DMS Recruiting

The problem

DMS is a two-person firm competing for searches against much larger recruiting firms. The owner’s brief was one line: “I need more leads.”

That meant three things: a website that wins employer inquiries and candidate applications, a steady flow of new companies to call on without anyone spending hours a day on job boards and news, and a way to reach the right person at each company without hurting the reputation of the owner’s own business email.

What changed

• A brand and website that look like the plants DMS recruits for. A full rebrand, a new logo, and a homepage that opens on real footage from the plant floor instead of stock video.
• A site that brings in both sides of the deal. Employers can start a search and sign the agreement online in one step. Candidates can browse open roles and apply with a resume.
• A page for every specialty. Fifteen of them, written in the language plant managers and engineers actually use, so the right searches land on DMS.
• A lead engine that never clocks out. Every day it finds companies showing signs they’re about to hire, finds the right people to contact, and drafts a personal email to each one.
• A review portal anyone can use. The team reads each lead, picks the email and the recipient, and approves it. Nothing goes out without a person saying yes.

Why it pays off

Recruiting firms get paid when they fill roles, and the recruiter who reaches a hiring company first is the one most likely to get the search. DMS now hears about new plants, new contracts, and hard-to-fill openings as they appear, with an introduction already written and waiting for approval. What used to take hours of daily digging is now a few minutes of review, so the owner spends the day talking to companies that need people. That’s where placements come from.

Everything I built

For anyone who wants the full picture, here’s the whole project, built over September and October 2026. Open any section for the details.

The website: 55 pages built to win searches

• A ground-up rebuild that replaced the firm’s old do-it-yourself site builder, moved over with no email downtime.
• Repositioned the firm around Manufacturing, Engineering, Automation, Reliability and Critical Infrastructure, adding specialties like data centers, automation and robotics, semiconductor and battery, aerospace and defense, and pharmaceuticals.
• A new service, Plant Startup & Greenfield Recruiting: staffing a facility before it opens.
• 15 specialty pages and 19 articles for employers and job seekers, each article linked to its specialty.
• A job board with filters and a page for every opening, marked up so Google can show the jobs in its job search.
• A Quick Start page where a new client reviews the agreement, enters the role, and signs online in one step, with no intake call.
• Application forms that accept resumes, with spam protection and a confidentiality note for candidates who are currently employed.
• A full logo system built from the client’s final artwork, and a homepage video cut from their own plant-floor footage, shrunk from 123 MB to 18 MB so it loads fast.
• Sitemap, Google Search Console, social share cards, and employment-agency markup on every page.

The lead engine: new companies to call on, every day

• Runs on its own dedicated computer, every day, with no one touching it.
• Watches four kinds of hiring signals: news about plant openings and expansions, federal government contract awards, plant startup announcements, and the biggest source by far, new job postings for the roles DMS fills, collected daily from job boards and company career sites.
• AI reads every item and keeps only real hiring opportunities in DMS’s specialties, with a plain-English reason for every decision, including the ones it sets aside.
• Filters out the noise automatically: other staffing agencies, duplicates, remote and part-time roles, and companies outside DMS’s industries.
• Ranks the best and newest opportunities first. Openings that have stayed open a long time rank higher, because those are the roles companies struggle to fill.
• Catches it when a contractor is building a plant for someone else, so outreach goes to the company that will actually run it.

Finding the right person at each company

• Identifies the decision-makers: plant managers and operations, HR, and engineering leaders.
• Verifies every email address before it can be used.
• Remembers every lookup, so the client never pays twice for the same one.
• When a contact can’t be found automatically, the company goes to a waiting list with a one-click way for the team to add someone. The system then finds and verifies that person’s email.

Personal emails, drafted by AI, approved by a person

• Drafts a personal first email for each company in the owner’s own voice, plus a LinkedIn message the team sends by hand.
• Every fact in an email has to come from the source, the news story or the job posting. Automatic checks block made-up details and wording that doesn’t fit the firm.
• When the lead is a job posting, the email can mention the actual opening, and the system checks that the job is still open right before sending.
• A person reviews every email before it goes out.

A review portal anyone can use

• Built for people who don’t use much technology: big labeled buttons, plain words, and no training needed. It works on a phone.
• Sign in with a one-time link sent by email. No passwords.
• A step-by-step flow for every company: read why it’s a lead, pick the email, pick who it goes to, check the final email, send. Each finished step gets a green check.
• Shows the exact email the recipient will get, with the owner’s real signature, before anything is sent.
• Every company sits in one clear stage, like Needs review, Approved, Sent, or Replies, with live counts.
• Live teamwork: everyone sees the same data, a plain warning appears if two people act on the same company at once, and every company shows who touched it last.
• Search across companies, cities, job titles, and contacts, one-click reply tracking with notes, and a full history of every action.
• One button downloads everything to Excel.
• Styled to match the DMS website.

Sending that protects the owner's email reputation

• Emails go out from the owner’s real business mailbox with the real signature, so they read like personal email and replies land in the normal inbox.
• Nothing sends until a team member clicks Confirm and send, and every send has a five-minute undo window.
• Emails go out during business hours in each recipient’s own time zone, spaced apart at random intervals instead of in bursts.
• Sends only to verified addresses, slows or pauses itself if bounces or complaints rise, limits how many people at one company are contacted, and holds the rest the moment anyone there replies.
• Opt-outs are permanent, and every email includes the firm’s mailing address and a plain way to opt out.
• Email authentication set up and verified, which also helps the owner’s everyday email reach inboxes.
• Watches for replies, records opt-outs automatically, and alerts the team the moment a prospect responds.

Built to run on its own, safely

• Restarts itself after power cuts and reboots, then checks that everything came back.
• Encrypted off-site backups every night, with a full test restore done to prove they work.
• New versions are tested beside the live system before they’re switched in, with one-step rollback.
• The daily jobs only run on versions that pass more than 860 automated tests.
• Locked down: no open doors into the network, and the portal can only see and do what it needs.
• AI costs are capped every day.

Business development help

• Merged five old spreadsheets into one clean contact list, split into warm and cold contacts and ready to send in batches.
• Wrote warm and cold outreach email templates.
• Reformatted the firm’s services agreement with the new logo and connected it to the Quick Start page.
• A prioritized plan for getting listed with industry associations to build visibility.