If you are interested, I started to share more of what I build over on Instagram: olivia.j.dyet

and as always, I’ll continue to share here,

for paid subscribers, i’ll be dropping a video on creating custom presentations next using AI!

If you would like to share my work, or give feedback it’s always much appreciated!

Olivia

But the feedback we’re getting is so good and naturally I got really excited, so I thought I’d share it with you too!

For a long time, recruiters and hiring managers have had limited control over their own careers pages, or they have none at all…without going to marketing, or using a templated version of someone else’s product and hope it mirrors our own brand.

Well, now you can create fully customised careers pages to communicate your epic Company story, inside of empathix.

You chat with Emmy (yes the one that operates inside empathix) and she builds you a fully branded careers website. A proper site, homepage, jobs list, individual role page.. whatever you want, all live on your own subdomain (yourcompany.careers.empathix.xyz), or your own company domain.

Here’s how:

→ Explain your vision, or copy in your Company website URL, Emmy will pull your brand automatically.

→ Describe what you want. “Make the hero bolder.” “Add a section about our values.

→ Watch it update live… preview on the left, chat on the right.

→ Then publish. Live on your own subdomain, link to your website.

“We chose empathix because we see the innovation and understand that recruitment will look different in the future and want to be a part of that” ~ beta careers page customer

Are Careers pages really that important?

Your careers page is often the first real signal a candidate gets about what it’s like to work at your company.

If your marketing site is polished but your careers page is a generic jobs board with your logo slapped on top… candidates notice and we know you do too.

Because it all lives inside Empathix, every person who shows interest in working for you lands in your pipeline automatically. Source them, chat with them, hire them…. all in one place. ✨

Want early access?

This is in closed beta right now. If you want to play with it, just let me know and we’ll be in touch!

If you have any feedback on this newsletter (or on the beta itself), what you like, what you don’t, how it could be better, please do send it through. I love all feedback, it helps me and Empathix grow :)

Paid subs:
I had a great response on the claude skills, and in my next newsletter, i’m going to show you how to refine those skills so they are trainable for you and get better over time!

Have a fab week!!

Olivia :)

The amount of people moving to Claude is A LOT and it’s because I think the capability is genuinely unmatched right now and the barrier to entry is so low, everyone can use it.

But the problem is a lot of people I speak to feel like they are behind, or it seems overwhelming to even start.

So I built some skills to help people teams specifically to start using Claude skills.

I’m giving away your People Team starter pack and here is what each part of it does:

→ Setup: A guided conversation that builds your company profile. About 10 minutes. Powers everything else (and it’s a good learning journey too, if you don’t know where to start).

→ Job description: Paste a messy brief, dot points, a Slack message, whatever you’ve got, and get a polished on brand job ad back.

→ Screening questions: 8-10 structured interview questions with scoring rubrics. Behavioural, technical, values-based.

→ Onboarding emails: Three ready to send emails for a new hire’s first week. Welcome, day-1 logistics, and a week 1 check in (these are so painful usually, but using your Company’s tone, problem solved!)

→ Manager upskilling: You describe the situation, a developer who keeps missing deadlines, two team members who aren’t getting along, and it gives you actual sentences to use in the room. What to say when they get defensive. What not to say. How to close it so everyone walks away clear on what happens next.

Why I built it for people teams

If you’re running a people function or leading recruitment you already know most of your week disappears into writing. Job ads, onboarding emails, interview prep, manager guides. It matters but it also keeps you from the actual human relationships.

This handles the writing. So you can handle the people.

Want it?

The whole thing runs on Claude and it’s a simple copy and paste setup.

If you want to try it, just reply to this substack (or email me) and I’ll send it through. Happy to walk you through setup if you need it, it takes about 2 minutes once you’ve got it.

And if you’re thinking “ok but I also need help actually finding people for jobs”... that’s literally what Empathix is for. empathix.xyz 🎉

As always, share this with someone who’d find it useful. It genuinely means a lot.

Have a fab week!!

Olivia :)

Happy Monday everyone👋

So this one’s a bit different to my usual newsletters and I’m really excited about it!

A lot of you will know I’ve been building AI skills and workflows for recruitment (and a whole product) for many years now. I’ve spent honestly hundreds of hours on them.

So I thought... why not just share them? One skill or workflow per newsletter. Practical stuff you can actually use. Whether you’re on Empathix or not. If it helps you hire better, that’s the point 🎉

And I’m starting with one that I think is going to save a lot of people a lot of pain.

The problem

You know when you’re in a second round interview and someone on the panel (generally not the person involved in the shortlisting) says “wait, I thought we wanted someone more senior?” or “this is a hybrid role?” and you’re sitting there thinking... did we not talk about this??

This drives me absolutely mad. You’d spend ages sourcing, get really excited about a shortlist, and then the hiring manager and the department head would sit in a debrief and realise they had completely different pictures of the role. Weeks gone. Everyone frustrated.

And… the job description would have been fine. The alignment conversation just never happened. One person wrote the JD in 15 minutes, someone else approved it without really reading it, and three different interviewers showed up testing for three completely different things.

