This week, the boys discuss recent excursions in Asia and Europe, as well as recent industry news. They cover topics such as the decline in job postings, the acquisition of Textkernel by Bullhorn, the rebranding of StepStone, and the funding of TechWolf and FairNow. The conversation also touches on the importance of AI in the recruitment industry and the trend towards skills-based hiring. In this conversation, Chad and Joel discuss various topics including skills-based hiring, AI governance software, the decline in traffic for job search engine Indeed, the car industry's trends, and the use of AI assistants in financial advising. They explore the challenges and opportunities presented by these themes and provide insights into the future of these industries.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION (AI made me do it)
Joel Cheesman (00:33.459)
two guys who will never fall for the banana in the tailpipe. What's up, boys and girls. It's the chat and cheese podcast. I'm your cohost Joel Cheeseman.
Chad Sowash (00:46.098)
And I'm Chad, he's back. So watch.
Joel Cheesman (00:50.803)
And on this week's episode, indeed traffic is declining. The EV revolution is deflating and Hooters Restaurant business is sagging. Let's do this.
Chad Sowash (01:05.938)
Welcome back! Look at that tan!
Joel Cheesman (01:11.987)
Did you miss me, Chad? Look at me, I'm tan rested and ready to go, baby.
Chad Sowash (01:17.979)
yeah. yeah. We need a little recharge every now and again need a little recharge. So so a little bit of Vietnam, Singapore, a little getting a little little little background on those how to go.
Joel Cheesman (01:30.355)
Sure. Sure. My, my wife had a conference in Singapore, the whole eating bugs thing. she that's a worldwide conference, a lot of money and companies go to this thing. So it was in Singapore and I didn't want to pass the chance to go to Asia, which I've never been to. So we decided to make it kind of a couple of weeks thing getaway. as you know, I unplugged as much as possible. I think the only time I heard from you was a text kernel got acquired.
Chad Sowash (01:35.41)
Mm -hmm.
you
Chad Sowash (01:44.738)
hell no.
Joel Cheesman (01:59.443)
because that was important enough to let me know that that happened. Otherwise I tried to unplug as much as possible, which was healthy. We, talked about where should we go to in Asia near Singapore for a little relaxation. We picked Da Nang. Thanks for, thanks for the recommendation from one of paradoxes, employees, that works in Vietnam. I believe they acquired someone out of Vietnam a few years ago. So anyway, my take, few take takeaways from Asia.
Chad Sowash (02:19.122)
No.
Joel Cheesman (02:28.275)
Number one, it's hot as balls. It's as hot as two rats fucking in a wool sock. It is in June. It is soupy hot. The Nang is like 95 and super humid. but, but in denying you can stay at a five star resort for like the cost of a, you know, a holiday in here and here in the U S so yeah, it's like super, super nice. if you want to get away,
Chad Sowash (02:50.61)
A con -o -lage.
Joel Cheesman (02:56.947)
Very different culture. I think my expectation and maybe I'm not alone as an American thinking that your favorite scene from full metal jacket is what Vietnam is like the whole country. It's a little bit like that, but not as much. It's it's chaos. It's probably 50 bikes and motorcycles to every car. There's no song like it's, it's like a living organism at every intersection. Nobody hits each other, but it all works in tandem.
But there are, there's a significant downtown, significant buildings. There are businesses that you and I know very well that are, are set up there. So they're sort of straddling the line of old Vietnam and the new Vietnam and being very commercially driven, but they're also a communist country. So there's sort of that element as well. Vietnam is pretty crazy. if you want a wild adventure at a really cheap cost, I think beers that we drank were like a dollar 25, which was nice. Singapore.
Chad Sowash (03:49.554)
Sounds like here.
Joel Cheesman (03:50.611)
Singapore is the exact opposite. It's like 17 bucks a beer in Singapore and it's built for business. It's built like it's very wealthy. Clearly there's some historical pieces. It was a English colony for a long time. It was invaded and taken over by the Japanese in world war II. And that history is really interesting. We tend to focus on Europe and the, and the German, you know, the Nazis in America.
Chad Sowash (03:56.722)
Yeah, yeah.
Chad Sowash (04:03.314)
Yes.
Chad Sowash (04:18.45)
Mm -hmm.
Joel Cheesman (04:19.635)
But there's a really rich history of Japanese and world war II and everything that went down there. Singapore for me is a little too sanitized. It's very safe. Like it's, it's, it's engineered by the government to just be comfortable. And, you know, I like my countries to have a drunk Scott guy, Scotch, you know, Scotsman on a bus named Gus, you know, talking shit, you know,
I want to know that someone might vomit in the street at any point in my cities. Singapore has cameras everywhere. It's super chill, like safe. The cost of a car is super high because they want to limit traffic and traffic is limited. It's not crazy. The metro is really nice. Alcohol is really expensive because they want people to be sober. Imagine that. People are more law abiding apparently when they're sober. It's been engineered and it's very sanitized.
Very nice, but it's not really my jam. I'm not going to be in a hurry to get back to Singapore. And then the third takeaway is that we're really comfortable in America in terms of like threats. We sort of forget that there's a war in Ukraine. There's like Middle East shit and there's this China and North Korea thing. And when you're in Asia, there's an underlying discomfort knowing that shit could go down at any time.
Chad Sowash (05:38.834)
We have a buffer.
Joel Cheesman (05:47.155)
And there were, there were, you know, there were, jets flying around Singapore. There's a military presence. Everyone in Singapore does military service of some kind. it was part of their citizenship. So we're really comfortable in America in this bubble. And I think maybe we may be sleepwalking, at times to what the world is going through, but going to Asia makes you very aware, like shit could go down at any minute. And, you need to sort of be thinking about that just in case.
Chad Sowash (06:06.642)
So we are.
Chad Sowash (06:16.082)
Yeah, yeah. I thought it was a fun trip. I have not. No, no, I have not. Julie's been to India. I'm good. I'm good off that. I definitely want to go to Vietnam. Definitely want to go to Singapore.
Joel Cheesman (06:18.451)
You've never been to Asia, correct?
