--- title: "Coastal Recruiting Case Study: 4.7x Candidate Intros | OneGTM" description: "How OneGTM built Coastal Recruiting a candidate outbound engine that grew recruiter-accepted intros 4.7x in four months, with interested replies daily." url: https://getaob.com/coastal-recruiting-case-study --- [image: Coastal Recruiting] × [image: OneGTM] Customer story · Recruiting # Coastal Recruiting grew accepted candidate intros 4.7x in four months with OneGTM Coastal used to get interested candidates in bursts. Now they arrive every day of the week, weekends included, and recruiters accept about ten intros a day. By [Garrett Wolfe](https://garrettawolfe.com) and Sahil Valecha, OneGTM. Published October 2, 2026. 4.7x more accepted candidate intros per month (72 in April, 340 in August) ~10 a day candidate intros accepted by recruiters, every day since August 71 of 72 days with at least one interested candidate reply (Jul 20 to Sep 29) > "Whatever y'all have done over the last three weeks, it's working. Now we want to scale." [image: David Friedman] **David Friedman** Co-founder, Coastal Recruiting Key takeaways - OneGTM built Coastal Recruiting a candidate outbound engine between April and September 2026, working inside the team with the founders and recruiters. - Recruiter-accepted candidate intros grew from 72 in April to 340 in August, and 1,149 in total. - Positive candidate replies went from about 35 a week to about 125 a week, arriving every day instead of in campaign bursts. - Quality held as volume grew: every candidate is scored the way a Coastal recruiter would score them, and every accept or pass makes the next batch better. ## At a glance Company [Coastal Recruiting](https://www.coastalrecruiting.co/?utm_source=partner&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=onegtm-garrettwolfe&utm_content=coastal-recruiting), a recruiting firm placing engineering, go-to-market and customer success talent at high-growth startups Motion Candidate outbound: finding people clients want to hire, and getting them into a recruiter conversation Channels Personalized cold email, LinkedIn Previous approach Recruiters sourcing by hand, a CRM that refreshed candidate data every 180 days, one-off email campaigns per client Engagement April to September 2026 OneGTM team Garrett Wolfe, Sahil Valecha 01 Before ## Great recruiters, and an outbound engine that ran in bursts Coastal places engineers, sellers and customer success leaders at venture-backed startups. Their recruiters are excellent on a call. The hard part was getting enough of the right people onto one. Outbound ran campaign by campaign. A new client search meant a new list, a new sequence and a new round of manual sourcing, and interested replies came in waves when a campaign launched, then tapered off. Candidate data went stale between CRM refreshes, so recruiters sometimes messaged people who had already moved to a client. And AI-written copy never sounded like a recruiter, so the team kept writing it by hand. > "[Our CRM] refreshes like every 180 days and it's killing us. A candidate started at a client, but they are not reflected as that client, and then we message them and it puts us in a bad position." [image: David Friedman] **David Friedman** Co-founder, Coastal Recruiting 02 How we worked ## Embedded with the founders and recruiters, shipping every week OneGTM worked inside Coastal's team rather than beside it. We set the logic with the founders and recruiters (which roles to recruit for, what a strong candidate looks like for each one, how much volume each role gets) and then changed the system every week based on what recruiters said about the candidates it sent them. 1. 01**Find**~1M candidate profiles, kept fresh 2. 02**Score**15 role scorecards, recruiter-calibrated 3. 03**Reach out**Short notes from real recruiters 4. 04**Triage**Replies sorted in seconds 5. 05**Decide**Accept or pass in Slack ↺ Every recruiter decision sharpens the next batch How the engine works: find, score, reach out, triage and decide, getting sharper with every recruiter decision. Play 01 ### Score every candidate the way a Coastal recruiter would Fifteen roles, from junior engineer to head of sales, each with its own definition of a strong candidate, built with Coastal's recruiters and calibrated on 1,880 of their decisions. Outreach only goes to the people a recruiter would actually want to talk to. Play 02 ### One candidate database, always fresh Coastal's candidate data (about a million profiles across 196,000 companies) stays current instead of waiting on a CRM refresh, so candidates hear from Coastal when they're most open to a move, and clients' own employees are never contacted. Play 03 ### Notes that sound like a recruiter wrote them, at a volume no recruiter could Coastal's team had given up on AI copy, so we built the writing around their voice instead of a template. Every email is short, comes from a real Coastal recruiter, and is specific to the person reading it. The result reads one-to-one and runs every day. Play 04 ### Every reply on a recruiter's desk in seconds Interested replies land in Slack with the context a recruiter needs to accept or pass in one click, and every decision makes the next batch of candidates better. Every one of 5,271 replies over six months has a recorded outcome. Reply desk 11:04 AM Interested · Senior CS Candidate name · Current company "Thanks for reaching out. I'd be open to hearing more about the role, happy to chat this week." - Score 87 / 100 for Head of CS - 6 yrs in CS leadership, Series B SaaS - Not at an active Coastal client Accept introPass Illustration of the reply desk: an interested reply with a short summary and one-click accept or pass. Candidate details hidden. > "With everything that you've built, the process, the system, the flow, the scoring, the attribution, it's actually what we've needed." [image: