AI recruiter for startups hiring their first engineers
RecruitingBot is an AI recruiter for startups that have roles to fill and no recruiter on staff. You describe the role once, and it writes the post, finds and scores candidates, emails them from your mailbox and books the interested ones into your calendar.
- GDPR built in
- Human approves every shortlist
- No hiring fees
Candidates pick an open slot. The invite lands in both calendars.
The founder is the recruiter until someone else is
In most seed and Series A companies, hiring sits with the founders. The CTO writes the job post at midnight, the CEO forwards it to friends, and both of them spend evenings reading profiles while product work waits. The first ten engineers shape the codebase, the culture and the speed of everything after, yet they are usually recruited in the gaps between investor calls and sprint planning.
RecruitingBot takes over the parts of that work that do not need a founder. It turns your notes into a job description and an editable scoring rubric, sources candidates from public professional profiles, open web sources and your own applicants, and runs a polite multi step email sequence. The founder steps back in where judgment counts, which is approving the rubric, reading a short ranked list and running the interviews.
- You keep. Defining the bar, approving every shortlist, interviews, references and the offer.
- It runs. Job post, sourcing, first pass scoring, outreach, reply sorting, screening questions, a short skills test and scheduling.
What ten engineering hires cost three ways
Startups usually compare three routes for their first wave of hiring. The figures below are illustrative example numbers, built from widely quoted ranges rather than from any customer data, so swap in your own salaries and fees. Agency fees commonly run 15 to 25 percent of first year salary, which adds up quickly when every hire is a senior engineer. An in house recruiter brings focus but also a salary, recruiting tools and a ramp period before the first hire lands.
A subscription does not replace interviews or decisions, and it does not promise hires. What it changes is the cost shape: a fixed yearly amount instead of a fee per head or a full time salary. If you hire ten engineers in a year, the gap between the routes can decide how many months of runway the hiring plan consumes. Plan details and limits are on the AI recruiter pricing page.
| Category | Sources | Screens | Outreach | Schedules | Shortlist |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sourcing database | · | · | · | ||
| AI interviewer | · | · | · | ||
| Success fee service | |||||
| End to end AI recruiter |
| Route (example numbers) | How you pay | Example cost for 10 hires in a year |
|---|---|---|
| Contingency agency at 20 percent of a 150,000 USD salary | 30,000 USD per hire on start | About 300,000 USD |
| In house recruiter at an example 10,000 USD per month fully loaded | Salary plus tools, whether roles fill or not | About 120,000 USD plus sourcing tools |
| RecruitingBot Growth billed yearly | 299 USD per month, flat, no hiring fees | 3,588 USD for the year |
Founder hours go to interviews, not inbox triage
The expensive part of founder led hiring is rarely the job board bill. It is the hours spent on work with low leverage: scanning hundreds of profiles that clearly miss, writing the same outreach message forty times, chasing people who said maybe, and juggling time zones over email. Each of those tasks is easy on its own and draining in aggregate, and they always land on the people the company can least spare.
With RecruitingBot the founder's week looks different. On Monday you spend about half an hour on intake and the rubric. During the week you glance at the reply inbox, where interested candidates are already flagged and routine questions about salary band or remote policy are answered from the facts you gave. By Friday you open a shortlist with scores, evidence per criterion and test results, and the strongest people are already on your calendar.
Your calendar stays under your control
Scheduling is where startup hiring loses good people. A candidate replies on Tuesday, the founder answers on Thursday, three messages later there is a slot next week, and by then a competitor has made an offer. RecruitingBot connects to the hiring manager's Google Calendar or Microsoft 365 calendar and lets interested, screened candidates pick a slot directly, so the gap between yes and a conversation shrinks to the time it takes them to click.
Candidates only see times that are open in the connected calendar, so whatever you have already blocked for focus work, board prep or customer calls stays untouched and a hiring push never eats your whole week. Reminders go to the candidate and the hiring manager before the interview, which cuts no shows without anyone sending a manual nudge. The CTO protects deep work blocks and the CEO keeps board prep sacred, while the pipeline keeps moving in the slots that remain.
Candidates pick an open slot. The invite lands in both calendars.
