The Chad & Cheese Podcast

This week on The Chad and Cheese Podcast (dubbed HR’s most dangerous podcast), hosts Chad Sowash, JT O’Donnell, and Maureen "Mo" Wiley Clough break down the latest corporate absurdities, dystopian AI trends, and labor market nonsense. Episode Highlights:

No Trust for AI: Humanoid Robots, digital AI twins and Amazon's last-mile automation.

Corporate AI Disasters: Amazon's tokenmaxxing problems.

Japan’s Big Staffing Cartel Raid: Recruits, Adecco, Manpower, and others are under investigation by the Japan Fair Trade Commission for alleged price-fixing.

The Death of Tip Culture: A look at US restaurants ditching traditional tipping.

Dolly Parton vs. Dark Trends: The gang pays respect to the late, great Dolly Parton. In stark contrast to her generosity, the hosts call out "bro-brand" Good Good Golf and Callaway over an appalling, tone-deaf advertisement featuring a founder pushing a woman to the ground.

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

On this installment of "HR's Most Dangerous Podcast," Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman grill Raj Ronanki, CEO of Signal Labs, on one of the weirdest M&A moves the HR tech space has seen in years. Guided by a childhood obsession with Star Trek, Raj has raised millions to build "systems of attention"—and then immediately used it to buy Brass Ring, an applicant tracking system older than half the engineers currently building LLMs.

In a chaotic blend of 1980s comedy references, sci-fi philosophy, and corporate jargon, the boys attempt to figure out if Raj is an AI visionary or if he just bought a ghost ship because 65% of the Fortune 500 forgot to cancel their subscription.

Key Highlights & Hot Takes:

Spock, Utopia, and Green Aliens

The "Nunya Business" Acquisition

HR's Forgotten Invoices

Interviewing Bots for Jobs

Making Compliance Cool Again

Tune in for the full episode as Chad and Joel try to decipher whether Signal Labs is building the future of work or just running a very expensive 1999 nostalgia trip!

Live from a Portuguese bar annex, Chad and Joel crack open a cold cider and fire up "HR's Most Dangerous Podcast" to roast the absolute state of modern recruiting. Before tackling the tech industry's worst ideas, the boys review hostage-style movie clips, swap obscure band recommendations, and pitch a Spaceballs 2 sponsorship.

The SaaS-pocalypse Comes for Workday: Private equity behemoth Silver Lake is eyeing a $51B buyout of Workday.

Google's Resume Garbage Can: Leaked documents show Google DeepMind's AI screening tool is rejecting qualified applicants at random, forcing frustrated hiring managers to set up illegal human-only shortcuts around their own TA department.

Gen Z's AI Penalty: Stanford research shows a 19% drop in entry-level hiring for AI-exposed roles.

Babysitting the Machine at Walmart: Store associates are now tasked with cleaning up after Walmart's AI.

Indeed's Desperate Marketing Pivot: Indeed's CMO claims targeting passive job seekers at soccer matches is a "revolutionary" new strategy. Really?

Chapters

00:00 - Intro and Episode Overview

03:45 - Review of the Odyssey and movie expectations

07:43 - Changes in media consumption and radio

09:54 - New music discoveries and bands

11:21 - Music show segment and shout outs

12:26 - TA20 awards and AI professionals recognition

13:25 - Upcoming events and travel plans

20:32 - Private equity buyout talks with Workday

21:50 - Implications of PE acquisition on Workday's culture and support

23:13 - The SAS apocalypse and AI's impact on SaaS companies

24:37 - Market valuation and PE acquisitions of software companies

28:38 - Google resume dumping and AI in HR

29:06 - Challenges of AI in recruitment and hiring processes

31:15 - The puppy analogy and AI's limitations

32:13 - The importance of human skills and adaptability

37:24 - AI's impact on youth employment and highly exposed occupations

40:00 - The need for experienced workers to train AI

41:32 - Future workforce and the importance of human skills

44:34 - Adapting to AI and the importance of continuous learning

46:35 - Walmart's AI implementation and employee trust issues

49:45 - The role of human nuance in AI and workplace tasks

52:57 - The importance of understanding complex tasks in AI deployment

54:29 - Indeed's new marketing strategy and market position

55:33 - Critique of Indeed's marketing and tech evolution

57:29 - Spaceballs 2 and industry humor

58:07 - Google and Indeed traffic decline signals

59:22 - The shift to old school marketing and candidate engagement

01:00:21 - The future of job search and AI-driven applications

01:01:18 - Humor and lighthearted closing remarks

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