It’s not a JD problem. It’s an alignment problem. And honestly it’s costing companies good candidates all the time.

So here’s what I use to catch it before it blows up

I built a prompt that takes any job brief, even a messy Slack message from a hiring manager, and turns it into an alignment tool.

It does three things and they’re all really practical:

→ Surfaces the questions nobody asked (because we are all too busy). What does success look like at 90 days? What’s the one thing that would make this hire a failure? Is this replacing someone and if so what didn’t work last time?

→ Generates interview scorecards that match the actual role. Every question maps to a specific requirement.

→ Flags misalignment. If the brief says “senior leadership” but the salary band says mid-level, it tells you now. Not in week six after three rounds of interviews. Better to have that awkward conversation with the hiring manager upfront.

How to use it (it takes like 2 minutes, I promise)

I’ll walk you through it because I know not everyone has used Claude before and that’s totally fine!

1. Go to claude.ai and sign in. Free accounts work. You can also use ChatGPT if that’s what you’ve got!

2. Open a chat (or better use Cowork, it’s available on desktop), paste the below in AND ask it to create a skill for you (that way, you can use it all the time without going through this process:

Please create a skill that helps me solve this problem: You are a senior recruitment consultant who specialises in role alignment. Your job is NOT to write a pretty job description. Your job is to find the gaps between what the hiring manager thinks they want, what the team actually needs, and what the interview process will assess. When I give you a job brief, do the following: First, identify what’s missing. What does success look like at 90 days vs 12 months? Is this replacing someone or a new role? Who does this person work with daily? What would make this hire a failure? Is the seniority consistent with the salary and responsibilities? Second, flag misalignment. “Senior leadership role” but mid-level salary. Responsibilities that describe two different jobs. “Must have 10 years experience” for a role that didn’t exist 5 years ago. Call it out. Third, generate an alignment document. Role summary in plain language. Must-haves vs nice-to-haves (max 4 must-haves). Success at 30/60/90 days. What failure looks like. Key stakeholder expectations. Fourth, generate matched interview scorecards. For each must-have, one behavioural question, one follow-up probe, and a 1-5 rating scale with descriptions for 1, 3, and 5. Be direct and practical.

4. Claude will build the skill for you and show you how to improve it. Then, paste in any job description or brief. It could be a hiring manager email, a Slack message, a formal JD, whatever you’ve got. And see what comes back.

I tested this on a role recently where the brief looked totally fine on the surface. It flagged that the responsibilities described a player-coach but the salary band was for an team member. That’s the kind of thing that would have been a misalignment, the best thing is that it gives me the right questions to go back and ask the hiring manager. Caught it before we even started sourcing, which is just so cool.

(you can paste my whole message above, like you can see I’ve done here)

Try it on your last open role

Take your most recent JD or brief and paste it in. I bet it surfaces at least one or two things the team hasn’t discussed yet. If it catches something good, reply and tell me! I’d love to hear what’s coming up for people 🎉

And when you’ve nailed the alignment and need someone to actually go find those people... that’s what Empathix does :)

Thanks so much for reading as always. If you like this kind of practical AI for recruitment content, share it with someone who might find it useful. It means more than words can express and as always any feedback please do let me know!

For paid subscribers, I’m sending an HR Leaders HR skill pack that you can use across multiple workflows!

Have a fab week!

Olivia :)

It’s been one of those weeks where you look back and think... wait, all of that happened in one week?

I wanted to give you a proper update on what’s been going on with Empathix. The wins, the things we’re building, and a few AI-in-recruitment tips I’ve been wanting to share for a while.

What Empathix lets you do now

🆕 Empathix Chrome extension. I’m sooo excited for this one, we built a Chrome extension that sits right in your browser while you’re on the internet.

You’re sourcing online, you find someone great and now instead of opening a new tab, logging in somewhere, copying details across... you just stay where you are. Their details, your notes, your reminders, all right there in the browser while you work.

It basically follows you around the internet making sure you don’t miss anyone. Like having your entire candidate pipeline sitting in the corner of your screen.

If you’ve got an Empathix account it’s live now, go try it and let me know what you think 😊 Click here to get it: https://chromewebstore.google.com/search/empathiX

Lots of Cool new Companies with lots of cool new roles!

This week we’ve onboarded Douglas Pharmaceuticals, Manifest, Concord Visa, AMP (useamp.com) and Les Mills International 🎉

There are lots of roles you need to know about and you can learn more about them by visiting www.empathix.xyz/emmy and having a chat with her about those roles.

For AMP (useamp.com) we are featuring 2 EPIC jobs

Amp is a venture-backed AI-powered profit platform for ecommerce merchants. Supporting more than 45,000 Shopify merchants across a multi product suite spanning customer analytics, retention, upselling, and re-engagement. AMP are building building the intelligence layer for
ecommerce, deep merchant data + AI agents that help brands grow profitably.

And they're looking for a General Manager/CEO - E-commerce product line, this will be based in Auckland and roles like this honestly don't come up often.

