Empowering Squared: How Employment Hero transformed operations and cut costs
Up to 5x
more candidates evaluated in the same timeframe
100%
elimination of the telephone screening stage
135
CVs screened with ease for a single high-turnover role
Company
Squared
Industry
NDIS
Employees
70
Business Type
Core
Location
UK
Favourite Features
About the business
Squared is a forward-thinking housing association based in Luton, providing affordable homes and wraparound support services across Bedfordshire. With 70 employees spanning property maintenance, care support, digital services and administration, their lean people team manages high-volume recruitment for roles with regular turnover.
The challenge
When you’re managing over 135 CVs for a single role with a small people team, something has to give. Sarah Badrick, Recruitment & Onboarding Partner, and Amanda Bentley, People Excellence & Communications Manager, were spending hours on manual CV screening and phone interviews — 15 to 20 minutes per candidate — all before involving the hiring managers. With high-turnover support roles, the team worried they were missing strong candidates who would shine in conversation.
They’d used video interviewing before but through a separate platform, adding another login and more admin to an already stretched process.
“We have one position that has fairly high turnover as we just haven’t found the right person. I wanted to try video screening to see if we could better understand candidates, instead of just reading their CV.” – Sarah Badrick, Recruitment & Onboarding Partner
The solution
When Sarah spotted Employment Hero’s new Recruitment Agent feature, she jumped at the chance to use it. She could now shortlist faster, using AI-powered video interviews to ask tailored questions, automatically score candidates and integrate seamlessly into the HR and payroll platform she already used.
The team piloted Recruitment Agent on their high-turnover support role with 130+ applicants. Here’s exactly how it works:
- AI reads the job ad and generates relevant screening questions automatically.
- Candidates complete a short video interview on their own time (laptop or mobile).
- AI transcribes responses and scores candidates based on relevance to the role.
- Sarah reviews scored interviews and shares top candidates with hiring managers.
Beyond just filling one role, these video insights allow Sarah to get a real feel for a candidate’s personality and culture fit before the first meeting. This means that Sarah can also quickly identify if a standout applicant is a better fit for a different department, cutting down hiring time for other managers, too.
“By being able to watch back the video interview, you can find candidates that are perfect for other roles in the business. That really speeds up our process. We aren’t hiring for just one position, we’re spotting talent for the whole organisation.” – Sarah Badrick, Recruitment & Onboarding Partner
Using Employment Hero, the team has embraced AI across their day-to-day work, far beyond recruitment. From drafting offer letters to creating job descriptions, tasks that used to take an hour now take five minutes.
“Drafting and sending letters, contracts and all of those kinds of things that you could spend hours on before are done in minutes. AI is saving us heaps of time, particularly when we are busy.” – Amanda Bentley, People Excellence & Communications Manager
The ROI
Employment Hero’s Recruitment Agent has transformed how Squared identifies and evaluates talent:
- Up to 5x more candidates evaluated in the same timeframe.
- Phone screening stage eliminated entirely, saving hours per week.
- Hidden talent discovered that would have been overlooked based on CVs alone.
- Hours reduced to minutes for HR document drafting with AI assistance.
- Tool consolidation with video screening now in the same platform as HR and payroll.
“In theory, we could go through three times, five times as many people… that time saved is going to be huge for us.” – Sarah Badrick, Recruitment & Onboarding Partner
Why it matters
For small HR teams managing high-volume hiring, AI is giving recruiters superpowers. By automating repetitive tasks like CV screening and phone calls, Sarah and Amanda can focus on connecting with candidates, understanding their potential and making thoughtful hiring decisions. Ultimately, this reduces turnover and creates a vibrant team culture.
“Everyone should embrace AI now rather than end up playing catch-up. We don’t want to lose the human touch with hiring, but we’re grateful for anything that assists us. The more that is integrated into the system, the better.” – Sarah Badrick, Recruitment & Onboarding Partner
Jump into Employment OS.
Employment doesn’t have to be hard. Streamline every step of the employment lifecycle so you and your team can run ahead.
Frequently Asked Questions
Squared needed a way to keep up with high-volume hiring without expanding their small people team. Manual CV screening and phone interviews were taking too long and created potential for candidates to slip through the cracks. Recruitment Agent provided AI-powered video screening integrated into the platform they already used for HR and payroll. No separate logins, no extra tools.
Yes. Squared tested Recruitment Agent on a support role with regular turnover which received 135 CVs. The AI video interviews helped them evaluate up to 5x more candidates in the same timeframe, eliminating the phone screening stage entirely and uncovering talent they would have missed based on CVs alone.
Squared eliminated an entire stage of their recruitment process, phone screening, saving hours per week. They can now evaluate significantly more candidates (3-5x) without adding headcount. Plus, video interviews stay on candidate records, allowing hiring managers to review them for multiple roles across the organisation.
Video interviews capture what CVs miss: communication skills, personality, problem-solving ability and cultural fit. Squared found candidates they wouldn’t have interviewed based on paper applications alone. The AI scoring helps prioritise top candidates, but recruiters still make the final call. AI supports judgment, it doesn’t replace it.
Absolutely. Squared’s people team is managing 70 employees across multiple locations and service lines. Recruitment Agent was built for exactly this scenario, small teams managing high-volume hiring without sacrificing quality or missing strong candidates.
