How Agency Owners Use AI Browsers for Candidate Sourcing
How agency owners run candidate sourcing in Strawberry using their existing tools and the browser. Prompt, real output, and tradeoffs.
This guide is for agency owners who run candidate sourcing. It explains how an AI browser like Strawberry runs the workflow given the tools a agency owner actually uses every day, what the output should look like, and where the workflow fits in the agency owner's week.
Why this matters for agency owners
A agency owner spends time on this: win new clients, retain existing ones, and produce billable work across multiple accounts with a small team. The pain that makes candidate sourcing feel slow is real: client reporting and pitch decks consume the senior team's time; juniors cannot produce them at quality. The reason an AI browser helps is that agency owners already use multiple surfaces (Slack, Google Workspace, a CRM, HubSpot or Notion for client tracking, Looker Studio or sheets for reporting) to do this work, and the browser is the only tool that can read across all of them and produce a finished output.
What success looks like
The goal of candidate sourcing is to build a shortlist of 10-30 candidates who match the role and have at least one signal of openness. For a agency owner, success metric is concrete: 30% reply rate to first outreach, 5+ first-call conversions per 30 sourced. A finished candidate sourcing run should look like this: a draft client report, a pitch deck section, or a research brief that is 80 percent there and only needs minor polish.
Signals candidate sourcing needs
The workflow needs these signals: current role and tenure; recent role changes (often visible on LinkedIn); GitHub or content output for technical roles; company stage match (someone leaving a Series B is more likely to talk to a seed-stage co). For a agency owner the practical question is which signals come from the tools already in the stack (Slack, Google Workspace, a CRM, HubSpot or Notion for client tracking, Looker Studio or sheets for reporting) versus what the browser has to fetch. Strawberry reads the in-stack tools through native integrations and uses the browser for the rest (LinkedIn, news, company websites, search). The agency owner stays in one surface.
Paste-ready Strawberry prompt
I'm a agency owner. Run candidate sourcing for me using Slack, Google Workspace, a CRM and the browser, then save the draft.
What a finished candidate sourcing output looks like
Concrete example, not a placeholder:
- Role: Founding Engineer (Stockholm or remote EU)
- Candidate: Marek Novak - Senior Engineer @ Klarna, 4 years
- Fit: 5/5 (worked on payment systems, contributed to Rust open source, recent talk on type-safe APIs)
- Opening line: noticed his RustConf talk on type-safe API contracts and our backend lead's tweet about Marek's library
- Contact: LinkedIn DM + GitHub email
When this works, and when it does not
This workflow is right for agency owners when the work is repeatable and crosses multiple tools. It is wrong when any output the agency cannot defend to the client without a human review pass. In that case, the agency owner should keep doing the work manually until the pattern is clear enough to automate.
Three mistakes to avoid
- Spray-and-pray DMs that mention nothing specific
- Missing the obvious signals (someone just posted 'thinking about a change')
- No quality bar - putting 200 names on the list to look productive
Caveats
Strawberry holds back on sending email, updating CRM records, or changing shared systems until a human approves the action. Treat the agent as a fast first-draft author, not an autopilot.
How agency owners run candidate sourcing with Strawberry
Tools
Agency Owners typical stack: Slack, Google Workspace, a CRM.
Browser
Public web, LinkedIn, news, search fill the gaps the stack does not store.
Compose
Synthesise into the candidate sourcing shape that a agency owner can ship.
Human
Approve before any external action; save to system of record.
FAQ
Is this useful for a agency owner who already has a workflow?
Yes - the question is which part of the workflow is the bottleneck. If it is research, data transfer, or writing the first draft, that is where Strawberry helps. The agency owner keeps the judgement calls and final approvals.
What tools does the agency owner need to connect?
The most common stack for agency owners: Slack, Google Workspace, a CRM, HubSpot or Notion for client tracking, Looker Studio or sheets for reporting. The browser handles everything else (LinkedIn, news, search) without extra setup.
What is the biggest mistake to avoid?
Spray-and-pray DMs that mention nothing specific.
Run candidate sourcing in 10 minutes with Strawberry for agency owners
Open Strawberry and connect the stack
Connect Slack, Google Workspace, a CRM from settings so the agent can read existing records before touching the public web.
Paste the candidate sourcing prompt
Use the paste-ready prompt below. Adjust the target name or company. Strawberry will plan 6 signals to pull.
Let the agent collect signals across tabs
Strawberry pulls current role and tenure; recent role changes (often visible on LinkedIn); GitHub or content output for technical roles in parallel tabs. You can watch it run or step away.
Review the draft
Strawberry stops before any external action. The expected output is: A shortlist with one row per candidate: name, current role, target role fit (1-5), one personalised opening line, contact link. Check sources, edit talking points, and reject anything that does not match your ICP.
Approve the next action
Send, save to CRM, or schedule the follow-up. Strawberry only writes to shared systems after you click approve.
Paste-ready prompt for candidate sourcing
I'm a agency owner. Run candidate sourcing for me using Slack, Google Workspace, a CRM and the browser, then save the draft for review.Paste this into Strawberry. Replace the target name and adjust the stack to match yours.
When this is NOT a fit for agency owners
Skip this workflow when any output the agency cannot defend to the client without a human review pass. agency owners should keep doing the work manually until the pattern is clear enough to automate, otherwise you ship a generic candidate sourcing brief that hurts trust.
Three mistakes to avoid
- Spray-and-pray DMs that mention nothing specific.
- Missing the obvious signals (someone just posted 'thinking about a change').
- No quality bar - putting 200 names on the list to look productive.
Honest tradeoff
Strawberry will not invent missing signals. If the public web does not have headcount data or the CRM is empty, the draft will say "unknown" rather than guess. That is the right behaviour - the workflow is faster, not magic. The win for agency owners is that the first draft is 80% there and the remaining 20% is judgement, not data plumbing. A good run looks like: a draft client report, a pitch deck section, or a research brief that is 80 percent there and only needs minor polish.
What a finished output looks like
- Role: Founding Engineer (Stockholm or remote EU)
- Candidate: Marek Novak - Senior Engineer @ Klarna, 4 years
- Fit: 5/5 (worked on payment systems, contributed to Rust open source, recent talk on type-safe APIs)
- Opening line: noticed his RustConf talk on type-safe API contracts and our backend lead's tweet about Marek's library
- Contact: LinkedIn DM + GitHub email