How Zenjob automates 90% of initial candidate calls with telli

About

Zenjob is an AI-powered platform for flexible staffing that efficiently connects companies and student workers. Founded in 2015, Zenjob now has over 1,000 partner companies and 40,000 active job seekers, and has raised $108M in capital.

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Challenge

Scaling candidate calls to accelerate a new staffing product

Zenjob had already made over a million short-term student job placements in Germany when it launched a separate long-term, contract-based staffing solution, Zenjob Pro.

Job seekers were quick to apply, creating clear validation. But the rising demand quickly stretched the capacity of Product Manager Martin Fricke and his team.

While contract placements demand speed, finding the right fit requires a careful process: after Zenjob’s matching algorithm first pre-filtered candidates for suitability, the Zenjob team conducted a ten‑minute preliminary call to collect key information. Human recruiters then reviewed the information to decide whether to invite the candidate to a full interview. With so many job seekers in the pipeline, this process soon became a bottleneck.

Martin understood that automating the more manual information-gathering work would give his recruiters more margin to focus on interviewing top candidates. To collect this candidate information more efficiently without compromising Zenjob’s thorough recruiting process, he turned to AI.

He initially experimented with several cutting-edge AI voice vendors, but none could master the German language. Their German sounded too artificial to student workers who often hesitated to open up to them. He knew there had to be a better way.

Then a colleague suggested telli’s Berlin-based call automation platform. As soon as Martin demoed the solution and heard its voice agents’ smooth, natural German, he couldn’t wait to see what telli could do for his team.

“We knew AI had the potential to automate a really manual call workflow, but we didn’t want to risk giving our customers a bad or robotic experience. telli’s natural-sounding agents put us right at ease.”

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Solution

Smooth voice agents handle candidate calls and help book interviews 7 days a week

Onboarding was “super fast,” with telli’s voice agents going live in just a month, quickly handling the vast majority of screener calls, accelerating contract hiring processes and helping scale Zenjob Pro.

The digital agents call applicants to review the position requirements and collect information about their past work experience. Because these calls don’t require human intervention, agents even screen on the weekends when students are more likely to be available.

“These calls can be pretty complex because you’re covering a lot of ground,” Martin says. “But the telli team held our hands throughout the prompting process, ensuring the agents mastered our tone and language at every step of the conversation.”

After each call, human recruiters remain the decision makers on advancing a candidate or not, but it takes a fraction of the time it once did. They scan telli’s transcripts and AI-generated summaries to identify the students’ qualifications. And if the student does progress to an interview, the transcripts provide the perfect context.

With telli’s capable voice agents handing initial screening on their behalf, Zenjob’s recruiters now move more applicants through the funnel faster while reclaiming valuable time to prepare for and conduct meaningful interviews.

Student job seekers are loving telli’s AI agents, too. The agents end each call by asking applicants to rate their experience from zero to 10. So far, CSAT is at a steady 9.

While telli’s user-friendly platform makes it easy to achieve these results out of the box, Martin also regularly collaborates with telli’s responsive support team. Whether they’re answering questions in the partnership’s dedicated Slack channel or quickly turning around a product update Martin’s team requested, the telli team is always 100% committed to Zenjob’s larger business goals.

“telli’s customer support is next level. We’ll give them a suggestion, and the next thing we know, they’re announcing a new feature that directly addresses that pain point.”

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Results

Zenjob cuts time spent on initial candidate calls by 75%

With telli, Zenjob scales call screenings, pushes more candidates through the contract recruitment process, and buys back bandwidth. Martin’s team has turned their new staffing product into a high-growth placement driver, all without adding headcount or sacrificing service quality.

The impact:

• 90% of information-gathering calls handled by a telli agent
• 75% reduction in time spent advancing candidates

Now that he’s seen telli’s scalable communication flows in action, Martin is ready to test out even more use cases. He’s currently working with the telli team to build a new inbound customer support agent for Zenjob Pro, with eventual plans to introduce it to the company’s main product line, too. Martin has no doubt that telli will play a vital role in helping Zenjob scale support and boost customer satisfaction.

“As we scale our new staffing product, telli will be essential to keeping operations as efficient as possible. And by the looks of their product roadmap, I know they’re going to have so many more use cases for us.”