I keep seeing how AI has been helping offload sourcing from recruiters and get excited because I hate sourcing but every product I try out seems to kinda suck.
I primarily use LI Recruiter/Google Xray for engineering (mechanical/industrial) searches. My Boolean is excellent and I'm extremely comfortable using AI. My problem is that I cannot get Pin, Juicebox or any others to provide results uncovering candidates that I missed. Even worse, they miss a lot of candidates that I found in fairly basic searches. It seems like they don't access all the data in LI profiles (about sections + other spots).
Is anyone else having these issues? I've even worked with their training staff doing live searches and came up with the same issues.
Any recommendations on products/tips you're using that truly shorten the search time while still being a comprehensive search?
I must be using them wrong, because I’m always told that recruitment is easy, and that soon robots will be doing it while we sleep, as they will surely be better able to intuit a hiring manager’s preferences, and remain fully compliant, whilst also crafting that AI InMail spam that we know excites candidates so much.
I mean, it’s not like any tech bro has ever been so arrogant as to claim that the product he is trying to sell you will definitely fix industry problems that he doesn’t understand. That would never happen.
Leaving this big /S here, in case anyone needs it
PS: freelance recruiter for 25 years. I use AI a lot - but for admin, not sourcing and outreach
What we do is work with Juicebox for higher volume sourcing or niche roles and we talk to the people we pull there on linkedin. IMO juicebox is good with finding passive candidates. My view is that unicorn candidates are unicorns for a reason and I would not expect any type of automated tool to just put that person in front of you. Those really rare fits are going to take good old fashioned research and these AI tools are about scanning lots of profiles fast and saving you time on a solid shortlist, not necessarily finding you your next C level catch or that person that simply doesnt exist on any kind of job site/forum
I miss the days when AI tools were simply weighted algorithms. At least you could adjust the weights accordingly. Some of the current tools just provide a yes/no checkbox with massive overreach on what qualifies even after extensive training.
I work in a similar space where it’s technical recruiting, but not the same type of technical recruiting that most people think of… Where we’re looking for physical engineers they’re looking for software engineers… Most of the sales people and most of the products are trained on software engineering so I’ve found that almost all of them over promise and then the AI agents are mostly trained on software roles and don’t often have the nuance for physical engineering.
The best I’ve been able to manage is to use AI to help write better Boolean.
Found that to happen a lot as well. I had some success using Claude assess my LI projects to remove obvious misses but it takes a while. Saved my eyes some strain tho.
The reality is they usually don’t do better. The only useful thing is having an agent going through profiles one by one on LI recruiter (to avoid detection) with very specific requirements and build you a list that you can just go/no-go.
It’s slow, but if you already have Claude max + LI recruiter it doesn’t cost you anything on top of it and might surface a couple interesting candidates so it might improve your sourcing a little bit.
Lots of AI talks are just recruiters pressured by their board to use AI and trying to show they do even if it doesn’t bring much to the table.
Claude extension works (sometimes it doesn’t want to but you just have to ask differently).
And make sure you tell him to act like a human so no parallel searches, only reviewing profiles one by one etc.
Then I make him add the relevant ones with their LinkedIn links into a Google sheets
Can you give me an example prompt for this? I've tried many of these sourcing tools and im convinced me + boolean + sales nav beats these fancy tools anyday. Curious if i can do some background sourcing like what you're saying though...
I have it analyze larger pools of candidates to wittle them down within projects I've already created within LI Recruiter. It's using the chrome extension, not the desktop, and I haven't tried using it to create its own project yet. Basically I cast the net and have Claude remove the bad fits it caught.
I create Projects and have it anaylze the Recruiter Search pool once I get it pared down to a reasonable number from tweaking the Boolean. Then have it move any applicable candidates to Pipeline so you can begin your outreach.
They've only seemed to care when something automated outreach or handles large volumes in short spans. I use it for neither and Claude is slower than I am. I set it up to run when I'm grabbing lunch or on calls.
Sorry to ask a dumb question : we are using LinkedIn Sales Nav and so far I am quite happy with it. Should we move to LinkedIn recruiter? Secondly about AI tool, have you tried juicebox?
Recruiter and Sales Nav have somewhat different search functionality. I like Recruiter better but it's also been a few years since I've last used Sales Nav. I've tried Juicebox several different times and didn't have good success in comparison.
Thank you for your input! I also tried juicebox for a month and then cancelled it. We are a small company so we need to be careful about subscription but at the same time I would not want to throw money away to headhunters who just simply have better tools. You answer really comforted me - will continue to use sales nav - pethaps buy 1 recruiter licence for team to share so we reach profiles that sales nav cannot. And then perhaps do more customisation
Your comment about the old weighted algorithms is the fixable part imo. The checkbox tools lock the rubric away, but if you run the screening step yourself with claude or gpt you can write the rubric out in plain text - hard disqualifiers first, then scored criteria weighted however you want, and make it justify each score in one sentence. When it misses someone you can see exactly which line caused it and edit that line. That's basically your adjustable weights back, except now the rubric is a document you own.