Yeah, yeah, a lot of
Joel Cheesman (06:30.135)
Yeah. A lot of Aussies in Singapore though. That was a good time. They, they liked to have fun in Singapore. I think that's a pretty cheap, flight for them to, to go there. Yeah. Yeah. It was nice to, it was nice to get away. it's nice to experience that. I don't think I'm in a hurry to get back to Asia, but it was a, it was a good experience. I'm glad to be back, baby. A couple of weeks off is good for you. Good for the soul. Good for the soul.
Chad Sowash (06:34.418)
Yeah.
Chad Sowash (06:38.29)
It's their side of the world. It's their side of the world.
Chad Sowash (06:52.434)
Wait, he's back. Very nice. Let's do some shout outs, man. And you're back, so you go first.
Joel Cheesman (06:59.923)
I love it. Yeah. So, a couple of people to highlight, when I was in, when I was in Singapore and this is the power of the podcast. People listen, people know I talked about it. They reached out, JJ, who we know at on loop. if you haven't listened to that firing squad, check that out. JJ reached out. we had lunch. I saw the, the, the headquarters, if you will, of the company. He got, I took a t -shirt to him. he probably saw it on LinkedIn and then, Daniel Callahan from bear Mark.
Chad Sowash (07:10.449)
Mm -hmm.
yeah, firing squad.
Joel Cheesman (07:29.203)
He reached out while I was out there. we hooked up for some beers. Pretty cool. It was called the beer company. It was like a huge fridge of beers from light to dark. You just picked out beer, scanned it, ordered food. that was kind of a cool experience. but, but shout out to those two guys. Thanks for showing me a good time in Singapore. And while I was gone, I got to give a shout out to Mo and, Joel Jr, Joel 2 .0, whatever we're calling him, for filling in.
Chad Sowash (07:29.97)
Yeah.
Chad Sowash (07:38.706)
huh.
Chad Sowash (07:54.354)
You
Joel Cheesman (07:57.523)
while I was out, it sounds like you guys had a good time and hopefully the listeners enjoyed a little change of pace on the show from me.
Chad Sowash (08:05.106)
Yeah, yeah. Well, big news, big news while you're gone. For some, maybe not for all. Be quick. We got to get to the big stuff today. So Bullhorn buys text kernel. Buys text kernel. What'd you think? Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (08:13.459)
Yeah, a lot of stuff.
Joel Cheesman (08:18.195)
It's big news. I, you know, I think it's, it's, it's a win, win, win, win, and maybe another win. if, if, if Robert rough, our friend at sovereign had, had, shares in text kernel, he's, he's a winner again, and he can buy some more land in Jackson hole or wherever he is, at the moment. But a big win for bullhorn. look, there's not a lot of parsing services out there. it's a little bit like programmatic advertising. If you can, if you can,
Chad Sowash (08:32.098)
yeah.
Joel Cheesman (08:44.787)
snag up one of these players and Tex Colonel by far is the top player. And I'm not just saying that because they're a sponsor of the show. I think that's a pretty universal opinion. that's a huge win for them and a sign that Bullhorn is doing pretty well. and as I think we both know that they've been around for a long time. so big win for them, big win for Tex Colonel, look, Gerard has this magical ability to kind of see around corners and
Chad Sowash (08:50.482)
Easy. Yeah. Yeah.
Chad Sowash (08:59.57)
Yes.
Joel Cheesman (09:13.907)
I'll get to that in a second, but I, you know, I think that, you know, this is, he sold to career builder, main capital comes in main capital is another winner by the way, in this, and then found an opportunity to get to bullhorn. I love the, the European show this, this past week, where Lee even talked about bullhorn and Gerard being at the event in Amsterdam, miracles happen when you go to conferences.
Chad Sowash (09:19.538)
Yeah.
Chad Sowash (09:23.026)
Yeah, of course.
Chad Sowash (09:36.562)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (09:38.995)
By the way, if you want to get acquired, it's not a bad idea to sponsor the Chad and cheese podcast. We have an amazing like lineup of companies that have been acquired, after sponsoring, the show. So anyway, if you're, if you're thinking about sponsoring and being acquired, that might be a good opportunity for you. I think that the interesting part around the sort of see around corners is that you touched, you touched on this and the European show, but, the AI question.
Chad Sowash (09:49.33)
We do. We do.
Chad Sowash (09:55.122)
If we have space, yes.
Joel Cheesman (10:09.267)
parsing a lot of data, figuring all that stuff out. You know, there's a, there's a school of thought out there that, that, that AI and large language models, generative AI can kind of do some of the heavy lifting of the parsing and matching and things like that. I think the jury's out on that, but, but it is a threat. And the fact that open AI is now in bed with, with Microsoft and LinkedIn. I know the jury's out as to whether or not LinkedIn can figure that shit out, but it is still a threat.
Chad Sowash (10:26.226)
Mm -hmm.
Joel Cheesman (10:38.131)
You've got indeed building what they, what I think is kind of a LinkedIn competitor beefing up their profiles. So there's a, there's a case to be made that they're going to get better at what they're doing. And I think Bullhorn and Bullhorn needed to do this from a strategic advantage perspective. They didn't want to fall behind some of those competitions, some competitors. So I think that was really smart on their end, but also I think timing may have been perfect for a techs kernel to look for.
Chad Sowash (10:57.746)
Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (11:08.275)
an acquisition partner, time will tell, but I think if you hedge your bets, Harard was on, it's going to be on the right side of history. And this is going to be a move that we look back and say timing was perfect on that acquisition. So good, good for everybody. Even good for our chili. probably the only one left of notes. you know, if, if you're indeed, you know, maybe you want to look at our chili as an acquisition to parse your, you know, indeed resumes. Yeah.
Chad Sowash (11:21.01)
Yeah. Yeah.
Chad Sowash (11:33.298)
to talk about one later. We're going to talk about one later. Yeah, there's still more out there. Anyway, StepStone, StepStone Rebrand.
Joel Cheesman (11:37.939)
Yeah. But, but overall, when, when, when the rebrand, so step stone rebrand, again, I think the European show, I think, I think leaving nailed it with the IPO, comment. Look, step stones, we're talking about IPO. They have all these properties. I know it sounds stupid, but I'm telling you, there was a meeting at step stone with marketing and the business people and they were like, okay, we need to create a consistent look and feel.
Chad Sowash (11:51.438)
yeah.
