ABOUT:
Established in 2000, Leap29 is a global recruitment business operating across Oil & Gas, Pharma, and Food & Beverage.
CHALLENGE: SCALING QUALITY WITHOUT SCALING COST
As demand increased, the business faced a familiar but critical operational challenge. Each role attracted over 300 applications, yet only around 15% were suitable. Recruiters were spending days manually screening CVs, creating a significant drain on time and productivity. With growth on the horizon, leadership was clear: adding recruiter headcount to manage admin-heavy work was not an option.
THE SOLUTION: AI BUILT AROUND REAL WORK
Following a TRN AI workshop with James Osborne, Leap29 reframed the problem with one question:
“Where are we wasting human time on work that adds no competitive advantage?”
Rather than adopting AI tools for the sake of innovation, the Leap29 team focused on removing low-value work by building a simple AI-powered candidate-matching agent named “Matt”. Matt was designed to do 3 things:
i. Match CVs to job specifications
ii. Rank candidates by suitability
iii. Automatically surface the top 15% of applicants
The agent was integrated into existing workflows within days without disruption.
THE RESULTS: TIME SAVED. COST REDUCED. QUALITY PRESERVED
The impact was immediate and measurable.
a) 70 hours saved per role
b) £1,500k cost saving per job
c) No additional recruiter hires were required to support growth
THE UPGRADE: IMPROVING EXPERIENCE THROUGH AUTOMATION
Leap29 evolved the agent even further, where suitable candidates now receive rapid, personalised acknowledgement, unsuitable candidates receive polite, timely reject notices, and repetitive tasks are eliminated.
LEADERSHIP LESSON: THINK DIFFERENTLY ABOUT AI TOOLS
By removing low-value work, Leap29 improved efficiency, protected recruiter capacity, enhanced experience, and scaled without increasing cost. The success wasn’t driven by technology alone, but by a mindset shift: using AI deliberately to strengthen what humans do best.
