Use LinkedIn Recruiter's AI to Draft Personalized InMail Messages

What This Does

LinkedIn Recruiter's built-in AI drafts a personalized InMail message for each candidate you're about to contact, pulling from their profile highlights and your job details — so you're not writing the same message 30 times a day or sending identical templates that candidates immediately recognize and ignore.

Before You Start

• You're logged into LinkedIn Recruiter (recruiter.linkedin.com)
• You have candidates saved to a project or visible in a sourcing list
• Your job posting or project has a populated description (the AI uses this to reference role details in the InMail)

Steps

1. Open a candidate profile from your project or sourcing results

From your Recruiter project or the AI-generated shortlist, click on a candidate's name to open their full profile in the Recruiter view (a right-side panel or full profile page). You'll see a Message or Send InMail button near the top of their profile card.

2. Click "Send InMail" and select AI draft

Click Send InMail. The InMail compose window opens. Look for a button labeled "Write with AI", "Draft with AI", or a sparkle/wand icon near the message field. Click it. LinkedIn's AI will generate a draft InMail based on:

• The candidate's current title, company, and listed skills
• Your active job's title, requirements, and company

3. Review the AI draft

The AI produces a 3–5 sentence personalized InMail. Read through it:

• Does it correctly reference the candidate's current role?
• Does it clearly describe the opportunity?
• Does the tone match how you write?

If the draft has the right structure but wrong tone, click in the message field and edit directly. Most AI drafts need a light touch — not a full rewrite.

4. Personalize one specific detail

Even with AI drafting, add one human touch before sending: a specific observation from their profile (a notable tenure length, a recent company change, a specific skill or certification). This takes 10–15 seconds per message and meaningfully increases response rates. Example: change "your background in manufacturing supervision" to "your seven years at [Company] in a hands-on supervisor role."

5. Adjust the subject line

The AI also generates a subject line. Default AI subject lines tend to be generic ("Opportunity that matches your background"). Replace it with something specific to the candidate or role: "Production Supervisor role — your WMS background is a fit" is more likely to get opened.

6. Send or schedule

Click Send to send immediately, or use the Schedule option to send during business hours (8–10am recipient time tends to get higher open rates for InMails).

Real Example

Scenario: You have 12 candidates saved to a light industrial supervisor project. You need to send InMails to all 12 today, but personalizing each one manually would take 45 minutes.

What you do: Open each candidate profile → click Send InMail → Write with AI → get a draft → scan for accuracy → add one specific line (e.g., "your background managing a team of 30+ at [Company] caught my attention") → edit the subject line → send. With the AI handling the base draft, each InMail takes 90 seconds instead of 5 minutes.

What you get: 12 personalized, professional InMails sent in under 25 minutes. Response rates are meaningfully higher than template blasts because each message references something specific to the recipient.

Tips

• Don't skip the personalization step. Candidates receive a lot of recruiter outreach. The AI draft gets you 80% of the way there; the one specific human detail is what makes it land. "I noticed your profile" signals a template; "your 4-year tenure at [Company]" signals you actually looked.
• Use the AI draft as a quality floor, not a ceiling. If a candidate is particularly strong or the req is particularly niche, spend 2 extra minutes writing a more detailed message. Use the AI draft for your mid-tier outreach and invest more on your top-10 targets.
• Check character limits. LinkedIn InMails have a 2,000-character limit. AI drafts usually come in around 300–500 characters — well within limits — but if you're adding detail, keep an eye on length. Shorter messages (under 150 words) tend to outperform longer ones.

Tool interfaces change — if a button has moved, look for the AI draft option inside any InMail compose window in LinkedIn Recruiter.