Crofter/Sectors/Recruitment

Recruitment.

Email and form intensity is the operational signature of a recruitment agency. A large share of the headcount sits in the back office, and almost every step is compliance-sensitive. When a candidate has to submit the same form twice, the agency has already lost.

The firms

Mid-market agencies - 80 to 400 staff, high desk churn, decisions owned by the managing director - live on ATS data, onboarding paperwork and IR35 status work. The stack is already paid for: Bullhorn, Vincere or Mercury, Microsoft 365, a payroll bureau, an accounting ledger. What is missing is a layer on top that runs one workflow all the way through, with audit logs the finance director can show HMRC.

Workflows we build here

One at a time, each wired into the systems the firm already runs.

Candidate compliance intake: A self-serve onboarding portal: right-to-work checks through a specialist vendor, a structured questionnaire, contracts generated from templates and status triage. Unusual files go to a named consultant; routine ones move on.
SOW risk assessment: A statement of work reviewed against a codified set of tests - genuine project boundaries, deliverables, fee structure, working practices - producing a defensible PDF that cites the exact SOW clauses.
CV-to-brief matching: Incoming CVs set against the live role brief, with strengths and gaps against the client's actual ask, and a submission pack drafted for the consultant to check and send.
Referral and inbound routing: Inbound enquiries sorted by sector, stage and urgency and routed to the right desk with the pre-brief attached, so senior time stops going on first-touch triage.

Specimen

The cover sheet a Build of this kind would put on its output, with each field described rather than filled in.

Candidate compliance intakeCover sheet

Contractor vetting: placement-ready pack

Role and client: From the ATS, with the statement of work attached where there is one
Right to work: Checked through a specialist vendor, with the evidence cited
Status: The IR35 status determination and the reasoning behind it, for a person to sign
Open questions: Anything the candidate still needs to answer
Sign-off: The consultant. Routine files move on; anything unusual goes to a named person.

A specimen, not a real matter. Nothing here comes from a live deployment.

Case studies

No published case study in recruitment yet.

When there is one it will name the firm and carry measured numbers, with the firm's sign-off. Until then this page describes the work, not its results. If your firm would like to be the first, write to crofter@nullhex.io.

The rules we build around

The general posture is on How we work.

Candidate data is the liability A recruitment firm's intake inbox is a dense mix of CVs, right-to-work evidence, references and compliance forms, some of it data the firm should never have held in the first place. We build minimisation into the ingest step rather than reporting on it at the end. The Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations, the off-payroll rules and right-to-work checking run as codified tests, with a named person handling the exceptions.

Nearby: Accountancy & Tax, Law. Or all five sectors.