Joel Cheesman (12:07.859)
across all of our properties. So when we go public and we talk to wall street about what we're doing, or if they go public in Germany, whatever the equivalent of wall street is in Germany. and we need people to go to these sites and there's a, there's a consistent look and feel. So like that meeting happened. And part of that was like, let's have a masthead that looks all the same. Let's have fonts that are the same and thus the rebrand. now the question that I have is.
My prediction of career builder, and or monster being acquired by step stone. So I'm, I'm checking out career builder monster on a regular basis to see if their color palette and their masthead changes. Because if you see it in that, that nasty pink and brown or orangey yellow thing, that they have, it's a clear sign. It's a clear sign that step stone is acquiring a career builder and or monster. But I think it's all about IPO, creating consistency on the brand.
Chad Sowash (12:55.282)
whatever the fuck that is, yeah. Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (13:06.835)
That was the reason for all this. I don't think it was anything more deep than that.
Chad Sowash (13:11.922)
It's more cutting costs. Okay, so I'm going to shout out, it's a little time for solace kids as Ryan McCabe, a CEO of Audro died over the weekend in a motorcycle accident in Scotland. I didn't know Ryan really well, but you know, with the few interactions I did have with him, he was always an incredibly happy and positive guy. And when I told him we were prepping for the Scotland trip.
When I told him that Julie and I would be spending about four or five days after we were in Glasgow and, and, and Edinburgh doing the shows, he was the one who recommended Locke Fine. And that's where we ended up finishing out our trip. It was amazing. And, you know, I never got a chance to say thanks. so, you know, thanks Ryan and rest in peace, buddy.
Joel Cheesman (13:59.315)
Yeah. Unfortunate life is life is, life is short. Enjoy it while, while the ride, while you're on the ride kids. Yeah. I'll make another quick shout out, to candidate .fyi. our friend Colin day founder and CEO of Isims who has since moved on, this company founded by an ex Googler brought him on as an advisor, with a pretty good, portfolio or lineup of advisors. they got a former CHRO of Disney.
Chad Sowash (14:05.65)
Short, short and fragile.
Chad Sowash (14:24.018)
smart.
smart.
Joel Cheesman (14:28.659)
And they've only raised $1 .3 million. So candidate .fyi is one to watch. If someone like Colin Day is looking at them and saying, I want to be a part of it, like that's a company to look out for. So shout out to, to Colin Day now that he's back in the biz, maybe you can come back on the show and update us on, on what's going on in his life.
Chad Sowash (14:36.786)
Yeah.
Chad Sowash (14:48.306)
Yeah, or maybe we'll just send Colin some free stuff, you know, t -shirts from Aaron Appalo, Chad and Cheese t -shirts. Everybody here, I brought a bunch of t -shirts here to Portugal for friends to be able to, you know, give them out. And whenever they wear them, they always come up to me and they always, the first thing they do is they mention how good it feels. That's right. It's like a hug from Chad and Cheese. And that's courtesy of Aaron App. Beer, always lovely, tasty, craft beer, scent.
Joel Cheesman (14:52.051)
You
Joel Cheesman (15:00.563)
Mm -hmm.
Joel Cheesman (15:08.243)
Mm -hmm.
Chad Sowash (15:17.106)
by Aspen Tech Labs, love those guys. Whiskey from just acquired by Bullhorn, Text Colonel. Birthdays, guess what? Rum with plum. And you can't win unless you go to ChadCheese .com slash free kids.
Joel Cheesman (15:19.667)
Mm -hmm.
Joel Cheesman (15:27.091)
Joel Cheesman (15:37.715)
That's right gang. If it's your birthday, we're going to shout out to you. And again, like Chad said, you could win a bottle of rum, but celebrating another trip around the sun and listeners include Tom Bickle, Eli Carstens, Brittany Porter, Sepe Nyeri, super fan of the show, by the way, Heather Myers, Colleen DeGeorge, Jenny, I always get this right, Shiaka, Skiaka, Shiaka I think, Sean Paul Seth.
Chad Sowash (15:43.858)
Ooh.
Chad Sowash (16:04.69)
skeet.
Joel Cheesman (16:06.867)
Robert Rudolph, Buddy Hanneka, Shannon Pritchard, Kerry Corbin, Mike Okars, and Faith Rothberg are all celebrating another trip around the sun. So happy birthday to them.
Chad Sowash (16:17.426)
Very nice.
Very nice. Hopefully we will see them in London. That's right. We're going to Wreckfest, July 11th at Nebworth Park. And guess who is joining us on stage to talk about AI, Joel? Lord Nathaniel Mignang -Wei of the House of Lords will share his experience in technology, entrepreneurship, and social innovation. We're going to discuss Nat's
Joel Cheesman (16:25.683)
yeah.
Joel Cheesman (16:34.291)
please tell me who's joining us.
Joel Cheesman (16:42.067)
What?
Chad Sowash (16:49.906)
maker life initiative aimed at integrating disadvantaged and underemployed individuals into the tech industry. Pretty cool and definitely needed. Apparently Lord Way has formed a team to drive this initiative emphasizing the importance of growth mindset for previously people lacking access to AI data and platform technology. So his vision is now supported by our friends over at This Way Global. So thanks to
Angela and the crew over at This Way Global for pulling this conversation and getting a Lord on stage with us. Not to mention, we also have invites for dinner at the House of Commons. I have no clue what to wear. I have no clue what to wear. And, and, and what, I can't wait to see what Cole wears. That's going to be the fun part.
Joel Cheesman (17:32.243)
Joel Cheesman (17:41.683)
getting coal and formal attire might be a stretch, but we'll see. Maybe he'll rock a Winston Churchill hat and overcoat maybe. I don't know. We have a Lord, does this, he has a PR person that's about to get fired if he's coming on stage with us at at Rackfest. By the way, there was a Lord Cheeseman at one point who was a Falconer, apparently. I might ask if they know each other.
Chad Sowash (17:45.458)
Be a bowtie t -shirt.
Chad Sowash (18:07.442)
That's surprising.
Joel Cheesman (18:10.035)
by, by any chance, there's a big election in England on the 4th of July, ironically. so we, we may be going into a cats and dogs living, such living together situation in England while we're there. It could be a really interesting time to talk to a Lord about the, the goings on of, of the UK. That's, that's kind of exciting, kind of exciting, almost exciting. Chad is as the jobs report. Sorry. Almost exciting as the jobs report.
