Manifesto

I. We have a confession

In 2022, we launched FOUND - a sales recruitment firm in Switzerland. Our mission was simple: place exceptional sales professionals across Europe and America.

By year two, we had a problem.

Not a revenue problem. Not a client problem. We had a sourcing problem.

Our recruiters were spending 14 hours per role just finding candidates.

Not screening them. Not interviewing them. Not building relationships.

Just finding them.

Fourteen hours of:

• Boolean searches that returned 800 profiles (750 irrelevant)
• Manual profile reviews, one by one
• Spreadsheet hell
• Copying and pasting between LinkedIn, our ATS, and email
• Doing it all over again for the next role

And we weren't alone.

II. The dirty secret of recruitment

Here's what nobody talks about at SourceCon or on RecTech podcasts:

Manual sourcing is killing the recruitment industry.

Let me show you the math.

The average RPO recruiter:

• Spends 10-15 hours sourcing per role
• Works 50 roles per year
• Dedicates 500-750 hours annually just to searching

That's 17 full weeks of work. More than 4 months.

For a 100-person RPO, that's:

• 50,000-75,000 hours per year
• $2.8-4.2M in annual sourcing cost
• 1,700+ working weeks - 33 full-time equivalent employees just searching

Not recruiting. Searching.

And here's the kicker: Quality doesn't improve with more time.

A recruiter spending 14 hours on sourcing doesn't find better candidates than one spending 15 minutes with the right system. They just suffer longer.

III. "But we have tools!"

I know what you're thinking.

"We use LinkedIn Recruiter. We have HireEZ. We tried Juicebox AI."

And you're right - these are powerful tools.

But they're not solutions. They're better shovels for digging the same hole.

LinkedIn Recruiter gives you access to 900M profiles. Amazing database. But you still have to:

• Write the Boolean strings
• Review hundreds of profiles manually
• Click through to assess each one
• Copy information to your ATS
• Build your outreach list
• Do it all again tomorrow

HireEZ searches multiple databases simultaneously. Impressive. But it's still:

• Manual query building
• Manual profile review
• Manual decision-making at every step
• Hours and hours and hours

These tools made searching more comprehensive. They didn't make it faster.

In fact, they might have made it worse - because now recruiters feel obligated to search everywhere, multiplying the time invested.

IV. Why this matters now more than ever

The recruitment industry is at an inflection point.

The problem is getting worse:

1. RPOs are scaling rapidly (post-pandemic hiring boom)
2. Recruiter shortages mean everyone's doing more with less
3. Candidate expectations have increased (faster response times)
4. Margin pressure is real (clients demand efficiency)
5. Recruiter burnout is epidemic (sourcing is soul-crushing work)

Meanwhile, every other knowledge-work industry has automated their repetitive tasks:

• Accountants don't manually categorize transactions anymore
• Lawyers don't manually review every document
• Marketers don't manually send individual emails
• Salespeople don't manually log every call

Why are recruiters still manually searching for candidates in 2025?

V. What we built (and why)

At FOUND, we hit a breaking point in late 2022.

We couldn't hire fast enough to keep up with client demand. Our recruiters were exhausted. Our margins were compressed.

So we built an internal tool to automate sourcing.

Not to make searching better. To eliminate searching entirely.

The goal: Recruiters arrive Monday morning with qualified candidates already identified, prioritized, and ready for outreach.

No Boolean strings. No profile reviews. No spreadsheet gymnastics.

The results shocked us:

• Sourcing time: 14 hours → 15 minutes (93% reduction)
• Candidate quality: Maintained or improved
• Recruiter satisfaction: Through the roof
• Capacity per recruiter: 3x increase

One of our recruiters told me: "I remember why I became a recruiter. I actually talk to people now."

That's when we realized: If sourcing was broken for us, it's broken for everyone.

VI. The sourcing engine era

We're not releasing another "sourcing tool."

We're releasing a sourcing engine - the automation layer that eliminates manual sourcing work.

