Landskill

Project Overview

Landskill is a performance-focused IT consultancy and recruitment firm based in Lisbon, Portugal, with a growing team of approximately 18 people. Founded in 2018, the company initially focused on placing software developers and DevOps engineers for Portuguese tech companies and international firms with Lisbon offices. They operate on JobAdder as their ATS/CRM, having migrated from spreadsheets in 2022, and had built a steady business serving the Lisbon tech ecosystem. By early 2025, they were generating consistent revenue from their core IT placement vertical and had begun exploring expansion into two adjacent markets: fintech recruitment and data engineering staffing, both growing rapidly in Portugal's tech landscape.

The expansion plan exposed two interconnected problems. First, Landskill's website -- a WordPress site built on a theme from ThemeForest, hosted on Hetzner shared hosting -- was designed for a single-vertical agency and did not reflect the breadth of services they were growing into. It loaded slowly, had no dedicated pages for the new verticals, and the candidate application flow was cumbersome enough that their recruiters regularly heard from applicants who gave up halfway through. Second, their internal processes had been adequate for a 10-person team focused on one market but were already straining with the addition of new consultants, new client relationships, and the operational complexity of managing placements across three verticals simultaneously. Landskill needed both a credible digital presence and operational efficiency -- they engaged NodeSparks for the full Digital Operations Package.

The Challenge

NodeSparks conducted Landskill's Health Check in June 2025 and found a company caught between two stages of growth. The website told the story of a small, specialist IT recruiter -- but the team was already operating as a multi-vertical firm and needed their digital presence to match. The site loaded in 7.8 seconds on mobile, Google PageSpeed scored it at 31/100, and the candidate application page had a measured 62% abandonment rate due to a multi-step form built with a poorly configured WPForms instance that required candidates to re-enter information already available in their CV. Internally, consultants across the three verticals were duplicating effort: the same client follow-up sequences were being manually composed in email, placement tracking was split between JobAdder and personal spreadsheets, and the weekly pipeline review meeting relied on a manually compiled Google Slides deck that was consistently out of date.

• Website PageSpeed mobile score of 31/100 with 7.8-second load time. The ThemeForest theme included 9 bundled JavaScript libraries that loaded on every page regardless of whether they were used, and hero images were served as uncompressed PNGs averaging 2.8 MB.
• Candidate application abandonment rate of 62%. The multi-step WPForms application asked for 14 fields across 3 pages, including information already contained in the uploaded CV. On mobile, the progress indicator was invisible and the file upload field failed on Android Chrome in roughly 1 in 4 attempts.
• No dedicated landing pages or service descriptions for the new fintech and data engineering verticals. All three service areas were described in a single paragraph on the "Services" page, providing no SEO value and no clear entry point for prospective clients or candidates in these specialisms.
• Client follow-up and candidate nurture sequences were entirely manual. Each consultant maintained their own email templates and follow-up cadence, resulting in inconsistent communication and an estimated 31% of candidates receiving no follow-up after initial contact.
• Pipeline reporting was a hybrid mess. Placement data lived partially in JobAdder, partially in personal Google Sheets, and partially in email threads. The weekly pipeline review deck took the Operations Manager 5 hours to compile, and by the time it was presented, the data was typically 3-4 days stale.

Landskill had already invested in JobAdder specifically because it promised to centralise their recruitment operations, but the implementation had been minimal -- they were using perhaps 30% of the platform's capabilities. Their previous web agency had quoted 15,000 EUR for a redesign focused purely on aesthetics, with no attention to performance, SEO, or integration with JobAdder. And their one attempt at internal automation -- a Zapier connection between JobAdder and Gmail for candidate notifications -- had been turned off after it sent duplicate emails to three hiring managers in a single morning. What Landskill needed was a partner who could address both the website and the operational challenges as a single, coherent project rather than two disconnected workstreams.

Our Approach

Step 1: Comprehensive Health Check (497 EUR)

• Full website audit using GTmetrix, Screaming Frog, Google Search Console, and Hotjar session recordings to identify both technical performance issues and user experience friction points.
• Process mapping across all three verticals: documented every manual workflow from candidate sourcing through placement, identifying 9 automation candidates and prioritising the top 3 by business impact.
• JobAdder configuration review to assess current utilisation, identify unused features (particularly the candidate portal and automated workflows), and map integration opportunities.
• Competitive digital presence analysis: benchmarked Landskill's website speed, SEO, and content against 5 comparable Portuguese IT recruitment agencies to establish realistic targets.

Step 2: Full Digital Operations Package (2,997 EUR)

• Website performance overhaul: migrated from Hetzner shared hosting to WP Engine managed WordPress, stripped the theme of unused JavaScript libraries, implemented image compression and WebP delivery, and rebuilt the mobile experience.
• Created 6 new dedicated vertical landing pages (2 per specialism: one client-facing, one candidate-facing) with proper on-page SEO, unique meta data, and clear conversion paths tailored to each audience.
• Rebuilt the candidate application flow: replaced the 14-field WPForms setup with a streamlined 5-field Gravity Forms implementation that leverages CV parsing, routes applications directly to the correct vertical team in JobAdder, and provides immediate confirmation.
• Built two core automation workflows using Make.com integrated with JobAdder: (1) automated candidate follow-up sequences triggered by pipeline stage changes, and (2) automated weekly pipeline report generation pulling live data from JobAdder across all three verticals.
• Configured Hotjar for ongoing conversion tracking on the application page and key service pages, providing Landskill with continuous visibility into user behaviour without requiring technical skills to interpret.

