The Chad & Cheese Podcast

Hosted by Evergreen Podcasts

Business Technology

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Episodes

1648

Latest episode

Aug 2026

Language

EN-US

About the show

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.

Listen to episodes

60 recent

August 25, 202635 min

SignalLabs + BrassRing = Signals of Attention

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!

August 21, 20261 hr 3 min

Walmart Slumps, Workday Jumps & Indeed Marketing Chumps

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

August 20, 20264 min

Shredded: Workday, Aerotek, PAC Group, Monster, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Indeed & More

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

August 18, 202640 min

When AI Needs Humans with Sonja Breuer

In this episode of The Chad & Cheese Podcast, hosts Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman sit down with Sonja Breuer, Senior Vice President of HR at Hamra Enterprises a powerhouse franchise group operating over 200 locations across Wendy’s, Panera Bread, and Noodles & Company.💡 What You’ll Learn in This Episode: The “Easy Button” for Hiring: How custom AI bots (including a talking Frosty named Sam) drastically reduced candidate ghosting and eliminated scheduling headaches for restaurant managers. Slashing the Ad Budget: The secret behind leveraging evergreen ads and conversational tech to keep job board spending at a fraction of the budget. Daily Pay as a Game Changer: Why instant access to wages has become Hamra’s secret weapon for recruitment (and how it saved one employee's prom night!). Tech Meets Culture: Why Sonja—a self-proclaimed Gen X “human connection” person—believes automation doesn't replace empathy, but actually gives leaders the time to be more human. What’s Next for AI in HR: A sneak peek at how Hamra is using AI for company-wide internal communication and video-driven recruitment.

August 14, 202659 min

ZipRecruiter Financial Gymnastics

Get ready for a jam-packed episode of The Chad & Cheese Podcast as hosts Joel Cheesman, Chad Sowash, and Emi B serve up their trademark mix of industry news, corporate earnings, and unfiltered banter. The episode kicks off with personal updates and shout-outs, covering everything from Chad’s slippery "Charlie Brown" beach wipeout in Portugal to a Harvard report on workplace outcomes, the rise of late-night interviews for night owls. As the episode shifts into corporate strategy, the hosts put the latest financial filings and major market moves under the microscope. You will hear them break down the Q2 earnings, cost-cutting strategies, and future outlooks for ZipRecruiter, Recruit Holdings, and Indeed. The team then brings back their signature "Buy or Sell" segment to grade recent consolidation in the space, evaluating MetaView’s acquisition of Reval (and its autonomous coworker "fillmore"), CareerMinds picking up Jobrapido, and the big transition of a long-time leader at LinkUp. Finally, the episode tackles the serious side of hiring tech with a look at global regulatory compliance and vendor transparency involving Maki People, Mochi AI Assessments and Recruitics, before winding down with a nostalgic debate over the unexpected relaunch of MySpace. To find out who gets a "Buy," who gets a "Sell," and exactly why the hosts are skeptical of the latest AI trends, you will have to tune in to the full episode.

August 13, 20265 min

Shredded: ZipRecruiter, Recruit Holdings, Upwork, Dice, Spark Hire, Careerminds, & Jobrapido

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

August 11, 202632 min

Ageism, Algo-Bias, and Corp Naughtiness w/ Cassell Kaye

Ageism is out in the open, AI is masking mass corporate cost-cutting, and 1 in 3 job postings might be completely fake. In this episode of The Chad & Cheese Podcast, 20-year HR executive Cassell Kaye from The Reframed Collective pulls back the curtain on a brutal modern job market. Drawing on her leadership experience at tech and entertainment giants like Disney, Yahoo, and Amazon, she exposes the calculated corporate math pushing older workers out, explaining why companies now treat discrimination lawsuits as just another line-item cost of doing business. Cassell also deconstructs the current tech hype, framing AI not as a revolutionary replacement for human workers, but as a convenient smokescreen for aggressive corporate cost-cutting and margin protection. She highlights how automated tracking systems scale existing biases at an unprecedented rate, creating a virtual trap for applicants where even opting out for a "human review" simply results in a resume disappearing into an ignored pile. Finally, the episode tackles the rise of the "ghost job" phenomenon, explaining the strategic corporate reasons behind the massive 2-million job gap between reported openings and actual hires. If you want to understand how the hiring game is truly rigged and how to navigate a system missing its old safety nets, you cannot miss this candid conversation. Chapters 00:00 - Introduction to Cassell and her background 01:56 - Cassell discusses ageism and workforce bias 04:08 - Impact of AI on layoffs and employment practices 05:54 - Legal risks and the role of government regulation 08:10 - The future of AI and its influence on workforce demographics 10:06 - Advice for workers over 50 facing layoffs 11:57 - The problem with ghost jobs and transparency 13:57 - The role of vendors and bias in AI systems 16:06 - Government actions and the regulation landscape 18:01 - The impact of AI on hiring processes and bias 20:00 - The political and legal challenges in regulating AI 22:07 - The lagging indicators in employment data 24:04 - The real state of the job market and ghost jobs 25:59 - The influence of corporate signaling and investor perceptions 28:03 - Automation, AI, and the future of talent acquisition 29:47 - The role of government and legal actions in employment law 31:57 - Final thoughts and where to follow Cassell Links https://www.youtube.com/@cassellkaye https://www.linkedin.com/in/cassell/ https://www.tiktok.com/@the.reframed.collective https://www.instagram.com/thereframedcollective/

