Software for UK recruiters, TA teams, and small HR functions
Candidate Monday. CV at 9pm. Interview Wednesday. Offer Friday. Sunday silence. Monday call back - “I’ve accepted somewhere else.” Two weeks of work, nothing.
You’re the principal at a recruitment agency, or the head of talent at a scale-up running on Bullhorn or Vincere or JobAdder or Greenhouse, or the people-ops lead at a 120-person company with a BambooHR / HiBob / BreatheHR install and one in-house recruiter. The ATS / HRIS does what it does - it parses CVs, it tracks the pipeline stages, it stores the records. What it doesn’t do is run the candidate experience layer that’s increasingly the difference between an accepted offer and a Sunday-night counter-offer reversal: the speed-to-first-response on the CV that lands at 9pm Monday, the WhatsApp + SMS cadence that meets the candidate where she actually opens her phone, the placement-pack assembly that turns a Friday-yes into a Monday-start-date, the ATS data-hygiene that stops the eighteen-thousand-candidate Bullhorn install from becoming an eighteen-thousand-candidate swamp. For agency-side recruiters the temp desk’s Friday-evening timesheet grind is its own world. For in-house TA the requisition-to-offer-to-hire pipeline is bigger than your headcount lets you cover well. Everyone wants the right AML + Right to Work + DBS + IR35 SDS + AWR paperwork to assemble itself rather than being typed three times into three systems.
We make custom software for UK recruiters and small HR teams - scoped per firm, sized to the bit between the ATS / HRIS doing what it does and the candidate placed, the offer not retracted on Sunday, the placement pack assembled, the temp desk’s timesheets in by Friday evening, the BD pipeline fed from signals you didn’t have to check by hand. Not a Bullhorn / Vincere / JobAdder replacement - they’re the UK standards for a reason. Not a BambooHR / HiBob replacement - the HRIS layer works. The bit between the system-of-record and the operational reality of placing humans - the CV-at-9pm that needs a sixty-second reply, the Friday-offer that needs a Sunday-evening retention nudge, the eight pieces of placement-pack paperwork that need to assemble themselves, the eighty timesheets that need to be approved by Friday five - that’s the bit we build. Tell us what your week looks like and we’ll come back with a sketch.
What you spend your week on that you shouldn’t have to
- CV lands at 9pm Monday on the job-board apply form. By the time you reply at 10am Tuesday she’s already interviewed somewhere else. Speed-to-first-response is roughly four-times the conversion lever it was three years ago and the agency three doors down has it on auto.
- Sunday-night call from the candidate who accepted on Friday - “I’ve taken a counter-offer.” Two weeks of work gone, and the client’s already told their team the role’s filled.
- Bullhorn at eighteen thousand candidates, four thousand active, eight hundred last-touched in the last ninety days - search returns a swamp, the consultant’s been there three years and trusts none of the tags.
- Placement made on Tuesday - REC Conduct Regulations disclosure, AWR Key Information Document for the temp, Right to Work IDSP check, DBS where required, reference chase, drug screen on the construction side, induction pack - eight pieces per placement, thirty placements a month, each one a half-day of admin.
- Friday 6pm on the temp desk - eighty timesheets to chase, fifty managers haven’t approved, weekend BACS run Sunday, payroll deadline Wednesday for Friday pay. The chase is individual emails to fifty people on holiday WhatsApp.
- AML check on the new corporate client - proof of incorporation, beneficial-owner resolution, PEP / sanctions screening for the buyer, the source-of-funds narrative for any deposit. Currently a Word doc and three browser tabs.
- Right to Work share-code check - candidate’s share-code has expired, holding deposit’s on hold, client’s pressuring you, candidate’s frustrated, the £20k civil penalty per worker under the Workers (Predictable Terms and Conditions) Act and the Home Office Right to Work guidance is the price of getting it wrong.
- AWR Week 12 - the temp worker on a six-month placement hits Week 12, you owe parity, the client’s never been clear which parity-track they’re on, the matrix of which clients agreed to what is in your head.
- IR35 SDS - contractor placement at the start of next month, the client wants outside, the contractor wants outside, CEST agrees with HMRC about seventy per cent of the time, the agency carries the fee-payer liability six months later if HMRC disagree.
- In-house side: forty open requisitions, one TA partner, three hiring managers expecting “a shortlist by Thursday” on each. People-ops side: BambooHR / HiBob holds the records, the thing the team actually needs (referencing chase, onboarding pack, leaver checklist, parental-leave timeline, tribunal-evidence assembly) lives in shared Google Docs and email.
