My Wild Ride from Old-School Recruiting to AI-Smarter Outreach

The Mess: Why Old-School Outreach Tanks

Recruiting’s tough, man. Here’s what I kept running into:

• Nobody’s Replying: Candidates get spammed with job offers all day. Good luck standing out.
• Manual Emails Are a Time Suck: Writing personal notes to 200 people? Yeah, no thanks.
• Boring Messages Flop: If it doesn’t click with their experience, they’re not biting.

I’ve lost count of how many awesome candidates ghosted me just ‘cause my email didn’t grab ‘em. AI’s been a game-changer here—it digs into their profiles, whips up something tailored, and keeps it human enough to not feel like a robot wrote it.

How AI’s Saving My Bacon

• Digging Into Profiles

• AI’s like a super-smart intern—it chews through resumes, LinkedIn, even random GitHub stuff, and spits out what makes a candidate tick: skills, gigs, the works.

• Personal Emails (With a Human Touch) - I don’t let AI run the show solo. It drafts, I polish—so it’s personal, not robotic. Check out what we’ve done at my company:

  
  

  
  

Old-School Email: “Hi [First Name], I came across your profile and think you’d be great for a [Job Title] role. Let’s connect!”

AI + Me email: “Hi Jason, I noticed your killer Clojure and ClojureScript skills from LegalSifter. With your AI-driven app experience, you’d crush it as a Software Engineer at Ladder Life—our crew’s tackling big tech challenges to shake up life insurance. Up for a quick chat this week?”

That’s real stuff we’ve sent out. Candidates actually open it, reply, and don’t ghost me. Less ping-pong, more “hell yeah, I’m in.”

And get this: I once spent hours manually trawling LinkedIn for a Stibo candidate — found a gem buried on page 15 of the search after too much clicking. Took me forever. Our AI could’ve sniffed that guy out in, like, five minutes. Insane, right? It’s cut my workload and let me focus on the good part: vibing with candidates instead of drowning in drafts.

Automating the Hustle (With Some Code)

I’ve messed with some Python to make this AI stuff hum. Here’s a quick-and-dirty script I’ve used—it grabs candidate info, uses GPT-4 to write emails, and fires ‘em off with Gmail. Check it:

Stuff I’ve Figured Out

1. Biggest Screw-Up AI Fixes
2. I’ve tanked outreach by missing the fine print—like pitching a senior dev a junior gig. AI’s got my back now, keeping it tight.
3. Tips for Start-ups or Firms
4. If you’re hopping on this AI train:

• Outreach: Automate it, but don’t sleep on it.
• Messages: AI starts, you add value and finish.

Scoring: Let AI rank candidates by skills and human build relationships.

Why It’s a Game-Changer

Personal emails are getting replies—way more than in the old days. It’s a total win.

Wrapping It Up

AI’s shaking up recruiting like crazy — making outreach quicker, sharper, and less “please notice me.” With some NLP tricks and automation, I’m not just spamming cold emails anymore; I’m hitting up the right people with stuff they actually dig. After 20 years in this gig, I’m pumped to see it evolve—and if you’re not jumping in, you’re missing out.

What do you think? Tried AI for recruiting yet? Drop a line in the comments!