First-time setup: from sales demo to first reply

You’ve seen the demo. You’re convinced. Now your account is live and you’re staring at the dashboard. This walkthrough takes you from “first login” to “first reply landed in my inbox” in a few focused sessions. No prior training assumed.

PUBLIC · Onboarding walkthrough

Before you start

You’ll need:

Your Wiggli Intelligence login
A role you actually want to fill (real or representative). Generic test searches lead to generic learnings; a real role gives you results you’ll act on.

The tool is designed to be intuitive. If you get stuck on a specific screen, every section below links to the detailed article for that step.

Get the foundation right

A few one-time things before you ever run a search. Skip them and you’ll trip over them later.

After sign-up, Wiggli sent a confirmation email from no-reply@wiggli.io. Click the link, then sign in. Full details: Sign-up and Account Creation.

2. Complete your personal and company info

Open Settings (gear icon, bottom left). Fill in:

Personal: name, job title, mobile, time zone
Company: logo, VAT, address, website, industries, size

3. Invite the team (if you have one)

If colleagues will use Wiggli, invite them now and assign roles. Most should be Recruiter by default; only give Admin or Super Admin to people who actually need to manage settings or billing. Full details: Inviting Users and User roles and permissions explained.

4. Connect your email account

This is the inbox outreach campaigns will send from later. Connect your Gmail or Outlook in Settings, Accounts.

5. Optional: connect your LinkedIn and WhatsApp

If your plan includes them (Strategist or Oracle), connect them in the same Accounts tab.

Foundation set. Now the fun part.

Run your first real search

The principle to remember: with 850M+ profiles, the candidates you want are almost certainly in the database. Strong results are about how you ask, not whether the people exist.

1. Open the search dashboard

It’s the home page after sign-in. You’ll see a search bar and three tabs: Smart Prompt, Similar profile, Manual Filter. Full details: Dashboard and Searching methods.

2. Start with Smart Prompt

Smart Prompt is the fastest way in. Describe the role in plain language, the way you’d brief a colleague. Better input, better output:

“Senior backend developer at a fintech in Antwerp, fluent in Dutch and English, strong with Python and Django.”

Click Find talents. Full details: Write an effective Smart Prompt.

3. Check what the system extracted

The row of tags under your prompt shows what Wiggli parsed from your sentence: job title, skills, location, industry, language. Read each one. If “Antwerp” got misread as “Antwerp, Netherlands,” you’ll see it now and fix it in one click.

One thing the system doesn’t infer by default: whether you want people currently holding the role or anyone who’s ever held it. If current matters, say so explicitly in your prompt.

4. Read the results, then refine

Results appear as candidate cards. Click into a few to see full profiles. Then refine:

Too few results? Widen the location radius, or accept the AI-suggested job-title synonyms (these often surface hidden A-tier candidates).
Too many irrelevant ones? Add Excluded Companies, narrow the industry, or raise the experience minimum.
Skill missing? The skills filter only matches structured skill data on profiles. Try Keyword or Boolean Search instead, which scans the full profile text.

5. Save the filter

Once results look right, click Save to keep the search as a Saved Filter. You can re-run it later as new profiles enter the database. Full details: Save and reuse a search with Saved Filters.

You now have a working search.

Shortlist with the AI Co-pilot

A search returns a long list. Outreach needs a short one. The Co-pilot is what bridges the two.

1. Create a project

From the left navigation, click Projects, then Create project. Name it for the role. Full details: Create a project and add candidates.

2. Add the top candidates from your search

Back in your search results, select 50-100 of the strongest-looking candidates with the checkboxes. Click Add to project. They’re now in your shortlist with their full profile data attached.

3. Run the Co-pilot presets

Inside the project, open the AI Co-pilot panel. Run a few presets:

Career summary: short overview of each candidate’s career, so you can skim instead of reading every profile.
Open to work: flags candidates whose profiles signal they’re open.
Likely to switch: flags candidates whose patterns suggest movement.

These fill in as new intelligence columns in your project. Sort or filter by them to find your real shortlist fast. Full details: Run AI Co-pilot presets on a project.

4. Ask the Co-pilot a custom question

The Co-pilot also takes plain-language instructions. Try one specific to your role:

“Has this candidate worked at a B2B SaaS company for at least 3 years? Give one sentence of explanation.”

It creates a new column with yes / no / unclear for each profile, plus a one-sentence reason. This is where the Co-pilot earns its keep. Filters can’t answer questions like that; the Co-pilot can. Full details: Create a custom Intelligence Column.

5. Pick your shortlist

Filter the project by your Co-pilot columns. Aim for 30-50 qualified candidates. That’s your shortlist.

Reach out

You have a shortlist. Now turn it into replies.

1. Reveal contact information

For each candidate you want to reach, click into their profile and reveal their contact info. You can do this in bulk from the project too: select your shortlist, click Reveal contacts.

A few things to know upfront so the credits don’t surprise you:

Email and phone are separate waterfalls, with separate credit costs. Phone is more expensive than email.
Credits are deducted the moment a provider returns a match, not when you click anything else. Each find costs.
If a provider returns nothing, no credits are spent.
Once revealed, the contact is permanent and visible to your whole workspace. A colleague who hits the same candidate later doesn’t pay to see it again.

Full details: Reveal candidate contact information, Understanding credits and what consumes them, and How Wiggli’s data enrichment works.

2. Build a multi-step campaign

Go to Campaigns, click Create campaign. Name it for the role.

For a first cold outreach campaign, three steps work well:

Step 1: Email. A short personalized note explaining the role and why this candidate.
Step 2: Email follow-up (4 days later). One paragraph, polite, useful.
Step 3: LinkedIn connection request with a note (6 days later). Plan-permitting.

Use the AI to draft the first version of each message if you want a starting point, then edit. Add variables ({first_name}, {company}, {job_title}) so each message feels written for that candidate.

Full details: Build a multi-step outreach campaign, Use AI to write email content, Variables and personalization in campaigns.

3. Add the shortlist and launch

From your project, select the shortlist, click Add to campaign, pick this campaign, confirm. Then toggle the campaign ON.

Full details: Add profiles to an outreach campaign.

4. Wait, then triage

Replies land in your connected inbox (your Gmail or Outlook), not inside Wiggli. Because we know you check those daily. Wiggli auto-stops the sequence for anyone who replies, so you don’t have to manage that yourself. Full details: Auto-stop, unsubscribe, and pause/play behavior and Campaign analytics and reply tracking.

First replies usually arrive fast.

After your first reply

From here, the workflow loops:

Push qualified candidates to your ATS in one click. See Adding Candidates to the Wiggli ATS.
Refine the campaign based on what’s working. See Campaign analytics and reply tracking.
Start the next search.

The full sourcing workflow is covered in depth in The Wiggli sourcing workflow: from prompt to first reply.

What if results don’t match the demo?

Most “this isn’t working” moments trace back to a few patterns. If your first search returns less than you expected, walk through Not seeing results? Optimization checklist. If a campaign goes quiet, My campaign is stuck or not sending covers the common causes.

The data is in the database. With the right prompt, the right filters, and the Co-pilot doing the screening, the candidates surface. And with the right outreach content, those profiles will reply.

Still stuck?

Your customer success manager reads faster than any search bar.

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