LinkedIn Recruiter Is a $900 Ghost Generator

Everyone’s Using LinkedIn Recruiter. No One’s Enjoying It.

Let’s state the obvious: LinkedIn Recruiter is still the default tool in most recruiting stacks.

It’s also one of the most universally disliked.

You pay $899 a month. You send 100 InMails. You get silence. Or worse, a “Not interested” from someone who forgot they had a profile.

And yet we continue using it. Not because it works, but because it’s what we’re stuck with.

LinkedIn Recruiter has become the Microsoft Word of sourcing, familiar, bloated, and built for a world that no longer exists.

The truth is simple: LinkedIn Recruiter is a ghost generator, not a pipeline builder.

In our 50 Demos Before Launch, we heard the same story again and again: We're paying for the privilege of getting ghosted

What’s Really Broken

LinkedIn didn’t fail because it’s a bad product. It failed because it was built on a set of assumptions that no longer reflect how talent acquisition works today.

1. It Treats Talent Like Static Data

A LinkedIn profile is a glorified resume. It's outdated the moment someone changes jobs or quietly starts looking.

More importantly, it doesn’t tell you why they’re open to change, what kind of role they’d thrive in, or whether they’ll ghost you in two days.

You’re sourcing from a static pool of noise.

2. It Assumes Outreach = Engagement

The InMail hit rate is abysmal. Most recruiters are lucky to get a 10–20% reply rate.

Why?

Because passive talent receives the same message ten times a week. Because it’s obvious it was mass-sent. Because you’re reaching out without context, signal, or timing.

LinkedIn made cold outreach the primary strategy. That strategy doesn’t work anymore.

3. It Prioritizes Filters Over Fit

LinkedIn Recruiter gives you dozens of filters: industry, title, location, keywords.

But filters don’t equal fit. Just because someone was a “Sales Director” at a fintech company doesn’t mean they want your Series A B2B SaaS role in Berlin.

You don’t need more filters. You need better signal.

Ghosting Isn’t a Candidate Problem. It’s a Product Problem.

Here’s a controversial opinion: ghosting is mostly our fault.

We’re reaching out with the wrong message, at the wrong time, through the wrong channel, using tools built for the wrong era.

If a candidate ignores you, it's not because they're rude. It's because the message didn’t resonate, and they’ve been trained to expect noise.

Ghosting is what happens when your tools treat people like data points instead of humans.

What Recruiters Are Doing Instead

The smartest recruiters we know aren’t doubling down on InMails.

They’re skipping the search bar entirely.

Here’s what they’re doing instead:

• Describing intent, not writing job posts Instead of searching for job titles, they define what kind of person they need—background, ambition, strengths.
• Letting Sarah, their AI recruiter, match them with candidates Sarah interviews candidates asynchronously, scores them, and returns a ranked shortlist—before the recruiter even logs in.
• Using conversational outreach that feels human Sarah connects with candidates via WhatsApp, SMS, and async video—not cold LinkedIn messages.
• Triggering job-specific interviews up front So you know whether someone’s a fit before you spend 30 minutes on a screening call.

It’s not just better, it’s faster, cheaper, and less emotionally draining.

What We’re Seeing at Asendia

Here’s what recruiters using Sarah are reporting:

• Time to first shortlist: Under 24 hours
• AI interview completion rate: 80%+
• Shortlist-to-interview ratio: 5× higher than LinkedIn sourcing
• Candidate response rate: 3–4× higher via WhatsApp/SMS than InMail

In other words: when you stop using tools built for 2012, you start seeing results that make sense in 2025.

Try This Instead

If you’re still stuck in the LinkedIn Recruiter loop, try this experiment:

1. Choose one open role that’s been slow to fill
2. Create a brief in Asendia instead of posting or searching
3. Let Sarah run outreach and AI interviews
4. Compare the top 10 matches with your LinkedIn shortlist

We’ve run this test dozens of times with TA leaders, and the results are consistent: Less noise. Faster traction. Higher-quality hires.

Final Word

LinkedIn Recruiter isn’t broken because it lacks features. It’s broken because the model is outdated.

Sourcing isn’t about scrolls, filters, and sending messages into the void. It’s about signal. Conversation. Fit.

If you’re paying $900 a month to generate ghosts, maybe it’s time to fire the tool—not the candidates.

There’s a better way to do this. Let Sarah show you.

Ready to ditch the scroll? Start here →

— Badis Zormati Co-Founder, Asendia AI Builder of Sarah. Here to replace the search bar.