This is an epic opportunity for someone with experience in product/growth and wants the opportunity to own a scaled product line and double the momentum it already has. This role I'm genuinely excited about, and so if you are interested, head along to the empathix website to have a chat with Emmy!

The second role from AMP is a Finance Manager, this one is based in Singapore, it's an excited role for an experienced Finance Manager with group growth experience to be a part of a really exciting team

3 AI recruiting tips you can use this week 🧠

Whether you’re using Empathix or not, here are a few things I’ve learned about using AI in recruitment that actually work:

1. Have you been using Claude Cowork?

It’s genuinely so good. If your business doesn’t have it, ask for it. And they just launched their Human Resources flow inside of it!

Cowork lets you work directly in folders (gives greater context for how you work), connects emails, calendars, notion.. everything.

My favourite use case has been asking it to read my calendar to make sure I have enough travel time in between meetings.

Here is more info on it if you’d like: See Claude HR in action

2. Use AI to source, but let humans decide

AI is incredible at finding candidates you’d never have found manually. Emmy inside Empathix searches across multiple data points. Skills, experience, even how candidates describe their own work. But the decision to reach out? That should still be yours to decide, Emmy does the rest for you though.

The best results we see are when recruiters use AI to build a shortlist of 20-30 strong matches, then spend their time interviewing, rather than trying to convert.

3. Have you tried using Nano Banana to give a better candidate experience?

With nanobana (powered by Google) you can create campagins that bring job ads to life. Personalise them and keep everyone engaged whilst giving a world class experience.

The best thing to do to get started is:

1. Go to Nanobanana, upload your branding to it and

2. Prompt: I’m working on a recruitment Campaign for the role of Sales Manager. Create some imagery inline with my brand guidelines that I’ve attached here that I can send to every candidate and engage them throughout the process.

I completed the below in just one prompt, as an example for you:

Btw the above recruitment process is completely made up by nana banana as an example to illustrate this exercise for you.

What’s next

We’re constantly refining the product and have excitingly brought on board Emily Stevenson to support Marketing and will look to hire a Sales Person soon (watch this space).

At the same time, we’re also reimagining what careers pages can look like when AI is doing the heavy lifting behind the scenes. More on both of these soon.

That’s the update!

Things are moving fast and it’s really exciting. Building Empathix feels like that perfect mix of hard and fun right now.

If you have any feedback on this newsletter, what you like, what you don’t, how it could be better, please do send it through. I love all feedback, it helps me and Empathix grow :)

And if you’re curious about Empathix, you can always book a demo and see her in action or run a search now, your first one is FREE!

Have a fab week,

Olivia ✨

We got covered by 6 publications this week. Know why? Because we’re the first to activate voice led search in APAC.

→ NBR published a feature on Empathix this week!! “Kiwi recruitment startup using AI to matchmake the perfect pair.”

Still a bit surreal seeing it in print 😂

→ We’ve also been covered by another FIVE publications and have more coming!

ChannelLife Australia - Industry insider news for technology resellers
https://channellife.com.au/story/empathix-unveils-emmy-a-voice-led-ai-job-search-tool

IT Brief Australia - Technology news for CIOs & IT decision-makers
https://itbrief.com.au/story/empathix-unveils-emmy-a-voice-led-ai-job-search-tool

ChannelLife New Zealand - Industry insider news for technology resellers
https://channellife.co.nz/story/empathix-unveils-emmy-a-voice-led-ai-job-search-tool

IT Brief New Zealand - Technology news for CIOs & IT decision-makers
https://itbrief.co.nz/story/empathix-unveils-emmy-a-voice-led-ai-job-search-tool

https://auckland.scoop.co.nz/2026/02/you-talk-emmy-searches-new-zealand-and-australias-first-voice-led-job-search-agent-launches/

What’s actually happening right now

Emmy has the capacity to speak to thousands of candidates every week. Real conversations. Not keyword matching, actual voice led conversations where candidates tell Emmy what they want, what matters to them, where they want to work, and what kind of role they’re looking for (if you haven’t tried it, please do we’d love your feedback). You can try Emmy here.

That means we’re building a live, growing picture of what talent in the market actually looks like right now.

And here’s the part I’m most excited about:

When Emmy finds a high match between a candidate and one of your roles, and the candidate gives their consent, you get an introduction to one another directly.

The quote from NBR that sums it up

“Instead of going to a recruitment agent and companies having to pay 20% per placement, we shift to a model that finds candidates that are aligned to organisations using AI and then directly introduces them so that they can have the human relationship as well.”

AI handles the matching. Humans handle the relationship. The irony is that we are an AI Company, using it to make recruitment more human, in the right parts.

Whilst all this is happening, we’ve also been madly building inside the platform to make it easier for you to manage your whole job…

Excitingly we launched our Google Workspace integration!

Gmail integration

Candidates now get emails from you, not a no-reply platform address. Response rates are completely different when it feels like a person reached out instead of a platform.

G-cal integration

Send a link, candidate picks a time, it’s in your Google Calendar. Done. No more 15 emails trying to coordinate across timezones.