These aren’t problems for a generic ATS. They’re the bit between the system holding the record and the candidate placed, the offer signed on Sunday holding through Monday, the timesheet paid, the compliance pack assembled, the temp desk closed by Friday seven. That’s the bit we build.
Example problems we could solve
Five things we hear most often from recruiters, TA teams, and small HR functions - with what the solved version looks like in your week. Four are universal across agency + in-house + HR consulting; one is the temp-desk niche where the operational pain is materially different. Every build is scoped per firm: a four-consultant boutique perm agency probably needs the first three; a forty-consultant mixed perm-and-temp agency might want all five. None of it means binning Bullhorn / Vincere / BambooHR where they’re working.
1. The candidate inbound that gets a reply inside sixty seconds - including the CV at 9pm
The CV-at-9pm moment: a web-form application lands at 9pm Monday with the perfect Senior Java CV; she’s also applied to two other agencies for two adjacent roles; Vincere flags her Tuesday morning; the consultant replies at lunch; by then she’s had a 9:15pm reply from the agency three doors down and an interview booked for Wednesday before you’ve even seen the CV. Engagement decay is the recruiter-specific economics - response inside an hour is roughly four times more likely to convert to interview than response inside a day - and weekday-evening + weekend coverage is now the BD posture that wins the candidate, not the marketing slogan.
Solved looks like: every candidate inbound - web form, job board apply, LinkedIn DM, Indeed application, WhatsApp, missed-call SMS - lands on a unified inbound surface that answers within sixty seconds in your firm’s voice across all the channels she’s used and any she might switch to. The agent qualifies the things that determine whether you’d progress her (location-flexibility, notice period, contract-vs-perm openness, salary-band match against your live vacancy, the must-have skill questions you’d ask in the first phone call) and writes the structured contact + the qualification answers + the conversation transcript into Bullhorn / Vincere / JobAdder / Greenhouse / Lever / Workable as a candidate record the consultant can pick up Tuesday morning already half-progressed. For the in-house TA side the same surface answers requisition-shaped questions (“yes the role is still open, here’s the salary band, here’s what the day-one to day-thirty looks like, here’s how to apply via Greenhouse”) so the hiring manager isn’t the first responder. The longer version lives at Trainable Inbound AI Agent; the recruiter version is anchored on weekday-evening + weekend coverage, the structured candidate-record write-back to your ATS, and the scope-of-conversation guardrail that keeps the agent from making the offer.
2. The counter-offer defence ladder that runs in the candidate’s WhatsApp
The Sunday-text moment: Friday-offer accepted at 4pm. Saturday-Sunday silence. Sunday evening at 9pm the WhatsApp arrives - “sorry, my current employer’s matched, I’m staying”. Two weeks of work, the client’s already told their team the role’s filled, you’re on a call Monday morning explaining. Counter-offer reversal rates have climbed materially in 2024-26 across most of the UK market and the window between offer-accept and start-date is currently un-tended - it’s a Friday handshake-and-fingers-crossed moment.
Solved looks like: at offer accepted, the candidate’s record enters a structured retention cadence - same-day WhatsApp confirmation with the offer letter + the start-date logistics + a “what’s running through your head right now” opener that surfaces hesitation; +24h check-in framed around the realistic counter-offer conversation she’s about to have with her current line manager (“this is the standard counter that comes up - happy to talk through how to handle it”); +48h with the retention-positive evidence (the team she met, the role detail, the growth path the client offered, the timeline-to-promotion-conversation she asked about); offer-day +1 with the start-date confirmation and the welcome-pack drop; resignation-day intervention prompt to the consultant if any of the signals show counter-offer pressure (LinkedIn profile updated, response cadence slows, a “let me think” in the conversation, a Friday-afternoon ghost of replies). The consultant sees the at-risk dashboard each morning with the Sarah accepted Friday, here’s where she is in the ladder, here are the signals surfaced - so the intervention happens before the Sunday text lands. The recruitment-specific moment: the period between offer-accept and start-date is the single highest-leverage retention point in the placement, and the build is shaped around making the candidate’s I’m in the middle of a hard conversation visible to you in time to do something about it.
