AI agents/Grok Bot guides/Tutorial 1

How Do You Use Grok Bot to Source a Candidate Shortlist?

Set up a Talent Scout bot that turns a job description into a shortlist with evidence for every name, checks your ATS first and stops before it contacts anyone. Includes a copy ready prompt and the bots to start from.

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The short answer

Create one bot called Talent Scout, give it a job description and your must haves, and ask for a review list with evidence for every name. Tell it to check your ATS first and never contact anyone.

You read the list, choose who gets a message and send it yourself. Once it works on a real req, save it as a skill.

What do you need before you start?

You need the Grok Bot desktop or mobile app and an eligible plan. According to xAI’s get started page, that is any paid individual Cursor plan, a Cursor Teams plan, or a SuperGrok, SuperGrok Plus or SuperGrok Heavy subscription linked to your Cursor account. Plan rules have changed since launch, so check that page before you budget.

You also need somewhere the bot can look. For sourcing that is your ATS, the sourcing tools you already pay for and, if you want scheduling prep later, your email and calendar.

How do you set up the Talent Scout bot?

1. Create the bot. Choose New, then Create new Bot. Give it a short name (Talent Scout), one primary job (sourcing and outreach drafts) and a description of how it should work.
2. Write the stop rule into the description. “Draft only. Never contact, reject or move a candidate without my approval.” xAI’s docs say standing boundaries belong in the bot description.
3. Connect the tools it needs, and no more. Add a connector from the Marketplace where one exists. Where none exists, the bot can use the website in its own browser and will ask you to take over for the password or two factor code.
4. Give it the role. Paste the job description, the must haves, the locations and the companies that are off limits.
5. Review the first list. Correct what is wrong and tell it which corrections are permanent, such as “never include current employees of our client”.

What should the first prompt say?

xAI’s own Talent Scout example asks for 20 candidates who meet the must haves, excludes anyone already in the ATS, explains the evidence for each match and drafts outreach without contacting anyone. Ours is a slightly tighter version.

You are Talent Scout. You source and draft. You never contact anyone.
Role: [paste job description]
Must haves: [list]. Nice to haves: [list]. Locations: [list]. Companies out of bounds: [list].
Find 20 people who meet every must have, using public pages and the sourcing tools I have connected.
Check every name against our ATS first and skip anyone already in it.
Return a table: name, current role, one sentence of evidence with its source link, one gap, profile URL and a three sentence outreach draft in my voice.
Then stop and wait. I choose who gets a message.

Which listed bots can you start from instead?

You do not have to write the bot from scratch. Each of these is a shareable Grok Bot template from our directory. Read what it does, then add it and inspect its instructions before you let it near your accounts.

• Req-to-Outreach takes a job description and returns a ranked shortlist and one personalised email per person, with nothing sent until you approve the wording.
• Talent Discovery finds and shortlists candidates from public talent signals.
• Scout writes a hiring scorecard, then scores a shortlist against it with evidence and gaps.
• Mappy maps who works at a named company by function, seniority and location, which suits sourcing from a target company list.

The full list is on the AI agents for recruiting page.

What should you not hand over?

Keep three things with you. Choosing who gets contacted, sending the message, and rejecting anyone. xAI’s docs also say to have the bot respect candidate privacy, regional requirements and the terms of each source, so do not ask it to copy profiles from a site whose rules forbid it. The approvals and candidate data tutorial covers the settings that enforce this.

Quick answers

How many candidates should I ask for?

Start with 10 to 20. A short list makes it easy to spot a wrong pattern before the bot repeats it 200 times.

Can it send the outreach?

It can, if you allow it. Do not at first. Let it draft, then send from the outreach tool you already trust.

Does it remember the role next week?

A named bot keeps preferences, role context and summaries of past work. For a live req, paste the current brief again or ask it to check the source rather than rely on memory, which xAI’s FAQ recommends for important decisions.