How Primis became an AI-native recruitment firm with General Input

Background

A fast-growing tech recruitment firm that wanted to lead on AI

Primis is a technology recruitment firm headquartered in London, with offices in Manchester, New York and Dubai. Founded in 2021, it places permanent and contract talent across engineering, data, AI and go-to-market roles, and was named Recruitment Company of the Year for 2025 by the industry body APSCo.

Founder and CEO Ben Broughton made AI the firm’s top priority. “If you’re not AI-enabled, you can get left behind,” he says. He met with 12 companies before choosing General Input, and within weeks the whole firm was working in its own branded AI workspace.

The problem

Great consultants, slowed down by research, spreadsheets and copy-paste

Recruitment runs on knowing which companies are hiring before anyone else does. At Primis, consultants mostly found out by accident. “We’re almost stumbling across, or hearing from candidates about, these companies that are hiring,” says Simon Gregory, who leads the UK go-to-market desk. “By then you’re almost too late.” Researching each company and drafting outreach was manual, and it took time.

General-purpose chatbots couldn’t do the job at scale. When Ben asked one to research every company Primis had placed with and find their live roles, it came back with: “I can’t do this. I’ll give you the top 10.” And the firm’s own data was hard to reach. Its CRM held 40,000 companies and years of placement history, but “we’re finding it hard to get the real-time data out,” Ben says.

The back office ran on spreadsheets. Every month, the finance team spent two days calculating commission by hand, moving between three or four spreadsheets and the CRM to check splits. “It’s just a lot,” says Safeera Pillay, who runs the numbers. Contractor contracts were copied from a form into documents by hand, and onboarding a new hire meant working through a long manual checklist.

The solution

AI specialists for every desk, from business development to finance

A fresh lead list for every consultant, every morning

Primis started with the work that grows the business. A Lead Generation Executive specialist builds a personal lead list for every consultant each weekday morning. It looks for companies with real hiring signals in that consultant’s market, like headcount growth, senior hires, open roles and new funding, and checks each one against the CRM and against colleagues so no two consultants get the same lead.

Consultants work their list in the Lead List app: they rate leads so the specialist learns what they like, find the hiring manager, add the company to the CRM in one click and open a drafted outreach email. Every consultant on the desk starts the day with a fresh list, 175 new leads across the firm every weekday. “Each day I get a fresh list, and 60 to 70% of them are genuinely interesting,” says Simon.

Commission in 20 minutes, not two days

In finance, a Commission Payout Specialist took over the monthly commission run. The team uploads the month’s placement and contractor reports and sets exchange rates, and the Commission Engine produces the full workbook, with splits, management schemes and a tab for every consultant. Anything that doesn’t match the CRM is flagged for a person to check, and nothing is paid until someone signs it off.

The first run on real July figures took 10 minutes and matched the team’s own numbers to within a dollar or two. “Was that just 10 minutes?” Safeera asked. “My job’s going to be so much easier next month.” Commission now takes 20 minutes and a final check, down from two days.

A specialist for every part of the firm

Primis now has a specialist for every part of the firm: a call analyst, a revenue analyst, interview reminders, an inbox that files emailed CVs straight into the CRM, and a report that flags every live vacancy with no recent activity.

The morning briefing runs for the whole team, each copy tuned to its owner’s calendar and start time.

Chief of Staff

AI morning briefing

Reads each person’s calendar, researches who they’re meeting and emails everyone a briefing before the day starts.

Before: prepping for every meeting by hand

Contractor Operations Manager

Contractor contracts

Turns a placement into client and contractor schedules, routes them for approval and e-signature, and sets up timesheets.

Before: copying form data into contracts

Onboarding Coordinator

Employee onboarding

One intake form drives every step for UK, US and contract hires: emails, contracts, IT requests and check-ins.

Before: a long manual checklist

Recruitment Data Analyst

Live recruitment data

Answers questions about placements, clients and pipeline from the live CRM, and helped build the board pack.

Before: data stuck inside the CRM

Candidate Consultant

CVs and matching

Reformats CVs into the Primis template, strips contact details, updates the CRM and matches candidates to open roles.

Before: reformatting every CV by hand

Call Analyst

Call summaries

Summarizes every finished call, researches the companies mentioned and drafts the candidate follow-up.

Before: typing up notes after every call

The results

A firm that runs on AI, from the CEO to the newest consultant

It runs across the whole business. Consultants start every day with a researched briefing and a fresh lead list, finance closes commission in twenty minutes, and operations hands contracts and onboarding to specialists that never skip a step. Between lead research and meeting prep alone, that is more than 300 hours of consultant time back every month.

The work runs on its own. 97.6% of automated runs succeed, and 98.6% start on a schedule or trigger, with nobody pressing a button.

And the time is going where it counts. “We’re looking at saving time and making people more efficient, but also delivering more business to our front door,” Ben says. Next, Primis is automating board packs, monthly consultant reviews and follow-up sequences.