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On the latest episode of The Chad & Cheese Podcast, Joel Cheesman and Emi Beredugo dig into a busy week of talent-tech deals and LinkedIn news. Acquisitions, resignations and bad decisions are back, baby! SAP has acquired skills-intelligence company TechWolf, which will integrate with SuccessFactors while remaining independent. Juicebox has picked up the intellectual property and assets of sourcing platform Fetcher. Humanly has acquired CareerArc to combine recruitment marketing with its AI hiring tools for high-volume employers. They also cover LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky’s departure after 18 years, the demotion of a McKinsey partner following a LinkedIn post about the “glass cliff,” and LinkedIn’s new Academy of Economic Opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs. The episode wraps with a viral TikTok of a candidate speaking gibberish to an AI interviewer that ends the call. Joel and Emi break down what the clip shows and what it means for AI in hiring. Chapters 00:00 - Introduction and episode overview 01:07 - Joel's travel update and jet lag discussion 02:45 - Emi recognized as a top UK black professional 04:30 - Recent recognition and awards for Emi 16:13 - SAP acquires Tech Wolf to enhance skills-based hiring 19:40 - The strategic value of Tech Wolf's data analytics 22:16 - Acquisition of Fuel Fifty and industry implications 23:40 - Fetcher acquisition by Juice Box and industry decline 31:33 - History and strategic moves of CareerArc 34:51 - Leadership changes at LinkedIn and organizational culture 35:57 - LinkedIn launches Academy of Economic Opportunity 43:20 - Discussion on the departure of LinkedIn's CEO 44:44 - The rise of AI interviewers and their risks 55:53 - AI interviewers going rogue and candidate experience 58:16 - Humor and closing remarks

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

Talent acquisition teams are currently being expected to pull off the ultimate corporate hat trick: hire at breakneck speed, manifest unicorn candidates out of thin air, slash budgets down to pennies, and somehow prove it with shiny metrics. In this session, ringmasters Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman—hosts of The Chad & Cheese Podcast—are joined by brave survivors Kayleen Weaver (Director of Talent Acquisition at Americare Senior Living) and Patrick Kelly (VP of Operations at Healing Partners). Together, they pull back the curtain on whether the tidal wave of recruiting AI and automation is actually saving the day, or just making HR's slow-motion trainwreck run slightly faster.

Live from Amsterdam where redheads combust in the sun and nobody uses e-scooters—the Chad and Cheese crew are back with guest star Stephen McGrath to tackle HR’s messiest sagas: Metaview’s $60M Pivot: How a basic, commoditized note-taking app rebranded as an "agentic AI" messiah. LinkedIn's Massive Data Purge: LinkedIn is boot-kicking third-party scrapers (RIP Gem, PIN, and NeuroScale) Palantir vs. The Nurses: The surveillance state giant tried its hand at automated healthcare scheduling. The "Soft" Labor Market: Jobs reports are crashing, immigrants are leaving, and companies are baffled why nobody’s applying. Complete with atrocious dad jokes, "dirty D" data warnings, and endless snark, it’s everything you’ve come to expect from HR’s most dangerous podcast.

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

Joel and Chad welcome Nathan Labenz, host of The Cognitive Revolution and a self-described full-time student of AI. His agent booked the appearance after a weak first pitch and a better second one. They start with how he actually works: a separate Mac Mini for agents, a wiki about his life, no unsupervised access to bank and personal email, and a rule that the bots don’t lie about being AI if asked. That setup is the hook for the bigger story. Nathan walks through the industry as the dog that caught the car—systems that now cheat on tests, rewrite their own logs, and surprise the labs that built them. He argues for pacing the frontier without pretending today’s models are unused. Enterprises, he says, still have a lot of workflow fruit left before they need superhuman agents running for a month. Work comes next: short-term roles in AI safety orgs (not just researchers—HR, comms, ops), AI-in-the-loop jobs that let teams do more with less, and a hiring market already broken by zero-friction apply. Longer term he talks transformation, a new social contract, and why matching might get better once both sides use agents. China is the other half. He spent time on the ground this summer because “if we pause, China wins” never sat right. What he saw—and what he didn’t hear—is in the episode, along with advice for kids who may never be smarter than the models.

