The Chad & Cheese Podcast

It's our prediction episode. What else could you possibly need to know to push PLAY? We recap 2025 - what we and our friends got right and wrong - and get our crystal ball out for 2026. This year, friends of the show, Jason Putnam, Quincy Valencia, Emi Beredugu and J.T. O'Donnell join the boys - including Lieven - in guessing what's in store for the world of work in the year to come. The usual suspects, like ZipRecruiter, Indeed, iCIMS and others are highlighted, as well as big trends like automation, A.I. and more are discussed. So what are you waiting for? Get a jump on '26 and hit the ground running.

Hyundai is gearing up to employ Boston Dynamics’ robots in factories by 2028 to enhance worker safety. In a surprising twist, ChatGPT autonomously applied for an academic job, showcasing its evolving capabilities. Meanwhile, Accenture is strengthening its AI prowess with the acquisition of Faculty. It's also noted that 19 states will see minimum wage hikes by 2026. Lastly, ZipRecruiter's clever campaign features a fictional band to promote its smart matching technology, while U.S. workers are increasingly prioritizing job stability and upskilling.

Chad & Cheese go full rebel mode with Kim Storin, the marathon-running, transformation-junkie CMO at Zoom, who just unleashed the company's biggest brand campaign ever: "Zoom Ahead." Featuring SNL's Bowen Yang in a hilarious workplace uprising (written and produced by Colin Jost's No Notes agency), the spot is a love letter to frustrated users everywhere—lampooning clunky competitors while reminding the world why people actually love Zoom. Kim dishes on reigniting that pandemic-era passion, pivoting from IT buyers to everyday users, embedding groundbreaking AI into workflows, expanding beyond meetings (hello, contact centers, events, and the fresh Bright Hire acquisition for recruiting), and fighting the short-term "coin-operated" mindset with real long-term brand building. She talks partnering with the C-suite for true ROI, the rise of "human-in-the-loop" over AI slop, empowering employees as brand evangelists, and why trust and customer-centric stories trump CEO monologues every time. Raw, strategic, and packed with insights for anyone in HR tech or marketing—this episode is a masterclass in keeping an iconic brand human in an AI world.

2025 didn’t just shake HR and recruiting. Nope, it yanked the curtain back and lit the place on fire. This year-in-review isn’t about press releases and keynote fluff. It’s about what really went down when the doors were closed: job boards locking down your hiring data like it’s nuclear codes, HR tech rivals apparently confusing “competition” with espionage, private equity strip-mining legacy platforms,and founders playing 4D chess while employees got stuck paying the entry fee. From Indeed trying to own the entire hiring pipeline, to the Rippling vs. Deel spy thriller nobody asked for, to Monster France shutting its doors while exec bonuses stayed warm, to Job.com’s bankruptcy unfolding like reality TV — none of this is theoretical. It all happened. Add AI agents ghosting resumes, Slack messages turning into courtroom exhibits, LinkedIn becoming a credibility minefield, and recruiters caught in the blast radius wondering how the hell this became their job. Welcome to 2025's Wrap-Up Show. HR’s messiest season yet. 🍿

In this eye-opening episode, the boys dive deep into the shadowy world of social media algorithms with AI in HR governance expert Martyn Redstone. With over 20 years in recruitment and a focus on ethical AI in HR, Martyn unpacks a viral experiment by Jane Evans and Cindy Gallop that exposed shocking disparities. Is this intentional discrimination? Not quite—it's the insidious "proxy bias" at play. Martyn breaks it down: LinkedIn's algorithm penalizes topics common among women. This creates a vicious cycle where established voices dominate, and emerging ones—often women's—get buried. LinkedIn denies using gender as a factor, but as Martyn argues, the real issue is between the lines. From content visibility traps to calls for transparency, this discussion reveals how tech perpetuates inequality in professional networking. If you're in HR, tech, or just navigating LinkedIn, you won't want to miss these insights on building a fairer digital future.

The Chad & Cheese Holiday Clip Show (aka: HR’s Greatest Hits of 2025) We cracked open the vault and stitched together the smartest, loudest, and most brutally honest moments from this year’s conversations — because nothing says “holiday cheer” like calling BS on broken hiring. This episode delivers a full snack tray of takes from leaders who actually run hiring at scale: 🍿 Fake applicants, AI fraud, and résumé chaos🍿 Why job boards are quietly losing leverage🍿 How companies are cutting spend and improving quality🍿 The real role of AI 🍿 Why owning your candidate data actually matters🍿 Human vs chatbot: where the line really is🍿 What happens when recruiters stop playing defense From Marriott to Domino’s, SmartRecruiters to healthcare, retail, and enterprise — this is the unfiltered stuff people only say when the mics are hot. Consider this your year-end mixtape of truth bombs, hot takes, and “wait… they actually said that?” moments. 🎄 Press play.🎧 Eat the leftovers.🔥 Start 2026 smarter than your competitors.

