Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Scaling Recruitment in Private Equity with Dina DeMarco of Hueman Private Equity Talent Solutions 5-28-25
Wed, 28 May 2025
In this episode, Dina DeMarco, President of Hueman Private Equity Talent Solutions, joins Scott Becker to share how her team bridges the recruitment gap for PE-backed portfolio companies—scaling hiring from staff to VP level with speed, flexibility, and cost-efficiency.
Chapter 1: What is the focus of Hueman Private Equity Talent Solutions?
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. We're thrilled today to be joined by a brilliant leader. We're joined today by Dina DiMarco. Dina is the president of Human Private Equity Talent Solutions. They've done an incredible job of building a company and building a division that serves private equity-sponsored companies in the middle market and otherwise.
Simply remarkable. Before I get started, I'll just make a quick note that the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast is recently surpassed 7 million downloads on the podcast. We're thrilled with that. We're very thankful to our listeners and our guests for helping us do that. Tina, can you take a moment and tell us a little bit about yourself and about Human Private Equity Talent Solutions?
Yeah, perfect. Well, Scott, thank you so much for spending a few minutes with me today. As you've mentioned, I have been with Human for 15 years, and I have spent the majority of my time at the organization leading large-scale RPO operations, so helping organizations to build high-performing recruitment teams.
About five years ago, I pivoted my role and I have helped to launch and subsequently lead our private equity division. Today within our PE division, we created this division after we realized that there was a gap in the market. Portfolio companies needed help hiring and not just with executives.
Chapter 2: How does Hueman address recruitment challenges in private equity?
There are tons of great executive search firms out there, but when it comes to hiring staff and middle management, what we found was there wasn't necessarily a great solution. So that's how we started this business.
Today, we partner with PE firms to ensure that their portfolio companies have access to scalable, flexible, and affordable recruitment resources so they can help build out their teams quickly without having to rely on an overpriced headhunter or Sometimes they're under-resourced internal HR teams. So that's what we do here in Human PE Talent Solutions.
Myself, as I said, I've been with the organization for 15 years. I am based in Atlantic Beach, Florida. I do a good amount of charitable work. I was previously on the board of our local humane society. So anything with animals, I love. I'm working on becoming a certified bird or wildlife rehabilitation specialist. That'll take a while, but that's the next thing on the docket for me.
So simply amazing. When you look at talent in the work that you do, is it at the middle level, the staff level, the executive level, all of the above? And is it typically with the portfolio company of a private equity funded, sponsored company? Talk to us a little bit about sort of the target and who you closely work with.
Yeah, yeah. So what we found is that lower middle market private equity firms that are investing in the lower middle market often have significant growth plans for their investment. However, those portfolio companies lack the resources and know how to effectively recruit.
So rather than calling in a search firm, a different search firm for every role, Human is designed to be a holistic recruitment solution. So the majority of our partners are PE backed portfolio companies, and we can come in and hire one role up to 100 roles. And that's anything from your staff level positions up to your VP level roles.
And concurrently, we're not only there to fill positions, but we're also there to help these organizations build out their own recruitment functions. So we do something that we call an outsource to insource model, where we actually help companies build a best-in-class recruitment process.
So when they're ready for their next transaction, they have the systems and processes in place to really maximize value.
Dino, let me ask you a question because one of the things I understand from having watched you over the years and what you do is that you've got sort of a compelling pricing structure. Can you take a second and tell us about that? Because everybody's trying to make sure they're doing things efficiently and intelligently and they're not spending more money than they have to.
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Chapter 3: What is the unique pricing structure of Hueman's recruitment services?
You also, as an aside, served as the president of the National Brain Tumor Registry, I think, did amazing work there too. That's on the charitable side. But talk for a second about the pivot into private equity several years back and sort of how that's going and what you've learned and some of the trends you're watching.
Yeah, yeah, great question. So we still have a very large portion of our business that's concentrated in healthcare, but we carved out a nurse staffing company and we actually sold that business to private equity in 2017. And it was during that transaction, we developed a really great relationship with the firm that purchased that organization.
