5 AI Chatbot Tips to Speed Up Quality Sourcing

Setting up a candidate search takes hours of preparation, but AI chatbots can help shortcut the process. To align with your hiring manager on role requirements, tools like ChatGPT and Claude can dig into role research and organize an initial slate of candidates. Expediting these early-stage steps can prevent you from wasting time going after the wrong talent—which means you can make your next great hire faster.Inside, you’ll find AI chatbot prompts and tips to:

• Apply before launching a full candidate search

• Simplify tedious role research

• Organize candidate requirements

• Find a sample pool of candidates for your hiring manager’s review

Sourcing candidates is understandably the least favorite part of a recruiter’s job. Not only does it painstakingly swallow hours of your time, but unclear expectations from hiring managers can lead to weeks wasted on the wrong talent.

Ahead, you’ll find AI chatbot tips you can pick and choose where to incorporate into the early stages of your existing sourcing process (e.g., researching and aligning with the hiring manager). They’ll help narrow down the right candidate criteria before kicking off your search, so you don’t waste time chasing the wrong talent.

AI chatbots aren’t foolproof, but if you experiment over time, they can be a helpful tool when defining “what good looks like” in a candidate profile and moving through tedious sourcing steps faster. With AI chatbots handling some of the administrative work, you’ll also get to the fun stuff sooner: building meaningful relationships with exceptional talent who will drive your organization forward.

A NOTE ABOUT PROMPTING WITH AI CHATBOTS:

The prompts and tips in this guide are suggestions. Best practices vary across AI chatbots (i.e., ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Claude), so we recommend researching prompting techniques based on the tool you use. Following platform-specific guidelines will improve your chances of getting the information you want.

1. Expedite role research

AI chatbots can gather information about a role much faster than if you were to start from scratch. You can use a chatbot to better understand a role you’re unfamiliar with and organize essential information about the role’s market context, including salary ranges, competitive benefits packages, and standard qualifications for similar positions.

If you’re unfamiliar with the industry or role itself: I’m a recruiter who is sourcing candidates for a role I’m not familiar with. The title of the role is [title of role]. Provide an overview of this role, including the business strategy behind it and what specific skills someone in this role should have.

Optional follow up prompt: Is there a trending technology someone in this role should have?

If you have the job description: Please save the following job description: [copy/paste the job description or upload a document]

Optional follow up prompt: I’m a recruiter who is sourcing candidates for this role, and I’m not familiar with it. Based on similar roles, please provide an overview of this role, including the business strategy behind it and what skills someone in this role should have.

2. Get context to intake meeting questions ahead of time

Alternatively, you can use AI chatbots to explore potential candidate criteria based on your intake meeting questions. The chatbot’s answers are for your eyes only to help you understand what the hiring manager may be looking for. By gaining context in advance, you can guide the conversation more strategically and wrap up the meeting with more precise answers. Think of it like a cheat sheet. You’ll be better equipped to offer insights into potential gaps in the candidate profile and identify critical hiring criteria.

Run your own meeting questions through the AI chatbot or use the following three-part question as a starting point. In our experience, this question helps hiring managers narrow down essential role requirements and keep conversations focused.

Intake Meeting Questions

What are the top two to four most important problems this person will solve?

For each problem, please include:

a. What specific skills should they have to succeed?

b. What past experiences would prove they can apply these skills effectively?

Here’s a sample AI chatbot workflow using this Intake Meeting Question. You can adjust the prompt based on your own intake questions and whether you have the job description.

Directions with sample prompts

1. Copy and paste the job description into the AI chatbot or upload a file.

I’m a recruiter hiring for a [title of role] at [name of company]. Here is the job description. Please save this. [Upload or copy/paste the job description].

2. Ask the main part of the Intake Meeting Question.

For each bullet point under [Responsibilities or What You’ll Be Doing] in the job description, can you reframe these as four problems that the candidate will be solving in the role? Please be concise and combine any task or responsibility that is overlapping or repetitive.

3. Enter part “a” of the Intake Meeting Question.

Can you tell me what specific skills the person in this role will need to solve each problem?

4. Enter part “b” of the Intake Meeting Question.

For each set of skills, can you tell me what past experiences would prove they can apply these skills effectively?