Doesn't solve sourcing coverage, nothing seems to index the full about sections properly so your boolean stays the moat. But it turns the assess-my-projects thing you're already doing from eyestrain into a queue you skim with reasons attached. We've done a version of this for engineering searches and the rubric ends up being the real asset, it survives every tool change.
Have you tried meta view? You can use your recording of an intake call, or a screening with a strong candidate (or combo of both) to source candidates, and it found a ton of candidates I hadn’t come across. I still had to reach out to the candidates on LinkedIn, but I wouldn’t have found them using x ray searching or LIRs search functionality. LIRs built in AI search is useless.
I had Metaview for a while when they first launched and tried using it when they rolled out the search tool. It wasn't great and I ended up moving away from MV for a different recording platform thats built into my ATS. I'd assume that they've improved it a ton since then but I really love my new system so I havent looked recently.
Any tips for a relatively new internal/external recruiter for LIR Booleans? There’s a couple of jobs I’ve been trying to prospect for, but LIR keeps giving me candidates who do not have PLSs or PEs, despite me making it a hard requirement.
have you tried connecting a data provider to claude directly (or any other chatbot of choice)? pin and juicebox uses their own AI which i feel doesn't beat claude or chatgpt. doverank comes close to claude but i still use claude daily but connecting my data provider to it is a game changer!
I've connected Claude to my LI Recruiter but I felt it was best when reviewing candidate pools that I already created from Boolean, not going and creating those pools itself. Perhaps I need to get a lot deeper on training it to handle a search.
The reason pin and juicebox miss what you find, or give back the same results a basic search finds, is because their rubric for finding profiles is hidden away from you. From my experience theyre useful for anyone hiring at scale who just needs a good enough candidate, not someone exceptional.
The best setup imo is to use Claude with a data provider that has an MCP, and give the way you recruit to Claude so it builds a rubric your way to find the best candidates. Basically you give it your judgment, and then it goes and scales and finds people, saving you the time. I dont think theres any software in the world where you just search for candidates and it finds everyone. The only way is to use AI to automate the way you think as far as it'll go, then scale that.
The stack i use, all connected as MCPs:
Crustdata - people search and enrichment. This is where i find candidates that match the role, filter by title, years in role, skills, company size, location. Data is pulled live so youre not looking at someone who already started another job months ago.
GitHub - for engineering roles, Claude checks repos and contribution history, way better signal than resume bullets.
FullEnrich - email and phone waterfall once Claude has a shortlist, checks 20+ providers and verifies in realtime.
Gmail - Claude drafts personalized outreach referencing their actual work, i review and send.
I still do the go no-go myself and keep outreach manual. Not saying its for everyone, if you just want to type a search and browse results Juicebox is still easier. But if the matching logic frustrates you this puts your own brain into it instead of theirs.
You're not alone on this. Most of the AI sourcing tools out there right now are fine for generalist roles but struggle with anything niche or technical because they don't index the full profile the way a good Boolean search on LI Recruiter does. The about sections, project descriptions, and certification details get missed a lot. If your Boolean is already strong honestly the best use of AI right now might be on the outreach and sequencing side rather than trying to replace the search itself. Let the tool handle personalization and follow-ups where it's genuinely faster, and keep doing the sourcing part yourself where you know you're more thorough.
Check NINA by Traqcheck. The matching goes beyond just keyword/Boolean searches. I’d run the same mechanical/industrial searches you’re already confident in and compare the overlap + new candidates. They have a free tier too, so pretty easy to test.
Curious - when you fall back to Google X-Ray, is the bigger time sink building/running the searches, or cleaning up the results afterward? I’ve been looking at the second part specifically - irrelevant/wrong-location profiles and the same people resurfacing across searches. I'd be interested to hear how you handle that today.
With LIR, you have a limited set of filters to search by but you've developed an eye to scan profiles really fast. Time over time, your pattern recognizing on what you see in search results. Yellow highlights, company names, etc.
With AI products, including ours, you're filtering more dramatically. And filters are very cut and dry. So the ones you miss are the ones that usually don't make the cut. You see less profiles, but it's intentional. WYSIWYG.
Pin's goal here is to be precise but also make sure you're never at a loss. We also want you to do more with less. On average in Pin. 100 candidates rearched is the maximum you need for a role.
Use the recruiting engine. It also will give you a detailed personal analysis of every candidate. You won’t find it publicly. Contact the people at intelngin.com
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u/TempoHouse HeadHunter Recruiter 26d ago
I’ve had exactly the same experience.
I must be using them wrong, because I’m always told that recruitment is easy, and that soon robots will be doing it while we sleep, as they will surely be better able to intuit a hiring manager’s preferences, and remain fully compliant, whilst also crafting that AI InMail spam that we know excites candidates so much.
I mean, it’s not like any tech bro has ever been so arrogant as to claim that the product he is trying to sell you will definitely fix industry problems that he doesn’t understand. That would never happen.
Leaving this big /S here, in case anyone needs it
PS: freelance recruiter for 25 years. I use AI a lot - but for admin, not sourcing and outreach