How Urban Rest hired 4 people from 1,300 applicants with the AI Recruitment Agent

About the business

Urban Rest is a corporate accommodation company headquartered in Sydney, Australia. Operating for nearly nine years, Urban Rest provides serviced apartment style accommodation targeted at business travellers, relocating professionals, and corporate clients on extended stays.

The company has grown to operate across Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and the United Kingdom, with further global expansion planned. Urban Rest recently expanded into hotel management agreements (HMAs), opening properties across Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and London. This transition has broadened its offering beyond its traditional apartment portfolio.

Urban Rest employs approximately 150 people globally across a mix of corporate and operational roles, including full-time property and guest-relations staff and casual housekeeping teams. The entire HR function is managed by a single People & Culture Manager, Natalie Gee, who has been with the business for over five years.

The challenge

When Urban Rest opened its first hotel requiring dedicated front-of-house staff, Natalie knew the application volume would be unlike anything the business had seen before.

“We’ve never posted for a reception-type role before because we’ve never opened a hotel that needed that. I just knew from the title it was going to explode.”

She was right. The job posting attracted over 1,300 applicants, a record for the business, which typically receives between 50 and 200 applications for most roles.

For a one-person HR team, manually processing that volume was simply not feasible. Without a smarter approach, Natalie faced the prospect of:

• Spending weeks sorting through CVs with no guarantee of finding the right candidates
• Scheduling and conducting hundreds of 15 minute phone screens
• Losing strong applicants due to delayed or inconsistent follow-up
• Diverting attention away from higher value HR priorities

At 15 minutes per screening call (including notes and upload time), even a modest pool of 30 phone screens would consume more than seven hours, with no end-to-end visibility for the hiring manager.

The solution

Urban Rest was already using Employment Hero to manage HR, payroll, onboarding and compliance across its global workforce. Faced with 1,300 applications for a single role, Natalie decided to trial the AI Recruitment Agent for the first time.

Rather than screening every applicant manually, Natalie and the hiring manager created an initial shortlist based on CVs. Thirty candidates were then invited to complete an AI-led interview, replacing the traditional first-round phone screen.

The interview assessed key criteria including Australian working rights, relevant hospitality experience, problem-solving ability and responses to common workplace scenarios. Candidates who chose not to complete the interview were naturally filtered out, providing an additional indicator of engagement.

After reviewing the responses, the team shortlisted around 10 candidates for brief follow-up calls before progressing them to in-person interviews. The process ultimately resulted in four successful hires.

“I used to spend 15 minutes per person for each phone screening and then I’d take notes and manually upload them. With the Recruitment Agent, I’m easily saving 5-10 hours for the 30 quality candidates we received.”

The results

The AI Recruitment Agent helped Urban Rest process high application volumes faster, identify stronger candidates, and free up HR time for higher-value work.

• 5–10 hours saved on a single hiring campaign
• 4 hires made from a pool of 1,300+ applicants
• Higher-quality interviews focused on culture fit and communication, not admin
• More time for strategic HR work and senior-level recruitment

“I can now commit a bit more time to our senior roles and make sure we’re finding the right candidate for those high-paying salaried positions. For roles like this one, we just need boots on the ground — someone keen to learn and jump in.”

Why it matters

In hospitality, hiring quickly is critical, but so is hiring well. For Urban Rest’s one-person HR team, the AI Recruitment Agent saved 5–10 hours on a single role, freeing up time to focus on senior and specialist hires where human judgement matters most. By reducing screening admin without removing the human touch, it helped the team move faster and hire with confidence.

“I recommend Employment Hero to everyone I talk to in HR, hospitality, and accommodation. It’s a great platform. I love that it’s always getting updated and new features added. I try to recommend it to everybody if possible.”