The Recruiter's Playbook
For recruiting agencies and in-house talent teams.
Recruiting on LinkedIn is a numbers game with a craft layer — the best recruiters combine high-volume sourcing with genuine, personalized outreach. These four reads cover the full stack.
The Complete Recruiting Playbook
Sourcing strategies, messaging templates, compliance, and metrics that matter.
Optimize Your Recruiter Profile
The headline and summary formulas that make candidates want to talk.
12 Templates for Candidate Outreach
Connection request templates adapted for recruiting — what actually gets responses.
Sales Navigator for Sourcing
Boolean search, saved leads, InMail — the Sales Navigator playbook applied to talent.
Recruiter LinkedIn playbook (deep dive)
The operating model for executive search and agency recruiting on LinkedIn in 2026 — sourcing, outreach, candidate management.
Sourcing model that works in 2026
Sales Navigator (or LinkedIn Recruiter for higher volumes) is the sourcing engine. Build 5–10 saved searches per active mandate, narrowing by skills, geography, tenure, and seniority.
Layer trigger signals: recently changed roles (within 6 months: 'in the honeymoon period, hard to move'), or recently funded companies (engineers leaving stable companies for higher-equity opportunities).
Reverse-lookup from existing placements: candidates who said yes to similar roles often have similar profiles. Build the saved search around their pattern.
Outreach workflow per recruiter
Volume target: 70–100 connection requests per week per recruiter. Not 200. Quality density beats volume.
Channel mix: 60% LinkedIn connection requests (highest acceptance), 25% InMail to high-priority candidates who didn't accept, 15% email follow-up via enrichment.
AI-personalization: Reads candidate profile + recent posts + GitHub or portfolio + speaking engagements. Writes a first message referencing something specific.
Daily review: 30 minutes per recruiter to approve queue + triage replies.
Candidate pipeline stages
Source → Outreach Sent → Connected → Replied → Phone Screen → Submission → Onsite → Offer → Placed.
Track time in each stage. Average healthy senior-engineer pipeline: 4–6 weeks from Outreach Sent to Onsite. Anything longer signals friction in your screening or your client's process.
Flag stuck candidates after 14 days in any stage. Either re-engage or mark as 'lost' for cleanup.
ATS integration
Infonet integrates with Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, BambooHR, and Bullhorn. One-click push from Infonet candidate to ATS.
Activity history syncs both ways. Replies in Infonet log as Notes on the ATS candidate; ATS stage changes propagate to Infonet to pause outreach to active-candidates appropriately.
Don't run separate spreadsheets. The ATS is the system of record.
Compliance considerations
EU candidates: legitimate-interest basis applies. Honor opt-outs within 24 hours.
US candidates: similar framework but with state-specific layers (California consumer privacy in particular).
If you're a contingent recruiter, get compliance approval from your firm before running automation. Most firms approve once they see the audit log structure.