Chad Sowash (18:11.506)
Ha ha.
Chad Sowash (18:16.338)
Yeah.
Chad Sowash (18:29.586)
I agree. I agree. Then yes. yes. No, I'm just gonna say yes.
Joel Cheesman (18:38.547)
that we talk about on a monthly basis with, with, with link up CEO Toby Dayton on the show. One thing I'm interested in Chad, there's, there's some growing buzz around ghost postings. some people are talking about high numbers in terms of jobs that aren't even available and what kind of impact that has. So I'm interested to see what Toby's opinion is on the ghost postings trend that, I'm seeing a lot more in our, in our industry.
Chad Sowash (19:05.618)
Same here, same here.
Joel Cheesman (19:08.179)
But with that...
Chad Sowash (19:10.002)
Yes. To the apex.
Joel Cheesman (19:15.027)
don't call them job Fox, Chad Belgian startup tech Wolf has secured $43 million in series B funding to develop its infrastructure for employee skills. That brings its total to $55 .6 million. The company founded by three computer science graduates in 2018 says it uses AI language models to infer employee skills from digital interactions, eliminating those pesky manual assessments. Chad, we all remember.
Chad Sowash (19:18.706)
god, no.
Chad Sowash (19:25.846)
Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (19:44.691)
the wolf from Pulp Fiction who fixed everything, but can this wolf fix the skills gaps within companies?
Chad Sowash (19:53.618)
Yeah, be, well, let's, let's put it this way. everything that they put out there is really cool and skills focused, but they are a parsing and matching organization. So holy shit, Dax drug gets serious and hires a new CEO. Then text kernel was acquired by bullhorn. And then last week, a much smaller competitor, tech wolf gets a series B.
A very nice size series B. So that's saying something for the parsing matching and data skills companies. That's not too bad.
Joel Cheesman (20:23.827)
Mm -hmm. Yup. 43 mils in ICP, yeah.
Chad Sowash (20:30.386)
You know, I do have to mention like you said earlier that you know many people thought that the text kernel deal Was it was because AI was coming for text kernel. I don't believe that I really believe that domain experts understand the data They need and how to train LLMs because all of these companies are already using large language models. They've already been using
these crazy algorithms for years. Now, Gen AI, what does that do? It just puts jet fuel in their fucking rocket ship, kids. So you gotta ask yourself this question. Why would Felix Capital, 20 BC, Acadian Ventures, Fortuna, SAP, Workday Ventures, and yet...
Joel Cheesman (21:14.131)
Service now, work day.
Chad Sowash (21:16.434)
my God, all the and people from DeepMind and Metta put money into an almost dead category. Here's the answer kids. They wouldn't. They wouldn't because you've got to understand that AI is much more complex than you fucking think it is, right? And thinking that open AI is coming after parsing and skills matching. That's not how it fucking goes. So with 50 % of their pipeline in the US, TechWolf will use those funds.
Joel Cheesman (21:40.339)
Mm -hmm.
Chad Sowash (21:46.354)
to expand their presence into the US, which is incredibly smart since once again, the text kernel acquisition, you get an acquisition like this, and you start to play off the waves of that. Daxtra is doing that. We've seen emails and promotions and things of that nature that are going out to text kernel companies just makes sense. They had a series A in May of 2022, $10 million. So, you know, for me, it's incredibly clear this segment
Is just going to grow and the term AI was used 12 times in the tech EU article. So, I mean, again, it's alive, it's growing, it's flourishing and tech will, I think they're in a good place along with Daxtra along with higher rise. There are, there are, there are a handful.
Joel Cheesman (22:36.819)
Mm -hmm.
Joel Cheesman (22:41.299)
First of all, can we take a second to applause the rebirth of animal names and URLs, job Fox tech, Wolf, Farat Lee talent zoo. Like I've, I've missed the trend of, of animals being in all these, these company names. So I, I, I salute well, Farat fairly, I salute the return of animals, in URLs. So these guys are serious. this is a lot of money. They're backed by a lot of serious people.
Chad Sowash (22:56.05)
Apparently. Apparently.
Chad Sowash (23:06.866)
Yeah. Yes.
Joel Cheesman (23:11.219)
Like you mentioned, Acadian Ventures, Jason Carcello, our friend, was very excited about this. They sent on an email to investors where Jason said, quote, workers should be defined by their skills, not titles. And employers will fill jobs in the future based on skills development and expertise, not job descriptions. We've talked about this trend many times. People looking to get away from the traditional post a job, pray, hope that the right person shows up.
It's more about who's in the, who's, who's already in the stable. Who's already in the kitty. How do we develop them? What jobs are they most like a position for? And how do we, how do we engage with them and get them on the right track for that position? So this falls right into the huge trend of getting away from the old way of doing things and looking at who you currently have because hiring is expensive. Recruiting is expensive. It's a pain in the ass. Recruiters are expensive.
Chad Sowash (23:41.682)
Yep.
Joel Cheesman (24:08.179)
It's much more efficient to do it, to do it this way. And from what I can tell, these guys are going to be a serious player, and what's going on. What is interesting though, there is some pushback on skills based hiring. there was an article in Forbes back in March that the tie that was titled skills based hiring has not worked. Now the, the, the gist of that article was it's not so much effective with college graduates that people aren't doing that with, with recent.
Chad Sowash (24:22.098)
this.
Joel Cheesman (24:37.619)
folks out of school, they still look at where that they, where they graduate from, but that doesn't impact the 35 year old. Yeah. The, the 30 year old that's, that's been a, you know, a sales guys, a future, you know, chief revenue officer. Like that's what we're talking about. And this trend is going to continue. And I think that, that these guys are in the right place at the right time and they've got money and brains, and supporters behind them to, to really make a big dent in this. This is one to watch as far as I'm concerned.
Chad Sowash (24:43.986)
That's a duh. Yeah, I mean...
Chad Sowash (25:08.978)
Yeah, no question. I think, you know, the biggest issue that we have with skills based hiring is companies don't know what the fucking skills are for the job in the first place. And a job is a set of tasks. And within those tasks, there are specific skills for each task, right? Companies don't understand, they don't break that down, right? And they don't understand that. If they understand that, then they understand specifically the skills that you need. So there's that.
first and foremost to identify the skills that you need. And then secondly, you know, the ability to then not only say, hey, can you do this and trust that the person can fucking do it, but then test for it, right? Prior to actually hiring the individual. So the whole screening process of can you do this, that, and the other thing, fuck all that. Give them a test.