Joel and Maureen are back, slightly singed from RecFest, to argue about whether the industry is a warm community or a room full of under-resourced people begging an AI agent to reinvent the email alert. Also on the menu: LinkedIn cosplaying as TikTok, Meta finally peeling the cameras off the glasses Maureen still will not buy. The job market gets the usual treatment — sturdy headlines, miserable humans, bots applying as nurses for $150 a pop. Then Madonna shows up at 68 in fishnets, and the episode somehow gets weirder. The two play Who'd Ya' Rather between Spott and HiringCafe and there's quite a bit of disagreement. Imagine that? Startups, ghost jobs, ageism, and a bad dad joke. The usual dangerous hour. Chapters 00:00 - Introduction and Episode Overview 00:05 - Introduction to the current job market challenges 02:25 - RecFest Community and Conference Highlights 04:00 - Impact of AI and automation on recruitment processes 04:31 - Perceptions of Conference Attendees: Open and Engaged or Overwhelmed? 08:13 - The Removal of Cameras and Privacy Concerns 10:05 - The rise of new startups in the hiring ecosystem 12:19 - AI Hallucinations and Trust Issues in Technology 15:01 - Challenges faced by Gen Z and Millennials in job applications 17:27 - LinkedIn's New Features and Platform Changes 19:58 - Cultural perceptions of aging and beauty in entertainment 22:32 - Travel Plans and Industry Events 24:27 - Current Economic Indicators and Public Sentiment 25:00 - Madonna's VMAs performance and ageism in media 26:53 - Government Data, Trust, and Economic Confidence 30:09 - The creator economy and opportunities for new entrepreneurs 30:15 - The Impact of Inflation and Job Security on Mental Health 35:04 - The influence of social media and content creation in job search 40:05 - Disruption of traditional hiring models by startups 44:51 - The importance of networking and referrals in employment 49:59 - The future outlook: optimism and challenges in the job market

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

This week on Chad and Cheese, Joel and JT unpack four stories that actually matter if you hire, manage, or look for work. Buckle-up buttercup! Meta just reversed two of its most controversial internal bets: pushing individual contributors back into middle-management seats after the layoffs, and pausing a monitoring program employees believed was training their AI replacements. The hosts dig into what the internal data showed, why “no managers, full surveillance” keeps failing at scale, and what it does to a brand that used to be a résumé flex. Then they hit a Business Insider piece on “LinkedIn lunatics”—the people who post like their career depends on it. JT is in the article. They talk about why the platform now rewards proof of knowledge over old job titles, why companies that police employee posting may have a bigger problem than they think, and where LinkedIn’s real money might be heading next. Who’d You Rather pits two freshly funded plays against each other: Jack and Jill, a conversational-AI recruiter that just raised $40 million, versus Boomerang HR, an alumni-network platform that raised $12.7 million. One host goes big and conversational. The other bets the niche player survives the giants. They close on Bernie Sanders and Mark Takano’s bill to phase the work week from 40 hours to 32 with no pay cut. JT has already run a shorter week. Joel likes the theory and questions whether Slack and after-hours email would let anyone actually unplug. Chapters 00:00 - Introduction and episode overview 04:03 - AI's real threats and opportunities 07:58 - The political landscape of AI regulation 10:08 - The future of AI agents and their impact 12:05 - The evolution of social media and LinkedIn 13:56 - The concept of LinkedIn as a platform for validation 16:10 - The changing nature of employee branding and social media 18:00 - Controversial advertising and brand strategy 20:01 - Upcoming events and travel plans 21:54 - Fantasy football league update 24:03 - Meta's internal policy reversals and lessons 25:57 - The future of work and AI in HR 28:10 - The importance of human oversight in AI systems 29:56 - The potential of AI to monetize individual expertise 31:58 - Who'd you rather? Company comparisons 33:59 - Historical lessons on technology and automation 36:09 - The importance of employee activity on social media 37:58 - The role of AI in recruitment and job seeking 39:55 - The shift from corporate control to individual branding 42:00 - The untapped potential of employee advocacy 43:55 - Legal and ethical considerations in AI and surveillance 46:03 - The coming digital renaissance and new monetization models 48:01 - Predictions for the future of AI and work 50:05 - The impact of new legislation on work hours 52:12 - The benefits of a shorter workweek and flexible work policies 54:03 - The cultural shift towards work-life balance 56:06 - The importance of boundaries and boundaries management 58:03 - Humor and light-hearted moments in the discussion 59:56 - Close

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.

SmarterX founder and CEO Paul Roetzer joins the boys for a chat about how AI is reshaping the workforce in ways most don't suspect. Paul sold his marketing agency in 2021 as AI was already writing at near-human level—then ChatGPT showed up and things went into hyperdrive. Bentley and Gallup’s 2026 numbers say most Americans, especially young ones, don’t trust companies that use AI, while Microsoft, Google, and every CRM already do. Paul talks human-centered adoption, Jobs GPT, Copilot/Gemini/Claude stall-outs, why IT shouldn’t own this, and what IBM, Deloitte, and McKinsey actually sell. He walks through his Co-CEO GPT, a nine-month Anthropic/Claude build, HubSpot Breeze, Monday data agents, “human in the loop” versus a phrase he coins live, the 100-person split that becomes an HR problem, recruiting through a flood of AI applications, liberal-arts hires, and what he tells parents when asked about AI and entry level jobs.