Agilus Reaches 100% of Qualified Applicants in Minutes With Tenzo AI

Learn how Canada’s leading staffing and recruiting firm partnered with Tenzo AI to scale human-first candidate outreach and boost speed-to-submit.

• 100% of qualified applicants contacted within minutes

• 2-hour median time from application-to-interview

• 90% of candidates rated the AI interview positively

“Tenzo empowers us to make the recruiting process feel more human. Because of their conversational AI, we’re reaching out to more qualified candidates much faster and making even better matches for our clients. It’s been such a game-changing addition to our workflow.” — Craig Brown, CEO, Agilus

About 

Agilus Work Solutions, majority-owned by Synergie Group, is one of Canada’s largest full-service recruitment firms. Operating for 50 years, Agilus places more than 10,000 job seekers at leading Canadian companies annually and has repeatedly been recognized as a Platinum Club winner in the prestigious Canada’s Best Managed Companies program.

Challenge

Screening a High Volume of Applicants Without Losing the Human Touch

For Agilus’ CEO Craig Brown, recruiting is a people-first business above all. He and his team aim to make every touchpoint in the hiring journey personal — starting with thoughtful reviews of every application.

At Agilus’ scale, keeping that commitment is a tall order. For every opening, Craig’s team typically spent hours vetting resumes, initiating outreach, and conducting in-depth phone screenings. This labor-intensive workflow enabled them to interview some candidates within a day of submission. 

But with upwards of 300 applications to review per role, the team often had to stop screening mid-search to prioritize getting the qualified applicants they’d already interviewed in front of clients. As a result, many applications were not considered.

Craig knew they were sitting on a potential goldmine of talent. He also knew the stakes were high: leaving applications unreviewed risked denying the best job seekers a fair shot and depriving his clients of top talent. And any unfilled role would directly impact Agilus’ gross margin and revenue. “We can have all the demand in the world,” Craig shares. “But if we can’t connect clients with quality talent, we won’t stay profitable.”

As these manual processes threatened to slow speed-to-submit timelines and jeopardize fill rates, Craig saw an opportunity to automate the process with AI. To stay true to Agilus’ people-first values, he needed an AI solution that could review resumes and speak to applicants with the same level of care as his human team. 

As Craig went looking for a solution that he could trust, his checklist was clear:

• Authentic, human-like conversational AI

• Compliant and bias-aware screening

• Deep ATS integration with Erecruit

• Adaptable across IT, engineering, professional, commercial, industrial, and specialty segments

He evaluated multiple AI recruiting platforms, including Tenzo AI, Alex, and HeyMilo. Tenzo checked every box without exception — especially impressing Craig with how natural its voice AI sounded. He couldn’t wait to see what it could do for his team.

“At Agilus, we believe that every applicant deserves proper consideration. But with the volume we were seeing, our recruiters couldn’t get to everyone. Using AI to automate the screening process was the obvious next step.”

Solution

Tenzo’s Friendly AI Voice Agent Engages and Interviews Candidates at Scale

To kick off the partnership, Tenzo carefully integrated with Agilus’ ATS, Erecruit. Then, Tenzo worked closely with Craig’s team to configure an AI agent, Morgan, for their specific hiring needs. For each role type, they used resume-based customization to determine which applicants to invite to interview. Then, they defined the screening questions, scoring rubrics, and passing thresholds that would drive Morgan’s assessments.

They began with a phased implementation — 10 recruiters in Agilus’ professional staffing and light industrial segments piloted Morgan. Following this success, Craig made the call to expand the rollout to all 60 recruiters across the full range of positions, from machinists to software engineers. Today, the team uses Morgan to give every application the attention it deserves, leaving no placement opportunity on the table.

Agilus’ fast success comes down to a simple, AI-powered workflow. When a qualified job seeker applies and clears the initial resume screen, Morgan initiates contact via text or phone within minutes. From there, Morgan autonomously schedules and conducts the interview — no matter what time of day. “The speed at which Tenzo gets applicants into our ecosystem is just incredible,” Craig explains. “A candidate can apply at 7 PM and already be speaking with us by 9 PM.”

For Craig’s team, the quality of these interviews is just as important as the speed at which they’re scheduled. Morgan speaks to candidates in their native language, whether that’s English or French Canadian, adopts a professional but empathetic tone, and adjusts to pauses and interruptions without missing a beat. After the interview, Morgan handles all follow-ups. 

Because Tenzo AI pushes transcripts, scores, and recordings directly into Erecruit, Craig's team can quickly review candidate interactions and make informed submission decisions. And, with Tenzo AI redacting protected candidate attributes from both its AI models and recruiter-facing interfaces, they can trust that every decision they make is bias-aware and defensible.

Since trusting Tenzo AI with screening and follow-ups, recruiters have been able to move even higher-quality candidates through the pipeline much faster. And according to Craig, fill rates have already begun to climb noticeably.

Candidates feel the difference too. Not only do far more of them get the chance to interview, but they attest to a positive experience when they do. Despite knowing they’re speaking to AI, candidates consistently give Morgan high satisfaction scores. Craig sees this as the ultimate validation of Tenzo’s ability to enhance Agilus’ people-first mission.

“Tenzo’s voice AI is so much more natural and conversational than any other solution we evaluated. Knowing we can confidently put it in front of candidates has enabled us to substantially accelerate outreach and, in turn, speed to submit.”

Results

With Tenzo, Agilus Interviews Qualified Applicants Within 2 Hours of Outreach

Thanks to Tenzo, Agilus leveled up their screening process to move at the pace of their booming candidate pipeline, increasing fill rates and gross margin as a result. Even better, the new workflow meaningfully improves the best-in-class candidate experience the company is built on.

The impact since the partnership began:

• 100% of qualified applicants contacted within minutes

• 2-hour median time from application-to-interview

• 90% of candidates rated the AI interview positively
  
  
  

Craig is eager to double down on his relationship with Tenzo. He has imminent plans to use its agentic solutions to resurface candidates already in Agilus’ database and match them with new opportunities. Craig is also in talks with the broader Synergie team, Agilus’ parent company, to scale adoption across its global staffing network.

“I love collaborating with the Tenzo AI team. The whole experience has been so positive that I’ve been recommending them to all my European colleagues.”