How a recruitment agency automated its entire 8-stage pipeline. One digital intern. 3,000+ candidates.

Aspire People had a pipeline problem

Aspire People places education staff across the UK. Teaching assistants, supply teachers, SEN specialists. Every candidate that walks through the door needs the same thing: screening, compliance checks, interview coordination, and documentation. The work is critical and it never stops.

Each candidate requires 65–120 minutes of manual work. CV review, initial screening, DBS verification, safeguarding checks, right to work confirmation, reference collection, interview scheduling, and candidate profile generation. At thousands of candidates, that's a full team doing the same work on repeat.

Education recruitment has the heaviest compliance burden in UK staffing. DBS Enhanced checks, Child Workforce clearances, safeguarding training verification, regulated activity references. You can't skip any of it. You can't shortcut any of it. Every candidate, every time.

They tried the obvious solutions. AI tools that could screen CVs. Chatbots that could answer candidate questions. Scheduling tools that could book interviews. Each one solved a piece. Nobody gave them the whole pipeline.

We deployed an intern that runs the whole thing

X-Arc trained and deployed CCAP for Aspire's recruitment pipeline. A digital intern that doesn't just automate steps — it runs the entire 8-stage process from sourcing to CRM sync.

CCAP deployed Sarah, an AI recruitment assistant that candidates interact with on WhatsApp. Sarah conducts full screening conversations. She asks the right questions, verifies compliance, collects documents, and books interviews. Candidates don't know they're talking to AI. Most don't care. They get a fast, professional experience and move through the pipeline in minutes instead of days.

Not a chatbot. Not a screening form. A trained system that runs end-to-end recruitment.

3,000+ candidates processed. 85% completion rate. 12-minute screenings.

What consultants actually see

Aspire's team doesn't manage CCAP. They don't give it tasks or review drafts. CCAP runs autonomously. What the team sees is results.

A consultant opens their CRM on a Monday morning. Overnight, CCAP sourced 47 new CVs from job boards, processed and deduplicated them, evaluated each one against open roles, and reached out to 12 qualified candidates. By the time the consultant sits down with their coffee, 8 screening conversations are already complete and 3 interviews are booked for the week.

That's the daily experience. CCAP runs the pipeline. The team runs placement. No one at Aspire spends time sourcing, screening, or chasing candidates. They spend their time where it matters — matching qualified candidates to schools and closing placements.

The full pipeline. Eight stages. Zero gaps.

CCAP doesn't automate one step. It runs the entire recruitment pipeline end-to-end. Every candidate goes through all eight stages automatically. Nothing falls through the cracks.

What candidates see

This is what a screening conversation looks like from the candidate's side. Sarah handles it end-to-end — compliance questions woven naturally into the flow. No forms. No portals. Average screening: 12 minutes.

Candidates don't know they're talking to AI. Most don't care. They get a fast, professional experience and move through the pipeline in minutes instead of days. 85% of engaged candidates complete the full screening.

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Numbers. Not promises.

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This isn't a demo. It's running.

CCAP has been live since January 2026. Not a pilot. Not a proof of concept. A production system processing real candidates through a real recruitment pipeline every day.

3,000+ real candidates processed through all eight stages. Real screening conversations. Real compliance checks. Real interview scheduling. Real candidate profiles delivered to consultants ready for placement.

The system runs 24/7. Candidates who apply at midnight get their first WhatsApp message before the office opens. No candidate waits. No candidate gets forgotten. The pipeline doesn't sleep.

Compliance isn't an afterthought. It's built in.

Education recruitment has the heaviest compliance requirements in UK staffing. Every candidate must be verified before they step foot in a school. CCAP doesn't bolt compliance on at the end — it checks everything during the screening conversation, as part of the natural flow.

3,000 candidates in. The pipeline is still getting faster.

CCAP has processed over 3,000 candidates. Every one of them made the pipeline better.

Outreach messages that got responses were reinforced. Screening questions that felt awkward were reworded. Follow-up timing was adjusted based on when candidates actually reply. The compliance flow was tightened so it feels like a natural conversation, not an interrogation. None of this was manually tuned. CCAP studied what worked and adjusted.

The result: early screenings averaged 15–18 minutes. Current screenings average 12. Candidate completion rate climbed from 70% to 85%. Outreach response rates improved as CCAP learned which messages land and which get ignored.

This is what one digital intern does for a recruitment agency. Yours would do something different — trained on your business, your domain, your operations. But the pattern is the same: an intern that runs your operation and gets better every day.

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