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Cherrypicker

The job board alternative

Most candidates you want to hire never even see your job ad.

A job posting only reaches the people who are actively looking and browsing in that moment. Why leave hiring up to chance when you can proactively cherry-pick the right ones?

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A job board is a channel, not a strategy.

Job boards do exactly what they promise. You post a role, people who are actively looking for new roles see it, and some of them apply. If you already have a strong following and an employer brand that people recognize, your chances of filling a job through a job ad are reasonably high, and it costs very little to try.

However, there are limitations with posting to job boards. A job posting can only reach people who are actively searching for it in that moment. Candidates who are gainfully employed, performing well in their current role, and too busy working to browse for anything are not ignoring your ad. They are never seeing it, period.

A job posting also depends on the candidate completing the entire application. Every additional step on an application creates friction and decreases the chances of completion. Most people have short attention spans and will not complete several lengthy applications in a single sitting, which is why LinkedIn's Easy Apply button became a popular option by default. Easy Apply can create a seamless experience for job seekers while creating additional work for hiring managers due to the increased applicant volume.

More volume does not equal better quality. Applications that hiring managers receive have become harder to trust. AI apply tools let candidates auto-submit polished, hyper-targeted resumes at scale, so a healthy looking application now tells you less about fit than it used to. Thus, additional screening is required to uncover the right applicants.

That is where Cherrypicker comes in. A hire needs two things to be true at the same time: the person has to be qualified, and they have to be interested. A job ad hands you interest from whoever applies and leaves your team to work out qualification. A sourcing tool hands you qualified names and leaves you to generate the interest. Cherrypicker does both, which is what actually gets the role filled faster.

Cherrypicker vs. job boards

Who you reach

Cherrypicker
People who are actively and passively exploring the job market discreetly.
Job boards
Whoever finds the posting and decides to apply.

What lands in your inbox

Cherrypicker
Qualified candidates who have replied and said they are interested.
Job boards
Applications, which your team then has to review and screen.

What the candidate has to do

Cherrypicker
Reply to an introduction request or job match, with no application to fill out.
Job boards
Find the posting, then complete your application process.

Who does the work

Cherrypicker
Cherrypicker runs the outreach and delivers the candidates who engage.
Job boards
Your team, working through whatever the posting brings in.

Cost

Cherrypicker
$5 per candidate recruited. No placement fee.
Job boards
Ad spend varies, typically around $500 per posting.

How it works

We run the outbound effort on your behalf to attract off-market talent.

  1. 1

    Tell us what you are hiring for

    We help you curate the list of qualified candidates through our AI-Assisted tools combined with our dedicated sourcing team.

  2. 2

    We craft the perfect campaign to attract the right talent

    We leverage the job details, your company description and additional context about the role to generate replies from talent you actually want to hire.

  3. 3

    We run the campaign on your behalf

    We find verified contact data for each candidate and perform outreach from our own sending infrastructure, so your company email domain stays protected.

  4. 4

    Interested, qualified candidates delivered to your team

    Get notified in real time as soon as a candidate shows interest. You decide who you want to hire and make an offer to directly. No placement fees are due when candidates are hired from Cherrypicker.

Roles we recruit for

Cherrypicker specializes in recruiting and filling corporate roles. Our team has over 13 years of recruiting agency and internal recruiting experience before building the Cherrypicker platform, which is why our personalized outreach reads like an experienced recruiter wrote it rather than an AI tool.

  • Accounting
  • Finance
  • Tax
  • Financial services
  • Real estate
  • Legal
  • Human resources
  • Operations
  • Office support

Pay-As-You-Go, when you need it most

Creating a company account is free. You only need to purchase Cherrypicker credits when you are ready to recruit candidates. Credit packages start at $1,500 for 300, one credit recruits one candidate, and a typical role fills within about 300 candidates. Credits are valid for 12 months and can be shared across your whole team.

Need help sourcing? Our sourcing team can build the target candidate list as an optional add on for $1,000 per role. There is no subscription, no minimum term and no placement fee when you hire, so a quiet hiring month costs you nothing.

That last part is worth planning around. A 20% to 30% placement fee on a $100,000 hire is $20,000 to $30,000 leaving your recruiting budget the moment someone accepts. Keeping it means you can put it where it compounds instead: a more competitive offer that gets your first choice to say yes, or the employer brand work that makes the next role easier to fill.

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What an outbound Cherrypicker campaign looks like

Historical figures from our real recruiting campaigns.

Candidates per campaign300
The average number of candidates it takes to fill a job.
Reply rate5-30%
The range we have seen on all campaigns.
Fill rate95%
The percentage of roles we have filled on Cherrypicker.

Campaign performance varies by role, compensation, location, employer brand, and candidate supply. These figures describe what we have seen historically and are not a guarantee of results for any particular search.

Questions teams ask about job boards

When is a job board the better option?
When you have a strong following and an employer brand people already recognize, a posting does a lot of the work for you. The same holds true wherever there is genuine active supply: high volume hiring, entry level positions, and roles plenty of qualified people are already searching for will often fill from a posting. Cherrypicker earns its place filling targeted roles where the right person is not actively searching job boards.
Should we stop posting jobs altogether?
No. Keep posting. A job ad is one channel and it costs very little to run. The problem is treating it as the whole strategy, because it only ever reaches the people who are actively looking. Cherrypicker covers the rest of the market that a posting cannot reach.
We get plenty of applications already. Why would we need this?
Volume and fit are different problems. A posting that brings 200 applications has not solved hiring if none of them match the role, and AI application tools have made that gap wider by letting candidates auto-submit polished resumes at scale. Cherrypicker proactively recruits the people you want rather than waiting and hoping for the right people to apply.
Can a long application process cost us qualified candidates?
Yes. Every extra step on an application creates friction and decreases the chances of the candidate completing it. Most people will not complete several lengthy applications in a single sitting. That is why Easy Apply has become the norm, and the candidates with the most options tend to rely on their networks to refer the best roles to them. Shortening the form helps. It does not solve the larger problem, which is that the strongest candidates for most corporate roles were never going to see the posting in the first place.
How is this different from a resume database?
A resume database is still a pool of people who put themselves on the market, and everyone else with a subscription is contacting the same names. Cherrypicker targets candidates based on the role you are filling and reaches them wherever they are, whether or not they have ever posted a resume anywhere.
What does it cost compared to job postings?
Postings and resume database subscriptions cost the same whether or not they produce a hire. Cherrypicker operates on a flexible pay-as-you-go credit model. Credit packages start at $1,500 for 300 credits, one credit recruits one candidate, and a typical role fills within about 300 candidates. Credits are valid for 12 months and can be shared across your whole team.
How quickly do candidates start replying?
Replies typically begin arriving within about 48 hours of a campaign going live, from interested and not interested candidates alike. A full campaign runs about 7 days.
Will this replace my internal recruiting team?
No, and it is not built to. Cherrypicker gives your team more recruiting capacity by running outbound campaigns on your behalf, which frees them for high value work such as employer branding, improving the candidate experience and closing offers. Your team remains in control of the entire hiring process.
What kinds of roles do you recruit for?
Corporate roles across accounting, finance, tax, financial services, real estate, legal, human resources, operations and office support. If it is a corporate hire, it is in scope.

More detail in the full FAQ, or weigh up every option side by side.

Ready to test out Cherrypicker?

Request a demo and we will scope out a campaign strategy for your open role.

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