Rapid City, SD — April 2026
Spring in the Black Hills means construction is back in full swing. Projects are ramping up,
crews are building out, and contractors are hiring. For skilled trades workers thinking about a
change, this is the window. The only thing standing in the way is a hiring process that has been
broken for a long time, and nobody has done much about it.
Until now.
Rapid City entrepreneur Corinne Perkins has spent 14 years in recruiting, including four years
with a professional staffing firm, and she has watched this problem play out from every angle.
She knows what it looks like when a candidate is a perfect fit and never gets a call back. She
knows what it looks like when an employer hires out of urgency instead of fit and ends up right
back where they started two months later. She has seen both sides of this long enough to know
the system is not working, and she built Plenty of Hires to fix it.
“Staffing agencies helped bridge the gap for a long time,” Perkins said. “But they were not
always affordable for smaller employers, which meant a lot of great candidates were never even
considered for jobs they would have been perfect for. That gap always bothered me.”
Plenty of Hires is a hiring platform built specifically for construction and the trades, and
construction was not a random choice. It is one of the most labor-short industries in the country
right now. Workers are putting in 50 and 60-hour workweeks, and if they are unhappy and want
to find something new, they are expected to go home after an exhausting week and somehow
navigate a job search on top of it. Most do not have the time or the technical skills to keep up
with applications, follow-ups, and resume formatting. They sit in limbo, waiting on jobs they will
never hear back about, while employers on the other side are drowning in applications from
people who are not even close to the right fit.
“Employers in construction are incredibly good at what they do,” Perkins said. “But most of them
are already wearing ten different hats, and hiring often gets squeezed in between running
projects, managing crews, and keeping jobs moving. That usually means hiring becomes
reactive instead of intentional, and both employers and candidates feel the impact of that.”
Perkins spent a year and a half talking directly with candidates and employers across the
industry, not just asking what the process looked like, but asking how it actually felt and what
would need to change to make it better. One worker told her he had put in 27 applications and
only heard back from two of them. The jobs he actually ended up interviewing for were ones he
never even applied to. That story was not unusual. Candidates told her they were exhausted,
overlooked, and stuck. Employers told her they were overwhelmed, pressed for time, and
frustrated with mismatches. Both sides wanted the same thing. A faster, simpler way to find the
right fit.
Plenty of Hires is not a job board, and it is not a staffing agency. There are no job listings to
scroll through, no recruiter taking a cut, and no applying and wondering if anyone saw it.
Instead, candidates complete a one-time job fit assessment that focuses on their actual skills,
certifications, work preferences, and the type of role they are looking for. The system then
matches them automatically to every role they qualify for, now and in the future, across eight
different categories of fit. There is no reapplying, no following up, and no starting over every
time a new opportunity comes along.
The platform supports the full range of roles that keep construction moving, including
carpenters, laborers, foremen, project managers, electricians, plumbers, builders, finishers,
concrete workers, and heavy equipment operators, as well as supporting roles like estimators
and sales staff. It covers full-time W2 positions, 1099 subcontract roles, and project-based work,
reflecting the real ways people build careers in this industry.
When an employer on the platform wants to connect, they reach out through the candidate’s
preferred contact method, whether that is a call, a text, or an email. No black holes. No
wondering if anyone saw it.
Creating a profile is always free for candidates. Workers simply show up as themselves, be
honest with who they are and what they want, and let the right opportunities find them.
The employers on the platform are real construction companies right here in the Black Hills,
actively looking for people who fit their crews. They are not waiting on a stack of resumes. They
are waiting for the right match.
“Candidates build one profile, and they are automatically considered for every job they are a
match for,” Perkins said. “They aren’t chasing listings. They are not filling out the same form
fifteen times. They just take the assessment, and the work finds them.”
For workers who are currently employed but want to quietly explore what else is out there,
Plenty of Hires offers an optional Incognito Mode upgrade. In Incognito Mode, a worker’s profile
and identity stay completely private until they choose to approve the job and connection with the
employer. To ensure their current boss will never know they are looking.
Perkins says this feature came directly from the conversations she had with workers during her
research. Almost every person she talked to said the same thing. They wanted something new
but were too afraid to look while they were still employed, worried about what would happen to
the job they had before they found something better. They were not unwilling to make a move.
They just needed a safe way to do it.
“A lot of people are stuck,” she said. “Not because there isn’t better work out there, but because
looking for it feels too risky. Nobody should have to choose between protecting their job today
and finding something better tomorrow.”
At the heart of all of it is something Perkins believes deeply. When a worker lands somewhere
that actually fits, where they feel respected, where they like the people around them, and where
the work means something to them, everything changes. They show up differently. They stay.
“If people love what they do and who they do it with, life just gets easier,” Perkins said. “That is
what we are trying to make possible.”
The employers on this platform believe that too. That is why they are here.
Plenty of Hires is launching first in the Black Hills during the region’s busiest construction hiring
season, with plans to expand across South Dakota and into other markets as the platform
grows. The company’s long-term goal is to serve more than 112,000 small and mid-sized
construction firms across the region, which means more opportunities in more places for
workers as Plenty of Hires continues to expand.
Plenty of Hires was built with the support of WildFire Labs and Elevate Rapid City, two of the
region’s leading programs investing in local entrepreneurs and homegrown innovation. For
Perkins, that backing means everything.
“This started as just an idea, and this community believed in it before it was anything else,”
Perkins said. “Through the support of WildFire Labs and Elevate Rapid City, and through every
honest conversation I had with workers and employers across the Black Hills, we proved the
problem was real. Now I get to do something about it, right here, for the people who helped me
see it clearly.”
Perkins says the company is already building the next phase of the platform, a retention tool
designed to help employers better understand what keeps their people around and what causes
workers to leave. For workers, that means landing with an employer who is invested in keeping
them, not just hiring them.
“Most hiring platforms stop the minute someone gets a job,” Perkins said. “We want to keep
helping after that, because that is where a hire actually becomes something real.”
Construction and trades workers can create a free profile today at app.plentyofhires.com.
“Whether you have been showing up to job sites for years or are just ready to show up for the
first time, this platform was built for you.”
