We go through how your desk really runs: the CVs reformatted by hand, the interviews rearranged four times, the candidates who never hear back. Then we tell you which of it is worth handing to AI, and in what order.
Most agency owners know AI could take some of this off the consultants. What they are missing is someone who will look at a real desk and say which part to hand over first.
The client moves it. The candidate cannot do Thursday. Somebody has to ring both of them, twice, and none of it is billable, placement-shortening or in any way the job you hired a consultant to do.
Every tool in your inbox promises to sift candidates faster. Most consultants do not lose their week to sifting. They lose it to scheduling, reformatting, chasing references and writing the same update to a client who has stopped replying.
A generic tool sends a generic rejection, or a spec so vague it damages the brand you have spent years building. In a market where candidates talk to each other, that costs more than the hour it saved.
None of that is a technology problem. It is a question of which job goes first, and that is the bit we do.
These come up in nearly every agency audit we run. Which of them lands in your plan, and in what order, depends on whether you are perm or contract, your sector, and the system you already work in.
Two diaries, several phone calls, and it moves anyway. Then it moves again.
Offers the slots the client genuinely has, books it, sends the brief and the directions, and handles the rearranging without anyone ringing anyone.
The prep call with the candidate. That is the bit that wins placements.
Reformatting a CV into your template by hand, then writing the summary underneath it, for every submission.
Produces the formatted CV and a first-draft summary against the brief, in your house style, ready for the consultant to sharpen.
The pitch. Why this person for this role is the consultant's judgement and it shows.
Candidates go quiet because nobody told them anything, and your reputation takes the hit months later.
Keeps every live candidate informed at each stage, in your voice, so nobody is left wondering.
Rejections after a real interview, and any bad news. Those are calls, and the plan says so.
Chasing referees, right to work documents, certificates and DBS checks one email at a time while the start date approaches.
Tracks what is outstanding per placement, chases the right person on schedule, and tells you the moment a file is clear to start.
Checking the documents are genuine and sufficient. That stays a person's job, always.
Turning a client's three bullet points into an advert, then cutting it down for each board.
Drafts the spec and the advert from the brief and your own past adverts, in the length each board wants.
The consultant edits before anything is posted. An advert is a public statement about a client.
Clients ask where things are, and somebody builds the update by hand, usually on a Friday afternoon.
Pulls the live pipeline per client and drafts the update on the day you promised it.
The relationship. A report is not a substitute for the call, and the plan does not pretend it is.
The same searches rerun by hand, the same notes typed into the system twice.
Runs the saved searches, deduplicates against your database, and writes what it found into the record so the consultant starts from a list rather than a blank screen.
Who to approach and how. Shortlisting is a decision about people and it stays with a consultant.
Chasing timesheets every week from people who are busy working.
Reminds, collects, flags the missing ones, and readies the batch for invoicing.
Any dispute about hours. Those go to a person immediately.
Half the records are years old and nobody has time to work through them.
Flags stale records, asks candidates to confirm their details and their consent, and keeps the database current.
Deciding what to delete. Data retention is your obligation, not a tool's.
The check-in at week one and month three that everybody means to do and nobody does.
Runs the follow-up sequence with both sides and flags anything that sounds like a problem early enough to fix.
Any answer that suggests the placement is in trouble.
Nobody starts with ten. A plan usually puts two live in the first month and leaves the rest ranked and waiting, so when you have the appetite for the next one you already know which it is.
Most of the job is joining up the systems you pay for rather than moving you off them. These are the ones we come across most in agencies, and we have no affiliation with any of them.
Three steps. You do the talking on the first one, and nothing is committed until you have seen what we found.
No prep, no agenda to fill in. We ask the questions and you walk us through how your week actually runs: the jobs, the tools, the emails you send a dozen times a month.
Recorded and written up, so you never repeat yourself.
We work back through the call and map where your time actually goes. Then we find the automations that suit your tools, your team and your budget, ordered so the biggest time saving comes first.
Back with you within a week.
We walk you through the whole report, recommendation by recommendation, and you decide what to take on first. Most people have their first automation running within a week of that call.
The report is yours to keep either way.
The plan tells you what to build. The dashboard shows you what it is doing once it is built, so you can see what you are getting back without asking us.
Set up when the plan is delivered, at app.fewerhours.com under your business name. No shared login and nothing to install.
Every one we build reports the hours it saved and the work it handled, so the value is a number you can check rather than a promise we made.
The rest of the ranked list sits there waiting. When you have the appetite for the next one, you already know which it is.
This works best where a director still runs a desk. There are a few cases where it would waste your time, and those are worth saying out loud.
Fewer Hours exists because too many owners knew AI could help them somewhere and had no way of telling a good idea from a sales pitch. The plan is the boring part done properly: sitting with the real workflow and working out which jobs are worth handing over.
Whoever takes your call is the person who writes your plan. No account manager, no junior doing the analysis, and nobody trying to move you onto a retainer at the end of it.
Three steps, and you can stop after any of them. The first one is a conversation, and nothing about it commits you to the next.
A short chat about how your business runs. If there’s nothing here worth mapping, we’ll say so on the call.
The full job. We map the workflows, score every candidate, and hand over the ranked list and the 30-day plan.
If you’d rather we built the projects than just planned them, we’ll do the ones the audit put first. Anything from a quick win to a full agent build.
If there are fewer than five of you and admin takes about an hour a day, there probably isn’t enough here to be worth mapping, and we’ll say so. If you already know exactly which job you want automated, skip the audit and just ask us to build it. And if your processes only exist in your head, we’ll tell you to go and write them down first.
If yours is not here, ask on the call. It is twenty minutes about how the desk runs, not a pitch.
No, and we would argue against it if you asked. Shortlisting is a decision about people, it carries discrimination risk, and it is the part of the job clients pay you for. The plan automates the admin around the decision, not the decision.
Every recommendation states what data it touches and where that data ends up. Keeping candidate data inside systems you already control is the default, and anything that would move personal data somewhere new is flagged, with the alternative, before it reaches the plan.
No, and that is rather the point. Most consultants do not lose their week to sifting, they lose it to scheduling, reformatting and chasing. The audit works from where your time actually goes rather than from what is easiest to sell.
Anything that writes is set up on your own past messages rather than a stock template, and anything sensitive stays a draft or a phone call. Rejections after a real interview are never automated, and the plan says so explicitly.
That is one of the first things we check. Some of it is the API, some is a feature your ATS already ships that nobody switched on, and some is email and a shared sheet joined up properly. Where your system will not do something, the plan says so rather than pretending.
Usually yes, because in a small agency the admin lands on the people who should be billing. If you place a handful of people a year alongside something else, we will probably tell you to save your money.
The plan lands about two weeks after the call. Most agencies have the first automation live within a week of that, because the first one is usually scheduling and that does not need anyone to change system.
Either. The plan is yours to take to anyone, including whoever supports your ATS. If you would rather we set up the first two, that is a separate job and you decide after you have read the plan.
The call takes twenty minutes and it is about how the desk runs, not about software. The plan lands about two weeks later.