Joel Cheesman (25:46.675)
Mm -hmm.
Joel Cheesman (25:55.667)
Mm -hmm.
Chad Sowash (25:57.298)
Let them take it and then they can shoot right to the top of the slate. If they kick ass and take names, then you have at this point a qualified candidate, a qualified and interested candidate that is worth. 10 ,000 fucking clicks easily, right? So this is where we're moving. I agree 100%, but we still have a lot of foundational work to do as companies to understand what those jobs and skills actually are.
Joel Cheesman (26:01.683)
Joel Cheesman (26:14.035)
Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (26:24.659)
Yeah. Look, if you're a company with, you know, we talked to UPS recently, if you're a company with 10, 20, 50 ,000 employees and plus, this tool is invaluable because it's very hard to track that many employees, what their strong suits like what, if you can leverage a tool like this and have tens of thousands of employees and start, you know, rank managing, like where they should fit in in the future and where they belong. This is an incredibly powerful tool and trend for companies that are huge.
Chad Sowash (26:29.074)
Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (26:53.267)
Maybe not the small businesses, but if you're huge, you need a tool like tech Wolf, to help you make sense of your thousands and thousands of employees.
Chad Sowash (26:59.986)
If you're a vendor, if you're a vendor and you have a huge database and you can start to actually push out slates of candidates that are more qualified, companies will pay more than per click. They will pay, I mean, they're going to pay for qualified leads, which is what sales and marketing have been doing forever. So we're finally catching up to some extent. It is much harder, obviously in our job than it is in sales and marketing's job to do that from a lead standpoint, but this is where it's at.
Joel Cheesman (27:28.755)
Yeah, yeah, good job.
Well, from one company we like to another one, fair now an AI governance software company based out of McLean, Virginia has raised $3 .5 million in seed funding to expand operations and staff. The company led by CEO and Chad and cheese fan guru set through Pathy, helps enterprises manage AI risks and compliance focusing on highly regulated industries. Fair now got two enthusiastic thumbs up on our firing squad show, but
Chad Sowash (27:35.826)
Yeah, Guru!
Joel Cheesman (28:01.971)
Are you still on board following this news, Chad?
Chad Sowash (28:05.97)
So AI is a big topic, compliance is a big business, an AI compliance company, I say winner, winner, robot, chicken, dinner, baby. So seriously though, hiring companies are going to need experts in this space and the traditional hiring compliance people.
They're going to have a hard time covering this gap using spreadsheets. So, you know, I was in compliance, the compliance business on the technology side for five or six years in hiring companies, the ability to explain and or defend their processes, standard operating procedures, data management techniques, candidate slates and overall hiring outcomes will be a humongous
business due to the new scale, AI affords companies to create more efficient processes, identify qualified candidates, and fill open positions for either internal or external candidate pools. So, I mean, for me, this is, I mean, this is, I think I'm going to go over a little overboard a little bit, but this feels almost like the Nvidia of our space, right? There aren't any of them. There aren't many of them.
but this is, this is going to be something that's going to be needed by every single big swing and you know what fucking company space. So congrats to guru and the team at fair. Now I believe this is definitely going to be, you know, give him a leg up on the competition and who knows there might be acquisition talks before you know it, because somebody's going to need this shit.
Joel Cheesman (29:24.947)
Mm -hmm.
Joel Cheesman (29:40.851)
Ooh.
Anytime that you have government regulation meet product solution, it's a, it's a home run, because buyers now have an intrinsic interest in buying a product that can manage their risk, keep them out of court, keep them out of trouble from their, from their bosses. We saw it like this was, I mean, direct employers.
Chad Sowash (29:48.53)
Yeah.
Chad Sowash (30:05.81)
Yep.
Joel Cheesman (30:12.691)
compliance like this, that you know this better than I do, but you look at, yeah. I mean, there was a, there was a day where, Hey, we, we post jobs on diversity jobs .com because well, that's a diverse audience. And that, that was something that they could show, the, the, the, the powers that be. there's a new law in Europe, a whistleblower law where companies of certain size have to give whistleblowers an anonymous portal to, submit.
Chad Sowash (30:16.466)
This made the organization.
Joel Cheesman (30:42.579)
cases of the company, you know, behaving badly. Well, guess what? There's going to be a whole lot of companies, come out of Europe with this whistleblower dashboard anonymous thing, because the government says you have to have it. This is the same thing. AI is everywhere. If you don't use it, you're going to fall behind. But guess what? There's more laws and regulation to come down the pike. You need some service solution to make sure you're covering your ass that you can go to whatever
law agency comes knock on the door and saying, no, we're good. Here's fair. Now here's our shit. Here's our certification, whatever that is. And fair now is an, is in a, in a position to like print money and tell me I'm wrong, but I haven't seen any competitors come out of the woodwork yet. which really surprises me. But right now, as far as I can see fair now is in the, the pole position to handle all.
companies using AI to recruit to make sure that you're keeping your nose clean and they are going to print money because of that. I was surprised that it was only 3 .5 million. So I have to think that guru being the guru that he is said, we're only going to take what we need. I still want to have as, you know, as much control as possible. So we talk all the time about companies fail because they take too much money. I was glad to see guru not taking a, you know, a ransom.
Chad Sowash (32:05.714)
Yep.
Joel Cheesman (32:09.747)
some to start this company because I think he was really smart around this. And, yeah, in terms of acquisition opportunities, come on, this is, this is going to be interesting. So hat off to him. This is a home run. Yeah. Yeah. Huge, huge applause. Just like we did when he was on firing squad. If you haven't listened to that episode and you want to know more about, about, fair now check that.
Chad Sowash (32:22.482)
Big applause.
Joel Cheesman (32:34.419)
check that one out. Well, from two companies we love to, well, maybe one that's not so much.
Joel Cheesman (32:42.931)
So in an article by our friend, Jim, the indeed whisperer Durbin for aim group job search engine indeed has seen a 10 % global and 9 .4 % us traffic drop from January through may.
