Podcast
The Chad & Cheese Podcast
Hosted by Evergreen Podcasts · EN
Everything people and workforce—recruiting, marketing, technology, talent management, and workforce economics—delivered with biting sarcasm and unapologetic snark. Industry misfits Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman bring their no-holds-barred opinions to dissect news, trends, and the occasional dumpster fire. If you’re a hiring company, staffing firm, or vendor looking for insights (and a thick skin), these two won’t just tell you what’s happening—they’ll tell you why you’re probably doing it wrong. Buckle up, buttercup.
82episodes
Episodes
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Korn Ferry Swallows AMS, Handshake Grabs Uplimit
4d ago01:15:56Tap to summarizeHide your kids and grab your bourbon, because The Chad & Cheese Podcast is back! Joel is finally home from his pretentious European tour—blaming jet lag for being completely rusty—and Emi is here to keep him from totally derailing. Together, they are tackling a corporate landscape that looks like a beautiful car crash. They're dissecting the massive corporate marriages of Korn Ferry buying AMS and Handshake grabbing Uplimit—are these brilliant strategic moves or absolute train wrecks? Next, they dive into the giant AI oopsies of the week, laughing as Ford frantically rehires 350 human engineers because their robots built junk, and Mark Zuckerberg publicly admits Meta totally misjudged the AI hype train. They also break down why The Wall Street Journal says Gen X is getting absolutely crushed by unemployment, why Scott Galloway thinks working from home is ruining America's youth, and whether a fully robot-operated hotel in China is a budget dream or a horror movie. Tune in for the travel stories, the savage HR gossip, and the brutal return of Joel's awful dad jokes! Website: https://www.chadcheese.com/ Make sure you check FREE Stuff: https://www.chadcheese.com/free Subscribe for an audio version: https://www.chadcheese.com/subscribe
Transcribe →Shredded: Korn Ferry, AMS, Microsoft, Uplimit, Handshake, Meta, & More
5d ago00:04:31Tap to summarizeThe Shred is a weekly roundup of what’s making headlines in the world of employment. The Shred is brought to you today by Jobcase.
Transcribe →Hiring Became Our Edge with Kristen Reilly
1w ago00:29:10Tap to summarize"We went from 34% fully staffed to 96% fully staffed" Imagine needing to hire 3,000 part-time coaches in a chaotic 6-to-8-week summer sprint. For Elevo Learning, missing that target meant operational nightmares and broken client promises. In this episode, Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman sit down with Kristen Reilly to look under the hood of an incredible hiring turnaround. By ditching manual, archaic workflows and going "all in" on conversational AI, Elevo transformed their biggest bottleneck into a massive competitive advantage. The Highlights: The 96% Turnaround: How automating candidate engagement flipped their Day One staffing rate from a stressful 34% to a near-perfect 96%. Recruiter Happiness Skyrockets: How stripping away hours of manual administrative "busy work" sent Elevo's internal Employee Net Promoter Score from a dismal 16 to a staggering 68. The Next Frontier: Kristen previews how they are tackling the next big hurdle—frictionless onboarding from the first text message to the school field. Automation is Human: Why freeing up recruiters from administrative hell actually allows them to do what they do best: build relationships and scale the business into new states. Ready to see how automation can scale your seasonal hiring? Tune in now!
Transcribe →Ageism in Tech: Dan Lyons on ‘Disrupted,’ Silicon Valley & Toxic Culture
2w ago01:21:27Tap to summarizeMaureen sits down with Dan Lyons — bestselling author of Disrupted, former Newsweek and Forbes journalist, and writer for HBO’s hit series Silicon Valley. At 52 years old, Dan made the jump from traditional media into a hyped tech startup… and quickly discovered he was suddenly “ancient” in an industry that worships youth. From bouncy ball chairs and candy walls to getting sized up as “someone’s parent” on day one, Dan delivers hilarious, painful, and brutally honest stories about ageism in tech. He breaks down the infamous CEO quote that sparked a company-wide controversy (“Gray hair and experience are overrated”), his wild ride writing for Silicon Valley, and what he uncovered in his follow-up book Lab Rats about toxic work culture, psychological burnout, and why so many companies treat employees like disposable kids. If you’re in recruiting, HR, or tech — and especially if you’re over 40 and wondering whether experience still has value — this conversation is equal parts laugh-out-loud funny and eye-opening. Needless to day, Dan Lyons doesn’t hold back.
