Adecco Group
Adecco Group uses an AI agent to pre-screen job candidates by SMS and email
The Adecco Group put an AI screening agent on Salesforce Agentforce to talk to job candidates by SMS and email and hand recruiters a list of pre-screened people each morning. After about six months in the UK, Adecco reported 28 companies filling vacancies with it and a 4.6/5 candidate satisfaction score.
Key figures
Copied exactly from the sources. Copy any figure with its citation.
28
Companies that filled vacancies with the screening agent, first wave in the UK (about six months after launch)1
57%
Share of candidate conversations that took place outside standard working hours1
What it took
The problem
Staffing firms handle huge numbers of applicants, and employers expect a shortlist fast. For Adecco Group recruiters, pre-screening is high-volume, time-sensitive work: asking candidates about availability, location, eligibility and skills before any deeper recruiting can begin.
What they built
An AI screening agent that talks to candidates by SMS and email in a written exchange that reads like a live conversation. It asks questions the recruiters approved, answers candidates' own questions, and tells them from the start that they are talking to AI. Each morning, recruiters receive a list of engaged, pre-screened candidates to contact. The first wave ran in the UK.
How they did it
The agent runs on Salesforce's Agentforce platform. Recruiters shape what goes into the agent. The agent also produces a match score that rates each candidate against the role's requirements, and Adecco launched a voice pilot for phone screening in English or French in November 2025. Salesforce's own services team ran workshops and reviewed the setup. The sources do not name the AI model.
Results
About six months after launch, Adecco reported that 28 companies had filled vacancies with the help of the tool, that candidates rated it 4.6 out of 5 and that 57% of conversations took place outside standard working hours. A later Salesforce story counts more than 65,000 prescreen conversations since April 2025 and says screened candidates were twice as likely to be hired, a claim for which it gives no method.
All reported figures
| Measure | Figure | Citation |
|---|---|---|
| Companies that filled vacancies with the screening agent, first wave in the UK (about six months after launch) | 281 | |
| Candidate satisfaction with the agent, first wave in the UK | 4.6/51 | |
| Share of candidate conversations that took place outside standard working hours | 57%1 | |
| Prescreen conversations held since April 2025 (Salesforce customer story) | 65K+2 | |
| Likelihood of being hired for candidates screened by the agent versus others (Salesforce claim) | 2x more likely2 |
Lessons for your project
Start with one high-volume, time-sensitive task. Adecco chose first-contact candidate screening, where speed matters and the questions are repeatable.
Keep recruiters in control of the agent's inputs. Recruiters set the screening questions, and the agent hands them a ready list each morning rather than deciding who is hired.
Tell candidates at the start that they are talking to AI. Adecco did this from the first message.
Measure from the candidate's side as well as the business side. Satisfaction scores and the share of out-of-hours conversations show whether the channel is useful, not only cheaper.
Caveats
- All figures come from Adecco's own press release or from a Salesforce customer story, the vendor of the platform. No independent party confirms them.
- The press release says the UK launch was about six months before its 30 July 2025 date. The Salesforce story says the chat agent went live in April 2025. The deployment date is therefore given as the year only.
- The two sources report different candidate ratings: 4.6/5 (press release, first wave) and 4.3 out of 5 (Salesforce story, an average of post-conversation surveys since April 2025).
- The 28 companies figure counts companies that filled vacancies with the tool's help. The press release does not say how many hires that represents, and does not give the number of candidates beyond 'thousands'.
- The sources do not name the AI model behind the agent.
Sources
- The Adecco Group completes successful first agentic AI implementation at scale with Salesforce's Agentforce
Adecco Group · 2025-07-30 · Press release · adeccogroup.com
- Agentic prescreening helps the Adecco Group find top candidates fast
Salesforce · 2026-04-30 · Vendor case study · salesforce.com
Summarized in our own words from the sources above. Spotted an error? See corrections.