Director of Talent

Director of Talent -- Midwest

Confidential retained search conducted exclusively by ETI Professional Search

Location:

Midwest-based (Hybrid)

Travel:
Approx. 40% across the Midwest portfolio and Texas headquarters

Reports to:

Head of Portfolio Operations

ETI Professional Search has been exclusively retained by a Texas-headquartered private equity firm to lead this search. All inquiries, referrals, and applications are handled in confidence by our team.

Most talent leaders spend years asking for a seat at the table; in this role, you start with one. This is a high-impact, hands-on talent leadership seat with a small, operationally focused private equity firm where recruiting strategy, candidate pipelines, and critical hires directly influence portfolio performance.

• Impact you can point to. A lean firm where one talent leader moves the needle across an entire portfolio. No bureaucracy, and no layers between you and the decision maker.
• Growth mode, not deal churn. Given where the market is today, the firm is focused on building up what it owns and strengthening every portfolio company with the right people rather than chasing continuous acquisitions. Your pipelines and your hires are the growth strategy.
• Operators, not spectators. You will work alongside people who have owned, run, and grown real businesses. They respect the craft of hiring because they have lived how hard it is to get right.
• A calling card that opens doors. Recruiting on behalf of a firm with exceptional returns and a reputation for operational excellence makes every candidate conversation easier, and it makes this a career-defining platform.

Our client is a Texas-headquartered private equity firm with a strong portfolio of companies across the Midwest. They are small by design and operational by DNA. Their team knows what it takes to own, run, and grow a business because they have done it themselves. Their returns speak for themselves, and their current focus is squarely on growth: strengthening and scaling the companies they own.

They believe talent is the single greatest lever for value creation, which is why they are hiring a Director of Talent to serve as the north star for talent strategy, execution, and enablement across the Midwest portfolio.

This is a hybrid player-coach role for a talent leader who can set portfolio-wide recruiting strategy while personally sourcing, engaging, screening, and closing priority candidates. You will build proactive pipelines, partner selectively with high-performing vendors, and turn talent acquisition into a competitive advantage across the portfolio.

You will operate as a true partner to portfolio company (portco) HR leaders, enabling them with tools, playbooks, technology, and communication rhythms while setting the standard for what great talent acquisition looks like across the platform.

• Drive value creation through talent. Connect recruiting strategy, critical searches, and process improvements directly to portfolio growth and business performance.
• Own the portfolio talent operating model. Set the standards, cadence, playbooks, scorecards, and communication rhythms that portco leaders use to hire with speed and quality.
• Build and convert priority pipelines. Create always-on candidate flow for executive, leadership, and hard-to-fill roles, and personally source, engage, screen, and help close candidates when needed.
• Manage external partners with discipline. Build a bench of exceptional search firms, RPOs, and staffing partners, negotiate terms, measure outcomes, and decide when to insource versus outsource.
• Enable technology, analytics, and talent intelligence. Evaluate and optimize the talent tech stack, run market mapping and competitive insights, and report on pipeline velocity, quality of hire, referral conversion, vendor ROI, and cost per hire.
• Build durable recruiting channels. Develop employer brand, recruitment marketing, referral programs, and Midwest talent networks that the portfolio can draw on for years.

Support the growth agenda. Partner with firm and portco leadership on organizational design, talent assessments, and hiring plans that support expansion and scaling across the existing portfolio.

• 10+ years of progressive talent acquisition experience, including 3+ years leading talent strategy across multiple business units, sites, or companies. Private equity portfolio, holding company, or multi-brand experience strongly preferred.
• A proven record of building candidate pipelines from scratch and personally filling director-level and above searches. You are a player-coach, not just a program manager.
• Deep sourcing craft like an OG, including Boolean and X-ray search, talent mapping, competitive intelligence, and modern AI-assisted sourcing techniques. AI tools and other abilities to work quickly and efficiently.
• Experience selecting, negotiating with, and managing retained and contingent search firms and RPO…