3. The placement pack that assembles itself by Friday
The eight-pieces moment: placement Tuesday. Eight pieces of paperwork per placement: REC Conduct Regulations pre-engagement disclosure, AWR Key Information Document for the temp, Right to Work IDSP evidence, DBS Update Service or Enhanced where applicable, AML check on the corporate client (proof of incorporation, beneficial-owner resolution, sanctions / PEP screen on the buyer for high-value perm placements), reference check, drug screen where required, induction pack, welcome SMS. Thirty placements a month is fifteen consultant-days of pack-admin a month; the consultant is the placement clerk; the half of the consultant’s week that doesn’t earn fee is the highest source of placement fall-throughs at start-date.
Solved looks like: at offer accepted, the placement-pack workflow opens with every dependency visible. REC Conduct Regulations pre-engagement disclosure renders against the placement type (perm / temp / interim / executive); the AWR Key Information Document drafts itself for temp placements with the parity reference clauses; Right to Work IDSP check runs via your accredited provider (Sterling / Verifile / GBG / Yoti / Onfido / Trust ID - whichever you’re contracted with) with the result captured + the share-code expiry on the calendar; DBS Update Service check fires where the role requires; AML on the corporate client (proof of incorporation, beneficial-owner resolution, sanctions / PEP screening for the buyer, source-of-funds narrative for any deposit) runs through your supervisor’s accredited surface and lands in a structured AML record; reference-chase loops to past employers via structured email + SMS with response tracked and escalation to phone-call where references stall past the client’s start-date threshold; drug-screen booking for the sectors that need it (construction, driving, healthcare); the induction pack and welcome SMS fire the day before start. On the consultant dashboard every active placement shows its current pack-completion state and which gates are blocking start. The recruitment-specific moment: placement-pack admin is the half of the consultant’s week that doesn’t earn fee, the AML + RTW + IR35 + AWR combination is the audit surface the trade body and HMRC both ask about, and the build is shaped around making the pack assemble itself rather than being typed three times across three systems.
4. The Bullhorn / Vincere / JobAdder swamp that stops being a swamp
The eighteen-thousand-record moment: eighteen thousand candidates in Bullhorn. Four thousand active, eight hundred last-touched in ninety days. Duplicates everywhere - Sarah Smith with three records, two of them by old colleagues who’ve left. Tagging conventions drifted years ago. You search and trust nothing. The Bullhorn / Vincere / JobAdder install is the firm’s core IP and the productivity multiplier on every consultant - and right now it’s three years of drift behind where it should be.
Solved looks like: the ATS data-hygiene loop runs as a background process. Duplicate detection identifies likely-same-candidate clusters (same email-and-phone, same email-and-LinkedIn, fuzzy-match on name + location + role history) and surfaces merge candidates to the consultant for one-tap approve; the merge keeps every CV version + every conversation thread + every prior submission + every consultant note in one consolidated record. Tag-convention enforcement runs against your firm’s standard (technical / function / seniority / location / availability / preferred-contract-type / sector) and proposes normalisations where consultants have drifted (e.g. “javascript dev”, “JS engineer”, “Front-end JS” all get suggested merge to your canonical “JavaScript developer”). The last-touched aging report surfaces candidates who haven’t had contact in 60 / 90 / 180 days, with a re-engagement cadence option per group - “placed last June, due a six-month check-in”, “silver-medal candidate from the Q3 search, role coming back open”. New imports from job boards normalise against the canonical schema before they enter, so the swamp doesn’t fill back up from Monday’s new applications. The recruitment-specific moment: ATS data quality is the foundation of search-and-shortlist productivity, the multi-source import reality is what creates the mess, and the build is shaped around making the data trustworthy enough that search-and-shortlist is two minutes, not twenty.
5. The temp desk’s Friday 6pm - closed at 5
The Friday-six moment: Friday 6pm on the temp desk - eighty timesheets, fifty manager approvals chased one at a time. Sunday-night invoice run. Wednesday payroll deadline for Friday pay-day. Half the consultants have their phone out at family dinner. The temp desk’s Friday is the most universally-painful operational moment in agency recruitment and the volume × time pressure × payroll deadline combination is what causes consultant burnout on the temp side.
