The Hiring Room

Renee L Beckman
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The Hiring Room is where leaders pull back the curtain on how they build and lead teams. Executive recruiter and host Renee Beckman sits down with executives, founders, and hiring managers to unpack their career path, leadership style, hiring philosophy, and the teams they’ve built. Along the way, Renee adds her recruiter’s take and SearchOS™ framework so you get practical insight for your own hiring and leadership.

  1. Sep 22

    He Left after 16 years at Levy Restaurants for One Test with Erich Kurschat

    Erich Kurschat spent 16 years in corporate HR at Levy Restaurants before he left to build a business around DISC assessments. In this episode Erich and Renee talk about what DISC measures, why it was never built to be a hiring tool, and how it's meant to be used instead: helping leaders understand their people and communicate with them better. They also get into how introversion and extroversion get misread in interviews, a small language shift from Renee's counseling program that changes how people respond when you're trying to support them, and where AI is helping, and where it's hurting, hiring right now.   In this episode: ●       Why Erich walked away from a stable 16-year career at Levy Restaurants to build a business around DISC ●       The difference between an assessment that is validated for hiring and one that is not ●       How candidates can (and do) manipulate personality assessments ●       The legal exposure companies take on when hiring decisions lean on personality data ●       The four DISC styles, explained plainly: D, I, S, C ●       DISC's surprising origin story, and its connection to the lie detector test and Wonder Woman ●       The Platinum Rule, and why it beats the Golden Rule at work ●       A simple language shift that changes how people respond when you're trying to support them ●       What introvert and extrovert actually mean, and why the popular definition misses the point ●       How AI is showing up in hiring right now, for better and for worse ●       Why Erich built the HR Hot Seat community, now 4,600 members across 15 chapters About the Host Renee Beckman is the Founder of MSeed, where she partners with growth-stage and mid-market companies to build disciplined, repeatable hiring systems. With over two decades in executive search and talent strategy, Renee has interviewed thousands of professionals and built leadership teams across industries. Through her SearchOS methodology, she helps organizations reduce costly hiring mistakes and create structured hiring ecosystems that drive long-term performance. Learn more at: www.mseedinc.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/renee-beckman/

  2. Sep 9

    The One Trait Nobody Hires For with Elizabeth Newhart

    Elizabeth Newhart has worked in talent acquisition, executive coaching, and HR leadership, a combination Renee says she almost never sees in one person. In this episode of The Hiring Room, Elizabeth and Renee talk about coachability: what it looks like, how to spot it in an interview when you don't have the luxury of watching someone's pattern of behavior over time, and why it's the trait clients almost never ask for by name even though it predicts so much of whether a hire actually works out. They also get into whether hiring managers are prepared to interview at all, given how rarely most of them actually do it. From there the conversation moves into AI: the self-interview video links now being sent to candidates, why passive candidates will not tolerate them, and why the HR community is largely skeptical of letting AI run the interview process. Elizabeth and Renee also get into leadership development, what it takes to build a real culture of accountability, and the "position agreement" Renee used for years to put expectations in writing from the first interview forward. Elizabeth also shares her path from HR generalist to executive coach, the common thread she sees across her coaching clients, and why the pull between what someone wants and what they think they're allowed to want shows up in almost every coaching engagement. About the HostRenee Beckman is the Founder of MSeed, where she partners with growth-stage and mid-market companies to build disciplined, repeatable hiring systems. With over two decades in executive search and talent strategy, Renee has interviewed thousands of professionals and built leadership teams across industries. Through her SearchOS methodology, she helps organizations reduce costly hiring mistakes and create structured hiring ecosystems that drive long-term performance. www.mseedinc.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/renee-beckman/

  3. Aug 3

    Why Recruiting For Someone Else Is Never As Easy As It Looks with Anita Knotts

    Anita Knotts spent almost three decades on the sales side of wealth management before she left to build Lotus Women's Institute, a firm that recruits, coaches, and develops women and underrepresented professionals coming into financial services. In this conversation with Renee, she talks about the difference between recruiting for a firm and recruiting for your own team, and how often a client's stated hiring criteria turns out to be completely wrong once you dig in. The conversation moves through why Anita walked away from a stable career to start her own business, the years she spent journaling and paying attention to what kind of work pulled at her before she made the jump, and the emotional weight so many people carry around money without ever naming it. She talks candidly about draining her 401k at 29 to move across the country, what she'd tell someone doing that today, and why she still doesn't fully regret it. Anita and Renee also get into leadership. Anita built and ran a team inside a mid-size wealth management division, and she shares what it actually takes to onboard someone well, the interview process failure that nearly cost her a strong hire, and the leadership lesson she comes back to most: find out what motivates a person before you try to manage them. They also talk about why so many people get pushed into leadership roles nobody actually asked if they wanted. Later in the episode, Anita lays out a statistic most of the industry isn't paying attention to: women are expected to control 34 trillion dollars in private wealth by 2030. She connects that number to the financial literacy gap in this country, the lack of women and people of color in the advisor population, and why she built her business around getting more of them into the room.   About the HostRenee Beckman is the Founder of MSeed, where she partners with growth-stage and mid-market companies to build disciplined, repeatable hiring systems. With over two decades in executive search and talent strategy, Renee has interviewed thousands of professionals and built leadership teams across industries. Through her SearchOS methodology, she helps organizations reduce costly hiring mistakes and create structured hiring ecosystems that drive long-term performance. Learn more at: www.mseedinc.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/renee-beckman/