Custom pipeline stages

We introduced a way to build stages that match how your team actually works. Not some default template you have to work around, this is a 2 way sync if you have an ATS. If you don’t, no worries, it acts as an invisible one for you 🚀

Note: this is not a real job, and not real candidates :)

We're seeing some really interesting patterns from the candidate conversations Emmy is having, what people actually care about, the types of jobs people are looking for, where the mismatches are and I'll share some of those insights in the next newsletter (anonymised insights of course!)

If you have any feedback on this newsletter, what you like, what you don’t, how it could be better… please do send it through. I love all feedback, it helps us grow :)

Ps for the paid subscribers, I’ll be breaking done Claude workspace and Moltbot (previously Claudebot and why I’m NOT using it… yet).

Have a great week!

Olivia + the empathix team

The big one: personalised outreach at scale (that you don’t have to type

A customer messaged me and said, “you know what would be great? If I didn’t have to type messages myself, I built a message generator and its working really well”

He had a shortlist of 20 people, reaching out one by one would have been a nightmare. That’s your whole afternoon gone. And the alternative, blasting the same generic template, just adds to the noise and is why people don’t reply.

And so we thought, what if we could give him the messages we know work for people and then use AI to generate them for his entire shortlist.

So we built it and… now you can! 🎉

Hit one button and Empathix writes a personalised message for every candidate on your list. You watch them generate one by one in real time (it’s weirdly satisfying). For each message you get three options: copy it, copy and open their LinkedIn profile, or send it directly through Empathix (yep, you can also edit them if you like as well, but they shouldn’t need much!)

The messages are actually different for each person, it pulls from their background, your company description, and the role. Not “Hi [NAME], I came across your profile and thought you’d be a great fit...” Actual context about who they are and why you’re reaching out. The result? This hiring manager has been interviewing all week.

Interview scheduling with Google Calendar & Sending emails from Gmail

These ones came from so much feedback. You’ve found someone great, they’re keen, now you need to actually get them in the room. You and your team can create a scheduling link inside Empathix, send it to your candidate, and when they pick a time that works for everyone it goes straight into your Google Calendar. Everyone gets invites. You get a confirmation email. No more Calendly links, no moreback and forth on “does Tuesday work?”

A few other things we added:

- LinkedIn contact tracking… you can now mark candidates as “contacted on LinkedIn” so you don’t accidentally reach out twice. Simple toggle, syncs everywhere.

- Notes on people you’ve met…Yay! Add notes directly on profiles so you remember why you reached out and what they said. No more hunting through emails and Slack.

Emmy update

Emmy talks to job seekers, understands what they’re looking for (not just keywords), and when there’s a genuine match with one of your roles, she surfaces them to you. You’re not just finding people, people are finding you. And they’ve already told Emmy what they want, so you’re not starting from zero.

If you know anyone looking for a role, send them to chat with Emmy on our website 🎉 she’s had hundreds of conversations in a matter of weeks and I’m so excited for the potential of adding exceptional talent into your pipelines.

That’s the update! Reply if you want me to walk you through any of this, always happy to jump on a call.

For paid subscribers this week: I’m breaking down the “AI doom loop” in hiring… why it’s happening, why most automation makes it worse, and how we’re thinking about it differently at Empathix. Plus a Claude Code trick I’ve been using to give a 100x Employer brand experience.

Have a fab week,

Olivia + the empathix team

We made 2 placements already and we’re very early into 2026!

We’ve also onboarded 3 new customers alongside the hundreds of recruiters who’ve used empathix to hire.

And they’ve got some super exciting roles all listed within empathix!

Customer job highlight for this week is:

Watchful are an epic Company in the growing fast Tech sector who continuously monitor all camera events to stop crimes 🪄

They’re a really exciting and growing Company who are recruiting a Software Engineering role and a Customer Solutions Engineer (Tier 2 Tech)

If you know anyone interested, feel free to share the ad or get them to have a chat with Emmy for a new experience.

Next is some reflection…

I realised when Emmy was launched that people thought Emmy + Empathix = two separate products. But they actually work together, I’ll explain how below…

Emmy talks to candidates

Emmy is our AI that has voice conversations with job seekers. No CV needed. No forms to fill out. Just talk about what you’re looking for.

She searches thousands of jobs across 1000+ job boards and sends those recommendations to candidates, understands what people actually want (not just keywords), and makes introductions to our recruiters where there is a high match. She also can help with things like job interviews, career advice - the things that I help with, but at a much larger scale and… all the time.

Here’s what candidates are saying:

“Wow, this is so much better than scouring job boards” — Product Manager

“This is such a different experience and I loved it, you’re really on to something here” — Software Engineer

“I can’t believe how personal the experience was” — UX Designer

Hundreds of conversations later, we’re learning that candidates want real conversations.

Then, Empathix helps recruiters hire people

On the recruiter side, our recruiters post a job inside of Empathix and they get access to the entire market (from linkedin, github, X and facebook) plus the top talent that Emmy speaks to (if consented).

We’re constantly refining the recruiter experience based on feedback from our customers and to start the new year we just shipped three upgrades that make the hiring process 100x faster:

Smart Candidate Selection

Filter by match quality and watch your selection update in real-time. Toggle between table (which is the view you are used to seeing) and grid view (the new view below!)

