Can I track candidates in Pipeline Pal?

It isn’t designed for that. Pipeline Pal tracks clients, mandates and fees. Use an ATS for candidates.

Can I record my expected fee per role?

Yes. Each deal has a value and currency, and you can ask for totals by close date or stage.

Does it connect to LinkedIn?

No. Pipeline Pal has no integrations and never sends messages. You log conversations yourself, in a sentence.

A CRM for the business side of recruiting

Recruiters juggle two pipelines: candidates and clients. Pipeline Pal is for the second one, the hiring managers, mandates and fees that keep an independent recruiter in business. It is a free CRM you update by chatting with ChatGPT or Grok.

See Pipeline Pal Set it up

Updated 18 October 2026

A CRM, not an ATS

Let’s be clear up front: Pipeline Pal is not an applicant tracking system. It has no candidate profiles, CV parsing, job boards or interview scheduling. If you need to manage hundreds of candidates through hiring stages, use an ATS or a recruiting CRM built for that.

What many independent and boutique recruiters lack is a simple way to manage business development: which companies are hiring, which hiring managers you’ve spoken to, which mandates are open and what fees are expected. That is a sales pipeline, and that is what Pipeline Pal does.

Clients and mandates as leads and deals

Leads: hiring managers and talent leads you are developing, with company and source (referral, LinkedIn, event).
Customers: companies you have placed with, so repeat business is easy to spot.
Deals: a mandate or role, with your expected fee as the value and an expected placement date.

The stages translate well to business development:

New: target company or warm intro.
Contacted: first conversation with the hiring manager.
Qualified: a real role with budget and urgency.
Proposal: terms sent.
Negotiation: terms agreed, search under way.
Won / Lost: placement made, or the role closed another way.

Day to day

New client lead: Sofia, Head of Talent at Ardent Bio, needs two lab managers

Adds Sofia as a lead with company and notes.

Create a deal for Ardent Bio, two lab manager roles, fee 22,000, closing end of December

Tracks the mandate as a deal.

Log a call with Sofia: terms agreed, sending shortlist next week

Adds the call to the timeline.

Which hiring managers haven’t I spoken to this month?

Finds clients that have gone quiet.

What fees are expected to close this quarter?

Lists deals and totals by close date.

Pipeline Pal deal detail panel for an example website redesign deal, showing its value, stage buttons, contact, expected close date and activity timeline. — A deal in Pipeline Pal with contact, close date and timeline (example data).

Keeping clients warm between roles

The best recruiters stay in touch when nothing is open. Log check-ins on the timeline, and once a week ask “which clients haven’t I spoken to in six weeks?”. The daily brief also ranks your open mandates by expected close date and value, so the fee that is about to land does not get neglected.

Limits to know

No candidate tracking, as above.
No email or LinkedIn integration. Pipeline Pal never reads or sends messages.
One person per account, so it suits independents rather than agencies with shared desks.
No import yet; add active clients by describing them in chat.

How to set it up

Add Pipeline Pal as a connector in your assistant. In Grok:

Open grok.com/connectors while signed in to Grok.
Click New Connector, then choose Custom.
Enter the MCP server URL:
https://plugins.works/pipeline-pal/mcp
Sign in to plugins.works, or create a free account, and confirm the connection.
Start a chat and say Show my sales pipeline.

In ChatGPT you add the same URL as a custom MCP server. Whether you can do that depends on your ChatGPT plan and workspace settings; the ChatGPT guide has the steps. For more detail on Grok, see How to connect Pipeline Pal to Grok.