# The open-source handover between candidate sourcing and recruiting

> Candidate sourcing ends when a recruiter holds a reviewed first touch; recruiting starts at the reply. Kortix is the open-source CompanyOS: your agents, their skills, your company memory, and every connector in one git repo you own, with the agents working on real cloud computers.

URL: https://candidatesourcingguide.com/candidate-sourcing-vs-recruiting

Sourcing ends, recruiting begins

`Run output`

```
Daily candidate-sourcing sweep · 07:00
Reviewed 31 LinkedIn profiles and dropped 13 that were already in the pipeline.
Drafted 18 personalized emails, each with the candidate's current role and the reason they matched.
All 18 are in the review inbox, and nothing was sent.
```

Source: https://kortix.com/use-cases/candidate-sourcing

Illustrative example. Your counts depend on the role and the sourcing profile.

[Try Kortix](https://kortix.com) · [How the run works](https://candidatesourcingguide.com/how-to-source-candidates)

Drafts stop in a review inbox · The recruiter sends · Rules live in the repo

## Two jobs, one handover

Candidate sourcing is the step that finds people who match an open role, drops anyone already in the pipeline, and prepares a first message a recruiter can send. It runs on people who are employed and not applying. The work is search plus a pipeline check on people who will never see the job posting.

Recruiting is everything after someone answers: the screen, the schedule, the panel, the offer, the close. It belongs to whoever owns the requisition. It runs for weeks, across more people than the sourcing step ever touched.

The two jobs meet at one artifact, a reviewed first touch. Sourcing is done when a recruiter has read the draft, fixed what is wrong, and is ready to send. Recruiting starts when the reply arrives. A team that cannot point at that artifact is running one blurry job, and it will buy tooling for the wrong half of it.

## Sourcing ends at the reviewed first touch

A sent-email count is the easiest number a sourcing tool can show you. A hiring process needs a later line, the moment a message is good enough that the recruiter who will answer the reply will put their name on it.

The candidate-sourcing job Kortix runs states the boundary in its own header: "Sources and drafts only · recruiter reviews and sends." Its guardrail is narrower still: "The agent never sends outreach itself and never adds a candidate to Greenhouse."

That boundary exists for ownership. A recruiter who edits a draft has decided what the company says to this person, and the reply lands in a conversation they started. A recruiter who reads a send report has inherited a conversation someone else started, with a candidate who expects an answer.

## What a sourcing handover has to contain

A batch of drafts is not a handover unless it carries four things:

- who the person is: name, current role, and where the match was found;
- why they matched: one or two details from their background, set against the role's real bar;
- the draft itself, written from those details and nothing else;
- the pipeline state: whether they have applied, been contacted, or been passed on in an earlier round.

The last two decide whether the batch is worth anyone's morning. A draft built from a template reads the same to every recipient, which is the part a reader spots first. A shortlist that skipped the pipeline check sends the recruiter back into the ATS before a single email goes out.

The worked example on the Kortix page carries its own label: "Illustrative example. Your counts depend on the role and the sourcing profile." In it, 31 profiles were reviewed, 13 were already in the pipeline, and 18 drafts went to the review inbox. The pipeline check ran before anyone wrote a line, which is the part of the handover worth copying.

## What changes when an agent takes the sourcing half

Run on a schedule, the sourcing half stops depending on whether anyone has the hours. A cron trigger gives one open role one complete sweep each morning. It searches LinkedIn against the role's profile, reads the Greenhouse pipeline, drops the matches already there, writes up to 20 drafts, and stops.

Each run is scoped to one role and gets its own machine. One isolated sandbox per session. Each session has its own isolated machine and branch. The ATS, LinkedIn and the review inbox arrive as connectors. Connector credentials are brokered server-side and never enter the machine.

What moves is the recruiter's judgment, from searching to editing. Reviewing a batch of drafts and sending the ones worth sending is a different morning from hunting for each of those people by hand. The reviewer sees why each match was made before committing to a send.

The rules behind all of this are files: the profile the search runs against, the order of the dedupe check, the 20-draft cap, and the instruction to stop before sending. Changing them follows the same path as any other file in the repo. Session work reaches main through a change request. Merge is default-deny for agents.

## The list nobody owns after the reply

Both roles fail in the same place, and it is a day after the send. Replies land in an inbox while the recruiter is in interviews, and nobody has been assigned the second message. The candidate who answered waits, then takes another offer. The pipeline then reports a sourcing problem when it has a follow-up problem.

A sourcing step can prevent that by ending where it does. The batch arrives in a review inbox instead of a sent folder. The person who sends is the person who will answer, and the handover shows up in their calendar instead of being implied by a tool.

Two numbers tell you whether the boundary is holding. The first is how many names the pipeline check removes before drafting, and a rising count means the ATS is doing its job. The second is how many drafts you send without rewriting. A falling count means the drafting rules have learned your voice.

## Where to go next

The full sequence, including where the pipeline check belongs, is in [how to source candidates](/how-to-source-candidates). If you are weighing a tool that ranks profiles against a job that reads your pipeline first, [AI candidate sourcing](/ai-candidate-sourcing) covers what a ranked list leaves to you. For the definition itself, the [candidate sourcing guide](/) starts there and works down to the pipeline check.

## Where each job ends, side by side

Sourcing closes on a reviewed draft the agent never sends, and recruiting opens on the reply that draft earns.

| | Sourcing run on Kortix (recommended) | Sourcing | Recruiting |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Who does it | A scheduled agent drafts; the recruiter sends | A recruiter or sourcer, before the role reaches applicants | The recruiter and hiring manager who own the role |
| What it produces | One daily batch: matches deduped, emails drafted, nothing sent | A shortlist, each name with a first touch ready to send | Screened candidates, interviews, a decision, a hire |
| What you need to run it | Greenhouse, LinkedIn and an email inbox connected, rules in the repo | A role profile, a source, the ATS pipeline, an inbox | A process, interviewers, and someone who owns the reply |
| How you know it worked | Example: 13 dropped, 18 drafted, nothing sent | No duplicate reach-outs, and each draft names why it matched | The role closes, and the panel can point to the evidence |
| Open source | Yes. Kortix is open source; the sourcing rules are files | A step, not a product | A role, not a product |

Illustrative example. Your counts depend on the role and the sourcing profile.

## Questions the two words raise

Short answers to the ones recruiters ask first.

### Is sourcing the same as recruiting?

No. Sourcing is the step before recruiting: it produces a reviewed first touch, and recruiting starts when that person replies and someone owns the next conversation. Teams that treat them as one job buy outreach software for a process they have not defined.

### What is the difference between sourcing and recruiting?

Sourcing finds people who match a role and prepares the first contact; recruiting runs everything after the reply, from the screen to the offer. The handover between them is a reviewed draft, so the person who sends should be the person who answers.

### What does candidate sourcing mean?

Candidate sourcing means finding people who fit an open role but have not applied, checking they are not already in your pipeline, and preparing a first message worth answering. The output is a shortlist with a reason each person matched and a draft the recruiter sends.

## Run one sweep on one open role

Read every draft before the schedule takes over.

[Try Kortix](https://kortix.com) · [The six steps](https://candidatesourcingguide.com/how-to-source-candidates)