Asher Hoffman] **Asher Hoffman** Co-founder, Coastal Recruiting 03 After ## Interested candidates every day, and recruiters who can tell the difference ### From bursts to a daily habit By late July the engine was running every day without anyone pushing it. Since July 20, interested candidates have replied on 71 of 72 days, Saturdays and Sundays included. Positive replies went from about 35 a week before the engagement to about 125 a week from August on, an average of 17 a day. Before (Mar 16 to Apr 5)~35 / week After (Jul 27 to Sep 27)~125 / week Positive candidate replies per week, before the engagement and from August on. Monthly averages rose from 204 (April to July) to 517 (August and September). ### Ten accepted intros a day An interested reply only counts once a recruiter says yes to it. Since August, Coastal's recruiters have accepted about 10 candidate intros a day and more than 300 a month, up from 72 in April. Across the whole engagement they accepted 1,149 intros, on 147 separate days. ~10 / day accepted intros since August (7 a day across the engagement) 300+ / month accepted intros since August, up from 72 in April ~125 / week positive candidate replies, up from ~35 before 1,149 intros accepted since April, on 147 different days Candidate intros accepted by Coastal recruiters per month, 2026. *September through the 29th. ### More candidates, and better ones The quality held as volume grew. Recruiters reported stronger candidates, not just more of them, and the targeting kept improving with every recruiter decision. > "The team gave us the feedback overwhelmingly that the leads, just after they talk to them, are just really, really strong." [image: David Friedman] **David Friedman** Co-founder, Coastal Recruiting > "We've definitely seen an uptake of highly qualified candidates for us to engage with and then convert." KE **Kyle Elliott** VP of GTM Recruiting, Coastal Recruiting ### Calls, placements and revenue Hundreds of those candidates booked calls with Coastal's team, and the engine produced placements and revenue for the firm. Nothing fell through the cracks along the way: every reply has a recorded outcome, and the share of replies lost in transit fell from as much as half a week's worth to 0.26%. 04 In their words ## What Coastal's founders say [image: David Friedman, co-founder of Coastal Recruiting] > "Truly, you've been the best partner / consultant we've ever worked with (and we've worked with a lot)." **David Friedman** Co-founder, Coastal Recruiting [image: Asher Hoffman, co-founder of Coastal Recruiting] > "You've truly been the best partner we've worked with and would recommend you 10 out of 10 times to anyone we know." **Asher Hoffman** Co-founder, Coastal Recruiting ## Coastal Recruiting case study FAQ ### What results did Coastal Recruiting get from working with OneGTM? Recruiter-accepted candidate intros grew 4.7x in four months, from 72 in April 2026 to 340 in August. Since August, Coastal's recruiters accept about 10 intros a day, positive candidate replies rose from about 35 a week to about 125 a week, and interested candidates replied on 71 of 72 days between July 20 and September 29, weekends included. ### What did OneGTM build for Coastal Recruiting? A candidate outbound engine with four parts: scoring for 15 role types calibrated on recruiter decisions, a candidate database that stays fresh and never contacts clients' own employees, short personalized emails sent from real Coastal recruiters, and a Slack reply desk where recruiters accept or pass on each interested candidate in one click. ### How long did the Coastal Recruiting engagement take? The engagement ran from April to September 2026. The first lift showed up within weeks, and by late July the engine was producing interested candidates every day without anyone pushing it. ### Can outbound work for a recruiting firm or staffing agency? Yes, when it is built around how recruiters judge candidates. Coastal's engine scores every candidate the way its recruiters would, writes in their voice, and learns from every accept or pass, so volume went up without the quality dropping. ### How is a recruiter-accepted intro counted? An interested candidate reply only counts once a Coastal recruiter clicks approve on it in the Slack reply desk. Out-of-office and other automatic replies are excluded. All numbers were measured on September 30, 2026 from Coastal's own database. How we measured: numbers come from Coastal's own database, pulled September 30, 2026. Accepted intros are recruiter approve clicks on the Slack reply desk. Positive replies are candidates who said they were interested, curious, or asked about a role, with out-of-office replies excluded. Quotes from recorded calls are lightly edited to remove filler words. See more of [what OneGTM builds](https://getaob.com/systems), or how we approach [signal-based outbound](https://getaob.com/outbound-agency). Want interested candidates (or buyers) on your desk every day? ## Related - [Signal-based outbound agency](https://getaob.com/outbound-agency): Cold email and LinkedIn systems triggered by real buying signals. - [AI sales automation](https://getaob.com/ai-sales-automation): Account research, follow-up, and CRM hygiene handled by AI your reps will use. - [Clay agency and Clay consultant](https://getaob.com/clay-agency): Clay tables, enrichment waterfalls, and scoring from a Clay Artisan Solutions Partner. - [Claude Code for GTM](https://getaob.com/claude-code-gtm): Custom GTM tooling, data pipelines, and internal apps built with AI coding agents. - [GTM engineering services](https://getaob.com/systems): Everything OneGTM builds, from CRM enrichment to signal-based outbound. ## Talk to OneGTM Tell us what you're building. We reply the same day. Book a call at [getaob.com/#contact](https://getaob.com/#contact) or email [team@getaob.com](mailto:team@getaob.com).