Chad Sowash (32:47.537)
There he is.
Joel Cheesman (33:00.659)
Raising concerns about seasonal trends or AI influence. Jim highlights the fact that competitors like zip recruiter show different trends, such as showing a drop from January followed by four month upward trends suggesting specific challenges for indeed. What kind of challenges you ask Chad, how about changes in Google's algorithm favoring AI summaries over direct clicks to job boards, Chad, your take on indeed's recent traffic woes.
Chad Sowash (33:29.586)
Yeah, you've talked about, you know, no click.
SEO, right, for I think a couple of years now because they've started to just provide more information before you even need to go to the website. And indeed was the winner of the SEO Olympics with Google, for goodness sake. So this right now could be a very, very bad thing for them. But this, kids, is just another reason for Indeed to move into staffing. I mean, when you hit the outer edges of your market,
What else would you expect if you've already hit that tam and you can't see any other way out? You blow through the walls and you do something more. And again, I really believe, and I said this on the last week's show, I believe for me, this is incredibly smart, not just for Indeed Flex, but for the market because it's going to force traditional staffing companies to stop.
being so fucking traditional, right? They're going to have to employ technologies. They're going to have to be smarter. They're going to have to be good at what they fucking do for God sakes. This is going to be interesting. So I'm going to love watching what happens here.
Joel Cheesman (34:44.531)
Yeah.
So Seth Godin, who I've mentioned on the show once or twice before, a well -known marketing guy, been around forever. He had a post on his blog recently entitled better than Google. In this post, he cited perplexity as a better experience than Google. If you haven't checked out perplexity, I encourage you to do that. But he says in his first line,
that he hasn't been, he hasn't done a Google search in months. pretty prescient. And, and on our, on our AMA call yesterday with, with Jeff Lackey, he mentioned the lack of Google, searches that he's done lately. So I do, I do think there is some underlying issues that Google's going to have to face. I mean, employment is the least of their worries, but like they're in a, if you rely on Google traffic, like a lot of our search, search job search brothers and sisters do.
Chad Sowash (35:25.938)
Mm -hmm.
Chad Sowash (35:35.314)
Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (35:45.107)
Google is going to be really hard, mountain to climb, based on some of the commentary that I've done. And I think in my own use, I use Google less than I typically have. Now I still think we're a long way from the summaries that, that, that Jim talks about. I think we're a long way from saying into perplexity or chat GPT or whatever. what, what's a job I can do or what job should I take in Indianapolis for sales? It's.
Chad Sowash (36:10.674)
Now we have. Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (36:12.819)
It's not going to give you a summary of like companies. Like it's the classified world is still very, very old school. And I don't see that changing because of AI. Now, what was interesting to me was his comment about zip recruiter doing better or not seeing a drop versus indeed. So I did a little bit of research before the show, Chad, and this is by no means scientific, but every search that I did where indeed and zip recruiter both had the same job.
Zip Recruiter was before Indeed. So it says apply on Indeed, apply on LinkedIn, apply on Zip Recruiter was always before Indeed. Why is that? I have no fucking clue. It can't be an SEO issue. Is it is indeed like, is Google like testing out like what if we own Zip Recruiter and what do people, I don't know, man, but it's
Chad Sowash (36:48.306)
Wow. Yeah. Right.
Chad Sowash (36:58.226)
Hmm.
Chad Sowash (37:03.665)
Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (37:12.467)
If, if zip recruiter traffic hasn't crashed and indeed is sagging and, and, and a search that I did that zip recruiter comes first after, you know, before indeed you got to put two and two together in common sense and say more job seekers are clicking zip recruiter because it comes before indeed and LinkedIn, everybody else. just because that's the habit of, of human beings. So no conspiracy theory yet, Chad, but it's kind of weird.
And look, indeed, you know, stuck it to Google for a long time. They wouldn't, you know, they wouldn't play with Google for jobs. ZipRecruiter was an early, early entrant to that. Is this like Google sticking it to indeed? Is this, I don't know, but it's something to watch and this decrease in traffic, I think maybe go deeper than just Google summaries and not Googling. Like it may be deeper. Sorry for the conspiracy theory, but it's kind of weird.
Chad Sowash (37:51.186)
Yeah, Adopt -r. Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (38:10.899)
that that's happening.
Chad Sowash (38:12.914)
It's kind of weird. It's kind of weird. Yes. Again. It's so weird. Yeah. Expanding, expanded the tam, baby. Expanding the tam.
Joel Cheesman (38:14.963)
It's so weird. It's so weird.
Joel Cheesman (38:22.131)
Yeah, yeah, no one's crying for indeed. All right, we'll take a quick break and talk about cars.
Joel Cheesman (38:30.835)
All right, Chad, we like a good car news story. We like good Tesla story and EV stories. Let's throw them all together. This week, there was quite a bit of car news. First, internal data out of Tesla shows the company slashed at least 14 % of the workforce this year. Secondly, autonomous taxi service Waymo announced they're ditching the wait list and opening up to everyone in the San Francisco area.
And lastly, McKinsey found that 46 % of EV owners in the U S said they were quote, very likely to switch back to owning a gas powered vehicle for their next purchase. Chad, what do you make of all this activity in the car industry this week?
Chad Sowash (39:13.746)
Yeah, I'm flipping around a little bit. Start with Waymo. I mean, it's just a matter of time. The tech will get better. Traffic cones on hoods won't bother the systems anymore. And for people like my wife, Julie, who hates driving, this is going to be her transportation panacea for God sakes. I think GM pulled the plug on cruise way too soon and they're going to regret it. As for the EV switch,
Joel Cheesman (39:30.387)
Mm -hmm.
Chad Sowash (39:38.578)
There are a couple of different things here. It's like all or none. It's either combustion or it's EV. And the first problem is infrastructure. I mean, when you have a gas -powered car, when you go to fill it up, it takes five minutes. You go to fill it up, to plug in somewhere, if you're taking a long trip, 20 to 30 minutes, right?
Joel Cheesman (40:00.915)
Mm -hmm.
Chad Sowash (40:01.234)
and we are all about immediacy. So access and then immediacy. So those are the two problems. And then at the end of the day, well, let's put it this way. That's why when I buy a car here in Portugal, it's gonna be a hybrid. It doesn't have to be one or the other. It can be both people, Jesus Christ. And then Tesla layoffs.
