What you'll build: An automated system that detects job postings at target companies, identifies which roles your product replaces or augments, finds the right contacts, and drafts personalized outreach — all using AI.
Time: 8-10 hours manually | 30-45 minutes with AI
What you need: A list of target companies, a clear understanding of what roles your product replaces
Why This Matters
When a company posts a job, they've already acknowledged the problem and budgeted for it. An SDR hire at $80-100K OTE means the company has committed real dollars to solve their outbound problem.
Your job is to show up at exactly the moment they're evaluating solutions — and offer a faster, cheaper alternative.
The problem: scanning job boards manually for 50-100 target companies, reading JDs, figuring out relevance, finding contacts, and writing personalized emails takes days.
Most teams never do it consistently enough to make it work.
How to Do It with AI
We'll use Claude Code for this workflow — it's ideal for tasks that involve scraping, data processing, and API calls.
You could adapt this with any coding-capable AI (Cursor, Copilot, etc.), but Claude Code makes the pipeline especially clean.
Step 1: Define Your Signal Map
Before touching any tools, you need to know what you're looking for. Tell Claude Code what roles matter to your product:
I sell [your product description]. Help me build a hiring signal map.
Roles my product REPLACES (strongest signal — they're hiring for what I automate):
- [list roles]
Roles my product AUGMENTS (good signal — I make these people more effective):
- [list roles]
JD keywords that indicate relevance:
- [list keywords like outbound, prospecting, lead gen, pipeline, cold email]
Claude Code will help you structure this into a reusable config. Here's what a real signal map looks like for an AI sales tool:
Category | Roles | Signal Strength
Category: Replaces | Roles: SDR, BDR, Outbound Sales Rep, Lead Gen Specialist, Growth Associate | Signal Strength: Strongest — hiring for what you automate
Category: Augments | Roles: VP Sales, Head of Growth, RevOps, Sales Ops, Demand Gen Manager | Signal Strength: Good — your product makes them more effective
Category: JD Keywords | Roles: outbound, prospecting, lead generation, pipeline, cold email, sequencing | Signal Strength: Filters for relevance
Step 2: Scrape Job Postings at Target Companies
Point Claude Code at your target company list and have it scan for relevant postings. You can pull from LinkedIn Jobs, Indeed, Google Jobs, or company careers pages.
Here's my list of 12 target companies: [paste list with domains]
For each company, search for active job postings that match my signal map.
Check LinkedIn Jobs, the company's careers page, and Google Jobs.
For each posting found, extract:
- Job title
- Location
- Posted date
- Key responsibilities from the JD
- Whether it's a "replaces" or "augments" signal
Claude Code will systematically search each company and compile results. From a real run scanning 12 companies, here's what came back:
Company | Role | Comp (OTE) | Signal | Key Detail
Company: Pave | Role: SDR | Comp (OTE): $95K | Signal: Replaces | Key Detail: Classic outbound SDR — cold calls, LinkedIn, email
Company: Pave | Role: Jr. GTM Engineer | Comp (OTE): $106-125K | Signal: Replaces | Key Detail: JD describes Clay automations, Outreach sequences, Salesforce data hygiene
Company: Replit | Role: SDR | Comp (OTE): $72-85K | Signal: Replaces | Key Detail: Uses Clay, SmartLead, ZoomInfo, LinkedIn
Company: Encord | Role: SDR + BDR | Comp (OTE): — | Signal: Replaces | Key Detail: Post-Series C, building outbound from scratch
Company: Airtable | Role: BDR (2 markets) | Comp (OTE): $77-100K | Signal: Replaces | Key Detail: Hiring in Austin and London simultaneously
Company: Glean | Role: SDR | Comp (OTE): $80-100K | Signal: Replaces | Key Detail: Partners with AEs to source pipeline
Company: Sourcegraph | Role: RevOps Manager | Comp (OTE): — | Signal: Augments | Key Detail: Explicitly replaced SDR function with data-driven motion
11 of 12 companies had active hiring signals. That's a hit rate you'd never get with cold outbound.
