Transforming Recruitment Through AI: An Interview with Niels Tukker
Written by: Jeroen Van Ermen from Talent Business Partnerson May 7, 2025
In the rapidly evolving landscape of recruitment technology, innovation continues to reshape how companies connect with talent. As businesses face increasing pressure to streamline hiring processes while maintaining quality and candidate experience, AI adoption has quickly shifted from a competitive advantage to a critical necessity. We recently sat down with Niels Tukker, founder of Recrubo, which was acquired by Carv and announced in March 2025. This acquisition brings together two complementary AI-powered recruitment solutions to create a comprehensive platform that transforms the entire hiring journey.
Congratulations on Recrubo's recent acquisition by Carv. Could you explain how this acquisition came about?
Niels: "From the moment I entered the recruitment tech space, my focus has been on removing the repetitive, manual tasks that prevent recruiters and hiring managers from actually connecting with people. These are the repetitive, laborious activities that you don't really want to be dealing with and didn't enter the industry for, and they're exactly the kind that are ideal to hand off to AI.
With Recrubo, we built a conversational AI platform to take over those tasks, specifically from the moment a candidate applies, up until the interview is scheduled. Carv, on the other hand, shared a very similar mission and vision, but approached it from a different part of the process, from the interview stage onwards.
If you look at the entire hiring journey, from initial response through to hiring decision and talent pooling, the synergy was immediately clear. By combining our platforms, we're now able to support recruiters across the full funnel, allowing AI to handle the operational load from start to finish. That gives recruiters more time for what matters: building relationships and focusing on high-impact activities. That alignment was the driving force behind bringing the teams together."
So it was a strategic choice, with complementary products and aligned company cultures?
Niels: "One hundred percent. The culture of both companies and ambitions were completely aligned. That was important.
And in addition, we see the opportunity in the market that the technical capabilities of both products, when combined, allow you to truly leverage the full potential of AI today.
So yes, in terms of product, technology, vision, and ambition, there were multiple connections that together made it a very logical step, both for us internally and for our clients and the value we create for them."
How does the future look now? Will you continue under the Carv brand, and what changes can clients expect?
Niels: "We are indeed continuing under the Carv name. It's one brand. That will save a lot of mispronunciations - Recubro, Recurbo, all the variants I've seen come by over the past years.
We're continuing under the Carv brand and dividing the platform up in 3 modules according to the hiring journey. So from application stage to the evaluation stage and the talent pool. The first module is our Zero Handling module, which is essentially our conversational AI product, mainly focused on handling the manual work during the application stage. We take over all repetitive tasks. So screening, scheduling, shortlisting, engaging candidates.
Then around the evaluation phase, where interviews take place, we activate the Zero Admin module. Carv joins those interviews and takes over all related admin tasks, like updating the ATS or CRM, logging notes, and handling follow-ups. It's all about removing manual system work so recruiters can stay focused on people, not data entry and doc creation.
And then we have a third module where the Zero Admin and Zero Handling platform and the capabilities behind it of registering and communicating come together. And that's our talent pool AI module: Zero Waste. We make the candidate database searchable, surface and engage the right candidates at the right moments, and ensure continuous engagement and compliance. All automatically."
That's quite a comprehensive solution you're offering!
Niels: "Yes, definitely. We've spent years working closely with recruiters, recruitment teams, and staffing agencies. And what we've often seen is a focus on incremental improvements, making existing processes just a bit more efficient or slightly better.
But we're now at a turning point. With the rise of AI, there's an opportunity to take a real step back and ask: what if we rethought the process entirely?
You've done this at exactly the right time. Which customer segments are you seeing the most traction with? And who are your competitors?
Niels: "Well, let me start with the last part first. We definitely see quite a few different point solutions. They're really popping up like mushrooms, using AI to make an incremental improvement in a process.
But because we essentially have sixteen of those different integrated point solutions throughout the entire recruitment hiring journey, we can offer one solution with which they can really be transformative.
