I had the idea to sell automated hiring pipelines to recruitment agencies and small medium-sized businesses, but after some chat cheapy teeing. I realized most of them already have ATS and that kind of threw me off since you sold these systems multiple times. What do you think?
You can totally do this with an ATS, applicant tracking systems. Actually, what you're doing is rebuilding an applicant tracking system, but yours is way better. Many recruitment companies use ATS like recruit CRM, which is pretty big, and they build custom ones. Monday.com has a bunch of presets for recruitment, but your value isn't necessarily replacing the ATS; it's coming into the ATS. By reading the docs, you realize there are automatic stage changes upon all these things, and you can build logic that automates some of the more mundane things they do between stage changes, like sending onboarding emails, congratulations emails, and automatically emailing clients when people are placed in a stage. Creating the pipeline in the first place is key. A lot of people have applicant tracking systems, but their pipelines—the stages they assign—suck and aren't very logical.
I wouldn’t sell the whole system as one monolithic offer. Instead, I’d break it down into its components—pipeline (a CRM), lead qualifier, scheduler, and a suite of tools like job post writers and CV screeners. I’d create multiple tiers and packages: for example, a basic package with just the CRM, another with CRM + qualifier, another with CRM + qualifier + scheduler, a fourth with just the tools suite, and a full package with all four. Then I’d test each package as a separate offer to see which resonates most. The most‑popular package gives natural upsell paths—you can sell the basic package, then add the qualifier, then the scheduler, etc., or bundle them together. I’d also consider adding a second niche, such as HR departments, alongside recruitment agencies, and run two variants per package (giving 16 tests total). To test efficiently, I’d send about 800 emails a day using roughly 25 mailboxes (costing ~$170/month) plus lead‑scraping infrastructure (~$200/month). In the first month I’d run all 16 tests, drop the underperformers, and scale the winners. This approach lets you validate each piece before committing to the full workflow.
Actually both. To companies: 'Hey, noticed you're hiring for XYZ role — I already have three qualified candidates for that, we work with companies like Netflix and Meta to place top engineers, here they are attached, no cost for the first placement if you like them.' To candidates: 'Hey, we're a recruitment company working with Meta and Netflix looking for high-quality talent, your name came up, would you fill out a brief application?' — that gets their info into your system. Then you sell the candidates to the companies and the companies to the candidates. A bit sneaky when you think about it, but really you're just acting as a market maker between the two sides.
Nice job being almost 18. The delivery process is simple: REACH (get in front via cold email, PPC ads, communities, social media DMs/referrals/events), ACQUIRE (sales call), FULFILL (onboarding call, gain access to the client's account, build the system directly there—handoff is easy), EXPAND (upsell a bigger package later because you now know their business better, can deliver more value, charge more, and take larger jobs). This loop repeats, growing your business.
I recommend not relying on the default “best matches” filter that everyone else uses. Instead, create custom searches using Upwork’s advanced filters and focus heavily on keywords. I include every platform you can think of—N8N, Make.com, Claude, various code models, Notion, Asana, Pipedrive, Monday.com, etc.—and separate them with quotes and the OR operator (e.g., “make.com” OR “n8n”). This gives you a large base of prospects looking for specific platform integrations, which is exactly what an automation specialist offers.
After you’ve built a platform‑based list, move up to a needs‑based approach. Instead of just listing platforms, categorize the need: lead generation, sales, marketing, revenue, ops, fractional work, and so on. This creates a much larger top‑of‑funnel.
Once you have that big list, open about a hundred tabs, skim each prospect quickly (about ten minutes total), and filter out the ones that don’t make sense. You’ll be left with maybe five to ten high‑quality prospects, which you can then apply to individually. So that’s how you do it on Upwork.