Step 3: Qualify and Prioritize
Not all signals are equal. Have Claude Code tier the results:
Prioritize these companies into tiers:
Tier 1 (act today): "Replaces" signal + strong ICP fit
Tier 2 (act this week): "Replaces" signal or multiple "augments" postings
Tier 3 (queue): Weaker signals, worth reaching out but lower urgency
For each, give me:
- The outreach angle (connection between their posting and my product)
- Framing: "replace" / "complement" / "scale"
The AI will rank by signal type, recency, and posting volume. Multiple postings for the same role type = scaling signal = bigger pain = more compelling outreach. Real prioritization from our run:
- Tier 1 (act today): Pave (2 replacement roles, $200K+ combined comp), Replit (SDR JD lists the exact tools we automate), Encord (post-raise, building outbound from zero)
- Tier 2 (act this week): Lovable, Airtable (2 markets), Glean, Amplitude
- Tier 3 (queue): Zapier (inbound-focused), Mercor (may build internally), Sourcegraph (already building this)
Step 4: Find the Right Contacts
The person who posted the job isn't always the person you should email. Claude Code can help you identify the right contacts using prospecting tools like Apollo, LinkedIn, or similar platforms:
For each Tier 1 and Tier 2 company, find 2-3 contacts:
1. The hiring manager (one level above the posted role)
2. A buyer (VP/Director level who controls budget)
3. A champion (someone in the team who feels the pain daily)
Use Apollo free search or LinkedIn to find names, titles, and LinkedIn URLs.
For a company like Pave (hiring both an SDR and a Jr. GTM Engineer), this returned:
- VP of Sales — owns the SDR hire, decision maker
- VP of Revenue Operations — owns the GTM Engineer hire
- VP of Marketing — stakeholder in pipeline generation
Across 11 qualified companies, the run produced 22 contacts total.
Step 5: Draft Emails Using the Signal as the Hook
This is where hiring signal outreach gets powerful. The job posting IS the personalization. Ask Claude Code to draft emails using proven frameworks: For "replaces" signals — use
Signal-Proof-Ask:
- Signal: Reference the specific job posting
- Proof: Show what your product does instead
- Ask: Soft CTA
For "augments" signals — use BAB (Before-After-Bridge):
- Before: Their new hire will struggle with X
- After: With your tool, they're 3x more effective
- Bridge: Here's how
Draft a 50-90 word email for each Tier 1 contact using Signal-Proof-Ask.
Rules:
- Reference the specific job posting in the subject line or hook
- Keep it under 90 words
- One clear CTA
- Casual-direct tone, no marketing speak
Here's a real output:
Subject: Before you fill the SDR role
Hi [Name] — I saw [Company] is hiring an SDR. Before you go through the hiring cycle, worth seeing what companies are doing with AI instead.
[Product] handles outbound prospecting, lead research, cold sequencing, and pipeline management autonomously. Same work as an SDR, live in days instead of a 3-month ramp.
Would 15 minutes be worth it to see how it compares?
The subject line hooks because it references something they're actively thinking about. The body connects the dots between their problem (hiring) and your solution.
No fluff. And a higher-specificity example — when the JD literally describes your product:
Subject: Your GTM Engineer job description
Hi [Name] — [Company]'s Jr. GTM Engineer posting caught my eye. The JD reads like our product spec: Clay automations, Outreach sequences, Salesforce data hygiene, pipeline experimentation.
[Product] does exactly that — GTM execution end-to-end, autonomously. No ramp time, no manual pipeline work.
Worth a 15-min look before you finalize the hire?
What You Get
From a single 5-minute run on 12 target companies:
Metric | Result
Metric: Companies scanned | Result: 12
Metric: Companies with signals | Result: 11 (92% hit rate)
Metric: "Replaces" signals | Result: 12 postings across 9 companies
Metric: Contacts found | Result: 22
Metric: Emails drafted | Result: 14
Metric: Time | Result: ~5 minutes
Doing this manually — scanning job boards, reading every JD, finding contacts, writing personalized emails — takes 8-10 hours. And you'd probably only do it once before the process falls apart.
With AI, you can run this weekly on your entire target list.
The Easier Way
Goose runs this entire hiring signal workflow as a single task. Give it your target list and role mapping, and it handles the scraping, classification, contact finding, and email drafting autonomously — no terminal, no API keys, no prompt engineering.
It also monitors for new postings continuously, so you catch signals the day they appear instead of running the process manually. Try Goose free →