How SGF Global Cut Shortlists From Three Weeks to Same Day Without Adding Recruiters

SGF Global is one of the world's largest staffing networks: a 35-year-old firm operating in 35 countries, in sectors from finance to manufacturing. Its problem was a familiar one in staffing. The work kept growing, and the team couldn't grow with it.

Four months after SGF put Sarah, Asendia's AI recruiter, in front of its candidates, shortlists that took three weeks arrive the same day. More than 80% of the active job seekers in the US and Latam that Sarah contacts respond, and recruiter delivery speed is up more than 10x. SGF got there without replacing a single recruiter.

SGF Global at a glance

• Industry: Staffing, recruiting, Employer of Record, Statement of Work
• Presence: 35+ countries
• ATS: JobDiva
• Channels: Phone, SMS, WhatsApp and email
• Live with Asendia: Four months, rolled out country by country

What three-week shortlists were costing SGF

Mauricio Sion, Director at SGF Global, describes the old limit plainly: "Before, a recruiter could make 5–10 calls an hour. Physical time was the ceiling."

At that rate, a recruiter who did nothing but dial for a full 40-hour week would reach somewhere between 200 and 400 candidates, with no time left for clients, interviews or paperwork. Spread across hundreds of open roles in dozens of markets, it meant SGF only ever assessed a fraction of the people who applied.

"The more people you can assess, the more chances you have to find the right candidate," Mauricio says. "The problem was we weren't assessing nearly enough."

The slow cycle had a direct price. Top candidates are off the market within days, and SGF's shortlists took three weeks, so active job seekers were lost between outreach cycles. Time zones made it worse. With teams spread over 35 countries, a candidate in Bogotá, Madrid or Dubai needed to be reached at the right moment and in the right language, and that wasn't happening consistently. SGF needed to reach more people without hiring more recruiters.

What SGF put in place

SGF connected Sarah to JobDiva, so recruiters kept working in the same system. Sarah handles the first outreach, the initial conversation and the qualification, and contacts candidates by phone, SMS, WhatsApp or email at a time that suits them, in their own time zone. SGF's leadership sees the funnel live: how many candidates are being screened, qualified and hired. That is why Mauricio can talk about results in numbers rather than anecdotes.

The rollout went one country at a time: Colombia first, then Argentina, Spain, Brazil and the Caribbean. Each market had time to adjust Sarah's language, tone and phrasing before the next one started. In Spain, the team replaced a neutral Latin American accent with a native Castilian one after seeing that candidates responded differently to it. SGF treated that tuning as part of the work, and built it on how real candidates in each market behaved.

The return after four months

• Shortlists in a day instead of three weeks. Clients who were used to waiting noticed straight away. "Sarah screens around the clock across every region we operate in," Mauricio says.
• More than 10x faster recruiter delivery. A recruiter used to top out at 5 to 10 contacts an hour. Sarah doesn't have that ceiling, so the volume SGF now handles in a day isn't comparable to what it could do before.
• 80%+ response rate from active job seekers in the US and Latam. More than 8 in 10 active candidates Sarah contacts respond, five to six times the rate of manual outreach. Put another way, manual outreach reached roughly 13 to 16 of every 100 active candidates. Sarah reaches more than 80.
• More hires per recruiter, same headcount. SGF didn't add recruiters and didn't replace any. Because Sarah took the volume work off their desks, the same team now produces more.

For a staffing firm, this is revenue capacity. The same recruiters cover far more candidates, put shortlists in front of clients weeks earlier, and spend their hours on the conversations that lead to placements instead of on dialing.

What changed for SGF's recruiters

When recruiters hear "AI," they wonder what it means for their jobs. Mauricio's message to his team was short: AI eliminates tasks, not humans. Sarah does the first outreach, the early engagement and the qualification. Recruiters step in where judgment matters: reading tone, building rapport, and understanding what a client actually needs.

The recruiters took to it. "You get to focus on the conversation that matters," Mauricio says. "The one where you actually help someone find the right opportunity."

Candidates took to it too. SGF surveyed candidates throughout the rollout as a quality check, and the results were encouraging: people who spoke with Sarah engaged, responded, and in many cases moved forward in the process.

Mauricio's advice to other staffing leaders

Choose the partner carefully. "Research very well what tool you're going to use and the company you want to work with." For SGF, the deciding factor was that Sarah was built for staffing firms, with JobDiva integration and recruiter workflows in place from the first day, and that it could be tuned market by market.

"Speed is key but also we need quality. And that's one of the things we've been able to achieve." — Mauricio Sion, Director, SGF Global

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