Exploring Agentic AI in Outbound Recruitment: Insights from Source and Recruit’s Journey
Introduction
The landscape of recruitment is undergoing a transformative shift, thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence (AI). For Source and Recruit, adopting agentic AI has been a game-changer, particularly in the outbound recruitment process. As we mark ten months of leveraging this technology, we’re excited to share our progress, key insights, and lessons learned along the way.
GenAI as a Foundation
Our journey began with the adoption of generative AI (GenAI), which now underpins almost every automatable task in our operations. Custom GPTs have streamlined sourcing, recruitment, business development, and marketing, enabling our lean team to achieve exceptional productivity.
Notably, this enhanced efficiency has a silver lining: while AI may displace certain jobs, the productivity gains in sales and business development have the potential to create new roles, balancing out its impact on employment.
GenAI vs. Agentic AI
To understand the role of agentic AI, it’s important to distinguish it from GenAI:
GenAI focuses on optimizing individual tasks.
Agentic AI automates entire workflows.
In early 2024, we launched our outbound recruitment automation service—our first commercial use of agentic AI. This system manages key stages of the outbound recruitment process, including:
Retrieving contact information
Drafting emails aligned with predefined guidelines
Sending emails
With replies managed by human recruiters, this approach achieves remarkable efficiency: outbound campaigns are executed at a fraction of the cost and significantly faster than traditional methods.
More Than Drip Campaigns
While our system may sound similar to traditional drip campaigns, it offers distinct advantages. Traditional ATS-driven campaigns depend on a single user email address, which can quickly lead to domain and email reputation damage.
Our approach is different:
We use multiple domains and over 140 email addresses, ensuring scalability while adhering to Microsoft and Google’s sending guidelines.
This safeguards email ecosystems and ensures a healthy deliverability rate.
Challenges and Lessons Learned
Implementing agentic AI hasn’t been without challenges. It took eight months to identify the right technology partners and establish system reliability.
One of the most significant hurdles? Maintaining healthy email ecosystems. Along the way, we faced a substantial IT and administrative learning curve, resulting in the damage and loss of numerous web domains and email addresses. Organizations looking to adopt similar systems should be prepared for these challenges. For many, outsourcing to a turnkey solution like Source and Recruit may be the most efficient approach.
Applications and Limitations
Agentic AI has proven highly effective in many scenarios, with success dependent on dataset size and quality. The system excels in:
Mid-to-large metro areas
Rural markets for roles open to candidate relocation
However, manual sourcing—enhanced by GenAI—remains the more practical choice for rural roles requiring strictly local talent.
Looking Ahead
Our experience with agentic AI has been overwhelmingly positive. With the right dataset and a compelling employment value proposition, this technology delivers strong candidate pipelines.
Yet, there’s room for growth. Integrating agentic texting and phone screening tools, currently scattered across different vendors, represents the next frontier in seamless automation.
Scaling in 2025
As we look to scale in 2025, Source and Recruit plans to forge new partnerships to access richer talent pool data. This will further enhance our automation capabilities, enabling us to deliver even better outcomes for our clients.
If you’re interested in leveraging this technology for your recruitment or outplacement/right-placement needs, contact us at info@sourceandrecruit.com. We’d be happy to provide an estimate tailored to your specific use case.
Conclusion
Agentic AI is revolutionizing outbound recruitment. While challenges remain, the opportunities for efficiency, scalability, and cost-effectiveness make it an invaluable tool for modern recruitment strategies. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue this exciting journey.
