The Chad & Cheese Podcast

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

How Ace Hardware Scaled to 100 Years with AI

Can a century-old brand out-recruit Amazon? In this episode, Stef Nikitas and Kaleigh Burns from Ace Hardware join Chad and Cheese to discuss "Project Hurricane"—the total overhaul of their hiring process. They share how they transformed a $500k "flyers and softball" budget into a $4 million automated recruiting machine.

Key Highlights:


Who is this... Grace?


The "Toy" Test:


Differentiate or Die


The 2-Minute App

Stop "posting and praying" and start listening to how one of America’s most iconic brands is winning the talent war through high-tech helpfulness.

How did the Ace team manage the "culture shock" of introducing AI to a workforce with such long-standing tenure?

Grab your favorite beverage for a special, highly opinionated "just us girls" episode of the podcast, featuring Joel Cheesman and Maureen “Moe” Clough taking the mic without the rest of the usual crew.

This week, the duo delivers a light-hearted yet deeply substantive look into the massive worker backlash against artificial intelligence and the brutal realities of today's hiring market. The hosts kick things off with quick hits covering a disastrous, heavily booed commencement speech at the University of Central Florida and a surprising take on the narrative depth of The Devil Wears Prada 2.

From there, the conversation tackles major industry shifts as massive job platforms like Upwork and ZipRecruiter face severe financial softening, sparking a debate on whether automation is permanently consuming traditional contractor roles. The gloves come off as they dissect a bold claim from Andreessen Horowitz labeling legacy HR software giants like Workday a "cartel," while analyzing how defensive tech acquisitions—such as Ashby buying Talent Llama—signal a broader software-as-a-service apocalypse.

Moe offers her expertise on age discrimination, discussing a lawsuit against Bloomberg Industry Group. The discussion moves to the backlash against automated hiring tools and LinkedIn’s new paid consultation feature. Finally, there is a disagreement over Google's new Gemini-powered smart glasses.

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction to the Podcast and Hosts

01:35 - Current Events and AI's Impact

05:30 - AI and the Youth Perspective

10:01 - Data Centers and Community Impact16:31Industry News: Upwork, ZipRecruiter, and Workday

19:59 - The Future of Work and AI's Role

22:00 - The SaaS Cartel and Its Challenges

25:02 - Age Discrimination in the Workplace

34:56 - AI's Role in Hiring and Recruitment

42:21 - The Rapid Evolution of AI in Hiring

45:04 - LinkedIn's New Monetization Features

52:51 - The Controversy of Smart Glasses

01:03:01 - The Inevitable Rise of Smart Technology

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

The "Lean, Mean, Hiring Machine": 6 Recruiters vs. 2,400 Locations

How do you hire for Applebee’s, Taco Bell, Arby’s, and Planet Fitness without losing your mind? If you’re Mark Gibson at Flynn Group, you don’t—you let a robot named Frankie do it.

In this episode of The Chad and Cheese Podcast, we hang out with the man managing the world’s largest franchise empire with a recruiting team so small they could all fit in one booth at Applebee's. Mark breaks down how they ditched boring forms for text-based AI, turning their six recruiters into "high-level media buyers" instead of resume-shuffling zombies.

What’s inside:


The "Midnight Million": What happens when you flip the switch on a new system and wake up to a literal mountain of applicants.


Frankie Goes to Hollywood (and Pizza Hut): How an AI assistant handles the "boring stuff" so humans can actually be human.


TikTok vs. The Churn: Using Gen Z influencers to drive talent and AI surveys to make sure they don't "ghost" after day three.


Judgment Day: Mark addresses the "Terminator" fears of automation. Spoiler alert: the robots aren't making the pizzas... yet.

From "black card" memberships for fries to surviving the HR tech "Judgment Day," this is a deep dive into how to scale a global empire without the overhead. Grab a snack and listen in—Frankie is watching.

If you could automate the single most annoying part of your job today, what would it be?