Think of it this way:

• 1990s: Recruiters used phone books and Rolodexes
• 2000s: LinkedIn democratized access to candidates
• 2010s: Boolean search and multi-source tools made searching more comprehensive
• 2020s: AI-matching and automation promised efficiency but still required manual work

2025 and beyond: Sourcing engines eliminate the need for manual searching entirely

This isn't incremental improvement. It's a category shift.

From "better tools for searching" to "no searching required."

VII. What this means for recruiters

I've talked to hundreds of recruiters over the past three years.

The best ones don't love sourcing. They tolerate it.

What they love:

• Conversations with candidates
• Understanding motivations and career goals
• Building relationships
• Making the perfect match
• Celebrating placements

What they hate:

• Boolean strings
• Profile review monotony
• Spreadsheet management
• The endless scroll

Here's our belief: Recruiters should do what humans do best - build relationships, read between the lines, provide counsel.

Machines should do what machines do best - scan millions of profiles, identify patterns, prioritize matches.

The sourcing engine era doesn't eliminate recruiters. It liberates them.

VIII. The economics are undeniable

Let's return to that 100-person RPO spending $2.8M annually on manual sourcing.

With a sourcing engine:

• Cost: $360K/year ($300 per recruiter/month)
• Time saved: 95% of sourcing hours
• Net savings: $2.4M annually
• Payback period: 6 weeks

But the real ROI isn't the cost savings.

It's what you can do with 50,000 hours returned to your business:

• Close more roles without hiring more recruiters
• Improve candidate experience (faster response times)
• Reduce recruiter burnout and turnover
• Scale capacity 3x without 3x headcount
• Actually build relationships with your candidate pool

This isn't a "nice to have." It's a competitive advantage.

Your competitors are either:

1. Already automating sourcing (and eating your lunch)
2. About to start (and will eat your lunch)
3. Ignoring it (and will be out of business in 3 years)

IX. The resistance we expect

Every industry transformation faces resistance.

We expect these objections:

"Our recruiters prefer manual sourcing."
So did taxi drivers prefer manual dispatch before Uber. Preference doesn't equal better outcomes.

"AI can't understand the nuances of candidate quality."
Neither can a recruiter reviewing 500 profiles in 10 hours. Quality comes from deep evaluation, not surface scanning - which is exactly what automation enables.

"This will replace recruiters."
No. It will replace the part of recruiting everyone hates. The relationship-building? That's still 100% human.

"We need to see proof."
Fair. That's why we're offering free 60-day pilots with clear success metrics. If we don't hit 70% time savings, walk away.

"What about data privacy?"
We're GDPR-compliant, don't store candidate PII, and can share our security documentation. Swiss precision includes Swiss privacy standards.

X. An invitation

This manifesto isn't a sales pitch.

It's a call to action.

The era of manual sourcing is ending. Not because we say so, but because the economics, the technology, and the recruiter burnout crisis demand it.

You have three choices:

1. Ignore it and watch your margins compress, your recruiters quit, and your competitors scale past you
2. Dabble in it with half-measures and incremental improvements that don't solve the core problem
3. Embrace it and fundamentally transform how your team spends their time

At Finder, we chose option 3.

We built the sourcing engine we wish existed when we were drowning in manual searches at FOUND.

We're releasing it to the world because we believe:

• Recruiters deserve to do work they love
• RPOs deserve to scale without margin compression
• Candidates deserve faster, better experiences
• The recruitment industry deserves to catch up with every other knowledge-work sector

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Join the movement

If you're a sourcing leader at an RPO, I want to hear from you.

Not to pitch you. To learn from you.

• What's your biggest sourcing bottleneck?
• How much time does your team really spend searching?
• What would change if that time went to zero?

Let's end manual sourcing together.

P.S. If you're skeptical, good. You should be. That's why we're offering free pilots with clear success metrics. If we don't deliver 70%+ time savings, you walk away with no hard feelings. If we do, we have a conversation about what's next. Zero risk, massive upside.