Transcribe →Your Best Hire Already Left w/ Gustavo Serbia
2w ago00:36:55Tap to summarizeNext on Chad & Cheese: Hired to Chair in 3 Days ✂️🔥 Chad and Joel are punching the recruiting industry right where it hurts with Gustavo Serbia, CHRO at Hair Cuttery Family of Brands. They dive into the wild, hyper-competitive world of managing 6,000 stylists where the barriers to entry are zero and the drama is real. Quick Cuts: Slashing Time-to-Hire: How they used Paradox to ditch their sluggish legacy ATS and compress a 17-day hiring process down to just 3 days. Gamifying Commission: Inside the custom app that shows stylists exactly what they make in real time to incentivize higher earnings. The "Polite Poach": Why recruiting in a fragmented industry means ditching traditional applications, hunting state board lists, and walking straight to the talent. AI & Raw Data: How Gustavo bypassed pivot tables to build an entire funnel analysis in minutes using AI—and what's next on his tech wishlist. "In this industry, you know to a tee when someone leaves. My CEO knows exactly what it's costing us right then and there." — Gustavo Serbia, CHRO Want to know how to manage high-turnover talent, build a booming rehire pipeline, and make tech work for a fiercely human business? Hit play on the AI series now.
Transcribe →The Snapchat & Anthropic Hype Machines
3w ago00:54:30Tap to summarizeOn this week's episode: The Football Flops: Portugal woke up, while England was lulled to sleep and Emi is losing her mind over corporate "hydration breaks". The Hype Block: The hosts rip into Snapchat’s new $2,300 glasses (a chunky, $3 billion boat anchor that makes a good-looking CEO completely unfuckable). Meanwhile, Anthropic's CEO is treating his LLM like a "superweapon" that practically needs a gun license just to drive up valuation. Who’d You Rather?: Emi tries to take home three startups (Sloneek, HeyMilo, and Orbio) for an HR foursome. The New Indoor Malls: Oracle is slashing 21,000 jobs to build data centers, and Google is training blue-collar workers for $166 a pop. Chad serves a history lesson: we are overbuilding data centers just like 1980s indoor malls. Ghostbusters in NY: New York is passing a bill to fine companies $2,500 for posting fake "ghost jobs" used for resume harvesting. Emi wants more guidance; Chad says stop making excuses. Tune in, skip the scams, and Go Portugal!
Transcribe →Shredded: LinkedIn, Adzuna, Autodesk, Microsoft, Deel, Oracle, Fika Jobs, & More
3w ago00:06:38Tap to summarizeThe Shred is a weekly roundup of what’s making headlines in the world of employment. The Shred is brought to you today by Jobcase.
Transcribe →Startup Debate: Skills-Based Hiring w/ Maya Huber & Phuong Vu
3w ago00:31:26Tap to summarizeFace it, "The Resumes" is officially dead, and generative AI just blew it to pieces. With 86% of hiring managers admitting that AI makes it too easy to fake skills on paper, corporate hiring is facing a massive identity crisis. The old way is broken—so what comes next? The Face-Off: In this fast-paced episode of HR's most dangerous podcast, host Chad Sowash moderates a high-stakes debate between two tech founders reshaping talent acquisition: Phuong Vu (CEO of Telexa): The advocate for the "skills-first" organization. Phuong argues that true skills-based hiring means moving away from static keyword libraries and focusing on real-world evidence, human adaptability, and transferable capabilities. Dr. Maya Huber (CEO of Tadio): The champion of performance intelligence. Maya warns that "skills hiring" will become an empty buzzword if we keep relying on old, text-based data. Her radical fix? Ditch applications entirely and have candidates try out the job through live simulations before they ever talk to a recruiter. Inside the Episode: Are companies treating employees like "disposable heroes" instead of upskilling them? Has "culture fit" just become a lazy excuse to hire people exactly like ourselves? How do you screen for technical skills when the technology changes faster than the workforce? The Bottom Line: Stop asking candidates what they claim they can do. Learn how to evaluate how they actually think, adapt, and execute. Listen now to find out who wins the duel.
Transcribe →Indeed's AI Bias Machine
4w ago00:48:18Tap to summarizeIf you’ve been wondering why the modern job market feels like a dystopian simulation, the latest episode of The Chad and Cheese Podcast is here to validate your existential dread. Chad, JT, and Lieven are back to dissect the tech industry's latest "innovations" with their usual cocktail of empathy, candor, and plenty of well-deserved swearing. Indeed’s Blind Faith in AI Sourcing The Stanford Study: Proof You're Being Blacklisted Teaching Your Humanoid Replacement Zuckerberg Says "My Bad" (Sort Of) "Generating assumptive qualifications or requirements is a hiring decision... If AI's doing that for you... it's the most stupid fucking non-scalable thing." — Chad Sowash "No job seeker should be required to give their data, not know where it's going, and not know how it's being used. And this is what got exposed." — JT O'Donnell Are we heading toward JT's utopian dream of golfing all day while robots do the laundry, or are we just funding our own automation? Stop screaming into the ATS void. Hit play, get educated, and subscribe to HR’s most dangerous podcast right now.
Transcribe →Shredded: Stepful, Google, Orbio, iCIMS, NewCore, ZRG, Fortium, & More
4w ago00:05:54Tap to summarizeThe Shred is a weekly roundup of what’s making headlines in the world of employment. The Shred is brought to you today by Jobcase.
Transcribe →