We primarily serve three types of clients. First, global enterprise staffing agencies. Second, high-volume corporates and third, mid-sized staffing agencies that are eager to innovate, move fast, and scale efficiently with lean teams. These are the segments where we see the most traction and where we focus our efforts."
That makes sense. There are indeed many new AI solutions entering the recruitment market, creating demand for an integrated platform.
Niels: "We're seeing a wave of so-called AI 'wizards', teams that quickly spin up features and call it a product. But in reality, many of these are just MVPs that offer slight improvements to existing workflows and only work about sixty percent of the time.
But building a real product is much more complex. You need to integrate with a client's existing tech stack, ensure legal compliance, and test thoroughly at enterprise scale. It's not just about speed, it's about delivering reliability and long-term value.
And the irony is, by the time you've built something, the landscape has already shifted. What worked yesterday is often outdated today. But that's the nature of the world we're operating in.
That's exactly why we've focused on building a future-proof platform, one that's deeply integrated, stable, and scalable, so our clients can keep moving fast without being left behind."
Could you highlight some case studies of clients who have implemented your solution and seen results?
Niels: "One example I'm really proud of is Oranjegroep, a Dutch staffing agency that operates internationally and deploys around 3,000 people daily.
Previously, they needed a large international team to follow up with candidates across different languages. Now, with our solution, they're able to follow up with 15,000 candidates per year using just three recruiters. Thanks to AI handling multilingual communication, each recruiter can manage roughly three times more hires than before.
Another great case is Carrefour. There, the system automatically picks up applications and schedules interviews directly with the store managers. The result? Time to hire has been cut in half, and both candidates and branch managers report significantly higher satisfaction."
Is that the future of the recruiter? Purely candidate-focused?
Niels: "Absolutely. People become recruiters because they enjoy connecting with candidates, because it's meaningful to help someone take a big step in their career. That's a significant moment in someone's life. What they didn't sign up for is sitting behind a screen all day, filling out fields and digging through crowded inboxes.
The recruiter of the future will be someone who's truly engaged, spending time with clients to understand their needs, building strong, personal relationships with candidates, and ultimately making better, more informed hiring decisions.
It means less time behind a computer, and more time in motion: talking to people, listening, and adding value where it really matters."
"This moment calls for a holistic view, not just optimizing what already exists, but reimagining the entire recruitment journey. It's no longer about plugging in a point solution. It's about designing a new process from the ground up, where we can intentionally redistribute tasks between humans and AI, and redefine where responsibility should sit."
You've done this at exactly the right time. Which customer segments are you seeing the most traction with? And who are your competitors?
Niels: "Well, let me start with the last part first. We definitely see quite a few different point solutions. They're really popping up like mushrooms, using AI to make an incremental improvement in a process.
But because we essentially have sixteen of those different integrated point solutions throughout the entire recruitment hiring journey, we can offer one solution with which they can really be transformative.
We primarily serve three types of clients. First, global enterprise staffing agencies. Second, high-volume corporates and third, mid-sized staffing agencies that are eager to innovate, move fast, and scale efficiently with lean teams. These are the segments where we see the most traction and where we focus our efforts."
That makes sense. There are indeed many new AI solutions entering the recruitment market, creating demand for an integrated platform.
Niels: "We're seeing a wave of so-called AI 'wizards', teams that quickly spin up features and call it a product. But in reality, many of these are just MVPs that offer slight improvements to existing workflows and only work about sixty percent of the time.
But building a real product is much more complex. You need to integrate with a client's existing tech stack, ensure legal compliance, and test thoroughly at enterprise scale. It's not just about speed, it's about delivering reliability and long-term value.
And the irony is, by the time you've built something, the landscape has already shifted. What worked yesterday is often outdated today. But that's the nature of the world we're operating in.
That's exactly why we've focused on building a future-proof platform, one that's deeply integrated, stable, and scalable, so our clients can keep moving fast without being left behind."
