“100k+ candidates. Like having 4 extra recruiters, without the headcount.”

Context

APraise is an Italian executive search boutique working on senior mandates for enterprise clients. The business model is classic executive search: a small number of open roles at any given time, each highly specialised, fees tied to placement seniority, and tight deadlines set by the end client.

APraise’s edge depends on its speed in identifying and qualifying senior profiles — candidates who are often not actively on the market (passive candidates sourced via LinkedIn, industry events, and personal networks).

The Real Problem

Executive search has operational characteristics that generic ATS software simply doesn’t handle well:

• Most candidates come through active LinkedIn sourcing, not inbound applications. Consultants spend hours browsing target profiles, manually copying names, roles, companies, experience, and education into the firm’s ATS.
• JD↔candidate matching is done from memory — senior consultants who recall “I spoke to Mario Rossi six months ago, he’d be perfect for this.” Valuable expertise, but impossible to scale.
• Fragmented database split across Excel (active mandates), a legacy ATS (historical records), and LinkedIn (sourcing). Three sources of truth, zero cross-source matching.
• On enterprise mandates, a single client can require 150+ candidates managed per role: without efficient tooling, the funnel breaks down.

The operational result: senior consultants — expensive, high-value people who should be talking to clients and candidates — were spending a significant share of their time on manual data entry.

What the AI Agent Did

Soraia built APraise ATS, a custom platform combining ultra-fast ingestion with an AI matching agent:

1. Custom Chrome Web Clipper — the consultant browses LinkedIn, finds the target profile, clicks the extension: in 1 click, the profile is captured and sent to the ATS.
2. Structured parsing AI agent — the raw profile is processed by an agent that extracts structured data with high accuracy: current role, past experience, years of seniority, skills, languages, education, and industry background.
3. Enterprise-grade workflow — management of 150+ candidates per role on a single mandate, with structured pipeline stages (contacted / interview / shortlist / presented / closed).

Senior consultants reclaim hours each day for client and candidate conversations. The operational heavy lifting is handled by the agent.

Results

1 click from LinkedIn to enriched database: what used to take 3–5 minutes of manual copy-paste per profile is now 1 click and a few seconds of review.

150+ candidates managed per enterprise role: the executive search funnel now operates at the scale demanded by top-tier clients.

15+ months in continuous production: a clear signal of operational robustness and the agent’s adaptation to APraise’s specific workflows.