3. Organize your conversation with the hiring manager

With permission, record your conversation so you can focus on engaging meaningfully in the discussion rather than taking extensive notes. Upload the call’s transcript to an AI chatbot and ask for a summary of the conversation, key takeaways and other actions, such as highlighting competitor skills, organizing your notes, and identifying common themes. Use the AI chatbot’s notes as additional context when refining your hiring manager’s answers to your intake meeting questions.

Directions with sample prompts

1. Upload the call’s audio file to the AI chatbot or copy and paste the transcript. What you can do will vary by tool and whether you have a paid or unpaid subscription.

Please save the following transcript of a kickoff meeting I had with a hiring manager about their desired criteria for a [insert job title role]. I’m a recruiter, and I will help them find candidates for this role.

2. Give the chatbot specific instructions about what you would like it to do.

Go through the transcript and organize it with headlines and bullet points. Summarize the key decisions in this meeting and any action items.

4. Create an initial slate of candidates faster

Before launching a full search, start with a sample pool of five candidates. You’ll confirm alignment with the hiring manger’s expectations before you do any more work. AI chatbots can save time reviewing resumes or applications but use caution. These tools are partially trained with publicly available information from the internet, which is loaded with varying perspectives and opinions that reflect society’s biases. Existing hiring practices are often biased, and it may show up in your results. Always review the AI’s output to catch biases.

Instead of asking an AI chatbot to rank resumes against one another, have the tool assess individual candidates against the job description or the answers to your intake questions. The breadth of detail in the chatbot’s response will vary from tool to tool.

Directions with sample prompts

1. Upload the job description or answers to your intake meeting questions.

Please save this job description [or these answers to intake meeting questions] for a [job title] role. OR Please save the following criteria for a [job title] role.

2. Upload the candidate’s publicly available profile or resume. You can download a PDF file of their LinkedIn profile, for example, or copy and paste their work history.

Review this candidate and tell me if they are qualified for the role of [job title] based on the [choose one: job description or criteria]. Please tell me why or why they are not qualified.

Need to narrow the scope?

In your initial candidate list, include one candidate who doesn’t match the criteria but could be a potential fit. This allows the hiring manager to separate nice-to-have versus must-have criteria, which will save you time and improve the quality of your full search.

5. Create candidate summaries for your hiring manager

Help the hiring manager review your selection of initial candidates by providing them with a quick summary of each profile. You can include highlights of each candidate’s experience and why they’re considered a good match. If you include a candidate who doesn’t match the criteria fully, let the hiring manager know how you see them fitting into the role.

Directions with sample prompts

If you used the prompt in tip 4, continue prompting in the same conversation that you used to review candidates. Otherwise, upload the candidate’s resume or LinkedIn profile (copy and paste or upload the PDF version from their profile)

Write a summary of [name of candidate]’s qualifications and what makes them a great fit for the role. This summary will be shown to the hiring manager. Please organize the candidate’s strengths in a bullet-form list.

Add the following if you aren’t continuing prompting from tip 4: Here is [name of candidate]’s qualifications: [include the resume or LinkedIn profile].

How SeekOut Spot’s agentic AI technology brings you quality talent in just three days

The tips we’ve laid out help source quality candidates in your day-to-day role, but you’ll need extra help during peak hiring surges or under hiring deadlines when speed is non-negotiable. AI chatbots can only get you get so far.

SeekOut Spot is a service guided by expert recruiters and groundbreaking agentic AI technology—AI’s most advanced capabilities—to deliver qualified, interested candidates in only three days.

What makes Spot different?

• Comprehensive rubric calibration. Your dedicated recruiter uses agentic AI to ensure your rubric is calibrated to your specifications without missing any details.

• Unprecedented matching against thousands of candidates. AI agents aren’t limited to keyword matching like humans; instead, Spot leverages semantic analysis to evaluate the candidate’s full work experience, meaning no one is overlooked.

• Start seeing qualified talent right away. Spot cuts down the traditional sourcing period from 30 days to three to help accelerate your time to hire.

Spot also creates highly personalized outreach messages, screens candidates, and presents a slate of the most qualified talent with evidence showing why they are a match. With Spot taking over tedious and time-consuming sourcing steps, your team can stay focused on the element of recruiting that humans do best: winning over top talent.