Candidate experience is your employer brand
A startup with no brand recognition is judged by how it treats candidates. Engineers share stories about companies that ghosted them, sent obvious mass mail or asked for a take home project with no feedback. RecruitingBot writes each first message around the person's actual background and the specific role, sends it from your own mailbox under your name, respects a sending window of 8:00 to 20:00 in the candidate's local time and caps daily volume.
Every candidate hears back. People who are not a fit receive a courteous rejection instead of silence, people who say not now are noted for later, and anyone can opt out with one click. Each first contact includes an Article 14 notice explaining who you are, why you got in touch, where their details came from and how long you keep them. The GDPR compliant candidate sourcing page covers the full approach.
Which plan fits a startup
A company opening one or two roles at a time usually starts on Starter: 3 active roles at once, 1,500 candidates analyzed a month, 2 seats and one connected mailbox, at 149 USD a month billed yearly. A startup running a proper hiring plan, say backend, frontend, a data engineer and a first product designer in parallel, fits Growth, with 8 active roles, 5,000 analyses a month, 5 seats for the founders and hiring managers, 3 mailboxes and ATS import from Greenhouse, Lever or Workable.
Both plans bill monthly or yearly, and yearly saves 50 percent. If you outgrow Starter mid month, upgrading charges the difference immediately and the higher limits apply at once. Monthly limits count consumption, so deleting a role does not return quota, and payments are final. You can cancel any time in the billing portal, which stops the next renewal.
- Starter. One or two roles at a time, a single founder hiring, CSV import of past applicants.
- Growth. A hiring plan with several roles in parallel, several hiring managers and an existing ATS.
Running your first role this week
Start with the role you would otherwise hand to an agency, typically your next senior backend or full stack engineer. Write down the must haves, the nice to haves and the deal breakers you would never compromise on, such as work authorization or time zone overlap. Review the generated rubric carefully, because it decides who gets contacted, and add two or three screening questions that would save you a wasted first call.
Then connect your mailbox and calendar, launch the role and let the pipeline run. If you want to understand each stage before you launch, read how an AI recruiting agent moves a role from intake to shortlist. Create an account, choose a plan and put your first role in today, so your next engineering hire is not waiting on a spare evening.
| Must have | 5+ years building backend services in Python | 30% |
| Must have | Designed and ran Postgres schemas in production | 25% |
| Nice to have | Payments or billing domain | 15% |
| Nice to have | Mentored other engineers | 10% |
| Deal breaker | Needs visa sponsorship (role cannot sponsor) | stop |
Questions buyers ask
Anything else goes to [email protected] or the help panel inside your dashboard.
Do we need a recruiter on the team to use RecruitingBot?
No. It is built for founders and hiring managers who recruit part time. Setup is a short intake form, a rubric you edit and a mailbox and calendar connection. Someone still needs to approve shortlists and run interviews, which is the part founders usually want to keep anyway.
Will engineers know an AI wrote the outreach?
Messages are personalized to each candidate's background and sent from your own mailbox under your name, with an honest signature and an opt out link. Replies go to you, and you can take over any conversation at any moment. Most candidates simply see a relevant, specific note from a founder.
Is this cheaper than an agency for a startup?
For several hires a year it usually is, because you pay a flat subscription instead of a fee per hire. In our example table, one agency placement costs more than many years of Growth. The tradeoff is that your team still interviews and closes candidates, which an agency partly handles.
Can we hire more than one person from the same role?
Yes. A role is a pipeline, not a single seat, so if you need two backend engineers with the same profile you run one role and approve several people from the shortlist. That keeps your active role count low and lets one rubric serve both hires.
Does it replace our ATS?
No. It fills it. Starter works with CSV, and Growth adds import from Greenhouse, Lever and Workable, so past applicants are scored against new rubrics. Hired candidates and interview history can live in your ATS as before.
Is there a way to see it before paying?
Yes. The demo on the homepage needs no signup. Enter a role title and it shows an example shortlist built from stored example profiles, so you can see the format of scores and evidence. Real sourcing and outreach start after you choose a plan.
Keep reading
Give it a role and see the shortlist it builds
Type a job title on the homepage. The demo runs instantly without an account and shows an example pipeline, job post and shortlist for that role.