Learn how Mercu, the AI-powered recruitment automation for volume hiring, revolutionized their product offering by integrating Cronofy’s scheduling API. We speak with co-founder Jascha Zittel to hear Mercu’s story, and why getting interviews booked via WhatsApp has been a game-changer for their customers.

The problem:

Lack of formal calendars making scheduling even tougher for recruiters hiring on scale

Having worked in Southeast Asia at a leading delivery app firm alongside his co-founder Elliott Gibb, Jascha Zittel was aware of the challenges that faced high-volume hiring in the region.

High turnover rates met no-shows and ghosting, creating the perfect storm, making it difficult for recruiters to secure reliable interviews. Often, both candidates and hiring managers alike did not keep formal digital calendars, or use email in their daily work lives, making the traditional way of scheduling interviews through back-and-forth emails to find free times unsuitable and slow.

Jascha realized that when it comes to satisfying hiring needs and streamlining the entire experience, “meeting candidates on platforms they already use is far more convenient, and decreases time-to-hire and time-to-onboard.” They began their mission, bringing together their market-specific knowledge of the prevalence of WhatsApp in the region with the fast-paced volume recruitment market, which was ripe for disruption.

The pressures caused by the ever-increasing volume of applicants per role could not be ignored, either. “Everyone is using AI, not just recruiters. Especially in entry-level roles, recruiters are just getting bombarded with AI-driven applications,” explains Jascha.

How do we make it seamless for recruiters to filter through the noise and get to the best candidates? We need to close the loop on these candidates by connecting with them on messaging platforms where they already spend so much time.

Then came the idea to move more of the candidate experience onto WhatsApp to take away some of the administrative burden on recruiters. “We thought, can we reach people on WhatsApp faster, therefore reducing time-to-hire, and make the whole experience more conversational? Once generative AI entered the market, being able to layer AI to automate a lot of conversations that recruiters previously had to have one-on-one sped things up even more.”

After conversations with hiring managers crunched for time, the answer was clear. They needed to build an experience that moves candidates through with velocity, without losing the interactive touch. A smooth scheduling experience was non-negotiable. Here’s how they made it happen.

The solution:

A simple scheduling experience within a familiar interface

For Mercu, simplicity is the key mantra when it comes to building their product. The choice to pare down the user interface for candidates to choose times from available blocks is a deliberate one. Mercu have been careful to distinguish when using conversational AI increases productivity, versus adding unnecessary friction.

“There’s two sides to candidate experience: structured and unstructured,” explains Jascha.

When it comes to unstructured experiences, Mercu gives customers the ability to train an assistant on their interview guidelines and values. Candidates no longer have to wait for a response to get them ready for the interview, and recruiters no longer need to answer the same questions hundreds of times.

Removing these barriers has increased candidate engagement and access to information. “Candidates are now better informed and are asking more questions than before because previously, it would’ve required sending an email, or getting on the phone.”

Rather than replacing recruiters as the champions of information about their company’s hiring process, AI is empowering them to do more with their time. “Recruiters are able to move higher on the value chain by being able to dedicate time to tasks that don’t require them to do the same thing over and over again.”

“Scheduling is not a free-flowing conversation, but a structured experience—it’s much easier to pick from a list than going back-and-forth with AI reading from the hiring manager’s calendar.” By making the booking experience more streamlined and sending reminders before the interviews, Mercu have managed to reduce no-show rates from figures that were previously as high as 50%.

“We knew that for recruiters, interview scheduling is a massive pain point, and we also knew that we were not in the business of building scheduling infrastructure. Although on the surface it seems simple, we knew it was very complex, and we knew we wanted to launch quickly. That’s why opting for Cronofy’s API was the obvious choice.” Mercu’s agile team worked to ship the first version of their automation featuring Cronofy’s scheduling API merely two weeks later.

“Documentation is super important when you’re onboarding to an API. Cronofy’s documentation is stellar, and made it really easy for our engineering department to implement the API,” speaks Jascha on their experience with integrating the API.

Although there is a human element to no-shows meaning that the number will never be zero, automated reminders sent 24 hours and two hours before the interview pre-empt any communication issues from candidates who can no longer make it. “Having interview reminders as trigger points really drove down interview no-shows,” speaks Jascha on the success of the feature. “You no longer need to pick up the phone or email. It’s now so much easier to tell the recruiter you can’t make it, or to reschedule.”

The result:

Blend of trained AI and controlled automation is reinventing how fast-moving workplaces hire

In many dynamic retail and service environments, hiring managers do not have dedicated calendars to schedule meetings. To overcome this challenge, Mercu is making use of application calendars. This is particularly relevant in cases of volume hiring where the manager conducting the interview is whoever is the shift leader at the time.

“Giving users the flexibility to create an interview link and connect it with an application calendar linked to their restaurant or store is very powerful. It frees businesses to conduct interviews according to their needs and employee schedules, without needing to tie the interview to a particular hiring manager,” speaks Jascha on how they solved this problem.

In fact, calendars are no longer even a necessity to get interviews booked for candidates.

“Many assume both recruiters and candidates have a calendar, but this isn’t always the case. What Cronofy allows us to do is to have a candidate experience completely within WhatsApp, with reminders that keep them engaged and informed before the interview.”

This keeps the candidate experience within an environment that they are natively familiar in, streamlining communications between the candidate and the company.

“By being able to make use of developer accelerators like webhooks, we were able to deliver pre-event reminders. They’re bringing huge value to our customers by driving down no-show rates. What has traditionally been a problem—with some roles in service industries in localized areas in Singapore seeing no-show rates as high as 50-60%—is now massively reduced.”

In our experience of working with Cronofy, we never felt like a small startup. Cronofy gave us the time and the attention to deeply understand our use case, and being able to leverage the startup discount ultimately made the decision very easy.

For Mercu’s customers, being able to schedule with ease is continuing to change their working lives for the better. “Many recruiters just accept that wasting time playing calendar ping-pong is a part of their job. When we show them how automated scheduling works with Cronofy, they’re blown away.”

What's next for Mercu?

“Recruitment is ultimately pairing people with opportunities, so it's a very human experience. But volume recruitment has certain aspects that can be automated, or can be given to an AI agent. We’re figuring out where those entry points are to streamline the frustrating and time-consuming manual work to connect candidates and recruiters in better ways.”