ICP vs MPC Profile: Two Sides of Your Recruitment Market

Every recruiter runs two pipelines whether they name them or not. One pipeline finds companies to sell into. The other finds candidates to place. Most tools treat these as separate workflows with separate data. They're not. They're two sides of the same market — and connecting them is where placements happen.

This is how ICP and MPC Profiles work together to close the gap between candidate and client.

What Is an ICP?

An Ideal Client Profile defines the type of company you want to sell your recruitment service to. It includes target industries, company sizes, locations, job titles of decision makers (hiring managers, HR directors, talent leads), pain points they're experiencing, and how your service solves their problem. When you generate an ICP, you're answering: "Which companies should I be pitching to right now?"

For a recruitment agency, your ICP describes the companies most likely to pay your placement fee. That might be Melbourne-based SaaS companies with 50-300 employees who are actively hiring senior engineers. The ICP tells you which companies to find, who to contact at those companies, and what to say when you reach them.

What Is an MPC Profile?

An MPC Profile — Most Placeable Candidate — defines the type of person you're recruiting. It includes role title, must-have skills, target employers where these people work, move triggers (what makes them leave), disqualifiers, seniority level, and a LinkedIn boolean search string. When you create an MPC Profile, you're answering: "What does the ideal candidate for this role look like, and where do I find them?"

MPC is recruitment-native language. It's the candidate your desk knows it can place. The senior account manager with enterprise SaaS experience who's been in role for 18 months and lives in a city with three viable employers. The MPC Profile captures everything about that archetype so you can systematically find more people who match it.

How They Connect: The Reverse Marketing Flow

Here's where it gets powerful. Most recruiters build their candidate pool and their client list independently. MPC and ICP Profiles connect them:

1. Start with the candidate. Upload their CV or describe the role. AI generates an MPC Profile — skills, target employers, move triggers, disqualifiers.
2. Generate an ICP from the MPC. Click "Feed to ICP" and AI builds an Ideal Client Profile targeting companies who'd hire this type of person. The ICP inherits the candidate's industry, location, and company size criteria automatically.
3. Run Deep Research. The generated ICP feeds into AI-powered market research that discovers real companies currently hiring for this role — with verified company data, hiring signals, and contact details.
4. Launch outreach. The discovered companies become your prospect list. Run a campaign targeting hiring managers at those companies with a pitch built around your candidate's strengths.

The result: you're not cold-calling with "do you have any roles?" — you're calling with "I have a senior account manager with 5 years of enterprise SaaS experience who's actively looking. Are you hiring?"

When to Use Which

Use an ICP when:

• You're building your client base — identifying companies to pitch your recruitment service to
• You're running business development campaigns targeting HR or hiring managers
• You want to map a market segment (e.g. "all Series A fintech companies in Sydney with 50-150 staff")
• You're doing outbound sales for any product or service — ICPs work for any B2B seller, not just recruiters

Use an MPC Profile when:

• You have a candidate (or type of candidate) you want to place
• You're defining a role brief before sourcing begins
• You want to map which companies employ this type of person
• You're building a talent pool for a specific role family

Use both together when:

• You're reverse marketing — "I have this candidate, find me the companies who'd want them"
• You want to run a two-sided desk — source candidates AND develop business from the same market intelligence
• You're placing a specialist where the obvious employers are already known but you need to find the hidden ones

A Real Example

Say you're placing a Customer Success Manager with 5 years of enterprise SaaS experience, based in Melbourne.

Step 1 — MPC Profile: Upload their CV. AI generates the profile: must-have skills (Salesforce, enterprise onboarding, APAC territory management), target employers (mid-market SaaS companies, 50-300 employees), move triggers (limited career progression, no APAC growth), disqualifiers (consumer-facing companies, pre-revenue startups).

Step 2 — Generate ICP: Feed to ICP creates a client profile: target companies are Melbourne-based B2B SaaS companies with 50-300 employees, enterprise customer base, APAC expansion plans. Pain points: losing enterprise accounts due to reactive support, can't retain at 95%+ without a dedicated CS function. Value proposition: your candidate has managed A$7.5M ARR portfolios and built CS teams from scratch.

Step 3 — Deep Research: AI discovers 15 companies matching the profile — real companies with verified data, current job postings for CS roles, hiring manager contact details. Companies you wouldn't have found by Googling because they're not advertising on SEEK yet.

Step 4 — Campaign: Launch an email sequence to VP of Customer Success at each company. The pitch is specific because it's built from real candidate data: "I have a CS leader who grew retention from 91% to 99.2% managing a A$7.5M portfolio at JotForm. Are you scaling your CS team?"

The Technical Distinction

In Kolvera's API and MCP tools, the distinction is explicit:

• ICP tools — list_icp_profiles, get_icp_profile, generate_icp_profile — manage Ideal Client Profiles for outbound sales targeting
• MPC tools — list_mpc_profiles, get_mpc_profile, generate_mpc_profile — manage Most Placeable Candidate Profiles for recruitment targeting
• Bridge — when an ICP is generated from an MPC Profile (via CV or candidate data), it's tagged with profile_type: "cv_reverse" and includes a profile_context field explaining that companies are placement targets, not product prospects

This matters because the same company can appear in both contexts. A SaaS company might be your ICP target (they need your recruitment service) AND appear on an MPC company map (they employ the type of candidate you're sourcing). The profile type tells you which hat you're wearing when you call them.

Getting Started

If you're already running a recruitment desk:

1. Pick your most placeable candidate right now — the one you know you can place if you find the right company
2. Create an MPC Profile from their CV (or describe the role)
3. Generate an ICP from it and run Deep Research
4. You'll have a list of real companies to call within 5 minutes — with a pitch built from your candidate's actual strengths

That's the MPC → ICP → Research → Campaign flow. Two profiles, one connected workflow, and a reason to pick up the phone that isn't "just checking in."

Frequently Asked Questions