I was about to hire an intern to tag 9,000 candidates. AI did it in 2 hours.
So I run a small recruitment agency (10 people) and like most of you, our database has been a mess for years. Thousands of candidates with incomplete tags, no industry classification, duplicates everywhere. You know the drill. Every search was missing great profiles just because nobody ever had time to go back and properly code them.
I'd actually budgeted to bring on an intern this summer whose entire job would be: open a profile, read the CV, add the right tags, next. For 9,000 candidates. I felt bad for him already.
Then our ATS released an MCP server, which basically lets you connect your database to AI tools like Claude. I plugged it in mostly out of curiosity, asked Claude to go through all our candidates and tag them based on their experience, skills and industries.
It did 9,000 profiles in 34 minutes (real Claude work time). Not rough guesses either, actually solid tagging that matched what I would've done manually (and maybe better for some of the candidates).
Then I pointed it at our duplicates, which is an even worse task because you need to figure out which are real dupes vs. same name different person vs. data entry errors. It sorted through all of them and told me which to merge and which to ignore ...
30 minutes. Database went from a graveyard to something we actually trust when we search.
That opened a rabbit hole. I started playing with their AI assistant for other stuff. Scoring candidates against roles, generating outreach messages for a whole shortlist, even writing job descriptions from client briefs. Things that used to eat full afternoons now genuinely take minutes. They also have a note taker that records interviews and writes structured reports, which completely changed how I conduct calls. I stopped taking notes and started actually listening.
I feel like I'm at the very beginning of what's possible here and I'm sure I'm underusing it. Next thing I want to figure out is using AI for the prospecting/BD side. Finding the right clients, personalizing outreach at scale.
Anyone here using AI features in their ATS or CRM day to day? Curious what's actually working for you and what was a waste of time.
Also if you've cracked AI-powered prospecting I'm all ears.