Distributed teams shouldn't mean broken hiring.

Helping TA leaders, CTOs and senior engineers navigate global coordination.

The Reality

When teams span continents, more recruiters won't fix it.

Scaling a distributed organisation isn't a headcount problem. It's an information problem: how market knowledge, candidate signal and decisions move across time zones.

I solve it with systems. AI tooling, automation and repeatable frameworks that turn global coordination from a "tax" on your growth into a sustainable competitive advantage.

01Writing

Read My Writing

Real scenarios from distributed hiring at scale

02Speaking

Speaking Topics

Pragmatic frameworks for building distributed teams at scale.

AI & Market Knowledge

How to become an instant market expert in regions you've never recruited in through rapid AI discovery.

45 min talk | Operations

Distributed Capacity

The mathematical models behind hitting hiring targets when your interviewers span multiple continents.

45 min talk | Strategy

Time Zone Choreography

Moving beyond timezone stalling patterns to create interview cadences that work across 8+ hour spreads.

45 min talk | Operations

Context Compression

How to maintain hiring quality when information asymmetry is your biggest constraint.

30 min talk | Systems

Building for Global Coordination

Technical frameworks and organizational structures that accommodate time zones, context gaps, and international business constraints.

60 min talk | Systems
Dominic Smith - Distributed Hiring Expert
03Background

Built at scale. Teaching the playbook.

I build hiring systems at DigitalOcean, where I hire for distributed, niche and leadership roles globally.

Alongside the searches, I build AI tooling, workflows, automation and enablement that turn hiring craft into repeatable systems. The frameworks I share here come straight from that work.

The mentality is 10x, not 10%. That AI work has cut my time from job description to outreach by up to 90% and turned weeks of market research into days, with quality going up, not down.

My Profile
04Tools

Free Tools

01

Requisition Intelligence

Paste a job description, get a full sourcing toolkit back.

More

The problem it solves

The gap between the JD landing in your inbox and you actually sourcing is hours of reading, decoding requirements you half understand, and second-guessing who is really a fit. This closes it in one paste.

What one paste gives you

  • A plain-English requisition breakdown, plus the hidden requirements and red flags
  • Ready-to-send clarification questions for the hiring manager
  • A realistic, sourceable candidate persona, not a unicorn
  • LinkedIn Boolean strings, a primary and a broadened variant
  • Free sourcing channels beyond LinkedIn you can open in a browser
  • A character-counted InMail and follow-up, and a LinkedIn post
  • ATS screening questions tuned to gate to roughly the top 15%

02

Candidate Shortlister

Point it at a folder of CVs and a JD, get back a ranked shortlist you can send.

More

The problem it solves

You pull a batch of profiles and then read every one against the JD to decide who to put forward. It is slow, it is inconsistent, and your reasoning, which requirements matter and which can flex, rarely reaches the hiring manager.

What you get

  • A shareable shortlist message for Slack, Teams or email, with a short rationale per candidate
  • A scored table of everyone considered, as an audit trail
  • An honest "nobody clears the bar" verdict when that is the truth, no forced shortlists
05Contact

Let's Work Together

I start with discovery. We spend time understanding where your distributed hiring is actually breaking—timezone coordination cost, context gaps, information asymmetry. Then I work with your team on frameworks that fix your specific constraints, not generic best practices.

When you book me to speak, your audience walks away with concrete frameworks they can implement immediately. I'm not there to inspire—I'm there to give them the mental models and structures for distributed hiring that actually work.

Let's build better systems.