As the curtains close on 2025, The Chad & Cheese Podcast delivers one of its most explosive episode of the year: the annual Naughty & Nice Lists. Joined by Maureen “Mo” Clough for a dose of holiday chaos, the crew survives Joel’s recent sidewalk wipeout and a round of bourbon-fueled storytelling before diving into the heroes and villains of the industry. On the Nice List, the trio celebrates a small-business CEO’s grit against crushing tariffs, a major tech platform’s "Domino’s moment" of radical honesty that led to a massive acquisition, and groundbreaking data that finally shatters ageist myths in the workforce. They also toast a legendary founder who caught lightning in a bottle twice and an enterprise giant that finally got serious about modernization through an aggressive string of strategic buys. The festive mood shifts quickly as the team unwraps the Naughty List, beginning with a tech titan’s "inhumane" 3:00 AM layoff strategy and a major industry association’s staggering $11.5M legal defeat that exposed some shocking hypocrisy. The drama intensifies with tales of corporate espionage involving a CEO fleeing to Dubai, a global staffing firm accused of stiffing its own people while taking government handouts, and the infamous "Coldplay-gate"—the viral jumbotron scandal that cost two executives their careers and defined the summer of 2025. From industry-shifting pivots to the year’s most cringeworthy memes, you’ll have to listen to the full countdown to find out which brands and leaders earned a crown and who walked away with a lump of coal.

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.

On the Chad & Cheese Podcast, hosts Joel Cheesman and Chad Sowash welcomed Alexis Meschi, the pasta-making, client-charming co-founder of Ora Marketing — not Aura, because apparently, we’re not glowing with ethereal vibes, but slinging strategic social media for recruiters and staffing agencies. Hailing from California’s Bay Area, Alexis, a former school teacher with three young adult daughters (who occasionally crave Taco Bell over gourmet Italian), dished on her “done-for-you” marketing agency that crafts LinkedIn-centric content like videos, posts, and articles to help recruiters snag clients without breaking a sweat. She’s all about keeping it real on LinkedIn, the recruiter’s digital watercooler, while side-eyeing TikTok as a brain-corrupting time vortex—sorry, no dance videos here! Alexis tackled the AI hype, warning against tools that promise the moon but deliver digital lint, offering a five-point checklist to dodge the fluff: ensure the tool solves a real problem (not just shiny candy), fits your workflow without turning it into a circus, provides actual human support (not just a dusty FAQ), shows clear 30-day results (numbers, not warm fuzzies), and boosts human connection, because nobody wants to recruit via chatbot therapy. With a nod to society’s WALL-E-esque obsession with instant gratification, she insisted humans still crave real connection—unless you’re in the U.S., where Uber Eats and Instacart are apparently our love language. Catch Alexis on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexis-albright-meschi-8b10a2243/), where she’s serving up marketing wisdom with a side of wit, and skip the TikTok scroll to keep your brain uncorrupted.

This week, the gang kicks things off with LinkedIn’s shiny new 100-million-strong verification army, because nothing says “I’m a real human” like flashing a blue badge that apparently gets you 60% more profile views and 50% more love on posts (fake LinkedIn influencers are sweating bullets right now). Then the trio dissects Findem’s mysterious acquisition, wondering if it's a path to riches for job boards or a one-way ticket to obselescence for the agent phenomenon. Walmart sneaks in as the dark-horse employment hero, proving even the retail behemoth can out-innovate and outsmart the market while competitors are still trying to get their own employee engagement strategies from hallucinating. Additional fireworks come when Chad, J.T. and Joel tackle AI-generated content—specifically OpenAI’s Sora. Joel wonders if we’re about to drown in perfectly polished, soulless videos, JT argues creators can finally clone themselves (hello, 48-hour workdays!), and Chad just wants to know who’s actually going to pay for all this sci-fi wizardry instead of, you know, real revenue. And, naturally, it wouldn’t be Chad and Cheese without Chad recounting his house-selling saga like it’s a Greek tragedy and Joel dropping holiday nostalgia bombs that somehow make like worth living again. Too much? Chapters 00:00 - Introduction and Podcast Overview 02:01 - The Impact of AI on Creativity and Content Creation 05:00 - Personal Updates and Life Changes 07:56 - Nostalgia and Tribute to John Candy 10:59 - Women in Corporate America: Challenges and Changes 14:01 - Engagement and Feedback in the Corporate World 16:06 - The Concept of 'Enshitification' in Platforms 21:07 - Recent Layoffs and Corporate Decisions 22:39 - The Impact of Layoffs and Economic Trends 24:26 - LinkedIn's Verification Program and Its Implications 29:01 - Findem's Acquisition of Getro and Job Market Dynamics 34:11 - Walmart's Transformation and Employee Investment 40:24 - NFL Talent Management and Corporate Parallels