with the staffing firms and they fucked them too. So during that timeframe, indeed a job search engine announced that they would be allowing job seekers to then start adding resumes into the system. But it was one of those nice easy it's your choice kind of things, right? Because in many cases, job seekers just wanted to go straight to the
job boards or the applicant tracking systems that they knew, right? So the designs of a resume database was planted. Then one day, Indeed launched 2Pane, not the wrapper. 2Pane was a new model that changed the search engine into a traditional job board. Yes, they were stepping backwards. So instead of clicking a link to a job and transporting to the destination site, Indeed popped up a version of their own job giving
option for easy apply if you had your resume in the system. Right there, there was no reason to for the job board or the corporate career site, you could do everything on Indeed. How fun, right? So then they made registration mandatory, but they still allowed you to do job search kind of tease you in there. Now, as a job search engine, and then a job board.
Joel (42:57.112)
That was nice.
Chad (43:02.018)
Indeed always exposed its job search, no matter the hoops they made you jump through. Well, until now, after Monster Career Builder, all the job boards, all the staffing companies, and all the hiring companies getting fucked by Indeed, they're going after the job seeker. Just like JT said, there's going to be a fucking kids and it's going to be for the job seeker now.
J.T. O'Donnell (43:31.14)
It's gonna be pay to play.
Joel (43:32.907)
They're running out of partners. I don't know how many more one night stands they can have with all of these users. All right, I'm gonna go back in time too, Chad.
J.T. O'Donnell (43:35.805)
Right.
Chad (43:39.11)
I don't get it.
Chad (43:44.752)
Ooh, double.
Joel (43:45.582)
And you mentioned direct employers. Uh, I'm going to bring up the name jobster, uh, and the, founder of the CEO, had a guy named Jason Goldberg and in 2006, I believe I attended the direct employers annual meeting in the basement of, uh, treasure Island, which was, which was nice, which was nice. Yeah. Upscale baby. No, no, no budget is too big for direct employers back in the day. And he came up.
Chad (44:03.194)
Yeah. Upscale, baby. Upscale.
Chad (44:10.34)
you
Joel (44:13.494)
And he shocked everyone. You probably remember this. showed Monsters homepage. It was, it was full of pop-ups, full of banner ads. He called it NASCAR at the time. And then he, and then he went into a job search and what it was like in Monster. People don't remember this. When you clicked on job search on Monster, the first thing you got was a, was a, was a page in between that asked you for, I think financial information or like, yeah, it was, and it literally,
Chad (44:18.0)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (44:39.684)
Interstitial, yeah. There's an ad. Yeah.
Joel (44:43.182)
literally asked for a social security number. This was pushing search job and you had to do this and then you could click submit and then go to the actual jobs. Monster was making I think a million dollars a month on this like landing page, this squeeze page between the searches.
Chad (45:00.582)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (45:02.328)
People that kind of knew and by the way, he highlighted indeed at the time, which literally was just Google back in the day. was two search boxes and go. There was no ads, no login. You searched, you saw the job postings, you clicked and went to that site just like a search engine should be. so it's kind of ironic that we find ourselves here 20 years later. and indeed is now in the spot of being a, basically a hurdle between the
Chad (45:07.462)
Mm.
yeah. Yep.
Chad (45:30.456)
huh.
Joel (45:31.224)
homepage and actually looking for jobs. we use the jump the shark analogy pretty freely that moment when you look at something and go, it's over. Indeed, as we know it is kind of over the job thing clicking like they've got to go into staffing as Alexander believes, or they've got to go into like a new LinkedIn like JT is speculating.
Chad (45:41.915)
Yeah.
Joel (45:55.842)
But they've clearly looked at their business and said, we got to pivot somewhere else or recruit holdings. said, has said, Nope, you're not this anymore. You're what we want you to be. it's an opportunity for other job sites to kind of take the mantle of ease of use and unencumbered and no walled gardens. We'll see if someone steps up. But yeah, historically this is a bad look and it's going to end very badly. for indeed, I couldn't believe I went to the site. I've been there so long. It's like, there's no search box. Really? Really?
Chad (46:11.201)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (46:23.024)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They were Google.
Joel (46:29.634)
They were easy to use. The site was fast. yeah, all those things.
Chad (46:33.102)
They are, they are the antithesis of everything they started out as.
Joel (46:39.992)
Go to the webpage and say to yourself,
Chad (46:42.79)
You
Joel (46:44.802)
All right, let's take a quick break and we'll go back to Elon. God, that's a bad, bad circle.
Joel (46:53.71)
All right, guys, Elon Musk, tasked by President Trump with reducing the federal workforce, sent an email to government employees requesting a justification of their work. The responses will be analyzed by an AI system to determine job necessity. This directive has faced backlash from unions, workers, and some agencies with concerns raised about data privacy and the legality of the process. In short,
People submitted their email. It was read by AI and AI is going to tell the powers that be whether you could still have a job or not. JT, I'm guessing you have a few thoughts on this as a spokesperson for job seekers.