Empathix Agents

You may have noticed we’ve launched Empathix Agents that continuously source for you, even when you sleep. We heard that people just wanted to set and forget, so empathix just delivers high quality matches to you each day to review. So, that’s what we’re doing:

How it all works together

Emmy talks to candidates → finds great matches → introduces them to recruiters on Empathix → recruiters choose who to connect with + send personalised voice messages at scale → conversations start → hires happen.

With the noise of a thousand recruitment tools, I’m so excited that Empathix brings that all together for you to reduce the noise and increase the chance of hiring success, all whilst enabling you to build the most important thing… real relationships.

Genuinely I’m so excited that our customers will access 1000x more talent for a fraction of the cost and we’ll be able to give so many more people support + jobs beyond whats just shown in their cv or linkedin profile

More coming in 2026 🎉

Want in?

Looking for a job? Talk to Emmy at https://www.empathix.xyz/emmy

Hiring? Join companies already using Empathix at http://www.empathix.xyz

Builders Corner for AI in HR

In my paid subscriber section, excitingly my paid subscribers has grown to 4 members! might not seem like much but I really appreciate everyone who has decided to support my content creation journey and am really loving producing impactful ways of building with AI.

I spend a lot of time learning and building, I genuinely love sharing what I’ve learned as well and so this paid section really helps me to continue to do that for you.

In the newsletter that went out this week, I take you through how to build your own voice agent to onboard your team members! You can try the end result here: Onboarding agent

Thanks everyone and hope you’ve had a wonderful start to 2026,

Olivia + the empathix team

Hope you’ve had a great break, I got covid (I know) so rested and thought of cool AI things to share.

You may have seen I shared a Kiwi Santa on Christmas Eve and it was an absolute hit, thousands of conversations were had, I haven’t turned it off yet because I feel bad that people are getting so much joy from it.

I’ve been using …

Read more

Employers on Empathix hire from Emmy’s pre-qualified candidates, plus LinkedIn, X, GitHub, Facebook, your ATS, and your job ads.

All in one place. There’s not a platform in the world like it 🎉

We upgraded Empathix last week. Here’s what employers see now:

Thousands of CVs can through empathix in seconds…click the video below to see, and how you can refine with Emmy on the right hand side…

And what just some of our customers are saying:

Empathix helps me connect with so many candidates at once and I have uncovered great people that a recruiter would charge thousands to find. I also love that it gives more candidates a genuine chance to have their voice heard. It has been great being involved from the early days and seeing how openly the Empathix team takes on feedback and continues to evolve the product.

- Alysha, Director of People, Kwetta

We were looking for an AI Talent tool that could address very different challenges across all of our global markets. Empathix not only offers several solutions in one platform, but also truly listens and iterates on feedback!

- Lauren Denny, Director of Talent, Global, Koala

Empathix finds talent needles in the recruitment haystack - FAST! Using this platform is redefining how we connect people to their next opportunity, so powerful.

- Stuart Little, Managing Director, Agency8 & Thrive

I use Empathix because it’s 2025 and no one has got time to manually do something that a tool can do better and faster for you? 😂

- Milena, Chief of Staff, Multitudes

Here is what Emmy sounds like for Candidates

No forms. No CV uploads. Just a conversation about what you actually want.

Then Emmy does the rest to land Candidates the role of their dreams! Emmy actually explains it really well below:

This is what candidates are saying about Emmy:

“Wow, this is so much better than scouring job boards” — Product Manager

“This is such a different experience and I loved it, you’re really on to something here” — Software Engineer

“I can’t believe how personal the experience was” — UX Designer

If you are keen, try out Empathix + Emmy at www.empathix.xyz now, we’d love your feedback!

If you are an HR leader or Recruiter, I also release paid content to share all the recent things I’ve been learning about in AI and show you how as well! This week I shared how to build an Interview Guide skill in Claude so you never have to think about question preparation again 😅

Until next time!!

Olivia + the empathix team

Read more

2. Source and Sift have now changed name to ‘Search’ and ‘Applications' to make the difference between the two more obvious 😅. You can see Emmy our agent along the side, ready to search for candidates!

3. You are now able to Talent Pool. Your applicants are no longer trapped inside your Applicant Tracking System, scattered in your email or in slack, you can bring them all into one place and use Emmy to search over your entire database for your top hires for that role 🪄

4. Automated outreach with voice. You can email anyone, and include voice in that message so you can message people in a hyper personalised way. This works across Search and your Applications.

And for candidates? We have given Emmy a voice. Every candidate will be able to talk to Emmy. She’ll get to know you, what your motivations are and what your next steps could be. Then, she’ll search job boards + our internal network for jobs + intros for you.

This is in beta currently, but we’ve had huge demand and great feedback, watch this space as we bring Emmy to life!

We’ve had a massive month onboarding: KOALA, Mitre10, AcademyEX + many others!

We’ve confirmed our partnership with Team Tailor and will have a webinar with them so you can see how Empathix works within an Applicant Tracking System, register HERE

I’m heading off to a HRNZ event where Empathix will be handing out coffees and smoothies!! Come and say Hello, you might even be able to try Emmy via voice!! You can see more HERE.