And what happened was they kept coming back to us at Hume and saying, hey, we know you know how to recruit. We've just acquired this company and they need to hire a financial controller, but we don't want to pay 30 percent. Or we've just acquired this company. It's peak season. They need to hire 40 HVAC technicians. Can you help us figure out and do it? how to do it.
And so we had this informal relationship and we were doing that for about 12 months. And then we had a light bulb moment and we said, wait, there is nobody out there that is serving this, this group with a really scalable and affordable recruitment resource. And so that's when I had the opportunity to figure out what this business looks like.
And that's when we decided to formally launch this, this practice. Yeah.
That's amazing. And that is fantastic. And I know that original set of funds is a really highly regarded set of funds that sought you out and worked with you on those things. So that's high credibility as a reference organization and one of the best in the business. What trends are you watching in talent and hiring today? Harder, easier to hire a couple of years ago.
What are some of the trends you're watching?
Yeah, I guess. So it's very interesting right now. So obviously, everybody is watching the economy. Being a talent person, what I'm watching is the labor market. And I like to describe it as cooling but optimistically resilient. So I look at the JOLTS report every month and we're seeing this continued downward trend in job openings.
But what's interesting is the number of hires is remaining relatively stable and the number of quits are remaining relatively stable. So we know that people are confident enough to make job changes, but we also know that employers are trying to hold on to talent. So it tells me that we're in really a strategic phase of hiring where organizations are doing precise hiring.
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Chapter 4: What trends are currently influencing the hiring landscape?
And specifically, they talk about the partnership that they have with Human. And they reference the enterprise value that we've helped to generate through either cost savings or accelerated hiring. So those are two things that I like to brag on.
That's fantastic. And you do a wonderful job of it. Talk for a moment about, Dina, what are you most focused on and excited about the rest of this year and going forward in 2026?
Chapter 5: How does the current labor market affect recruitment strategies?
Yeah. So we know that private equity firms are very good at most things that they do. But what we're seeing is that there is this gap around understanding talent acquisition as a lever. So what I want to do is I really want to push forth this idea of having a talent acquisition playbook.
And so we know there are playbooks for operations, accounting and finance, almost every other facet of the business. But what we don't see is this concept of a talent acquisition playbook. And really, that's what we are in Human PE Talent Solutions. We are your TA playbook. And so I'm focused on really bringing that to our partners and figuring out how we can further develop this concept.
It's something that we're doing organically, but to really have it crystallized is something that I'm really excited about.
That's fantastic. And talk for one moment. You've had this phenomenal career, phenomenal growth as a human. Talk a little bit about sort of what advice you would give to private equity-sponsored companies and private equity funds about building out their talent plan, their talent playbook. What advice would you give to people?
Yeah. So let's see. So first – Don't overlook the middle. And when I say that, I think you can talk to nearly any PE firm and they're going to know really great partners for their C-suite hiring. But when it comes to hiring that financial controller, they're not going to have a go-to resource. They don't know what to do. They don't want to pay corn fairy 33%.
So understand how to address the middle roles and understand how important they are. Build your recruitment resources early in the process. So have a partner in place who can help you scale and who can help you understand what the levers are to pull within a recruitment function. That's a shameless plug for human right there, but I think it's important that people have a good recruitment partner.
And then my final tip would be, and this one's slightly controversial depending on who you ask, is consider decoupling recruitment from HR in its entirety. I think that oftentimes people think that recruitment is just a subset of HR functions. When in reality, recruitment is a strategic lever. It's not just a piece of HR.
So I think it's important to evaluate, is this something that should be decoupled from the HR function and really have a seat at the table?
Thank you. I think that is a brilliant take that HR is one role and a critical, critically important role. Recruiting should be another role and a critical, critical role, particularly as you grow as a company. So, so important that you're getting the right people in and then you're making sure they excel and they thrive and so forth. I just love that thought.
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