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Sourcing is Metaview’s AI‑powered sourcing agent that helps you find candidates for any role. You describe what you’re looking for and Metaview will help you source matching candidates.
Matches reflect alignment with the Ideal Candidate Profile you approve, not a judgment about candidate quality. Every decision about who to review, contact, or progress stays with you — see Best practices for Sourcing.

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How Sourcing Works

  1. Describe the candidate you want
To start a search, open Metaview, click Sourcing in the sidebar, and type what you’re looking for in plain English. You can also use the mic button to dictate your search criteria instead of typing.
Sourcing Start Redesign

Start your sourcing search by describing what you’re looking for in plain language. You can also use manual filters, or choose a more advanced research mode such as talent mapping.

Example: “Product engineer with 5+ years of experience, based in San Francisco, big tech background, strong Python.”
  1. Add documents
To make your search more precise, you can also attach a job description or other role documents. This step is optional, but we recommend it — the extra context helps Metaview generate a more complete and accurate Candidate Profile, so you can move faster through setup. Click the 📎 (paperclip) to select documents to upload, or paste them directly in the chat window.
  1. Refine the Candidate Profile
Using your prompt and any attached documents, Metaview will generate a draft Ideal Candidate Profile (ICP) that summarizes the key role requirements (experience, skills, etc). Review and refine it, and once it looks right, click Accept to start sourcing candidates. Every version of the ICP is kept. Open ICP versions in the search header to read earlier versions and see how many candidates each one surfaced, and how many of those you accepted or rejected — useful for seeing which refinement actually improved the results.
  1. Run your sourcing search
Once you approve the Candidate Profile, Instant Matches may appear right away while Metaview continues a more detailed search in the background. Within a few minutes, you’ll receive tailored Agentic Matches in a Candidate Pack, including links to external profiles where available. You can also configure email and Slack notifications to let you know when the search is complete.
  1. Review and provide feedback to refine results
As you review, mark candidates as Yes/ Maybe/ No and add feedback. After a few ratings, you can refine the search and Metaview will adjust results to match your preferences. If you want to change your search criteria, you can also edit or delete a previous message. Metaview will re-run the search from that point in the conversation. Working through a Candidate Pack:
  • Candidates arrive in numbered batches of Agentic Matches. Use the breadcrumb at the top to look at All of them together or one batch at a time — the review tabs below it count whatever you’ve selected.
  • Use the review tabs to focus on All, Unreviewed, Yes, Maybe, or No, and switch between table, card, and profile views. In table view you can show current job title, location, current company, education, overview, and any AI-generated columns, and sort by any of them.
  • Press Y, M, or N to record a decision and J or K to move between candidates, so you can work through a pack without leaving the keyboard.
  • Metaview tells you how much feedback it still needs before it can recalibrate — a banner reads Review N more candidates to recalibrate. Once you’ve reviewed enough, Refine search becomes available and the agent re-runs the search using the decisions you’ve just made.
  • Select candidates to reveal bulk actions — Review to mark them all Yes, Maybe, or No, plus Add to sequence, Find contacts, and send to your connected ATS. Select all acts on the current result set.
Want to get better results faster? Read the Sourcing Guide and for ICP best practices, calibration tips, and advanced prompting. Also, you can join our bi-weekly 30-min live training for new users and learn the habits that make the biggest difference. Register here!
  1. Enrich contact details for potential candidates
Candidate profiles provided through Sourcing include professional information and may contain links to publicly available public professional profiles or to the candidate’s profile in your ATS, where available. Metaview also offers an optional contact enrichment feature, powered by third-party providers. This allows you to retrieve additional email and phone contact details to support your outreach. Our standard Sourcing subscriptions include a limited number of free enrichment credits, with the option to easily purchase more as needed. See here for details.
  1. Reach out to potential candidates
Once you’ve identified the right people and enriched profiles with contact details, you can contact them directly from Metaview using Sequences. Select the candidates you want to reach out to from your Candidate Pack and click Add to sequence in the bottom right corner. To keep a search and a sequence connected so future Yes candidates are enrolled automatically, see Sourcing to Sequences. These options help you jump into sourcing with less setup by generating the starting context automatically based on existing calls you have captured on Metaview.
  • From a role intake call: If Metaview is present on a role intake call, it can use the call transcript to draft the initial search and generate candidates based on the discussion.
  • Find candidates similar to someone you just interviewed: Open any interview and click Find similar candidates to source more profiles like the person you just spoke to.
Sourcing Find Similar Candidates