Joel Cheesman (40:18.003)
Hmm. Yeah.
Chad Sowash (40:26.002)
If you've been listening to the prior stories at all and watching BYD move toward market dominance, none of this should be a surprise. None of it should be a surprise. So, you know, it was great. I think obviously Tesla came out of the barrel incredibly hot. They had sexy cars. They went incredibly fast. They had plaid speed from space balls. I mean, all these really cool kind of weird, you know, weird
Joel Cheesman (40:33.267)
Hmm. Yeah.
Chad Sowash (40:51.25)
Elon things, but it is for me, I think it's really short lived personally.
Joel Cheesman (41:02.099)
By the way, Chad space balls was released this week back in 1987. Little factoid for the, for the listeners out there who I know enjoy a good space balls reference. So I'll go in your order. Waymo. Yes. you and I saw these cars in action. We were in Phoenix. I did not try one because we had an Uber, Uber credit, to use, but I don't know if you did or not, but, but the people who had.
Chad Sowash (41:07.154)
Look at that, look at that connection.
Chad Sowash (41:20.018)
Yeah.
Chad Sowash (41:26.098)
Yeah, exactly.
Joel Cheesman (41:30.195)
Enjoy the experience. very little, negative commentary around Waymo and I'm with you, man. If I didn't have to own a car, I wouldn't. The insurance sucks. Like it, what you pay for it, it takes up space. Like it's just a bad investment. It's not an investment at all. Right. It depreciates to hell. after the second you drive it off the lot, if I could just on an app, get a Waymo, you know, take me to Chipotle.
Pick me back up to like, I would totally do that. Now it's not in our market, but I think it's just a matter of time before Waymo and there's more competition around the self -driving. By the way, all these Waymos are EVs. so take that for what it's worth. If this trend grows, EVs are going to grow. in terms of the sentiment around, I bought an electric car, but my next car is going to be gas. So I, we own a Tesla. Okay.
We don't test that my wife drives. I'll, I'll create some kind of, but I get to drive it every so often. and I will tell you that it's a, it's just a, it's a fun experience. like I w we would buy, I would buy another EV and that might be our next car, but I, I do, I do appreciate the feed, the pushback that if we want to go on a long trip. So let's say when we want to go to Louisville. So from Andy to Louisville, there are no.
Tesla charging stations, right? You're in Columbus, which is right in the middle. It'd be perfect, right? Put it at that, at that exit where there's a B dubs and some other stuff, right? There's a Freddy's burgers. Yeah. So like we have to, if we go to Louisville from where we are, which is about a two hour drive to Jeffersonville, we have to go further south to charge it and Louisville to then go back, go back to Indianapolis.
Chad Sowash (42:58.386)
Nah. Nah.
Yeah, perfect.
Joel Cheesman (43:19.091)
That's pretty inconvenient. So we've had times where we've said, let's just take the minivan because we don't want to go like an extra five miles to go charge it over in Louisville. we go to Canada often. It's not super convenient. We got to like kind of go out of the way. So there has to be more charging stations to your point that hybrids are having a moment. So to say like, nobody wants an EV. I'm not sure that's correct. They want to be more efficient. They want to do the environmental thing, although you can argue whether or not.
Chad Sowash (43:19.538)
Wow. Yes.
Chad Sowash (43:27.314)
Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (43:48.403)
Teslas are that good for the environment. And I appreciate that as well. But if you solve the problem of easy access to chargers, I think that people would feel much differently about changing back to a gas car and watch the fluctuations of gas prices go up and sentiment is going to go the other way. And that's going to escalate based on gas prices. So I'm not bearish at all on EVs. They're going to figure some of that stuff out. I think.
But anyway, in terms of Tesla, you're right. The stock has been sideways for a year or for this, this whole year stock has been sideways. China is going to get in this market in a huge way. And even though it was, you won't see him in America, for sure. A hundred percent is a hundred percent, tax on that. And then even in the EU, I think there's like a 38 % tax on, on the B Y on those cars. But in terms of.
Chad Sowash (44:32.754)
Don't have to.
Joel Cheesman (44:45.587)
Africa, rest of Asia, South America, like these are going to be a trend and Tesla's gonna suffer for it. I don't, I don't see anything any way around it. They're like $9 ,000. I mean, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And they're talking about like, they're going to make them in Mexico and because of NAFTA, like it's free trade from Mexico. So like, I mean, it's, it's going to be a pickle and Tesla's sort of.
Chad Sowash (44:52.978)
They're half the price. They're half the price of a Tesla. So therefore, if it's a 38 % tax, yeah, it's 38 % tax. It's like, okay, they're still cheaper.
Joel Cheesman (45:14.515)
What's going to happen to them? I mean, a lot of people, 200 ,000 people work for Tesla roughly. or sorry, 140 ,000 people work for Tesla. So let's call it 20 ,000 people lost their jobs. If this, if these numbers are true, I mean, that's, those are real people with, you know, real lives and families. So my heart goes out to them. It's easy to say 14%, but what does that mean in human terms? So Tesla's got some shit to figure out and some competition coming on the pike. so I think, you know, it's going to be, it's going to be tough.
Rivian just got a big investment from Volkswagen, but then also Fisker declared bankruptcy. So we're seeing a lot of volatility in the EV market, but I think at the end of the day, I think that's, that's the future. don't, don't deny it. Don't deny it.
Chad Sowash (45:53.65)
Yeah.
Chad Sowash (45:58.962)
Yeah, yeah. Hybrid now though.
Joel Cheesman (46:02.259)
Hybrid for now kids hybrid for now. Well, let's go to some more automation stories. This is pretty interesting. Morgan Stanley. I know that's where you keep all your money. Chad is rolling out what they call debrief, a generative AI assistant to help its financial advisors with administrative tasks, improving efficiency and client engagement. The tool built on open AI's GPT -4 will summarize meetings, draft emails, and manage notes with the expectation of enhancing an advisor's productivity.
I think I smell a trend, Chad. What are your thoughts?
