Kezia Adeyemi started Nova Staffing Solutions from her spare bedroom in Manchester three years ago. Like most recruitment entrepreneurs, she had the industry knowledge, the client relationships and the drive. What she did not have was time.

Running a recruitment agency is, at its core, a matching business. You receive job briefs from clients, you find candidates who meet the criteria, you arrange interviews and manage the process through to offer and placement. Simple in theory. Exhausting in practice.

The Problem: Drowning in Process

Before Wilmot, Kezia was placing an average of four candidates per month. Not because she lacked clients or candidates, but because every placement required an enormous amount of manual effort. Writing and posting job adverts across multiple platforms. Reading through stacks of CVs. Sending initial screening emails. Chasing non-responders. Scheduling calls. Confirming interviews. Chasing feedback. The list never ended.

"I was doing the work of three people," she explains. "Every morning I would open my laptop to find 40 to 60 emails that all needed attention. Most of them were routine but they all needed reading, processing and responding to. I was a recruitment agency that barely had time to recruit."

Kezia had tried using virtual assistants, but the cost was high and the quality was inconsistent. She had tried various recruitment software tools, but they automated individual tasks without joining them up into a coherent workflow. She needed something fundamentally different.

The Solution: Automating the Entire Candidate Journey

After implementing Wilmot, Kezia designed an automated candidate journey that handles everything from initial application through to reference check. When a new role is posted, Wilmot begins screening incoming applications automatically. It reads each CV against the job criteria, scores the candidate on key attributes, and sorts them into tiers: strong candidates, maybes and no.

Strong candidates receive an automated WhatsApp message from Wilmot within minutes of applying. This message introduces Nova Staffing, explains the role and invites the candidate to answer five qualifying questions by reply. Wilmot reads their responses, evaluates them and either progresses the candidate or politely declines them, all without Kezia's involvement.

Candidates who pass the WhatsApp screen are automatically sent a short availability questionnaire and a reference request form. If they complete both promptly, they are added to a shortlist that Kezia reviews each morning. At this point, she is looking at pre-screened, pre-qualified, reference-checked candidates. Her job becomes purely about making the final match and building the relationship.

The Results: 47 Placements in One Month

Within three months of implementing Wilmot, Kezia's monthly placement rate had more than tripled, from four to fourteen. Within six months, it had reached forty-seven. Revenue grew by 340%. The agency has since taken on two additional members of staff, not to handle admin, but to manage the volume of new client enquiries.

Perhaps more significantly, the quality of placements has improved. Because screening is now consistent and thorough, the candidates Kezia puts forward to clients are better matched. Placement failure rates have dropped. Clients are happier and reorder more frequently.

"What Wilmot did was remove every bottleneck between me and growth," Kezia says. "The work that used to consume 80% of my time is now done automatically. I spend my days on the strategic work, building relationships, developing new client accounts, working on my business rather than just in it. I would never go back."

What You Can Learn from This

The key lesson from Nova Staffing's story is not that AI can replace human judgement in recruitment. Kezia still makes every hiring recommendation herself. The lesson is that AI can eliminate the administrative scaffolding that prevents skilled professionals from doing the work they were actually hired to do.

If your business involves any kind of application or inquiry process, whether you are a recruiter, a solicitor, an estate agent or a gym owner, the same principle applies. The initial filtering, qualifying and chasing that consumes hours of your week can be automated without losing quality. In many cases, the quality improves because the process becomes more consistent.

To explore how Wilmot could transform your recruitment or business operations, visit our sectors page or start a conversation using the chat widget below.