> Source: https://builder.ema.ai/v2/recruiter
> Title: Recruiter

# Recruiter

Recruiter is Ema's standalone candidate-sourcing product. You describe the role you're hiring for in plain language (or upload a job description), and Recruiter searches a large external index of professional profiles, scores every candidate against a scorecard it generates for the role, and runs multi-channel outreach (email and LinkedIn) to the people you shortlist. It surfaces inside the AI Employee builder as a dedicated **Recruiter AI Employee** with its own tabs, and it is available as a self-serve free trial.

> [INFO]
> **Beta.** Recruiter is in beta. Behavior, quotas, and integrations described here may change, and some capabilities (such as ATS connections) are rolling out gradually.

## What Recruiter does

Recruiter compresses the manual parts of sourcing into one workflow:

-   **Search** — Turn a natural-language description or a job description into a structured query, then search Ema's external index of professional profiles (PDL-backed). See [Candidate Search](/builder/v2/recruiter/candidate-search).
-   **Score** — Generate a five-section scorecard for the role and score every fetched candidate against it with an LLM, producing a weighted aggregate score and per-criterion justifications. See [Scoring Criteria](/builder/v2/recruiter/scoring-criteria).
-   **Shortlist** — Review candidates ranked by fit, open a profile to read the evidence behind each score, and shortlist the ones worth contacting.
-   **Reach out** — Build an outreach sequence of email and LinkedIn steps and enroll shortlisted candidates, sending from your own connected mailbox and LinkedIn account. See [Outreach](/builder/v2/recruiter/outreach).

Each of these lives inside a **search** (also called a project) — a single hiring effort tied to one role. A search holds its own query, filters, scorecard, candidate list, shortlist, and outreach sequence.

## How Recruiter fits into the platform

Recruiter is a separate service (the `recruiter` service) that owns its own data — projects, candidates, scores, outreach sequences, and integration credentials. It surfaces in two places in the UI:

-   **A Recruiter AI Employee.** Recruiter is presented as an AI Employee whose `interaction_type` is `recruiter`. Its searches and configuration appear as tabs on the AI Employee dashboard, alongside the standard AI Employee surfaces.
-   **A self-serve trial signup.** New users can start a free Recruiter trial from a dedicated signup page without a full platform onboarding. See [Getting Started](/builder/v2/recruiter/getting-started).

Recruiter calls Ema's shared services the same way every other product does — EmaFusion™ for all LLM work (filter extraction, scorecard generation, scoring, outreach drafting), the auth service for identity and trial provisioning, and the notify service for trial emails. All candidate text sent to the LLM travels over Ema's internal, mutually authenticated transport.

## Trial vs. full access

Recruiter ships in two shapes:

-   **Free trial.** Provisioned through self-serve signup. Trial tenants get a Recruiter AI Employee with a stripped-down dashboard (just **Searches** and **Configuration**) and capped usage. By default a recruiter trial allows roughly **5 searches** and a **10-candidate shortlist** (per-tenant configurable). Trial users hit an upgrade prompt when they reach a cap.
-   **Full access.** Provisioned for paying customers, with the full Recruiter AI Employee, higher limits, and integrations such as ATS connections.

These trial quotas are not hard-coded in the product — they come from Recruiter's per-tenant configuration, and the values above are the out-of-the-box defaults. Ema can raise them for an individual tenant. See [Getting Started](/builder/v2/recruiter/getting-started) for how the trial is provisioned and what each role can do.

## Key terms

Term

What it means

Search (project)

A single hiring effort for one role. Holds the query, filters, scorecard, candidates, shortlist, and outreach sequence.

Filters

Structured constraints on the candidate pool (job title, location, company, skills, and more), each expressed as **must**, **preferred**, or **exclude**.

Scorecard

Five criteria — each **primary** or **secondary** — that every candidate is scored against.

Aggregate score

A weighted average of a candidate's per-criterion scores, with primary criteria weighted more heavily than secondary.

Public profiles

Candidates fetched from Ema's external index.

Internal talent

Candidates pulled in from a connected ATS (beta).

Sequence

The ordered set of outreach steps (email and LinkedIn) a shortlisted candidate is enrolled in.

## What's next

-   [Getting Started](/builder/v2/recruiter/getting-started) — start a trial, find the Recruiter tabs, and connect senders.
-   [Candidate Search](/builder/v2/recruiter/candidate-search) — natural-language search, job descriptions, and filters.
-   [Scoring Criteria](/builder/v2/recruiter/scoring-criteria) — how scorecards are generated and how candidates are scored.
-   [Outreach](/builder/v2/recruiter/outreach) — sequences, channels, and how outreach is sent.