J.T. O'Donnell (47:35.027)
Did you hear the deep breaths while you were talking? Probably. Yeah, I just, again, I just, the job seeker, or, know, the employee is begging to keep their job, is sitting there agonizing over to what to put in this email to save their job. And AI is going to just read it and decide if those keywords were relevant, right? Did they say things that were relevant? We talk all the time with job seekers about teaching them how to unlock their UVA, their unique value add.
I didn't think about it. You have a set of features, but we don't buy the features, we buy the benefits. It's no different. You're a business of one, selling your services. In this moment, you're asking a bunch of workers, do you understand how you save or make the federal government enough money to justify the cost or any business that he runs to justify the cost? And if you don't, and you can't articulate that and quantify that, you're out.
And that's exactly what's happening here. But you're talking about people that doesn't understand how to do that. And so they're praying that what they wrote is right. They're probably talking about what a great person I am, what a super team player, and this is what I got done, and is how, and gone. And so it's gonna be a rude awakening for people that again, to understand that.
Chad (48:38.074)
They don't
J.T. O'Donnell (48:42.462)
It is what you deliver today. Can you show me how you save or make enough money? 130, 140 % of your salary, because that's what it costs them. If you can monetize that for me and talk to me, OK, I'll keep you. And even then.
Joel (48:52.674)
How many people are asking generative AI, write me an email that won't get me fired by an AI?
J.T. O'Donnell (48:56.958)
Probably, right, yeah. Here's what I do, quantify it so that I don't get fired. That's a great point. It's probably what you would put through Chad GPT. But that's what's gonna happen, right? You know, people don't understand quantification.
Chad (48:57.254)
you
Joel (49:05.486)
That's what I would do.
Joel (49:11.96)
Chad, your thoughts.
Chad (49:13.19)
Much like the firings, mean, Doge is gonna fuck this up. They're gonna cock this up, right? Like it's just gonna happen. Managing people is hard and we don't provide enough training to develop our employees into managers and leaders as it is. And as companies cut the middle layer of their management, which is pretty much what's happening here, it's gonna be harder to manage due to the human's inability to scale.
That's, I mean, that's hard. So this is dumb. It's dumb because if, if it doesn't hit the biggest problem in corporate America, which we have today, which is we're not managing to outcomes. And if you start throwing a bunch of jibber jabber bullshit into, into AI that has nothing to do with outcomes, because that's not what we're managing to in the first place. And what the fuck does it matter? I mean, it all comes back down to the objectives that you, you met.
the tasks that you achieved, so on and so forth. We're not managing to that today. So what the hell is AI gonna help us with? Again, it's garbage in, as JT had said, and garbage out.
Joel (50:24.312)
Remember when getting fired on a zoom call was, was outrageous. hold my beer says AI we're just going to fire people without any interaction whatsoever. with human beings. I mean, talk about, don't need CEOs anymore because AI is going to fire and hire everybody. this is horrible. This is bad for humans. this, this plays into the culture of ghosting.
Chad (50:28.366)
Yeah.
Joel (50:51.062)
not talking to each other, being stuck in a screen all day. Like we're just going to outsource firing people, based on what AI says. Like I hope that if companies do this and more companies will, this is going to happen. I mean, people will take daily activities and like have a, have an ongoing daily like summary of like fireball, not fireball, like productive, non-productive. And then this will, this will be a thing that companies do. I hope to God, humans stay in the, in the loop somehow.
Chad (50:52.485)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (51:19.896)
Cause if we get into a place where like we just push a button and people are hired and fired and off boarded and on boarded without anybody actually looking and talking and interacting with each other. Like we're, we're, we're done with human, human existence and we're with the sex robots and the, the, the chat, the chat bot, boyfriends. And, this is, this is the end of our good feel feel good, podcast, but the good news is kids, we're, we're going to end it with.
That's right. Another dad joke, another dad joke. And I got my first positive comment. So I know the dad jokes are landing all of them very, very well. All right. All right, you two. What do you call a lesbian on fire? What do you call a lesbian on fire?
Chad (51:50.138)
dad joke.
Chad (51:55.59)
At least one of you out there are fucking masochists.
Chad (52:08.614)
I
Joel (52:10.274)
Keep in mind kids, we all grew up with like dead baby jokes, so nothing is offensive to us. What do you call a lesbian on fire?
Chad (52:13.807)
You
Chad (52:17.356)
I don't know. Get it over with, Jesus.
J.T. O'Donnell (52:18.194)
I don't know. Yeah, tell me now.
Chad (52:25.978)
BBQ. Okay, BBQ.
Joel (52:29.91)
We out.
Chad (52:31.526)
So bad. So bad. So bad. I am not.
J.T. O'Donnell (52:32.305)
We out. That's that.
Joel (52:36.27)
You know you're going to retell it.
J.T. O'Donnell (52:38.111)
Nah.