LinkedIn Recruiter

Recruiter finds people and Hiring Assistant adds AI, at a price set by contract

Results from LinkedIn and its customers

Recruiters using Hiring Assistant review 81% fewer profiles to find a qualified match. InMail acceptance is 66% higher than with traditional sourcing. InMail acceptance is the share of messaged people who accept the message.

Who it suits, and who needs a different plan

Where it stops, from availability to your data

Microsoft bought LinkedIn in December 2016. Hiring Assistant uses OpenAI models through Microsoft’s cloud to read the job and run searches. Ireland’s data regulator announced fines of €310 million on LinkedIn Ireland. The fines were over its use of members’ data for behavioural analysis and targeted advertising.

What it costs, and what happens when you leave

Public US government orders show what some buyers paid. A Department of Defense order signed in 2019 paid $102,335.76 for four Recruiter seats in the first year. That is about $25,600 a seat. An order signed in June 2024 paid $59,239.56 for three licences in the first year. That is about $19,700 a licence. It would reach $88,859.34 if every option were used. A Department of Justice order signed on 30 September 2026 for fiscal year 2026 Recruiter licences totals $295,819.12.

Hiring Assistant comes in three tiers. Each licence has monthly limits on how many people it can find and how many applicants it can assess. Recruiter Corporate is for companies hiring for themselves. RPS+ is for staffing and recruiting firms. Your order form sets the final limits.

You cannot hold more Hiring Assistant licences than Recruiter licences. At the monthly limit, Hiring Assistant stops finding or assessing people for that recruiter. Unused allowance does not roll over. A licence started mid-month gets the full limit for that part month. A person uses the finding limit only when they meet the requirements and are saved to the pipeline. Instant outreach messages use the same allowance as messages a recruiter sends by hand.

When the contract ends, LinkedIn returns your personal data or securely destroys it, whichever you choose. It may remove content you uploaded after termination. You can remove an ATS link and purge the data it brought in. Improvements LinkedIn’s systems learned from deleted data stay.

Eight questions to put to LinkedIn

1. Which Hiring Assistant tier do you advise for our hiring, and what does each tier cost? Good answer: A price for every tier in the order form, with the monthly limits written beside it.
2. Is Hiring Assistant open to our account today? If not, on what date will it be? Good answer: A start date in the order form, and no payment for it until it is live.
3. What happens to an applicant that Hiring Assistant marks “Not a Fit”? Does a recruiter see every one before anyone is closed? Good answer: Every one stays visible to a recruiter, and none is rejected without a person.
4. Prescreening cannot be switched off. Who sees what candidates answer, and for how long? Good answer: A named list of who sees answers and a stated time they are kept.
5. Will you stop reviewing our candidates’ prescreening conversations to improve your product? Good answer: Yes, written into the order form.
6. Will you confirm in the contract that our job descriptions, feedback and candidate data never train your own models? Good answer: A written promise that covers today and the future, or an opt-out we control.
7. Can you give us a bias report on Hiring Assistant from an outside auditor? Good answer: A full report that we can show a regulator or a candidate.
8. How were the 81% and 66% figures measured, and against what? Good answer: A named comparison group, a time period and the number of customers.

Alternatives to LinkedIn Recruiter

SeekOut, Gem and hireEZ are the alternatives, along with Recruiter without the Hiring Assistant add-on, or buying nothing.

SeekOut searches about one billion public profiles and your ATS. Its self-serve plan, Sourcing Core, costs $149 a month paid yearly or $179 a month paid monthly. It comes with a 14-day free trial. Higher tiers are custom priced and invoiced yearly in advance. Those fees cannot be cancelled. The subscription renews for a year unless one side gives 30 days’ notice. SeekOut’s AI screening, called Sam, holds a voice interview of 15 to 20 minutes with each candidate. Sam costs about $2 for each completed interview. Recruiters can check a candidate’s government ID. Candidates are never auto-rejected.

Gem’s AI Sourcing Agent searches more than 800 million profiles and your past candidates. Gem’s Application Review scores and ranks every applicant against the recruiter’s criteria, with a plain-language reason for each score. In Application Review, a recruiter makes every advance or reject decision. Gem also sells its own applicant tracking system. Its browser add-on saves profiles from LinkedIn and more than 20 other sites with one click.

hireEZ’s EZ Agent searches more than a billion profiles on 45 or more platforms. It gives the reason for each name. It sits on top of your ATS. Every candidate gets a screening conversation by voice or chat using your questions, and you decide who moves forward.

Buying nothing means no contract that cannot be cancelled and no settings to watch. The guide to AI sourcing and screening covers what the rest of the market offers.