Over in the Paid sub area: I’ll be releasing how to build with CLAUDE SKILLS for your HR + Recruitment stack this week 🎉, you can learn there how to build agents, optimise prompts and I try to release a high impact workshop once a week there :)

I’ll share one Customer Love quote this week:

”I reached out to 21 people yesterday afternoon, 9 of them came from Empathix and THE ONLY responses I got so far were from these people 🤪 so that’s 56% response rate for Empathix and 0% for all our other sourcing after 24 hours.”

Empathix sourced runs across Linkedin, X, Facebook and Github and conversion is looking good!!

Any questions, or if you’d like a demo I’m happy to share!!

Watch out for our upgrades coming soon 🎉

Hope you are all going well,

Olivia

This week I recorded a full walkthrough of building a custom GPT for job descriptions, sounds boring, but isn’t. As you go through this walk through, you can see how I think about writing prompts and getting the AI to a highly optimisable job description generator bespoke to your org. So, no more writing JDs!

HR teams wri…

Read more

We wanted 25 testers. We got 50+ in 48 hours.

Why this matters for you: The top 10% of candidates aren’t spending hours on job boards, they’re using tools like Emmy to find roles fast. When they search, your Empathix roles get surfaced based on actual fit, not keywords.

We’ve got enough interest now to build the next part of the platform, and this will be released soon.

Empathix Product Updates for recruiters ✨

Beyond Emmy’s voice search, we’ve been shipping:

→ Multi-platform job aggregation expansion - We can search across linkedin, meta, X and github, now we’re launching job boards.
→ Application response tracking - See which applications actually get replies (spoiler: most don’t)
→ Outreach for passive candidates: You can message candidates directly or have Emmy do this to convert passive talent, this will be released in the next week so watch this space 🎉

All designed around one idea: get the right people to the right roles, faster.

For Paid Subscribers: Agentic Workshop 🧠

New for paid subscribers: The Empathix Agent Studio workshop has launched!

We now have 2 workshops that are live in the studio (you get access as a paid subscriber to all of these)

Last week, we did a Team session with the fabulous team at a forward thinking organisation. We built multiple custom GPTs across their people department and they’ll now be measuring the impact of that.

This week for you, I’ll be releasing the Job Description GPT. Because writing job descriptions is painful, I’m going to show you how you can support your hiring managers to complete this themselves, then send the final version to you with no edits for you to make - wahoo! This will be out by the end of this week.

If you like my content to learn from thats so rad, but this is not intended to be resold. Crediting work where it’s due is gratefully accepted :)

If you have any feedback on this newsletter, what you like, what you don’t, how it could be better please do send it through. I love all feedback, it helps us grow :)

Have a fab week,

Olivia

P.S. If you’re hiring and want your roles in Emmy’s search results, reply to this email.

Emmy is getting smarter with every search you run. We’re constantly refining our AI agent behind the scenes, and your usage directly improves her accuracy.

Why natural language search feels different: While talking to Emmy is intuitive, it requires a slight mindset shift. The key is learning to articulate the context you’re thinking about, not just keywords, to get the most relevant results. It takes practice, but the payoff is worth it.

We receive lots of customer love which is great, and I thought it would be good to shamelessly share it here!

Such lovely words, which we are all very grateful for!

Using Empathix Crimson Global Academy hired 115 roles in 6 weeks.

Every hire went through their full process, case studies included. Empathix didn’t make any decisions; recruiters did and candidates got seen without the fatigue recruiters often face. It’s so cool that the product can handle the bit nobody enjoys, the endless searching and screening, so they could focus on the actual conversations, and the human things that are so important in any hiring decision. The software finds the people. You decide if they’re right. Sounds simple right :)

And now, Emmy is learning to do something new: reach passive candidates for you.

Up until now, Emmy searched through your ATS and candidate databases to find hidden talent. Now she’s going one step further, actively reaching out to passive candidates, screening them, and delivering the warm ones to your inbox.

Here is how Emmy works:

Emmy will reach out & convert passive talent for you, have screening conversations, and deliver the warm ones to your inbox…

Here is how Emmy works:

The result is you’ll be talent pooling live, reaching more people, ready to hire the top 10% of talent, when you are.

New for Paid Subscribers: Want to understand how Emmy works under the hood, or build your own custom AI agents for HR?

The Empathix Agent Studio workshop just launched! I’ll be releasing fortnightly(ish) content where we build custom AI agents together, tailored to your specific workflows.

We’ve partnered with Caffeine Daily to share some cool events you might want to attend (I know I do!)

