Field Notes · Author
James Doyle
Founder, HOLI
James founded HOLI to build a partner for specialist recruiters — the kind that captures the intelligence you gather and turns it into the action that wins the role. Twenty years in specialist search across healthcare, behavioural health, and creative.
Issues by James Doyle
- No. 023
Feedback loops that make the AI sharper (not louder)
Not all feedback is training signal. Which corrections Holi weights heavily, which it ignores by design, and why the difference matters.
- No. 021
Ending the day at inbox zero without lying to yourself
Inbox zero is a lie when it means everything got filed. It is honest when it means every item was decided. Command Center makes the honest version practical.
- No. 020
What belongs on today, what belongs on someday
The editorial call that makes Command Center work. Two lists, one clear boundary, and how Holi decides which items cross the line.
- No. 019
The follow-up cadence specialist desks actually use
Not the sequencer default. The cadence pattern the top-quartile specialist recruiters in our cohort run, and how Holi's outreach layer matches it per-recipient.
- No. 018
Subject lines that survive Outlook filters
Why 'Outlook-Safe' is its own tone preset in Holi, and the five subject-line rules that get past strict inbox filters without stripping the voice.
- No. 017
When repurposing becomes recycling (and how to tell)
Repurpose is a multiplier. Recycling is a smell. Three tests for whether your outputs are still doing their job or just filling space.
- No. 016
One conversation, five artefacts
Walk through what repurpose actually produces from a single thirty-minute candidate call, artefact by artefact, in the recruiter's own voice.
- No. 015
Signals worth capturing from a job spec
Most of a spec is furniture. The three or four lines that matter are the ones Holi's capture layer pulls forward before you start sourcing.
- No. 014
Reading a candidate profile in 90 seconds
The specialist's shortcut: what to look at first, what to ignore, and how Holi's capture layer does the same read at machine speed.
- No. 013
What 'Holi learned about you this week' actually looks like
The learning loop is what turns Holi from a lookup into a partner. Every week it writes back what it noticed about your niche, your language, and your decisions.
- No. 012
The today list that replaced the recruiting dashboard
Command Center is a short editorial list, not a wall of tiles. What matters today, what changed since yesterday, what to do next.
- No. 011
Outreach that sounds like you, at cohort scale
Tone presets, source-attributed drafting, and cadence patterns that hold up in specialist niches where recipients actually notice the difference.
- No. 010
Repurpose: turning one signal into five moves
One conversation, five artefacts. How Holi's repurpose layer takes a single captured signal and drafts everything downstream in one pass.
- No. 009
What "capture" actually means for a specialist recruiter
The intake layer of the loop. Reading a profile, a spec, or an inbound the way a specialist would, then storing what matters with the source still attached.
- No. 008
The candidate experience gap in specialist recruitment
Specialist candidates do not judge you by your ATS or your careers page. They judge you by whether the second conversation remembers the first.
- No. 007
Using AI in recruitment without losing your voice
The recruiters who win with AI are not the ones who let it write for them. They are the ones who use it to think faster and then insist on their own voice at the send step.
- No. 006
The specialist recruiter tech stack in 2026
A field report on what specialist recruiters actually run day to day, what has been quietly retired, and where the leverage now lives.
- No. 005
Recruiter cold email that gets replies (without the AI smell)
Templates are dead. What replaces them is a short, specific note that could only have been written to one person, in one niche, this week.
- No. 004
How to choose a recruitment CRM
Five questions to ask before you sign anything. The wrong CRM costs you two years and a third of your team.
- No. 003
What is a recruitment CRM?
A recruitment CRM is the system that remembers everyone you've ever spoken to, what they care about, and when to reach back out.
- No. 002
How to source passive candidates in 2026
The best people aren't on job boards. They're in your network, in your inbox, and in the long tail of LinkedIn searches you're too busy to run.
- No. 001
Will AI replace recruiters?
Short answer: no. Longer answer: the recruiters who use AI as a thinking partner will replace the ones who don't.
- No. 000
Bullhorn vs Recruit CRM in 2026: which specialists actually pick
A working read on the two agency CRMs that dominate specialist desks, what each is genuinely best at, and the layer both of them still leave out.
- No. 000
Why AI sourcing tools miss the specialist recruiter
The AI sourcing category is real, and it is pointed at the wrong end of the funnel for anyone whose edge is memory and judgement.
- No. 000
Why AI sourcing tools miss the specialist market
A candid read on why the current wave of AI sourcing tools underperforms on specialist desks, and what the intelligence layer needs to do instead.