Solved looks like: the temp-cashflow loop runs as one workflow. Timesheet capture goes to the worker on Friday morning (WhatsApp message with a one-tap “38 hours, Mon-Thu × 9hr, Fri × 2hr” confirmation, or a quick web form with project / cost-code where the client structure needs it); the timesheet auto-routes to the manager’s approval channel (WhatsApp first if they’ve opted in, email otherwise) with a chase ladder - initial send Friday 9am, +4h nudge, +24h escalation, +48h ring-from-account-manager - so by Friday 5pm the un-approved set is the genuinely-stuck cases not the I-didn’t-see-the-email set. Approved timesheets flow into the invoice run (client side) and the umbrella / agency-payroll bridge (worker side); the BACS run reconciles to Xero on Monday; the worker sees her own running rate, hours, next pay-date on her phone. Disputes (worker says 38, manager approved 32) route to a structured let’s resolve this thread, not a phone call to the consultant on her way home. AWR Week-12 parity tracks per-worker-per-client with the matrix of which clients agreed to which parity-track held as a structured record, so the conversation happens the week before the cliff, not the month after. IR35 SDS captures per placement with the CEST output, role description, decision rationale and the fee-payer indemnity log structured so the audit pack is one click ready if HMRC come asking six months later. The recruitment-specific moment: the temp desk’s Friday is the operational pain that’s eaten more consultant evenings than any other, and the build is shaped around making Friday close at five.
The closest things we’ve already built
- mendbuddyour own multi-channel AI agent platform for inbound conversations across voice, SMS, WhatsApp, web chat, Facebook Messenger, Instagram and inbound + outbound voice. The sixty-second CV-at-9pm reply in problem 1, the counter-offer-defence WhatsApp cadence in problem 2, the reference-chase loop in problem 3, and the timesheet-confirmation flow in problem 5 are recruiter-shaped versions of this - trained on your live vacancies, your client roster, your candidate-side voice. See Mendbuddy.
- pharmaceutical-analytics.coma custom analytics dashboard we built for an analytics consultancy. The recruiter / TA KPI dashboard (pipeline conversion by stage, time-to-fill, counter-offer rate by client / sector, source-of-hire quality, placement-pack completion rate, temp desk gross-margin per consultant, AML + RTW + IR35 audit-readiness) is the same shape: operational data captured at every candidate touchpoint, decision dashboard for the principal or the head of TA. See Pharmaceutical Analytics.
- mmi-servicesa legacy insurance-claims surface we’re modernising (older PHP stack, lifting onto a current platform without rip-and-replace). The reference when an agency is running on an older internal ATS or a heavily-customised Bullhorn / Vincere install the principal doesn’t want to migrate - same operational shape (structured object with multi-stakeholder approval, status pipeline, document evidence pack), lifted into a current platform without losing the muscle-memory the consultants have built. See Mmi Services.
- planpostour own social-media scheduling SaaS. The LinkedIn-led thought-leadership cadence (IR35 commencement commentary, Employment Rights Bill milestones, Worker Protection Act anniversaries, sector hiring outlook, candidate-market briefings) runs through planpost; the consultant-by-consultant brand-voice approval flow keeps the posts in-voice so the firm’s brand stays consistent. See Planpost.
Adjacent verticals
- Accountantsfor the closest existing professional-services relationship most small-HR teams have; both sides are records-and-deadlines work and the chase-loop shape generalises.
- Solicitorsfor the employment-law-led HR adviser whose practice overlaps tribunal preparation, handbook drafting, and employee-relations evidence.
- Professional servicesfor the HR / talent / leadership consultancies billing project-or-retainer mix where the time-to-bill and retainer-scope-visibility builds apply.
- Constructionfor the industrial-temp specialist whose placements run through CSCS + CIS verification + drug-screen + the principal-contractor’s subcontractor onboarding pack.
- Domiciliary carefor the care-temp specialist whose placements run through DBS + safeguarding-checks + Care Certificate + sponsor-licence-aware overseas recruitment.
FAQ
Will the inbound agent and counter-offer ladder work with Bullhorn / Vincere / JobAdder / Greenhouse / Lever / Workable / BambooHR / HiBob?
Bullhorn, Vincere, JobAdder, Greenhouse, Lever and Workable all expose APIs we read and write against - contact create, application status, candidate notes, conversation thread. BambooHR and HiBob likewise on the HRIS side. The cadence engine sits on top, runs the WhatsApp / SMS conversation, and writes the structured events back to your system-of-record so the consultant or hiring manager sees what’s happening without leaving their normal tool.
Will the placement pack handle REC Conduct Regs + AWR Key Information Document + RTW IDSP + DBS + IR35 SDS + AML correctly?
