The Chad & Cheese Podcast Stepstone Spins & Kombo Wins
Feb 27, 2026
They unpack StepStone's 'record applications' spin amid rising job desperation. They rant about AI agents harassing people and the need for human review. They debate AI in hiring, from hallucinations to frontline platforms like Kombo and Humand. They spar over claims that AI can modernize COBOL and what that means for legacy vendors and layoffs.
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Episode notes
Check Jobs Per Application Not Just Volume
- Don't celebrate raw application volume without checking jobs-to-applicant ratios and market context.
- Emi Beredugo warns StepStone's 'record applications' spin ignores rising unemployment and lazy-apply features inflating counts.
Traffic Spikes Can Be Macro Noise
- Public company PR often frames increased candidate traffic as product success when macro unemployment is the real driver.
- J.T. O'Donnell and Chad call StepStone's messaging tone-deaf amid Germany's 12-year high unemployment.
Always Have A Human Final Reviewer For AI
- Always keep humans in the loop when deploying AI that influences reputations or decisions.
- Emi Beredugo cites an AI agent that fabricated defamatory Reddit posts, stressing human review to catch hallucinations.