Anyone looking for outreach automation in DACH recruiting meets the LinkedIn tools first: Dripify, Waalaxy, LinkedHelper, Lemlist. They are mature, well documented — and they automate LinkedIn.
The problem: LinkedIn is not XING
The point is not that one network is better. It is that they do not connect: a LinkedIn tool operates a LinkedIn account, and no amount of quality makes it reach a XING profile or a XING inbox. If the candidates you need to reach maintain a XING profile, a LinkedIn tool cannot contact them there.
The same holds for the sourcing product. LinkedIn has LinkedIn Recruiter and XING has XING Talent Manager; they are the analogous products, not one filling a gap the other leaves. What matters for tooling is that a project living in TalentManager is reachable only from XING — a LinkedIn tool cannot fetch that list, however good it is.
Effixient named this gap before we did, positioning itself explicitly as “the LinkedHelper / Dripify / Lemlist automation tool for XING”.
What to expect from a XING tool
The mechanics are familiar: contact requests, messages, follow-up sequences, stopping on a reply. The difference is the integration — if your candidate list comes out of TalentManager, the tool has to be able to fetch it from there.
What stays the same — and what should make you sceptical
XING has its own limits on contact requests and action rates, exactly as LinkedIn does. A tool working inside your own account is subject to them. Promises of “unlimited” or “safe from bans” are a warning sign in both worlds.
Using both in parallel is entirely normal, incidentally: LinkedIn for international roles, XING for the DACH market.