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Evergreen Podcasts

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.

The Chad & Cheese Podcast

"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!

Hiring Became Our Edge with Kristen Reilly

Maureen 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.

Ageism in Tech: Dan Lyons on ‘Disrupted,’ Silicon Valley & Toxic Culture

Next 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.

Your Best Hire Already Left w/ Gustavo Serbia

On 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!

The Snapchat & Anthropic Hype Machines

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.

Shredded: LinkedIn, Adzuna, Autodesk, Microsoft, Deel, Oracle, Fika Jobs, & More

Face 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.

Startup Debate: Skills-Based Hiring w/ Maya Huber & Phuong Vu

If 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.

Indeed's AI Bias Machine

Shredded: Stepful, Google, Orbio, iCIMS, NewCore, ZRG, Fortium, & More

Get ready for an explosive episode of The Chad & Cheese Podcast as hosts Joel Cheesman and Chad Sowash welcome Jack McFarland, a 32-year DEA veteran and former Quantico instructor, to HR’s Most Dangerous Podcast. 

In this high-stakes interview, McFarland bridges the gap between federal law enforcement and corporate leadership, sharing gripping stories from his rise through the streets of Philadelphia during the crack epidemic to commanding major cartel investigations and leading elite teams in the Caribbean. 

He breaks down the elite psychology of hand-picking teams, the critical art of vetting human intelligence, and why managing special agents is exactly like coaching high school football. 

From his old-school 1987 application process to a wild, modern-day run in the casting semi-finals for reality TV's The Traitors, Jack blends sharp humor with serious operational wisdom. 

Plus, he pulls back the curtain on federal mandatory retirement at age 57, delivering a raw look at institutional ageism and why agencies are forced to rehire retirees to fix massive staffing shortages. 

Whether you are scaling a company, managing risk, or navigating corporate politics, this wide-ranging conversation delivers actionable leadership principles straight from the front lines.

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction to Jack McFarland

02:59 - Jack's Journey to the DEA

05:54 - The Interview Process for Reality TV

08:59 - The Evolution of the DEA's Brand

11:49 - Managing Diverse Teams in Law Enforcement

19:39 - Career Progression and Leadership Roles

21:02 - Ageism and Mandatory Retirement in Law Enforcement

23:12 - Financial Motivations Behind Hiring Practices

24:31 - Rehired Annuitants: A New Approach to Staffing

26:46 - Transitioning to Civilian Life After Law Enforcement

29:32 - The Importance of Networking in Career Advancement

30:01 - Managing Human Intelligence and Informants

34:47 - Actionable Intelligence and Avoiding Bias in Law Enforcement

Busting Drug Cartels and Climbing Corporate Ladders: DEA Vet Shares Journey

The band is finally back together! This week on HR’s most dangerous podcast, Chad, Mo, and Lieven team up for a wild ride across dystopian corporate tracking, AI bias, and the shifting sands of global recruitment. If you thought the job market couldn’t get any weirder, you’re going to want to hear this. 

Here is a look at what the crew is tackling on this week's show: 

 
Indeed Goes In For The Kill: Indeed’s new "changing landscape" FAQ drops a massive hint about their latest agenda. Chad explains why the platform is trying to squeeze out recruitment agencies entirely. 

 
IBM Tells Boomers to Pack Their Bags: A juicy new lawsuit alleges that IBM used automated hiring tech to block older, laid-off workers from returning. 

 
ChatGPT’s "AI Job Slop": OpenAI launched conversational job searching partnered with Indeed, Upwork, and Appcast. Lieven tests it via VPN with hilarious, glitchy results , while Chad exposes how the platform is already infected with the exact same scam jobs and candidate-harvesting schemes plaguing Google. 

 
Meta's Dystopian Trap: Mark Zuckerberg wants you to think Meta is saving the world with a $115M workforce training academy. In reality, the team connects the dots.

Plus: Stick around to hear about Mo's questionable obsession with a fictional hockey captain , Lieven's take on European pay transparency , and a binary dad joke. 

Are we descending into a corporate tech dystopia, or can we build guardrails before the robots completely take over?

Indeed Goes For The Kill

iCIMS, the talent cloud company, today announced the acquisition of... LISTEN
Big thanks Recruitology for supporting The Shred. Recruitology brings machine learning and AI to virtual job fairs, remember when virtual job fairs were lame? Not anymore, check out how you can leverage candidate matching and programmatic job distribution with a virtual job fair at recruitology.com/employers.

iCIMS Acquires...

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