Yes for all the named compliance pieces. The templates and statutory wording stay current as the regs evolve (Worker Protection Act, Employment Rights Bill commencement, AML supervision changes). The IDSP integration runs against your contracted provider (Sterling / Verifile / GBG / Yoti / Onfido / Trust ID - pick yours). The IR35 SDS gets captured per placement with the CEST output, role description, decision rationale and the fee-payer indemnity log so the audit pack is one click ready if HMRC come asking six months later. AML on corporate clients runs against your supervisor’s accredited surface (HMRC, AAT, ACCA or the relevant body if you’re supervised, or via an outsourced AML provider for the firms that aren’t). The accountability for the SDS, the parity decision, and the AML risk assessment stays with the named party - what the system does is make the evidence assemble itself.
Will the temp-cashflow engine integrate with my umbrella partner and my payroll software?
Parasol, Giant, Brookson, ClearSky, Workwell, Orange Genie, NoPalaver - most FCSA-aligned umbrellas accept structured timesheet feeds. On the payroll side BrightPay / Sage Payroll / IRIS Earnie / Moorepay all integrate; on the bookkeeping side Xero is first-class and QuickBooks Online is second. We confirm against your specific umbrella + payroll combination in discovery.
What about the data-hygiene side - won’t merging Bullhorn records lose history?
Every merge preserves every CV version, every conversation thread, every prior submission, every consultant-side note, every interview record. The merge is reversible inside the source ATS (Bullhorn / Vincere / JobAdder) for 30 days with a one-tap undo; nothing’s destroyed at the merge moment. Tag normalisation runs as suggestions to the consultant, not as silent edits - the consultant approves each rename in their batch view.
Will the system spam my candidates and contacts under PECR / GDPR?
Service messages (interview confirmation, offer logistics, start-date pack, timesheet confirmation, counter-offer-defence cadence) sit under the legitimate-interest / contractual basis for the placement relationship; marketing content (new-vacancy alerts to a passive candidate, BD outreach to a new contact) sits under explicit consent with clean opt-out and a separate channel. The system enforces the split - that’s where the ICO concern lands, and the audit log shows which basis fired for which message.
Will you handle my REC / APSCo / ALP / FCSA / EAS Inspectorate compliance on my behalf?
No. Trade-body memberships, REC / APSCo / ALP code adherence, FCSA audit (for umbrella companies), EAS Inspectorate enforcement readiness, CIPD chartered status - all stay with the firm and the named accountable individuals. What the system does is make the audit-evidence assemble itself as you place - Conduct Regs disclosures captured, KID issued, RTW evidence retained, IR35 SDS vaulted, AML on corporate clients structured, AWR week-counter ticking - so when audit happens, the folder is one URL.
Will the inbound agent give advice that could be construed as employment law / tax advice?
No. The agent triages, captures the candidate or client detail, books the call with a consultant, and answers high-frequency factual questions (“what’s the typical day-rate for a Senior Java contractor outside-IR35 in the Midlands”, “how does the temp parity at Week 12 work”, “what’s the IDSP process for share-code verification”). Anything substantive - IR35 decision rationale, employment-law dispute framing, contract-shape advice - escalates to a named consultant the moment it lands. The line between helpful triage and regulated advice stays clearly on the human side.
What does it cost?
Every build is scoped per firm - depends on consultant count, placement volume, agency vs in-house vs HR-consultancy mix, whether the temp-cashflow engine is in scope, how many of the five sketches above are part of the build. We talk it through, agree the scope and the price in writing, then build. Send an enquiry and we’ll come back with a sketch. See pricing for how we work.
How long until something’s live?
The CV-at-9pm inbound agent and the counter-offer-defence ladder typically go from scope conversation to a working version inside a few weeks, with a couple more weeks of running real placements through them before go-live. The placement-pack engine and the ATS data-hygiene loop ship together inside a couple of months. The temp-cashflow engine slots in alongside as the umbrella + payroll integrations are confirmed; AWR + IR35 + AML evidence layers ship as the placement-pack engine ships.
Tell us what your week looks like
What firm or team you run, consultant count, ATS / HRIS stack (Bullhorn / Vincere / JobAdder / Greenhouse / Lever / Workable / BambooHR / HiBob / PeopleHR / BreatheHR), placement mix (perm / temp / contract / executive / RPO / in-house TA / HR consulting), trade body (REC / APSCo / ALP / FCSA), where the operational pain lives - the CV-at-9pm reply you can’t cover, the Sunday counter-offer, the eighteen-thousand-candidate Bullhorn swamp, the Friday 6pm timesheet chase, the placement-pack admin eating Wednesdays. Send an enquiry - what you do, what’s slowing you down, what you’ve already tried. We’ll come back with a sketch of what we’d build and what it would cost. No calendar, no demo to sit through. Email reply, scoped sketch, you decide.