  4. Jul 22

    Your Hiring Process Might Be IIegal with Cody Bengtson

    Renee Beckman sits down with HR consultant Cody Bengtson to unpack the compliance mistakes companies don't even know they're making, from illegal interview questions to job descriptions that trigger six-figure settlements. From there they get into how AI is reshaping recruiting, interviewing, and performance reviews, and what that means for the career ladder over the next decade. They also dig into a real case of a candidate whose maternity leave was miscategorized and stripped of PTO, why smaller companies might actually be the safer bet in an AI-heavy hiring market, the six types of power every manager should know, and why benefits communication matters more than people think when it comes to retention. Whether you're building a hiring process, managing a team, or just trying to figure out where AI actually fits into HR right now, this episode has something to take with you. About the Host Renee Beckman is the Founder of MSeed, where she partners with growth-stage and mid-market companies to build disciplined, repeatable hiring systems. With over two decades in executive search and talent strategy, Renee has interviewed thousands of professionals and built leadership teams across industries. Through her SearchOS methodology, she helps organizations reduce costly hiring mistakes and create structured hiring ecosystems that drive long-term performance. Learn more at: www.mseedinc.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/renee-beckman/

  5. Jul 9

    AI Agents are Already Recruiting- Are you Ready for It? with Steve Zipparro

    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, why staffing hasn't changed much in decades until now, the token and credit costs behind these AI agents, and why the human side of recruiting still wins, especially in executive search where trust and relationships carry the deal. They also get into training recruiters, hiring internally, tripling sales during the 2008-2009 recession, and how LinkedIn changed cold outreach for good. About the Host Renee Beckman is the Founder of MSeed, where she partners with growth-stage and mid-market companies to build disciplined, repeatable hiring systems. With over two decades in executive search and talent strategy, Renee has interviewed thousands of professionals and built leadership teams across industries. Through her SearchOS methodology, she helps organizations reduce costly hiring mistakes and create structured hiring ecosystems that drive long-term performance. Learn more at: www.mseedinc.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/renee-beckman/

  6. Jul 1

    AI Isn't Taking Your Job. It's Exposing Whether You Can Think with Devin Johnson

    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 real job search strategy looks like right now, and why the fear-based narrative around AI unemployment is making things worse. Devin is optimistic about the future of work — but clear-eyed about the mistakes being made on the way there.   Topics include: AI and future hiring, critical thinking as a workforce skill, early career talent gaps, retail high-volume hiring, candidate experience, job seeker strategy, small business AI adoption, data center environmental impact, and the need for federal guardrails on AI. ABOUT THE HOST  Renee Beckman is the Founder of MSeed, where she partners with growth-stage and mid-market companies to build disciplined, repeatable hiring systems.   With over two decades in executive search and talent strategy, Renee has interviewed thousands of professionals and built leadership teams across industries. Through her SearchOS methodology, she helps organizations reduce costly hiring mistakes and create structured hiring ecosystems that drive long-term performance.   Learn more at: www.mseedinc.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/renee-beckman/

  7. Jun 24

    Why People Follow This CFO From Company to Company with Becky Norris

    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 culture fit over skill set every time. They also dig into the differences between private equity ownership models, what changes when a company gets absorbed by a corporation the size of GE, and whether AI is really replacing jobs or just getting blamed for layoffs that are really about cost cutting. If you hire people, lead a team, or are trying to figure out what kind of leader you want to be, this conversation is full of real, unscripted advice from someone who has lived it. About the HostRenee Beckman is the Founder of MSeed, where she partners with growth-stage and mid-market companies to build disciplined, repeatable hiring systems. With over two decades in executive search and talent strategy, Renee has interviewed thousands of professionals and built leadership teams across industries. Through her SearchOS methodology, she helps organizations reduce costly hiring mistakes and create structured hiring ecosystems that drive long-term performance. Learn more at: www.mseedinc.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/renee-beckman/

  8. Jun 9

    Why Business Owners Are Underestimating AI's Impact & What It Means for Hiring with Ganesh Krishnan

    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 AI is closer in scale to the invention of computers than any previous tech wave — and why most leaders aren't taking that seriously enough. From there they get practical. Ganesh walks through what he does when he interviews candidates for his 28-person team: he opens up ChatGPT with them in the room and watches how they think, not what the tool spits back. He explains what separates the people who are going to thrive from the people who are going to get left behind — and it's not what most people expect. They also dig into hallucination: why it's still the central unsolved problem with LLMs, why it matters so much for companies trying to use AI in finance or operations, and what Ganesh's team is building with Hal0 to try to address it. The conversation moves into bigger territory from there: who controls the major AI models, what Google's actual incentives are versus Alibaba's, and whether the career ladder as we know it survives the next five years. Honest, direct, and full of things you haven't heard on the standard AI podcast circuit. About the HostRenee Beckman is the Founder of MSeed, where she partners with growth-stage and mid-market companies to build disciplined, repeatable hiring systems. With over two decades in executive search and talent strategy, Renee has interviewed thousands of professionals and built leadership teams across industries. Through her SearchOS methodology, she helps organizations reduce costly hiring mistakes and create structured hiring ecosystems that drive long-term performance. Learn more at: Website: https://www.mseedinc.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/renee-beckman/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MSeed-Inc

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About

The Hiring Room is where leaders pull back the curtain on how they build and lead teams. Executive recruiter and host Renee Beckman sits down with executives, founders, and hiring managers to unpack their career path, leadership style, hiring philosophy, and the teams they’ve built. Along the way, Renee adds her recruiter’s take and SearchOS™ framework so you get practical insight for your own hiring and leadership.

Information

  • Creator
    Renee L Beckman
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    33
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Renee L Beckman