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Workflow improvements

These features help you move faster, reuse context, and keep sourcing connected to your workflow.
  • Collaborate with your team: Add comments directly on candidate profiles so your team’s feedback, decisions, and reasoning stay in one place. @mention teammates to bring them into the search (they’ll receive your comment by email), or tag @Metaview to ask questions about the candidate’s profile and use team feedback to refine the search.
  • Use Sourcing in Slack: Start or continue sourcing searches from Slack, receive updates when the agent needs input or results are ready, and jump back into Metaview for full candidate review. See Slack and the Sourcing Guide for setup and best practices.
  • Personal and Workspace Knowledge: Save and reuse sourcing preferences so you don’t have to rewrite the same instructions every time. Click the 📖 (book) icon to add new knowledge for yourself or for your workspace (so your whole team can reuse it), and enable/disable knowledge items for any specific search.
  • Add candidates to your ATS: Once you’ve shortlisted candidates, push them directly into your ATS to stay organized.
  • Check company context with PitchBook: Connect your firm’s PitchBook API key so the agent can cross-reference candidate employers’ ownership, investors and deal history. See PitchBook setup and credit usage.
  • Schedule search reruns: Automatically rerun a search daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly to find new candidates and refresh existing results (only available on Max and Enterprise Sourcing plans). Set the cadence from Schedule in the search header, or choose Never to remove an existing schedule.
  • Expand your search to your existing applicant pool: Expand your searches to include candidates already in your ATS and within your Metaview workspace. When enabled, your searches can surface “CV-invisible” insights from interviews — like motivations, career goals, and preferences.
  • Exclude candidates you’ve already seen or contacted: Use the Exclusions menu to prevent candidates from appearing in your results if they were seen in a previous search, are already in your connected ATS, were contacted in a sequence, or recently changed jobs. You can also ask the agent to apply these exclusions in plain language. Exclusions apply only to the current search, so you can use different settings for different roles.
  • Organize, Find and Share agent sessions: Click the History panel on the left to expand it and access your past Sourcing and Research agent sessions. Use the search field to quickly find a session, then click the ... (three dots) menu to manage it. From there, you can Pin, Rename, Delete, or Share the session. To learn more about sharing with colleagues and collaborators in Metaview, see our Sharing functionality.
  • Use through MCP: Connect Metaview to an MCP-compatible AI tool, such as Claude or Cursor, to run sourcing workflows from your AI assistant. You can manage searches, review surfaced candidates, give feedback, and ask sourcing reporting questions in plain English. See here for details.
  • Research mode: Use Research mode when you want to understand the market — for example role trends, hiring flows, or employer growth. It uses structured prompts and returns tables, charts, profiles, or reports.
  • Export candidate packs: Download Candidate Packs as a CSV for use in other outreach workflows. You can choose to include only candidates with emails and optionally enrich missing emails before exporting.
  • Create Application Reviews from a sourcing search: Move from Sourcing into inbound application reviews faster. When Metaview detects a matching ATS role without an Application Review, it can help you create one using your Sourcing ICP added as context.

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Where Does the Candidate Data Come From?