Thurs, Oct 23 | 5:15pm | AKL
Carsten Grueber – ex-Google, Facebook & TikTok, now Co-Founder & CEO of Aether
Carsten will share lessons from inside the world’s most powerful companies and what he’s carrying into (and leaving behind) as he builds his own startup.
Tickets here

Tues Nov 5 | 5:15pm | AKL
Naomi Ballantyne & Kris Ballantyne - ex Partners Life, now KNK Consulting Limited
A workshop that tackles startup challenges - Naomi & Kris sold their company for $1b NZD, now they are giving back. At this event, they will work through three real founder challenges live on stage. Selected founders will step into the ‘clinic’, present their toughest problem, and have these masterminds unpack it in real time.
Tickets here

Thurs, Nov 13 | 5:15pm | AKL
James Sampson, FileInvite
James will share the lessons he’s learned through blending NZ and US working cultures - combining ambition with empathy proves to be a competitive advantage.
Tickets here

Until next time!

Olivia & the empathix team

Read more

Read more

There is that moment when you know you have a role coming up and you think"I wish I knew who was out there before I posted this job"? or if you do post a job, I wonder who the people are that match this job who aren’t applying.

I reckon it’s fair to say most companies wait until they're desperate, post a job, and hope the right people happen to see it at exactly the right time.

But I genuinely think it needs to work the opposite way. Cliche I know, but.. it works.

What we built and why

Sourced reads everything about your organisation and role requirements, then matches you to people who are likely aligned - before you even advertise.

It's like having a research team that:

• Understands your company culture from your website, socials, and job descriptions

• Maps this against millions of profiles across LinkedIn, Facebook, X, and GitHub

• Surfaces people who aren't actively looking but might be genuinely interested

• Lets you search in plain English: "Find senior developers who've worked at B2B SaaS companies with strong design cultures"
  
  The product is WOW! It got me to the aha! moment pretty quickly and effortlessly - which is amazing." - Hiring Manager, Global saas tech Company
  
  Click here for a Demo
  

  

Try it yourself

We're opening Sourced at www.empathix.xyz and you can search a role for free. You’ll need a business email address and to be a recruiter or hiring manager.

Why does this even matter..

The best candidates aren't actively job searching on the day you post your role. They're working at companies they like, following interesting projects, building things. But they might be interested in what you're building, if they knew about it, and if the timing was right.

Sourced helps you find them first. So now it doesn’t matter about having the biggest budget, AI is changing that and it’s an exciting time to be involved.

If you do use it, we’d love your feedback - big or small it all matters in developing a product that people love and want to use.

AI roundup

Lots of people worried they’ll get left behind due to AI. I don’t think that’s true, products will make this easy for you. But I do think its helpful to know about them.

So here are the top 2 things on my mind this week that might be helpful to you (because I know you don’t have much time).

1. Prompting is one of the most important skills to learn. Sounds simple, it can be. But as my son said, if you know how to talk to AI, I think you can achieve anything with it.

2. Google is coming out with a whole heap of new tools. Over the weekend they launched Nano Banana, which is an image creation tool and it is really good. But, you still need some level of technical know-how do create any meaningful image.
Heres how you can access it - go to Google Ai studio and play around with the tools.

Here’s me in New York, except I’m not really. Wild.

AI for HR

Firstly thank you to the paid subscribers that have joined!

I've spent years perfecting my prompts, and the first piece of exclusive content drops on Monday for paid subscribers.

No theory. No advanced AI strategies.

The first course is prompt engineering fundamentals. It’s the most important skill you’ll learn in your job.

And especially is AI role out and uptake, is genuinely and wholly a people issue so.. you’re role will be major in this.

What this ISN'T: A deep dive into AI theory or generic "write better prompts" advice.

What this IS: The fundamental frameworks broken down step-by-step so you can start using them immediately.

I’ve designed it so you can read it in 10 minutes and start saving hours that same day as well!

If you know anyone who’d be keen to join, feel free to refer on!

As always thanks for reading and I’ll be back next week with another newsletter (which I really look forward to writing each week!),

Olivia + the empathix team.

Then I put that information into a CustomGPT and every time I had anything account related, I’d just ask the GPT!

Over time, I would interview my accountant, and others, grab those transcripts and put them in the CustomGPT too so I knew what to look out for from an accounting perspective. It’s also really helped with strategic finance too and I bunch of other things.

I was careful not to put client or business sensitive info in there though, so just be mindful of that.

Then I just started creating more and more of them. I found if I could get the prompt right, it was highly specific and saved me a lot of manual work and second guessing.

Custom GPTs are not how we’ve built Empathix, but they are a part of prototyping and learning.

The three GPTs that will help you the most

🏛️ NZ Employment Relations GPT

The Problem: Employment law changes constantly. One wrong move costs thousands in legal fees or tribunal cases.

The Solution: Trained on every NZ employment law decision for 2025. It's like having an ER consultant on speed dial, minus the $400/hour fee. OK but don’t actually use it for legal advice, it is not. It can guide you, but you do need a trained specialist if you are in a tricky spot. We know lots of them!

🎯 Employer Value Proposition GPT

The Problem: Your EVP is either generic corporate speak or based on assumptions about what employees want.

The Solution: Research-backed audit that reveals how your employer brand actually performs in market reality.

💬 Interview Question GPT

The Problem: Most interview questions predict nothing about job performance. You're hiring based on who interviews well, not who performs well.

The Solution: Role-specific questions used by top hiring teams that actually correlate with success.

