Why "how long" depends on who does the work
There are two ways to put AI on a recruiting desk. The first is do-it-yourself: pick a general-purpose AI tool, connect your email and calendar on your own, figure out how it should talk to your ATS, then write the instructions that teach it what a job order is, what an MPC is, and why the counteroffer conversation happens before the resignation, not after. None of that is impossible. It's a second job, and it's yours, because a generalist tool arrives knowing nothing about recruiting. The honest DIY answer to "how long does setup take" is: as long as you keep working on it.
The second way is white-glove: the product arrives already built for a recruiting desk, and the vendor does the wiring. RecruiterClaw takes this path. The recruiting knowledge ships in the box, built by recruiters with 30+ years of combined placement experience, so setup isn't training an intern from zero. It's introductions.
What actually happens inside the 48 hours?
The discovery call, 30 minutes. You look at the product, we look at your desk, and both sides decide whether this is a fit before anything else gets scheduled. Bring questions and a role you're working; a live demo on your own niche beats a canned one.
The onboarding call. This is the deep one. We go through your desk, your clients, and your niche: who you place, who you place them with, how your searches usually run, what a good week looks like. This is where your Chief of Staff starts learning the desk it's about to run, so the first morning brief reads like it was written by someone who already works for you.
The remote install session. We drive, you watch. The install happens on your own machine: Slack, your email (Gmail or Outlook), your calendar (Google or Microsoft), and your ATS all get connected while you look on. Credentials go into your machine's encrypted keychain, not into anyone's cloud. Then you're live, within 48 hours of starting, without ever opening a terminal.
What should you prepare for onboarding?
You don't need documentation or a project plan. You need the things only you know about your desk.
Your niche, in your own words. The built-in Field Manual coaching and the Monday post ideas both get adapted to it, so "ground-up commercial GCs in Texas" is more useful to us than "construction."
Your clients and active roles. Permanent memory starts on day one: clients, fees, promises, patterns. The more of your real desk you bring to onboarding, the sooner the pipeline alerts and 7 and 14 day deal touches mean something.
Your email, calendar, and ATS. Know which accounts you live in. Loxo is included out of the box; any other ATS with an API gets wired during the install itself.
Your own playbook, if you have one. Every install ships with the Field Manual, a recruiting playbook built from 30+ years of desk experience. If you've spent a career building your own scripts and sequences, upload them; yours take precedence.
One live role. The best first search is a real one, because you can judge the shortlist against your own knowledge of the market.
Why is there an install at all?
A signup page would be quicker. It would also mean your client data living on someone else's servers. RecruiterClaw installs on your machine precisely so that your memory, client profiles, conversation history, and candidate files stay with you, and so that RecruiterClaw can operate no servers holding client data. The remote install session is the price of that ownership, and we pay most of it: you watch, we work. For a firm whose moat is its relationships, we think that trade is obvious.
The same session is where the guardrails go in. ATS writes are set up additive only, so delete, merge, and archive are impossible by design, and you choose a write-approval mode from read-only to confirm-each to trusted. Email sending is locked behind an exact confirmation phrase from the start. Nothing about the speed of setup skips the safety.
What does "live" mean the next morning?
Live means the cadence is running, not that a login exists. At 7 AM the morning brief lands: email triage, your calendar, pipeline alerts, deals needing a touch at 7 and 14 days, and one First Move Today. You can type a plain-English search into Slack and get a ranked shortlist from 400M+ profiles in about 90 seconds, or drop a resume with the word MPC and watch a client campaign assemble. Two days after a 30 minute call, the desk has a Chief of Staff. That's the whole timeline.
How long does RecruiterClaw take to set up?
You're live within 48 hours. The whole process is three touchpoints: a 30 minute discovery call, an onboarding call that goes deep on your desk, your clients, and your niche, and a remote install session where we drive and you watch.
Do I need to be technical or have IT help?
No. You never touch a terminal. The install is remote and white-glove: we do the driving while you watch, and credentials go straight into your machine's encrypted keychain. There is no IT department requirement because there is no IT work on your side.
What should I have ready for the onboarding call?
Your niche in your own words, your client list and active roles, which email and calendar you live in (Gmail or Outlook, Google or Microsoft), your ATS details, and your own playbook if you have one. Bring a live role you're working so your first search is a real one.
Does setup work with my ATS?
Loxo is included out of the box, and any ATS with an API can be wired during the white-glove install. Every write is additive: create, note, add-to-pipeline, update. Delete, merge, and archive are impossible by design.
What happens right after the install?
The cadence starts. At 7 AM the morning brief lands in Slack: email triage, your calendar, pipeline alerts, deals needing a touch at 7 and 14 days, and one First Move Today. You can run your first plain-English search across 400M+ profiles the same day and have a ranked shortlist in about 90 seconds.