August 7, 202659 min

Indeed Pauses, Fiverr Falls & Rippling Ransacks

The latest episode of The Chad & Cheese Podcast with Emi and Lieven is officially live, and it is a certified must-watch. In this episode, the crew dives straight into a massive legal showdown brewing in the tech world, breaking down the explosive trade secret drama between Rippling and Runlayer. They also discuss a massive $50M acquisition move by Deel involving Clarity to fight a terrifying new trend in hiring, begging the question: is big tech done buying smaller tools for good? The conversation takes a sharp turn into the ultimate AI casualties, analyzing how one freelance giant’s stock has cratered a staggering 94% since ChatGPT entered the chat. The team breaks down the absolute collapse of Fiverr and discusses why their desperate pivot to save the platform might already be too late. Meanwhile, they expose why AI adoption has completely stalled across Europe, how companies are fighting weak data foundations, and the massive compliance hurdles that are about to change the landscape for international employers.Finally, the bots are officially taking over, and the major job platforms are panicking. he hosts talk about how LinkedIn just quietly rolled out a brand-new button to fight the wave of artificial content taking over your feed, while Indeed was forced to hit the emergency brakes on their aggressive new automation feature after severe user backlash. Want to know what the crew really thinks about these massive shifts? Tune in to the full episode now on your favorite podcast platform or watch it on YouTube! Chapters 00:00 - Introduction and Episode Overview 01:14 - European Culture and Vacation Trends 03:26 - Review of the Odyssey Movie 04:45 - Discussion on AI in Entertainment and Media 07:14 - Controversies in FIFA and Sports Politics 09:18 - Belgian Football and World Cup Highlights 11:21 - Deep Fake Detection and HR Security 18:41 - Rippling and Deal Legal Drama 29:39 - Fiverr and AI Displacement of Freelance Work 38:33 - European AI Adoption and Cultural Barriers 49:32 - LinkedIn and Indeed AI Content and Automation 52:48 - Future of AI Regulation and Ethical Concerns

August 6, 20266 min

Shredded: Foundational, LinkedIn, Buildforce, Deel, Clarity, Runlayer, Rippling, & More

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

August 4, 202627 min

90 Days Hired, They Stay a Year w/ Jolene Hostal

In this episode, HR veteran Jolene Hostal joins Joel and Chad to discuss how a legacy brand like Stanley Steemer stays "young and vibrant" in a competitive labor market. Managing high-volume hiring for thousands of technicians across 57 corporate locations, Jolene breaks down how modern tech integrations, fast candidate screening, and a strong culture drive their talent acquisition strategy. Mobile-First High-Volume Hiring: Because candidates for cleaning technician roles are constantly on the move, Stanley Steemer uses Paradox’s chatbot ("Maria") to let applicants apply in 90 seconds or less. Open Architecture Tech Stack: Jolene explains choosing Dayforce as their HCM due to its strong API connections, allowing seamless integration with Paradox and background check partners like First Advantage. The "90-Day" Retention Milestone: Highlighting the physical demands of technician roles, Jolene notes that if a technician stays for 90 days, they almost always stay for a full year. Career Progression from the Trucks: The company boasts strong internal mobility—73% of company managers started out as service technicians, proving that entry-level roles can lead to long-term career paths. Keeping the Remote Workforce Connected: Field technicians receive job dispatches, safety updates, and communication through in-van tablets and driver safety monitoring systems.