How to Access These GPTs (Takes 30 Seconds)

1. Open ChatGPT

2. Click "GPT Store" in the left panel

3. Search "Empathix"

4. Start using them immediately

How to Build your Own

1. Go to ChatGPT

2. On the left panel you’ll see “GPTs”, click that

3. Top right, click create

4. Follow the prompts to put it together.

5. The most important part here is the prompting and the knowledge

   1. Be specific with your prompting, treat it like a very literal person. It doesn’t take it context, unless you tell it.

   2. Gather the knowledge you want it to refer to. This knowledge isn’t shared with people who interact with your GPT, its specific to what the Custom GPT will reference in conversations and the output you want to give it.

6. Once you have done all of that, select create. You have the option for it to be private, in the GPT store or shared with your workspace i.e. if you share a workspace with colleagues/friends etc

I’ve launched paid subs (for your professional development)

Some of you noticed I launched paid subs and starting next week and subscribed, thank you!

So now I’ll be launching an AI Community series showing how to build workflows with AI, you can honestly eliminate most of your repetitive work and I’m so excited for it!

You’ll be able to share knowledge, request workflows to be built that you can copy for your own businesses and any other questions you might have!

I’ve turned on the Founding members option, so if you want to be a founding member, just be sure to click that :)

The Bottom Line

While everyone else is arguing about whether AI will replace recruiters, smart hiring teams are using it to become 10x more effective. Alongside empathix of course, these three GPTs are your head start.

Ready to test these out? Search "Empathix" in the GPT Store and let me know which one becomes your go to.

Want to build your own custom AI solutions? Upgrade to paid for the complete GPT building series + AI agent tutorials, first edition out by Monday.

Pic of the early Ideally team from their careers website 🚀

A lot of you will know we have a specific product called Empathix Exec.

We released it because we know how this market works, and have placed 5 C level roles in the last 12 months alone.

But because the market is so confusing to a lot of Companies, you get crushed on pricing.

Don’t worry, I’ll tell you how it works and I’m actually not here to be unkind to Exec recruitment Companies, they’re cool, I work with them and intro them to great CEO’s all the time!!

Exec search Companies are excellent for strategic guidance and for complex searches but not every Company needs this and so we thought why can’t there be a different, not so time or cost intensive process that gives complete transparency into a Global recruitment database.

I think the best Companies are thinking about multiple paths and the smartest are saving $600k in fees.

It just doesn’t need to be so expensive or time consuming anymore and I’m honestly very excited about it.

The underground market is real. Most Companies don’t even know direct access can exist confidentially, but imagine if it did. Because it does.

So the result is you’re left staring down the invoice of a 25-35% payment of total compensation for an executive recruitment process…

We thought… what if you could access that pool directly? You definitely need recruiter support, and often that is what you are paying for, the strategic guidance.

But it really doesn’t need to be so much in time or fees.

Like I said earlier, we have been receiving this feedback from our customers for a while, but it sounded almost too good to be true. But when it kept happening, that’s when we realised… it’s actually happening.

What’s new in Empathix that help recruiters fly through their work

Recruiters can now use Empathix to sort & search a stack of applications, or their whole database in natural language, thanks to our agent Emmy. Emmy lives on the right hand side of the screen and cleverly supports with any finding necessary.

The best recruiters use Emmy to search for specific skills, experience or preference.
Example prompt: 'Find me people with startup experience'. Emmy is still new, so we've focused on getting the core search functions right first.

What's been interesting to watch is how recruiters are actually using it.

Instead of the usual boolean searches with endless AND/OR combinations, they're just... talking to their database. "Show me engineers who've worked internationally" or "Find candidates who've managed remote teams."

Emmy surfaces often don't have those exact words anywhere on their CV. She's picking up on context - someone who "coordinated virtual workshops across 3 time zones" clearly has remote management experience, even if they never explicitly said so.

It's making me think we've been doing candidate search backwards for years. Why are we forcing recruiters to think like search engines when we could just let them think like humans?

TIP OF THE WEEK

If you are putting CVs in GPT, please stop. Here’s why:

1. Grab some fake CVs from GPT or another Large Language Model like Claude (never real ones) put 10 into GPT and tell it what you are looking for, ask it which candidate is likely to be successful.

2. Record who the candidate was it selected

3. Repeat with the same candidates twice more.

You didn’t get the same candidates because AI is non deterministic, also, if you give GPT lots of data i.e. more than 10 (if you want to test this, test with 50), it will get confused and you’ll miss candidates.

The other reasons are around privacy/confidentiality of candidate data and preserving that (along with needing consent to do that).

Building with this technology reminds me why I’ve always loved to be in the people space. It should never have been about becoming a human keyword filter. It’s about understanding people and matching them with opportunities where they'll be happy and I’m so excited to help Companies do that without the complexity that was once involved.

Any feedback/questions or insights on this newsletter?

People who’ve subscribed here have been so generous with their insights on how I can improve the writing of this newsletter, and I really appreciate it (alongside all of the encouragement!)

Also to those who have converted to be paid subscribers - THANK YOU. It means a lot.

Olivia :)