A free guide from Resonant · ~4 min read
Kondo + MCP: the recruiter inbox upgrade
Most recruiters lose deals, candidates and follow-ups in the LinkedIn inbox. Here is how to fix it, and turn it into a workbench you can run from Claude.
Jump to the use casesWhy this matters for recruiters#
We use this stack at Resonant every day. This guide is the version we'd give a friend.
LinkedIn DMs are the operating surface for most recruiter outreach. They are also, by design, a mess. Threads scatter. Replies get buried under congratulatory noise. The native filters do not separate candidates from clients from cold pitches. You finish a day of DMs and have no real list of who is waiting on you.
That is the real cost. Not volume, but losing track of who you owe. Every untracked DM is a lead, a candidate, or a placement quietly going cold.
What you get#
Kondo on its own is the Superhuman of LinkedIn DMs. The six features that matter:
Labels and folders
Tag people by stage (Candidate, Client, Prospect, Partner) or by deal. Split inboxes show one stage at a time.
Waiting-for-reply view
The filter that earns its keep. Surfaces only threads where the other person replied last, so you stop losing follow-ups.
Snooze and reminders
Park a thread until next Tuesday. It comes back to the top of your inbox on the day.
Notes on conversations
Drop context next to a thread: role they are open to, salary expectation, last conversation point.
Sales Nav unification
Business tier merges your standard LinkedIn inbox and Sales Nav inbox into one place.
CRM and Notion sync
Conversations, labels, and notes flow into HubSpot, Salesforce, or a Notion database.
Add MCP and Claude can now act on all of it:
- →Triage messages by applying labels
- →Draft replies and follow-ups in your voice
- →Research a person and leave notes against the thread
- →Archive or snooze threads you have dealt with
- →Pull lists of who is waiting for a reply
- →Plan the next move across a stack of conversations
One thing it will not do: send messages for you. You stay in the loop on purpose. LinkedIn punishes automation, and recruiters cannot afford a shadow ban on their primary channel.
Pricing (indicative)
Business is ~£24/mo, Premium ~£32/mo, Ultra ~£40/mo (billed annually). Cheaper than the hour a day you lose to inbox chaos.
How to set it up#
- 01
Get on Kondo Business and install the browser extension. Keep a Kondo tab open whenever you want MCP to work.
- 02
In Claude (Desktop or web), add Kondo as a connector and authenticate via OAuth.
- 03
Build a Claude Project for recruiter DMs with your voice, your labels, and your sequence rules.
- 04
Optional: wire Kondo into Notion so labelled conversations flow into a database Claude can plan against.
A Claude Project for recruiters#
The project is where the leverage lives. Load it with:
- Your label taxonomy. Candidate / Client / Prospect / Partner / Cold / Snooze, plus role and account labels.
- Your voice rules. Short sentences. No corporate filler. British or US English. How you sign off.
- Your sequence library. First touch, soft follow-up, value-add follow-up, breakup message. Candidate intro, role pitch, availability check.
- Your qualification questions. What you need before a client call. What you need before submitting a candidate.
- Your rules I never break. No mass connects. No automated sends. No "just checking in." No pasting roles into cold DMs.
With that loaded, you can ask: "Pull everyone waiting for a reply on the Senior PM role, group them by where we left off, and draft the next message for each." Claude does the read, the grouping, and the drafts. You edit and send manually inside Kondo.
Four use cases that pay for the subscription#
Edit the prompts to your voice. Also works for: candidate research, weekly retros.
The daily sweep
Once a day, ask Claude:
Sweep my Kondo inbox. List everyone waiting for a reply, grouped by label. For each, give me the last message they sent, what stage we are at, and a one-line draft reply. Flag anything that needs a real conversation rather than a message.
One review screen. You send manually. End of day, inbox is current.
The candidate shortlist follow-up
You submitted five candidates three days ago. Ask Claude:
Find every DM thread tagged "Acme - Head of Sales role". Show me where each candidate is in the process. Draft a chase for the client and a holding message for the candidates.
No more candidates going cold because the client went quiet.
The BD pipeline triage
You have been running outbound for a fortnight. Ask Claude:
Pull every Prospect-labelled conversation from the last 14 days. Score them: replied with intent, replied with deflection, opened but no reply, no response. Suggest the next step for each.
You stop wasting time on dead threads and stop dropping live ones.
The research-before-reply
One thread, one name. Ask Claude:
Research this person. Look at their profile, their company, their recent posts. Leave a note on the thread with three things I should reference, and draft a reply that lands on the most likely pain.
Good DMs stop depending on whether you are sharp that day.
Why bother#
- ✓Manual grinding loses leads. The waiting-for-reply view alone fixes that.
- ✓Automation tools send for you, and that is the problem, not the solution. LinkedIn detects them and your channel burns.
- ✓Kondo + MCP gives you the speed of automation on read, triage, draft and report, with manual sending preserved.
- ✓Under £40 a month for a tool you will open every working day.
If LinkedIn is your channel, this is the upgrade. If it is not, the rest of this page does not apply.