What is an AI assistant
for headhunters, and what can it do?

01

AI assistant or AI agent: what’s the difference for headhunters?

The terms often get mixed up, and for a headhunter the difference matters in practice. An AI assistant works one exchange at a time: you ask, it answers. It is handy for drafting an email, summarizing an article or explaining an unfamiliar technical term. An AI agent is different. You hand it a goal, and it breaks the goal into steps, searches, reads and compares, and finally hands back the result.

Most of a headhunter’s work is the second kind. Take a single request: “Map the vision teams at Xingchuan Robotics and two peer companies, and see who is already in my database.” Behind it lies a whole chain of searching, reading and checking that no single question and answer can cover. So to judge whether an AI tool is useful to a headhunter, first ask whether it can take on a whole piece of work, not just answer a question.

An AI assistant designed for headhunters adds three things on top. First, it knows what you already have: your clients, your candidates and the org charts you’ve built can all be put to use. Second, when the same person is scattered across different places, it checks the records before merging them. Third, the research it does is kept for the next piece of work, so you don’t have to explain everything from scratch each time.

02

What can AI do for headhunters?

Follow a piece of business from start to finish, and the stages best handed to AI are the ones that mean looking in many places, reading a lot of material and checking things over and over. From finding a client to keeping up with candidates, there are roughly six:

• BD client research: spot companies that are expanding from funding news, careers pages and business moves, and judge whether the need is real and who to approach.
• Org charts: lay out the departments and reporting lines of target companies and their peers, level by level, and mark where the gaps are.
• Job matching: break the job description (JD) into must-haves and nice-to-haves, and for each candidate set out why they match and what still needs confirming.
• Sourcing: search your CV database and org charts first, then fill the gaps from public information, papers and patents, and open-source communities.
• Identity checks: the same person’s name may be written differently on a CV, in papers and in open-source communities. Cross-check the records before merging them, and rule out namesakes.
• Keeping your network current: watch for changes in key candidates’ public career histories and in their teams, so the records in your database don’t fall behind.

These six have one thing in common: they take time, but there is a clear right and wrong. Either you can find it or you can’t. Either it matches or it doesn’t. Handing them to AI is not only about speed. It’s about nothing missed, nothing muddled and everything sourced. You might spend an afternoon tracking down a lead, then by next month forget where you saw it. AI keeps a record of every source.

03

What can’t you hand over to AI?

AI can put the material in order, but some judgments only a person can make. The reason is simple: the answers aren’t in the material at all. They come from talking face to face, from reading people, and from the instinct and trust you’ve built up in the business.

• Whether someone wants to move

  A team reshuffle or a few years in the same role are only signs. Why they’re looking this time, and what they really care about, you only learn by talking.

• What the client really wants

  What the JD says and what the hiring manager has in mind are often not the same. Unspoken requirements and the feel of the team are things you have to ask about in person.

• Whether to recommend, and how to negotiate

  Who to put forward, when to speak up and how to negotiate your fee all involve the trust between you, your client and your candidate. Those calls are yours to make.

• Respecting candidates

  Use only public information to find people and check identities, and flag what’s uncertain. Whether someone wants to talk, and how much they share, is up to them.

A simple test: can you click through from every finding the AI gives you to the original source? If you can’t see where it came from, treat it as a guess.

04

How do you choose an AI tool for headhunting?

A demo rarely tells you whether a tool is any good. A more reliable way is to test it on something you’ve already finished. You know the answers, so it’s easiest to see where it gets things right and where it’s making things up.

1. Test it on a finished search

   Pick a search that closed recently, give it the JD you had at the time, and see how the people it finds differ from your list back then.

2. Open a few sources at random

   Check whether each source really exists, whether it’s about the same person, and whether the information is still current.

3. See how it handles uncertainty

   A good tool lists what still needs confirming separately, rather than writing guesses up as facts. This matters more than how many people it finds.

4. See whether it can use your own resources

   Can you bring in your CV database and the org charts you built in Excel? Once they’re in, does it check identities, de-duplicate and merge?

5. Check the boundaries

   Does it contact people or make promises on your behalf? Who to contact and how to open the conversation should always be your decision.

One more point is easy to overlook: whether the work you’ve done is kept. If the org chart you map today is ready to use when you source next month, the tool gets more useful the more you use it. If not, you start from zero every time.

05

How can HunterBuddy help?

HunterBuddy is an AI assistant for headhunters, built by Boseek for independent headhunters and senior search consultants, and it can help with all six jobs above. Take the Xingchuan Robotics example from our homepage. Xingchuan has just raised a Series B. HunterBuddy spots a new Head of Computer Vision role on its careers page, finds the hiring manager, Qing Xu, then maps the org charts of Xingchuan and two peer companies and matches them against the candidates in your database.

When sourcing, it searches your CV database and org charts first, then fills the gaps from papers, patents and open-source communities. Yue Lin has a record in your CV database, another on a team page and a third in a paper. Once the details are cross-checked and namesakes ruled out, the three are merged into one person. Every finding names its source, and anything uncertain is marked “To confirm”.

• Business development · 2 sourcesNew on the careers page: Head of Computer Vision

  The careers page and the funding news agree.

• Org charts · MatchedTuojie Robotics · Vision team lead

  The website and the team page agree: it’s Yue Lin, already in your database.

• Identity checks · 3 records mergedYue Lin

  Records from your CV database, a team page and a paper, checked and merged. Namesakes ruled out.

• To confirmTeam size and reporting line

  Not visible in public information. Only a conversation will tell.

It uses only public information and your own material. It never contacts anyone or makes promises on your behalf. Who to contact, how to open the conversation and whether to put someone forward are for you to decide. HunterBuddy is still in development and offered as an invitation-only trial.

06

Where should you start with an AI assistant for headhunters?

Start with something you know well but have never had time to finish. Say, a target company you’ve followed for a long time whose org chart is only half drawn, or a live search whose longlist never feels long enough. On familiar ground, you can tell at a glance whether the results hold up.

The first few times, open the sources and take a look. Treat whatever it marks “To confirm” as your list of questions to ask next. Once you’re comfortable, bring in your CV database and the org charts you’ve made before, so it starts from your own resources. The better it knows what you have, the closer its results come to your business.

And don’t expect it to decide for you. Its job is to put the material in order and make the sources clear. How you read people, what you say and how you look after relationships are still your craft. That is also why clients and candidates keep coming back to you.