The Hiring Room

AI agents are already taking candidate calls, running pre-screens, and digging through old databases to find people recruiters forgot about. Steve Zipparro spent 20+ years on the staffing side before moving into staffing tech, and he's watching this shift happen from the inside. In this episode, Renee and Steve talk through what AI can actually do in recruiting today versus what's still just noise...

Devin Johnson spent 7 years at Amazon at the intersection of employee experience and AI workforce development. Now at Nordstrom, he's watching the same questions play out in retail — and he's got clear opinions about what companies are getting wrong.   This episode covers the roles AI is reshaping first, the growing gap between what schools are teaching and what companies actually need, what a rea...

Becky Norris is the CFO of North Star Aerospace, now a GE Aerospace company. She has spent over two decades in finance, working her way up from senior accountant to divisional CFO across three companies, each one eventually acquired or sold. In this episode, Renee and Becky talk about why people follow Becky from job to job, what actually makes a leader worth trusting, and why she interviews for c...

Ganesh Krishnan has been working in machine learning for over 20 years — at eBay, IBM, and alongside the team that built the transformer model at Google DeepMind. So when he talks about what business owners are getting wrong about AI right now, it's worth slowing down and listening. In this conversation, Ganesh and Renee cover a lot of ground. They start with the big picture: why the velocity of A...

Dr. Adam Link was at Coinbase when it was still under a thousand people. He watched it grow to over five thousand, lived through the IPO, and then walked away on purpose. What followed was three startup exits, backend teams, earn-outs that did not fully pay out, and eventually a fiduciary wealth management firm he built from scratch called Fireweed Capital. In this episode Renee and Adam talk abou...

In this episode of The Hiring Room, Renee sits down with Dr. Chris Johnson, licensed psychologist, executive coach, and author of Leadership Pause , for a conversation that covers what it actually takes to lead well under pressure. Dr. Johnson shares how her background in trauma treatment, addiction, and mindfulness shaped her approach to working with executives, and why she believes the single mo...

What if one of HR’s biggest problems was never really solved? In this episode of The Hiring Room , Renee Beckman sits down with Kasey Devine, Founder of Entravia and former ADP and TriNet leader, to discuss the outdated systems still driving HR outsourcing, payroll, benefits, and PEO evaluations. Kasey shares the real story behind launching a startup, raising investor funding, building an MVP usin...

Adam Dickinson spent more than 15 years as an FBI intelligence analyst making high-stakes decisions based on information, patterns, and risk. Today, he helps professionals navigate career pivots using a different kind of intelligence: intuition. In this episode of The Hiring Room , Renee sits down with Adam to explore the intersection of logic and intuition in career decision-making. They discuss...

Most leaders believe they understand their team. In reality, they are missing critical signals. In this episode, Renee speaks with former enterprise HR leader Pooja Bhatt about the leadership blindspot that impacts hiring, performance, and retention. With 20 years of experience in talent strategy, Pooja explains why managers often rely on assumptions instead of consistent feedback and communicatio...

What does it take to build successful companies, lead high-performing teams, and know when it’s time to move on? In this episode of The Hiring Room , Renee Beckman speaks with David “DJ” Jackson about building two staffing firms, scaling teams, successful exits, and the leadership lessons learned along the way. They discuss management, accountability, hiring mistakes, recruiting changes, AI in sta...

Why do sales teams still struggle even after making hires? In this episode of The Hiring Room , Renee Beckman speaks with Beth Mastre about why hiring is only one part of the equation. They discuss the leadership mistakes that happen after the offer letter is signed, including weak accountability, poor management, unclear expectations, and promoting the wrong people into leadership roles. Beth als...

Most people think personal branding is something you might need someday. But the reality is—you already have one. The question is whether you’re building it intentionally… or leaving it to chance. And for Brad Hughes, that realization wasn’t about posting content for the sake of it, but about creating leverage. In this episode of The Hiring Room , Renee Beckman sits down with Brad Hughes to break...

