How We Cut Recruitment Time by 70% at NetConnect Group

Background

I'm writing this from the perspective of someone who lived through this change. I lead HR operations at NetConnect Group, a B2B technology services company with around 1,800 employees across 14 countries. Before we implemented Headcount, our recruitment process was functional. Barely.

We ran on email, a master spreadsheet that was perpetually out of date, and weekly check-ins that almost always started with "did you review that candidate yet?" The answer was usually "which one?"

The Problem

The real issue wasn't that our system was bad. It's that it couldn't scale. When we were hiring 5 to 10 people a quarter, spreadsheets were fine. When that became 30 to 40, things started breaking.

Candidates would get stuck between stages because someone forgot to follow up. Hiring managers would send feedback three weeks late, by which point the candidate had already accepted somewhere else. I couldn't answer basic questions like "where are we on the engineering hire?" without opening five browser tabs and checking my email.

The thing that pushed us to actually do something about it was losing a senior product manager we'd been recruiting for two months. We'd found the right person. She was genuinely excited about the role. But our process took too long to move, feedback sat in someone's inbox for eight days, and she accepted another offer on a Friday morning before we'd made ours. That one stung. Our CPO asked directly: why does this keep happening?

We ran the numbers around the same time and found our team was spending roughly 60% of their time on admin work, tracking things down, updating spreadsheets, sending status emails, instead of actually evaluating whether candidates were good fits.

What We Did

We started with a pilot on our product team, which had 4 open roles at the time. No big company-wide rollout, just a contained test. The results were clear enough that we expanded from there.

The core change was simple: everything went into one system. Every job posting, every candidate, every piece of feedback. Recruiters moved candidates through stages instead of emailing CVs around. Hiring managers left comments directly on profiles instead of feedback disappearing into inboxes.

We also started using the AI scoring feature, which I was skeptical about at first. When we opened roles with 80 or more applicants, the strongest matches were already surfaced. We weren't starting from zero every time. It didn't replace judgment, but it meant we were spending time on the right profiles instead of reading every CV in order.

The AI screening interviews were more useful than I expected. Candidates record answers to a few questions on their own time. We review before deciding who to bring in for a live call. A lot of the preliminary "tell me about your experience" conversations that used to fill up calendars just stopped being necessary.

What Changed

We measured this properly because I needed to justify the expense to our CFO. After six months:

Time to create a shortlist dropped from 12 days to 4 days on average. Recruiters could immediately focus on candidates flagged as strong matches and spend less time on the 60% who clearly didn't fit.

Screening calls were cut by more than half. The video interviews handled most of the early conversations that used to clog up calendars before anyone had made a real assessment.

Overall time-to-fill came down significantly across roles. That's the number the CFO cared about, and it moved.

Hiring managers actually responded to feedback requests. Having everything in one place mattered more than I expected. Before, I'd email someone a CV and it would sit there. Now, the profile, interview notes, and feedback form are all in the same view.

We stopped losing candidates between stages. When someone has been sitting in "schedule interview" for a week, it's visible. Someone deals with it.

The 70% efficiency improvement is a blended number based on time saved on admin work, faster shortlisting, fewer duplicated efforts, and reduced time-to-fill overall. It's not that every task suddenly took 70% less time. It's that we accomplished significantly more with the same team.

Things I Didn't Expect

The AI authenticity score flagged a handful of applications that turned out to be almost entirely AI-generated. One was particularly obvious in hindsight. The candidate described their experience in unusually polished language that didn't match how they communicated in the screening interview. Without the flag, that would have gone to a full interview and wasted at least two people's time.

The bigger change was cultural. When everyone can see the same information, people stop waiting for permission to act. Recruiters aren't chasing hiring managers for updates. Hiring managers aren't wondering if their feedback was received. Things just move.

It's not perfect. Delays still happen, usually around scheduling. The AI scoring occasionally underrates someone who turns out to be genuinely interesting. You still need judgment. But it's considerably better than manually reading 100 CVs every time a role opens up.

Where We Are Now

Headcount is now running across all our offices. Recruitment went from a constant source of friction to something that mostly just works. Our recruiters tell me they actually have time to build relationships with candidates now instead of drowning in admin.

We're looking at onboarding workflows eventually, but that's further down the road. For now, we've solved the problem we started with: hiring at the pace the business needs without burning out the team.

If you're managing recruiting across multiple locations or dealing with high application volume, the difference between a chaotic process and a clear one is bigger than you'd expect. It's difficult to maintain consistency at scale without a system built for it.

This case study reflects our actual experience over a six-month period. Results will vary based on team size, hiring volume, and implementation.