PRECISION SEO · CASE STUDY
The Industrial Recruiter
How a $7M machine shop turned its skilled-labor bottleneck into a self-sustaining talent pipeline — with structured job listings, no recruiters, and zero ad spend.
406
high-intent job-seeker clicks
133K+
search impressions over 16 months
$0
spent on ads, recruiters, or agencies
100%
organic — surfaced by structure, not paid placement
THE CHALLENGE
The Bottleneck Was Hiring — Not Demand
A $7M machine shop had the work and the capacity to grow. What it didn’t have was people. Skilled machinists, programmers, and operators are scarce — and the usual playbook for finding them (pay-to-post job boards, staffing agencies, recruiter fees) is expensive, slow, and puts a third party between the shop and the candidate.
Every hire carried a recurring cost, and every search started from zero. The shop needed to be found directly by the exact people it wanted to hire — on its own terms, without paying a toll on every placement.
THE STRATEGY
Job-Schema Architecture
Instead of renting visibility on someone else’s job board, we made the shop’s own roles legible to Google — structured so they surface in the dedicated jobs results candidates actually use. Three pillars carried it.
Structured Job Listings
Published every open role as a properly structured job posting Google could read and feature in its dedicated jobs surface — no board fees, no middleman.
A Careers Hub of Its Own
Built the careers ecosystem on the shop’s own domain, so candidates land on the company — not a third-party aggregator that owns the relationship.
Search-Intent Role Targeting
Wrote each posting around how machinists and programmers actually search — role, certification, and locale — to capture high-intent job-seekers at the moment they’re looking.
THE PROOF
133,000 Impressions. 406 Clicks. Zero Spend.
Over 16 months, structured job listings surfaced more than 133,000 times in search and drove 406 high-intent clicks from job-seekers — without a dollar of ad, recruiter, or agency spend. The story isn’t only the reach. It’s the cost of getting it.
Traditional recruiting channel
ongoing $$$
Job-board fees, recruiter retainers, agency placement costs — recurring with every hire
RADX job-schema architecture
$0
Structured listings surfacing organically — no incremental ad or agency spend
RADX didn’t lower the recruiting bill — it removed it. The channel-cost comparison above is illustrative of how the two approaches differ; the 133,000+ impressions, 406 clicks, and $0 spend are this engagement’s actual results.
Figures sourced from Google Search Console, GA4, and client reporting.
HOW IT WORKS
How the Architecture Works
01
Role Mapping
Catalogued every open position and the certifications, skills, and locations real candidates search for.
02
Structured Listing Build
Published each role as a structured job posting Google could read and feature in its dedicated jobs results.
03
Careers Hub Architecture
Built a careers ecosystem on the shop’s own domain so candidates land on the company, not a third-party board.
04
Continuous Optimization
Monitored impressions and clicks, refining titles and structure around how job-seekers actually search.
Traditional Recruiting vs. Job-Schema Architecture
Traditional Recruiting
— Pay-to-post job boards
— Recruiter and staffing-agency fees
— A third party between you and the candidate
— Cost recurs with every hire
— Candidates land on someone else’s site
Why This Matters for Manufacturers
Skilled Labor Is the Real Ceiling
For most shops, growth isn’t capped by demand — it’s capped by who you can hire. Owning recruitment search turns hiring from a bottleneck into a pipeline.
Direct Beats Brokered
When a machinist finds you directly, there’s no agency fee and no third party shaping the relationship. You own the candidate from the first click.
Structured Once, Works Indefinitely
A properly structured careers hub keeps surfacing roles long after it’s built. The cost is front-loaded; the return compounds.
Hiring Is a Search Problem Too
Every engagement starts with a free 10-minute audit. No pitch deck. No pressure — just an honest look at whether your open roles are findable by the people you want to hire, and what it would take to build a pipeline that works without recruiter fees.