Built on Relationships

DLM Consulting Group is a boutique executive search firm placing go-to-market talent at growth-stage companies across the UK, Ireland and the US. Senior-led, deliberately small, and measured by what our hires go on to build.

Dean Mitchell Founder

20 years recruiting sales leaders and GTM teams for technology and industrial companies.

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Why I started DLM

I’ve spent 20 years in recruitment, including 17 in specialist GTM search, placing sales professionals and leaders into technology and industrial companies. I’ve also worked within a large generalist agency and internal talent acquisition.

I’ve seen the same pattern again and again: the right hire can radically change the trajectory of a growing business and the career of the person joining it. The wrong hire costs time, revenue and momentum.

The placements I’m proudest of became long-term relationships. Leaders I placed came back to build their teams, took me with them to new businesses or trusted me with their own career moves, sometimes through to CRO. Others returned for advice on job searches, career decisions and navigating changing markets, from the financial crisis and COVID to, more recently, AI.

That’s what good recruitment should create: relationships that last. It comes from understanding the business, the person and the commercial problem, not just the job spec.

I founded DLM Consulting Group in 2025 to work that way by design: a boutique consultancy helping growth-stage companies find specialist GTM talent, and ambitious professionals navigate what comes next.

Human first, AI second

People don’t fit neatly into an algorithm. The best hires often only loosely match the job spec on paper, and I’ve watched that human X factor win out in search after search. That’s why I believe AI should handle the admin in recruitment, while the judgement stays human.

I’m a living example of that X factor. My career has taken me through book publishing, real estate and recruitment, but the common thread has always been direct sales, leadership and a fascination with what makes people tick. No surprise, perhaps, that my Myers-Briggs type is ENFJ (Assertive).

I believe in continuing to learn, staying open-minded and occasionally doing things I’m spectacularly unqualified for. Along the way I’ve taken risks, changed direction, hit low points and got back up, more than once. My two forearm tattoos keep me honest: ‘Fortune Favours the Bold’ and ‘Know Thyself’.

That’s how, after moving to Canada, I took up baseball having never played and ended up coaching a team for three seasons. It’s also how, as a teenager with zero evidence of musical talent, I learned to play the saxophone. These days it’s the gym five times a week, which is either discipline or stubbornness, depending on the day.

I’m also an unapologetic nerd: board games, role-playing games like D&D, and far too many dice. And at home there’s the DLM Consulting unofficial well-being team: my partner Steve and our Weimaraners, Juniper and Jia.

Not a neat fit for any algorithm. Much like the best people I’ve placed.

Juniper and Jia, two Weimaraners, sitting on the grass by a lake — Juniper and Jia, DLM Consulting's unofficial well-being team.

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