We run a live search with you, end to end. Nothing is sent to candidates.
Book a demo (opens in a new tab)One returns a list. The other runs a role. Buying the first when you needed the second is where most disappointment with AI recruiting comes from.
An AI sourcing tool takes a search and returns ranked candidates; an AI recruiter takes a role and runs it from brief through outreach and screening to interview, stopping at human gates. Choose by identifying where roles actually stall: unreachable good candidates means a capacity constraint, where a better search tool makes things worse. Once a system contacts candidates, the evaluation questions shift to brand and spend control.
A tool that finds candidates and a tool that runs a hiring process are sold under the same words, and the gap between them is where most disappointment with AI recruiting comes from. A team whose bottleneck is contacting and screening people buys a better search engine, gets a longer list, and is now further behind than before.
A longer list is not progress if the list was never the constraint.
| AI sourcing tool | AI recruiter | |
|---|---|---|
| The unit of work | A search. You describe a person, it returns ranked candidates. | A role. It runs from brief to interview, stopping at your decisions. |
| Where it ends | A list, usually exported. | A shortlist of people who have been contacted, screened and often interviewed. |
| Who contacts candidates | You, or a sequencing tool you also bought. | The system, under limits and consent rules you set. |
| What it spends | Search and contact-data credits. | The same, plus outreach and interviews, which is why spend caps matter more. |
| Human decisions | Everything after the list. | Specific gates: the brief, arming automation, approving spend, the hire. |
| What it needs from you | A good query and time to work the results. | A good brief and a decision at each gate. |
Ask where your roles actually stall. If you have good candidates you never contacted, the constraint is capacity and a search tool will make it worse. If you cannot find anyone worth contacting, the constraint is discovery and an end-to-end platform is overkill.
Most teams under about fifteen open roles per recruiter are capacity-constrained and buy for discovery, because discovery is the part that feels like the work.
This is the real line between the categories, and it is not a feature difference. A search tool that returns a bad list wastes your afternoon. A system that contacts candidates on your behalf can damage your employer brand at a scale no individual recruiter could manage.
Which is why the questions worth asking shift entirely once outreach is involved.
Plenty of teams should run both, and the good sourcing products are better at discovery than any end-to-end platform is. The mistake is buying one expecting the other, then concluding that AI recruiting does not work when what actually happened was a category error at purchase.
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