Metaview helps you source candidates by providing candidate profile data from vetted third-party providers with broad global coverage. Candidate profiles are built from publicly available professional information such as job titles, work history, education, and skills. We review provider coverage and data quality on an ongoing basis. If you connect a supported ATS (see list below) and enable it for search, Metaview can also surface relevant candidates from your own ATS alongside external results. These candidates will be clearly marked with an ATS icon and linked to their existing profile. This can help you rediscover candidates who have previously applied or were considered for other roles, but may be a strong fit for your current needs.
We suggest ensuring you have an appropriate legal basis for sourcing, that your privacy notice covers candidate sourcing, and that your first outreach includes a short disclosure explaining how you found the candidate and how they can exercise their rights, such as requesting deletion or opting out of future contact. This helps you meet common privacy expectations across jurisdictions and keeps your outreach transparent.

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Troubleshooting

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I’m blocked from running searches or seeing candidates

You may be on a Free (trial) Sourcing seat. Free seats have restricted access, including caps on the number of searches you can run and the candidates you can view. If you need unlimited access, you can upgrade to a Pro or Max Sourcing seat. Sourcing Upgrade For up-to-date pricing plans, please see https://www.metaview.ai/pricing

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I’m prompted to upgrade, but I’ve already paid

If you’re seeing an upgrade prompt even though your team has purchased sourcing, it usually means a paid sourcing seat hasn’t been assigned to your account yet, or you have reached your monthly search limit on the Pro subscription. Purchased sourcing seats aren’t automatically tied to a specific person — your team admin assigns them to individual users and can reassign them at any time as team needs change. To get unlimited access, check with your team admin to confirm that you’ve been assigned a Max sourcing subscription. For more details, see Managing your team.

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Where can I see sourcing usage and seat assignments?

You can see sourcing usage and seat assignment on the Team Management. Team Management View

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I hit a limit even though I’m on a Max (paid) Sourcing seat

If you’re on a Max sourcing seat and hit a limit, don’t worry — this usually just means you’ve reached the maximum length for a single search or chat. To keep going, simply copy the most recent Ideal Candidate Profile (ICP), start a new search, and paste the ICP into the new conversation. You can then continue refining and sourcing from there without losing your progress.

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How do Sourcing credits work?

Sourcing credits are used when you find candidate profiles through Sourcing. Metaview uses professional profile data to help surface candidates who may be a good fit for your approved Ideal Candidate Profile. While we apply quality filters and use your feedback to improve results, some candidates may occasionally be unavailable, outdated, duplicated, incorrectly matched, or not suitable for the role. For this reason, sourcing credits are non-refundable once used. Free trial and entry-level Sourcing subscriptions include a limit on the number of candidates you can source. Sourcing credits on the free plan do not refresh. Pro plan sourcing credits refresh every calendar month, but unused credits do not roll over. If you’re on the Max plan, you can run unlimited monthly searches and source unlimited candidates. Sourcing credits are separate from enrichment credits. Sourcing credits help you find candidate profiles, while enrichment credits let you unlock additional contact details (email addresses or phone numbers) for outreach. Every workspace includes a limited number of complimentary enrichment credits, and top-ups are available if you need more. Please see here for more details.

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Why am I seeing candidates before the search has finished?

These are Instant matches. They appear as soon as you approve the Candidate Profile, giving you an early set of candidates to review while Metaview continues the full search in the background. Instant matches are useful for quickly checking whether the search is headed in the right direction. They’re based on the core filters in your brief, such as location, role, seniority, company, and industry, and they’re free to review. Because they’re only a quick first pass, some candidates may be less relevant than the final results. They haven’t been fully tailored yet. Once the full search is complete, Metaview will show the final reviewed Agentic Matches in a candidate pack. Only completed Agentic matches count toward Sourcing credits.

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How long do searches take?

Searches often take a few minutes, but may take longer depending on the complexity of the role, the search criteria, and the amount of research needed. While the full search runs, you may see Instant matches first — these give you an early set of profiles to review before the final sourced list is ready.

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Do I need to stay on the page while the full search runs?

No. Once you approve the Candidate Profile, Metaview will continue running the search in the background. You can leave the page or close the tab and come back to the search later from your Sourcing history. You’ll also receive an email notification when the full search is complete.