Chad Sowash (46:35.794)
That's too easy. That's it's too easy. I mean, no more taking notes, entering summaries into your CRM, boiling down highlights, creating action items, drafting emails. I mean, that's just for starters. I mean, that's just for starters, it's going to get smarter. And that's the scary part, because as this happens, you're training the the LLM, right? So the AI could isolate if you're in sales, objections.
and the best ways to handle those objections, which would be amazing for an individual and group trainings, then it could take the next step, AI voice technology, which starts fielding incoming calls, making outgoing calls, emails and other communications. You know, much like teleperformance.
are using their AI to help customer service reps find appropriate responses and answers faster. Those human interactions are also training the large language model to do what? Well, to provide better responses and answers and possibly take the human's fucking jobs. How does this work for recruiting? This is fun.
Joel Cheesman (47:37.139)
Mm -hmm.
Chad Sowash (47:41.49)
Check out talktosam .ai. It's already happening and it's just the beginning as the LLMs are just a puppy in training right now. It's going to get smarter. It's going to get better. And our buddy Max Armbruster over at Talk Push, they did this talk to Sam thing and he's like, try it out. I'm like, come on, man. This is going to be hokey and corny and just going to suck. And it was, it was legit.
Joel Cheesman (47:59.475)
Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (48:06.835)
It's going to be all War Games 1984.
Chad Sowash (48:10.898)
Exactly. And then, and then we take a look at how we do podcasts. We use Riverside. They've got it infused with some, some large language model and it saves us a huge amount of time. I also use Chatt GPT, Dolly. I mean, so for me, if you're not using these tools, two things, first and foremost, you got to be aware that you're training them in the first place. But secondly, I mean, they're just, they're making life so much easier.
Joel Cheesman (48:38.259)
Yeah, much easier.
Joel Cheesman (48:42.707)
So this is just sexy. And this is the way it's gonna be. Look, we talked to Eileen at General Motors when we were in Phoenix. She talked about laying off 200 schedulers, human beings whose only job was to schedule, reschedule, cancel whatever interviews. That's insane. And in today's world, you don't need 200 people working.
you're scheduling, and GM is now 200 employees lighter because of technology and Morgan Stanley is following suit and more and more companies will be doing this. Morgan Stanley employees, 15 ,000 or so people. These are some of the numbers posted by, one of their executives. They believe it will save 30 minutes of work per meeting. Little context,
they expect to have to conduct roughly 1 million Zoom meetings per year. If you're doing the math, that's roughly 500 ,000 hours that they're saving. Or if you're working a 40 hour week, that's 250 ,000 full -time employees that will be doing that work. So the year of efficiency goes on past its first year and more. Yeah, look.
Chad Sowash (49:41.33)
Yeah.
Chad Sowash (50:00.626)
decades.
Joel Cheesman (50:03.571)
This is going to impact the bottom line. This is going to impact stock price. People are going to excited. this is going to be a huge trend that we're going to see at every company that has, you know, a certain amount of employees, maybe every company, no matter how many employees.
Chad Sowash (50:13.074)
Yeah.
Chad Sowash (50:17.49)
The biggest piece around this is data.
All of this transcription information, everything that gets pushed into your sales force, if they have access to sales force, they can see how those leads actually go through the system. The sales cycle for every single individual contributor, so on and so forth. I mean, this is going to make things so much smarter, not just from the standpoint of sales and customer service and so on and so forth, but it's going to help managers identify where people are falling down and hopefully
Joel Cheesman (50:41.363)
Mm -hmm.
Chad Sowash (50:51.06)
help them before they get fucking fired. So I mean that amount of data though is just key.
Joel Cheesman (50:58.035)
Yeah, if you're not on this train, well.
Chad Sowash (51:02.802)
you
Joel Cheesman (51:03.539)
Let's take a quick break and talk about Hooters. What else would you expect after a two week break from Cheeseman?
Joel Cheesman (51:15.187)
All right, Chad, while Hooters are all the rage at Edmonton Oilers games and portals between Dublin and New York City, not all Hooters are enjoying their time in the sun. Once popular restaurant Hooters, the home of chicken wings and female breasts recently closed approximately 40 of its 300 restaurants worldwide, citing economic.
pressures. This move is part of a broader trend among restaurant chains facing challenges from inflation. And that's the money kind of inflation, not the mammary kind Chad, the changing consumer spending habits are impacting it as well. Chad, your thoughts on the sagging business at Hooters.
Chad Sowash (52:00.914)
I think once again, this is a business model issue. Buffalo Wild Wings was an evolution of Hooters. They serve better wings, they have more TV, and most importantly, half of the population, women, actually want to frequent BW3s instead of having a half -naked woman put their tits in their husband's face at Hooters. It just makes good business sense not to piss off half the population. Plus, those Hooters girls can probably make more money without fighting off
of grabbing drunks on OnlyFans.
Joel Cheesman (52:35.923)
You know, Hooters is really going south. I wish, I wish they'd get some support somewhere for that. Chad, we used to, we used to read Playboy for the articles and we used to go to Hooters for the wings. None of that was true. Of course, we wanted to see women naked or at least partially naked. look, the biggest thing is that Wingstop makes better wings now and we have Pornhub and OnlyFans.
Chad Sowash (52:39.122)
Yeah.
Chad Sowash (52:44.914)
Huh? Yeah, sure.
Joel Cheesman (53:04.467)
to replace Playboy. So where does Hooters fit in this current trend? It ain't the food. And frankly, the outfits are outdated. You feel a little dirty when you go, the wings aren't that like, there's really no good reason. And you can't take your family there. You can't, you know, you can't take your wife, girlfriend there.
you got, you got flat screen TVs that are 85 plus inches, you know, large, you can watch any game from home, fry up your own wings. Like it just, it just doesn't make sense to have a Hooters in the current day, landscape. So I think no amount of support is going to save this company. they're, they're going down the tubes. So I always, I always wondered what the, what it was like to apply for a job at Hooters. Like, did they just give them a bra and say, fill this out? Is that how?
Is that how that works? I don't know. Wait a minute, Chad. I've been gone for a while, so I got another dad joke for you. My wife was so happy to hear that I was giving so much money to charity until she found out that charity was a waitress at Hooters. That's right, kids. That's right. That's right. I'm back, baby.
Chad Sowash (53:59.282)
Welcome back, Cheesman.
Chad Sowash (54:04.946)
Yes.
Joel Cheesman (54:21.171)
We out.
Chad Sowash (54:22.738)
We out.
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