Could you highlight some case studies of clients who have implemented your solution and seen results?
Niels: "One example I'm really proud of is Oranjegroep, a Dutch staffing agency that operates internationally and deploys around 3,000 people daily.
Previously, they needed a large international team to follow up with candidates across different languages. Now, with our solution, they're able to follow up with 15,000 candidates per year using just three recruiters. Thanks to AI handling multilingual communication, each recruiter can manage roughly three times more hires than before.
Another great case is Carrefour. There, the system automatically picks up applications and schedules interviews directly with the store managers. The result? Time to hire has been cut in half, and both candidates and branch managers report significantly higher satisfaction."
Is that the future of the recruiter? Purely candidate-focused?
Niels: "Absolutely. People become recruiters because they enjoy connecting with candidates, because it's meaningful to help someone take a big step in their career. That's a significant moment in someone's life. What they didn't sign up for is sitting behind a screen all day, filling out fields and digging through crowded inboxes.
The recruiter of the future will be someone who's truly engaged, spending time with clients to understand their needs, building strong, personal relationships with candidates, and ultimately making better, more informed hiring decisions.
It means less time behind a computer, and more time in motion: talking to people, listening, and adding value where it really matters."
"The recruiter of the future will be someone who's truly engaged, spending time with clients to understand their needs, and building strong, personal relationships with candidates. Less time behind a computer, and more time in motion."
How did you get into this field, Niels? Do you have a background in staffing or are you a tech person who saw an opportunity? Niels: "No, I didn't have a background in recruitment. Well, only from a candidate perspective. In 2019 I was looking for a job and I sent out some job applications. I discovered that it sometimes took two weeks before I had contact with a recruiter, during a peak in open vacancies. If you look at such a process from a marketing perspective, you only see places where people can drop off. While it's about something important in someone's life - a new career step. So why can't you make that warmer and more efficient? I experienced that when I was a candidate myself. I looked up a recruiter's number and just sent them a text. It felt natural and personal. And since I was already exploring conversational AI and chatbots, it made total sense: why not use that technology to scale the kind of experience I appreciated myself, and enable high-volume staffing agencies and corporates to offer that same human touch, at scale?" What a wonderful story. Where did you first see traction? Did you start focusing on the local market? Niels: "We first gained traction with high-volume, blue-collar employers: sectors like retail, hospitality, and customer service. Early clients included companies like DHL, Teleperformance, and Sodexo. These organizations often deal with large volumes of similar candidate profiles, and their processes typically involve filtering against standard criteria and scheduling interviews: a perfect fit for automation. What proved more challenging was scaling that same level of automation for staffing agencies, where the workflows are more dynamic. That's been one of the biggest technical hurdles we've had to solve. Today, through Carv, we're operating across Europe, have a team in the U.S., and serve clients globally." What does a typical onboarding program look like for your clients? Niels: "It really depends on what the client wants to achieve and where they are in their AI adoption journey. We've designed our products to support different stages of that discovery process. For example, with our note-taker, you can simply create an account on the website and start using it immediately. You don't need to migrate to a new ATS to modernize your process. Most ATS systems were built for human-driven workflows, and we enhance them with AI rather than replace them. It's plug-and-play. But we also work with companies that require deeper integration. In those cases, we dive into their existing systems, workflows, and hiring processes to create a tailored setup. In general, we address different parts of the hiring journey from the start, and most onboarding programs take about a month." Final thoughts you want to share? Niels: "AI is here and it's here to stay. Whether people embrace it now or later, it will inevitably become part of their process. What often slows things down isn't the technology, but the pace at which teams are willing or able to adapt. So no matter where you are in your adoption journey, whether you're just starting to experiment with OpenAI or already rethinking your entire workflow, the key is to start. Don't wait too long."Stay ahead in talent acquisition—subscribe to our Talent Business Insights newsletter for more recruitment insights.