Step 3: Growth Retainer (597 EUR/month)

• Monthly website performance and SEO monitoring with proactive optimisation: Core Web Vitals tracking, quarterly Screaming Frog crawls, and content freshness checks on all vertical pages.
• Ongoing automation maintenance and development: monitoring Make.com scenario health, adjusting workflows as JobAdder configurations evolve, and building 1-2 additional automations per quarter.
• Strategic quarterly reviews aligned with Landskill's expansion timeline, ensuring that digital operations evolve in lockstep with business growth into new verticals and geographic markets.

The Solution

• Migration from Hetzner shared hosting to WP Engine managed WordPress with integrated CDN, server-level page caching, and automatic SSL certificate management.
• Theme optimisation: removed 9 unused JavaScript libraries, deferred non-critical scripts, implemented lazy loading, and converted all images to WebP with automated compression via ShortPixel.
• Six new vertical landing pages built with structured content, targeted keywords, and clear conversion funnels: IT Recruitment (client/candidate), Fintech Staffing (client/candidate), Data Engineering Talent (client/candidate).
• Rebuilt candidate application with Gravity Forms: 5-field streamlined flow with CV upload and automated parsing, JobAdder API integration for direct candidate record creation, and mobile-first design with reliable Android file upload.
• Automated candidate follow-up sequences via Make.com + JobAdder: 4-stage nurture flow triggered by pipeline stage changes, with consultant-personalised email templates and configurable timing per vertical.
• Automated weekly pipeline report via Make.com: pulls live data from JobAdder across all three verticals, generates a formatted Google Slides deck with pipeline stage breakdowns, velocity metrics, and week-over-week comparisons.
• Hotjar integration on candidate application page and all 6 vertical landing pages for session recordings, heatmaps, and conversion funnel analysis. Google Analytics 4 configured with custom events for application starts, completions, and CTA clicks.
• Comprehensive on-page SEO implementation: unique meta data for all 29 pages, schema markup for job postings and organisation, internal linking strategy, and Google Search Console optimisation with performance monitoring.

Business and Technical Outcomes

• Google PageSpeed mobile score improved from 31/100 to 82/100; desktop score reached 93/100. Page load time reduced from 7.8 seconds to 3.1 seconds on mobile 4G connections, measured from a Lisbon testing node.
• Candidate application abandonment rate dropped from 62% to 28% -- a 55% relative improvement. Monthly completed applications increased from 34 to 71 within the first 3 months, with the new fintech and data engineering pages contributing 41% of inbound applications.
• Automated candidate follow-up sequences achieved a 93% delivery rate and eliminated the 31% "no follow-up" gap entirely. Average time from application to first consultant response decreased from 27 hours to 3.4 hours.
• Weekly pipeline report generation reduced from 5 hours of manual compilation to 8 minutes of review. Report accuracy improved to 97.2%, and data staleness was eliminated -- the deck now reflects data as of the morning it is generated, not 3-4 days prior.
• Organic search traffic increased 178% over 5 months. The fintech staffing landing page reached page 1 for "fintech recruitment Portugal" within 4 months, and the data engineering page ranks on page 2 for "data engineer staffing Lisbon."
• Consultant time recovered: approximately 19 hours per week across the team, redistributed from manual follow-ups, report compilation, and application processing to direct candidate sourcing and client engagement.
• 4.7x return on investment within 6 months, calculated against increased placement volume (7 additional placements in the new verticals), reduced cost-per-application, and recovered consultant productivity valued at 3,200 EUR/month.

The Impact

For Landskill's day-to-day operations, the combined effect of the website rebuild and process automation was transformative in a way that neither would have been alone. The new website gave Landskill credibility in their new verticals before they had a track record -- prospective fintech clients browsing the dedicated landing pages saw a specialist recruiter with a clear value proposition, not a generalist who mentioned fintech in passing. Meanwhile, the automated follow-up sequences meant that the first candidate experience in the new verticals was just as polished as in their established IT recruitment practice, despite the smaller team covering the new markets. The two workstreams reinforced each other: a better website drove more applications, and the automations ensured those applications were handled promptly and professionally.

Four months after the project completed, the results had exceeded Landskill's initial expectations. The fintech vertical, which had been a speculative expansion when the project began, was generating consistent placements and had already secured two retained search agreements with Lisbon-based fintech startups. The data engineering vertical was developing more slowly, as expected for a niche market, but the landing page was generating qualified inbound leads and the pipeline was building steadily. Internally, the team had adopted the automated workflows completely -- the old spreadsheets were archived, and the weekly pipeline review meetings were transformed from data-compilation sessions into strategic planning discussions based on accurate, real-time data from the auto-generated reports.

The Growth Retainer has positioned Landskill to continue scaling without repeating the operational growing pains that prompted the original engagement. The automation infrastructure is modular and extensible: when Landskill eventually adds a fourth vertical or expands their geographic reach into Porto or other European markets, the website template system, SEO framework, and automation workflows can be replicated and customised without rebuilding from scratch. The operations manager has already mapped out three additional automation candidates for the next two quarters, and the quarterly strategic reviews ensure that NodeSparks is building ahead of demand rather than reacting to it. Landskill is no longer constrained by their digital operations; they are enabled by them.