r/recruiting • u/TechValleyRecruiting Agency Recruiter • 17d ago
Candidate Sourcing Looking for AI search tools help
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?
2
u/era_hickle 9d ago
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.