Most leaders are asking the same question right now: Will AI replace roles like accounting, finance, and even decision-making? In this episode of The Hiring Room, Renee Beckman sits down with Hunter Scott, Partner at StrataCloud, to explore what’s really happening beneath the surface. Hunter shares his experience working inside a venture-backed startup that raised over $100 million to automate acc...

Companies don’t struggle because they lack the business strategy. They struggle because the work never gets executed. In this episode of The Hiring Room , Renee Beckman sits down with Amber Powers, Founder of Powers Peak Consulting , to unpack what happens inside companies when progress slows and initiatives stall. Amber shares what she sees when leadership teams are too deep in the day-to-day, pr...

Hiring should be a process, but most companies aren’t running it like one. In this episode of The Hiring Room , Renee Beckman sits down with Heidi Lancaster, a recruiting leader with over 20 years of experience, to examine what is happening inside hiring today. Heidi has worked inside some of the largest recruiting firms and now operates independently, giving her a perspective across both environm...

AI is transforming the way companies hire. It can scan resumes in seconds, surface stronger candidates, summarize interviews, and create clarity in early-stage screening. The real question is not whether to use AI. It is how to use it responsibly. In this episode of The Hiring Room, Renee Beckman sits down with Sean Griffith, Founder and CEO of Truffle, to discuss how hiring technology can elevate...

The truth about leadership is not found in strategy decks or executive meetings. It is found on the floor. In this episode of The Hiring Room , Renee Beckman speaks with Lynne Ulishney , Director of Human Resources at Trigon America , about what it takes to lead inside complex manufacturing environments. From multi-union facilities to armored car operations to medical device production, Lynne shar...

“Pain is one of my best teachers.” In this episode of The Hiring Room , Renee Beckman sits down with employee benefits advisor Brendan Nicholls of Hub International for a candid conversation about mistakes, growth, and what experience actually teaches you. Brendan shares the early leadership errors that shaped his career. From asking illegal interview questions as a first-time manager to learning...

Hiring conversations have changed — and not necessarily for the better. In this episode of The Hiring Room , Renee Beckman sits down with HR leader and executive coach Nikole Maculan to unpack what is happening inside today’s interview process and why so many candidates leave feeling disconnected from it. Nikole shares her journey from accounting to strategic HR leadership and into executive coach...

Founder led sales works. Until it doesn’t. In this episode of The Hiring Room , Renee Beckman sits down with Susan Wiemeyer, a former enterprise sales leader turned fractional CRO, to explore what changes when companies move from founder driven selling to building a scalable sales organization. Susan draws on decades of experience leading sales teams inside large global companies and explains how...

In this episode of The Hiring Room , executive recruiter Renee Beckman speaks with CFO and entrepreneur Annette Welsh-Kastner about leadership, hiring, and the realities of leaving corporate life to build a consulting business. Annette built her career leading finance and accounting teams in middle market and growth stage companies. As a CFO, she managed large teams, executive stakeholders, and co...

Entrepreneurship is often described as freedom, but the path to it is rarely linear. In this episode of The Hiring Room , host Renee L. Beckman sits down with Heather Winandy to explore career evolution, visibility, and what actually happens when capable people outgrow the roles they were hired into. Heather shares her journey from administrative leadership and project management inside large orga...

Hiring decisions now carry legal, cultural, and operational risk that many companies underestimate. In this episode of The Hiring Room , Renee Beckman speaks with labor and employment attorney Neil Dishman of Jackson Lewis about what has changed for employers heading into 2026. They discuss Illinois’ new AI disclosure laws, interview boundaries, criminal background checks, cannabis testing, and ho...

In this episode of The Hiring Room , host Renee Beckman sits down with Denny DeDecker , Controller at Sollitt Construction, for a candid conversation on how ownership models fundamentally shape leadership behavior, culture, and long-term performance. Denny brings firsthand experience leading inside private equity–backed organizations where growth expectations are aggressive, pressure is constant,...

In this episode of The Hiring Room , host Renee Beckman sits down with Juli Johnson, a seasoned Chief Human Resources and People Officer, for an honest and wide-ranging conversation about culture, confidence, and what it really takes to build strong organizations. Juli shares her non-linear path into HR, including a decade spent outside the function before stepping into people leadership. She expl...