Use LinkedIn Recruiter's AI Hiring Assistant to Build Candidate Shortlists

What This Does

LinkedIn's AI Hiring Assistant (included in your LinkedIn Recruiter subscription at no extra cost) reads your job requirements and automatically surfaces a ranked shortlist of passive candidates — candidates who match your criteria but haven't applied. It replaces the manual process of building project lists by hand.

Before You Start

• You're logged into LinkedIn Recruiter (recruiter.linkedin.com) — not regular LinkedIn
• You have an active Recruiter Seat (not Recruiter Lite — AI Hiring Assistant requires a full Recruiter seat)
• You have a job or project open with a populated description

Steps

1. Open a Recruiter project and locate AI Hiring Assistant

From the LinkedIn Recruiter dashboard, click Jobs in the top navigation and open the job posting you're sourcing for, OR go to Pipeline and open an existing project. Look for the AI Hiring Assistant panel — it appears as a blue banner or a button labeled "Find candidates with AI" in the right sidebar of any active job. If you don't see it, click the More options (•••) menu on the job listing and look for "AI sourcing" or "Hiring Assistant."

2. Confirm or refine the AI's sourcing criteria

The AI Hiring Assistant reads your job description and automatically populates sourcing criteria: job titles, required skills, years of experience, location, and education if relevant. Review what it extracted. If any criteria are missing or wrong, click Edit criteria to adjust — you can add synonymous job titles, remove irrelevant requirements, or expand the geography.

Tip: Add 2–3 title variations the AI may have missed. For example, if your JD says "Production Supervisor," also add "Manufacturing Supervisor" and "Shift Lead" to catch candidates who use different terminology.

3. Review the AI-generated shortlist

After confirming criteria, the AI produces a ranked candidate list — typically 20–50 profiles ordered by match strength. Each card shows: current title, current company, years of experience, relevant skills, and a Match Insights section explaining why the AI ranked that candidate highly.

Scan down the list, reading the Match Insights for the top 10–15 candidates. These are your priority outreach targets.

4. Save candidates to your project

For each candidate you want to pursue, click Save to project or the bookmark icon on their card. This adds them to your Recruiter project pipeline and makes them available for InMail outreach.

5. Set up a weekly refresh

LinkedIn's AI Hiring Assistant updates automatically as new candidates match your criteria. Return to this view weekly (or enable email notifications from Settings → Notifications → New AI-matched candidates) to see fresh matches without re-running the search manually.

Real Example

Scenario: You have a new req for a CNC machinist in the Pittsburgh area. You posted it yesterday and have five applications, none of whom are fully qualified. You need proactive outreach candidates.

What you do: Open the machinist job in LinkedIn Recruiter → click "Find candidates with AI" → confirm criteria (Bullhorn auto-pulled "CNC machinist," "CNC operator," "machinist"; you add "CNC programmer" and "machine operator") → approve. The AI returns a list of 34 candidates. You scan the top 15 Match Insights summaries and save 8 candidates who have 3+ years CNC experience and live within 20 miles.

What you get: A sourced shortlist of 8 qualified passive candidates ready for InMail, built in 10 minutes instead of the 45 minutes it would take to build the same list manually.

Tips

• AI Hiring Assistant is not Recruiter Lite. If you don't see the feature, confirm your seat type with your LinkedIn account manager. The AI sourcing features are available on full Recruiter seats, not on Recruiter Lite.
• Use "title variations" aggressively. The single most common reason the AI misses good candidates is narrow title matching. If your client calls the role "Plant Supervisor" but most candidates say "Production Manager," the AI needs both titles in its criteria to find them.
• Save a few borderline candidates too. The AI ranks by title/skills proximity, but sometimes a candidate with a slightly different background is a great call. Save a few 70–75% match candidates for after you've worked through the top tier.

Tool interfaces change — if a button has moved, look for similar AI/sourcing/match options in the Jobs or Pipeline sections of LinkedIn Recruiter.