The Chad & Cheese Podcast

The Shred is a weekly roundup of what’s making headlines in the world of employment.

How do just 20 recruiters handle over 150,000 hires and 7 million annual applications? On this episode of The Chad & Cheese Podcast, Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman chat with Shay Johnson, VP of Strategic HR Partnerships at Compass Group, to explore the future of high-volume hiring.

Shay breaks down how the global food service leader modernized its talent pipeline to eliminate candidate drop-off, targeted candidate re-engagement, and a full conversational ATS experience.

Catch this episode to hear how AI interviewing agents, smart bot detection, and candidate coaching are turning tedious administrative tasks into high-value human connections.

What do a big couch, a can of Stella, and four of the biggest personalities in recruitment have in common? They’re all live from RecFest this week, covering the hottest topics in the world of hiring.

Chad, Joel, Mo’, and J.T. are on hand to talk about everything from an HR tech founder facing up to 20 years behind bars to the great iced-latte-in-job-interviews debate sweeping the land.

First up, the crew covers all things RecFest USA live from the Shaker Recruitment Marketing booth, each offering a unique take on the world’s hottest recruitment conference. You may have heard about the recent controversy over an iced latte that made its way into an interview—and then drew criticism from a practitioner. Yeah, that gets covered.

Then it’s news time. The team discusses the recent guilty plea by the former CEO and founder of Joonko, who is looking at as much as 20 years in prison after allegedly ripping off investors to the tune of $27 million.

Next, the gang turns to Harver’s acquisition of Symphony Talent, a move destined to rattle recruitment ad agencies for years to come. Does the future favor the agency? The group weighs in.

Then comes a Chad & Cheese first: a representative from Findem makes a sponsored announcement about the company’s latest product drop, Findem Studio.

To wrap things up, the crew looks at ZoomInfo’s newly launched Talent Autopilot, a sourcing tool the company hopes will shake up the industry by tapping a dataset it calls second to none.It’s a fun wrap-up from Nashville at the end of RecFest’s first big day. Now pass the hot chicken.

The Shred is a weekly roundup of what’s making headlines in the world of employment.

Is the resume dying — or is it just lying and on life support while AI agents pump out 11,000 fake-looking apps a minute.

On this episode of The Chad & Cheese Podcast, Joel and Chad sit down with Etan Bernstein of the Velocity Network Foundation, an HR lifer who wants to stop the whack-a-mole and put a chip in the talent system the way banks killed mag-stripe fraud.

Self-reported CVs, ghost jobs, North Korean bots, and vendors who get paid for the chaos all get roasted. Etan’s pitch: one open protocol, worker-owned credentials, and trust at the source instead of another detector.

If you’re still screening slop with more slop, this one’s going to sting.

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction to the industry's trust issues

02:23 - The shift from traditional resumes to AI-generated profiles

04:11 - The impact of AI on fraud and exaggeration in resumes

06:10 - The problem with fragmented HR data systems

08:33 - Building trust through verifiable data

10:48 - The economic impact of chaos in HR tech

15:36 - The flood of resumes and legal compliance challenges

19:38 - The vision of an open, shared protocol for HR data

21:27 - The role of LinkedIn and other platforms in verification

24:24 - The digital footprint and future of verification