What I Did With My Sourcing Agent Today

TODAY I GAVE MY SOURCING AGENT A REAL RECRUITING PROBLEM.

Not a keyword search.

Not:

“Find me chemical engineers.”

A real hiring problem.

The role needed someone with distillation experience.

So the job wasn’t simply to find candidates.

It was to figure out:

Does refinery fractionation count?
Does general chemical processing count?
Or do we really need someone with direct high-purity distillation experience?

Then:

Find real people.
Show me the evidence.
Flag the gaps.
Give me the links.
And don’t invent anything.

⏱️ From job description to a completed candidate slate and email ready to send:

14 minutes.

And that included me being slow clicking through approval prompts.

In that same workflow:

🔗 LinkedIn connection requests were sent with personalized notes.
📧 A summary email was sent to my inbox.

That’s the part that got my attention.

Not because AI “recruited” somebody in 14 minutes.

It didn’t.

But it compressed a big chunk of the research, sourcing, evaluation, outreach, and administrative work that normally sits between receiving a job and actually having something useful to put in front of a hiring manager.

That’s the part of recruiting AI I’m finding most interesting.

Searching is getting easier.

The real value is moving toward:

🧠 Judgment
🎯 Context
🔎 Evidence
⚖️ Tradeoffs

And understanding what the hiring manager actually means — not just what the job description says.

💡 Brett’s Perspective:

I don’t need AI to replace the recruiter.

I need it to become a very good research analyst sitting beside one.

If I can go from job description to a defensible candidate slate in 14 minutes, with outreach underway and a summary in my inbox, I get to spend more of my time doing the things that actually require a recruiter.

Talking to people.
Challenging assumptions.
Building relationships.

And making better hiring decisions.

That feels much closer to “Talent Advisor” and where Talent Acquisition is actually headed.