At Jelle, an independent staffing agency in Rotterdam, an AI recruiter called Eva now handles the first step of hiring. In 12 months she handled every application Jelle received and booked roughly one in nine into an interview.

Candidates rated the experience 4.46 out of 5, and about a third of conversations start outside office hours.

This is how Jelle did it, what the numbers show, and what other staffing agencies can take from it.

At a glance

The number that started it

In late 2024, Jelle’s leadership ran the year’s numbers: 95% of applications were being rejected by hand, one at a time, before a single interview was booked. The recruitment team spent at least 60% of their working day on first-contact screening and scheduling, by Jelle’s own estimate.

Today Eva does that screening. The rejection rate is 78%, and no one rejects by hand.

Rebecca van der Kaai, Commercial Manager at Jelle, remembers the moment:

"I looked at the results and thought: how can we have so many applications but so few people here for interviews? 95% were being rejected — all by hand. I had a full team and they were spending most of their day just on that first step."

Rebecca van der Kaai, Commercial Manager at Jelle

Behind that number sat four practical problems:

1. Every application waited for a person, in a market where the agency that responds first usually wins the placement.

2. Candidates who didn’t fit one vacancy were lost, even when they fit another.

3. Intake was manual: completing each candidate’s profile took 15 minutes on arrival.

4. Repeat applicants slipped through and were invited again.

In Rotterdam’s temp market this matters more than most. The port economy keeps demand for logistics, technical and production work high, candidates apply to many vacancies at once, and margins are thin. Speed isn’t a differentiator there. It’s the entry ticket.

Meet Eva, Jelle’s AI recruiter

Eva takes a candidate from application to confirmed interview. She is connected to Jelle’s MySolution ATS and books interviews directly in Microsoft Outlook. Candidates can apply to a specific vacancy or send an open application, and choose whether to continue by message or by call.

Candidates know they are talking to an AI recruiter. The hiring decision always stays with a Jelle recruiter, in the interview.

How Eva works

1. Pre-screening per vacancy. Eva checks each candidate against the hard and soft requirements of that specific role, instead of running a fixed question tree.

2. Open applications. Candidates without a specific vacancy are screened the same way and matched to open roles across Jelle’s client network.

3. Interview booking. Matched candidates are invited to an in-person interview at the Rotterdam office. Eva books it in Outlook inside the conversation, aiming for a slot within 24 to 48 hours.

4. Redirect instead of reject. A candidate who doesn’t fit is offered two alternative vacancies, and the conversation continues.

5. Profile enrichment. After booking, Eva collects the remaining profile fields, so candidates arrive with a complete profile.

6. Duplicate detection. Candidates interviewed are flagged automatically instead of being invited twice.

When an interview can’t be booked inside the target window, MySolution alerts the team and a recruiter takes over.

Built for how Rotterdam talks

Before going live, Jelle stress-tested Eva against its own candidate base. Internal testers sent blunt, direct and sometimes confrontational messages to check that she could hold the conversation without breaking or sounding scripted.

“We really trained her on how Rotterdam people talk. I tested her myself — said strange things, tried to catch her out. Her tone is direct, simple, no nonsense. What you see is what you get. I think that’s one of the reasons the rating is so high.”

Candidates rated their experience 4.46 out of 5, up from 3.9 out of 5 in 2024 (Jelle data). Knowing Eva is an AI hasn’t stopped candidates from treating her like a colleague:

“Sometimes people invite her to come over. They compliment her for working at night and tell her she can go to bed.”

The results

From conversations to placements

Jelle built its own matching engine on top of Eva’s profile data. When Eva finishes a profile, it is matched against open vacancies across Jelle’s client network, and the relevant contact at the client is notified of a strong candidate.

The week Eva went offline

In October 2025, Jelle migrated its ATS to MySolution and took Eva offline for one planned week. That week made visible how much first-contact work Eva had absorbed. The team had been handling it by hand for years; within a year of Eva going live, there was no room left for it in their day.

“Before, they always used to do it. But after Eva, they didn’t know how to fit it into their work anymore.”

Where this sits in the Dutch market

AI is already mainstream in Dutch recruiting. The Stand van Werven 2026 survey by Intelligence Group (317 recruitment professionals) found that 91% of recruiters use AI. Most of that use is in text and admin: 86% use it for vacancy texts, 40% to automate administrative tasks and 37% for analyses and reports.

Eva works on a different part of the funnel: the step between application and interview, where most candidates used to be decided by hand.

What’s next

Jelle is extending Eva from application-to-interview to the whole candidate relationship.

What other staffing agencies can take from this

1. Start from the number that hurts. Jelle’s trigger was one calculation, not a technology trend.

2. Design for your own candidates. Eva was tested against blunt Rotterdam messages and tuned to their tone.

3. Make every conversation build data. Profile enrichment turns each chat into a placement signal.

4. Redirect before you reject. Half of the candidates offered an alternative vacancy booked an interview.

Frequently asked questions

Do candidates know they are talking to an AI recruiter?

Yes. Candidates know Eva is an AI recruiter, and the hiring decision always stays with a Jelle recruiter, in the interview.

How does an AI recruiter connect to a staffing agency’s existing systems?

At Jelle, Eva is connected to the MySolution ATS and books interviews directly in Microsoft Outlook, so recruiters keep working in the systems they already use.

What happens when a candidate doesn’t fit the vacancy?

Eva offers two alternative vacancies and the conversation continues. Half of the candidates offered an alternative booked an interview.

How fast can an AI recruiter book an interview?

At Jelle, the median interview is booked about an hour after a candidate’s first message, and two thirds are booked within 24 hours. The interview itself takes place a few days later, depending on recruiter agendas.

Can candidates choose between chat and a phone call?

Yes. After applying, candidates talk to Eva on WhatsApp and can continue by message or by voice call. More than 1,100 asked for a call between October 2025 and September 2026.

Does the AI recruiter work outside office hours?

Yes. About a third of conversations start outside Monday to Friday office hours, in the evening, at night or at the weekend.

Want to see how an AI recruiter could work in your own hiring funnel? Book a walkthrough with Scotty AI and we’ll map your hiring journey together.