LAUREL.AI AT A GLANCE

• Company: Laurel is an AI-powered platform that automates timekeeping and billing for professional services companies. Their mission is to return time to their users through AI-powered automation, with approximately 7,000 AI models in production.
• Company Type: Series B (approaching Series C)
• Products Used: AI Resume Screening Tool
• Industry: Business/Productivity AI Software
• Hiring focus: Technical and Data Science
• Employees: 55 employees
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Success with SquarePeg

Overview

Laurel.ai, a Series B AI startup on the verge of Series C funding, adopted SquarePeg in November 2024 to enhance their lean recruiting function. The company, which provides AI-powered time tracking for legal and accounting firms, was facing significant challenges reviewing hundreds of resumes for specialized technical roles. With SquarePeg's AI resume screening tool, Laurel.ai dramatically reduced their review time and has already hired two candidates through the platform.

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The Challenge

As a growing startup with approximately 7,000 AI models in production, Laurel.ai operated with a "team of one" recruiting function led by Tara, the Head of People. Without dedicated recruiting staff, hiring responsibilities fell heavily on technical leaders like Jim, who leads the engineering and AI teams.

"We started looking at tools last fall that could boost our team of one recruiting function," says Tara. "A lot of the responsibilities from a recruiting perspective fall on our hiring managers and our leaders' shoulders."

The company faced a particularly challenging scenario when managing a green card application process that required posting a remote-eligible position. This resulted in over 300 resumes to review, with each requiring detailed documentation and thorough evaluation.

"It is an extremely labor-intensive process. Anything, especially present day, that is remote eligible is a floodgate type application where we get hundreds of resumes," Tara explained.

Before SquarePeg, Jim manually reviewed each resume, spending approximately 5 minutes per candidate, including writing rejection summaries for those who didn't meet requirements. For technical roles requiring specialized skills like building Siamese network embeddings, this process was especially time-consuming.

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The Solution

SquarePeg's AI-powered candidate screening tool transformed Laurel.ai's resume review process by providing accurate, transparent scoring that enabled them to quickly identify qualified candidates.

The platform allowed Tara to assist with technical resume reviews despite lacking domain expertise, effectively doubling their review capacity. SquarePeg's scoring system reduced Tara's review time to just 1 minute per straightforward candidate.

"SquarePeg enabled Tara to help with resume reviews despite lacking technical domain knowledge, effectively doubling our review speed," notes Jim.

As an AI company themselves, Laurel.ai particularly appreciated the transparency of SquarePeg's scoring system. While Jim focused more on correlations between scores and candidates passing technical screens, Tara initially had "trust issues" and validated the system by reviewing 10-15 candidates with Jim to confirm accuracy.

"I appreciated seeing how candidates with missing requirements, like no master's degree, scored in the 50th percentile or lower," Tara said.

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The Outcome

SquarePeg delivered substantial time savings for Laurel.ai, with Tara calculating at least 40 hours saved between her and Jim for a single role. The platform identified 4-5 strong matches on the first day of implementation, allowing immediate outreach to qualified candidates.

By enabling parallel candidate reviews between technical and non-technical team members, SquarePeg potentially saved weeks in Laurel.ai's hiring process. This acceleration is especially valuable for a fast-growing company approaching Series C funding.

"SquarePeg helped Laurel.ai identify qualified candidates faster, potentially saving weeks in our hiring process," says Jim.

The company plans to continue using SquarePeg as a core component of their recruiting strategy as they scale, with Tara estimating it currently covers approximately 85% of their recruiting needs. They are even hiring a dedicated recruiter who will use SquarePeg as their primary tool.

"Using AI recruiting tools enhanced Laurel.ai's credibility as an AI company when discussing our internal AI applications," Jim adds, highlighting an unexpected benefit of their partnership with SquarePeg.

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