Artificial Intelligence in HR: cutting seasonal hiring costs with AI-powered recruiters

Seasonal hiring ranks among the toughest challenges in human resources, and more companies now rely on artificial intelligence in HR to stay ahead. Seasonal recruitment always runs on a compressed timeline: retailers must staff up weeks before holiday sales, farms need hundreds of workers for harvest within just a few days, and hotels often double their teams before summer begins. Even short delays lead to lost sales, unpicked crops, or poor customer service.

Modern AI recruitment tools shift the balance. Instead of HR teams spending weeks posting ads, making endless phone calls, and rescheduling interviews, businesses empower AI-powered recruiters and conversational AI assistants to handle repetitive tasks. These systems screen candidates, schedule interviews, and guide onboarding while managing thousands of applications in parallel without overwhelming human recruiters.

Companies that adopt AI recruitment strategies speed up recruitment with AI, reduce hiring costs, and deliver a smoother candidate experience. Seasonal hiring stops being a chaotic race against time and becomes a predictable, scalable process that drives both efficiency and quality.

The Challenge of Seasonal Hiring

Seasonal hiring pushes HR departments to their limits. In retail, hospitality, and agriculture, companies often need to bring on dozens or even hundreds of workers in just a few weeks. Without automation or modern AI in hiring strategies, the process slows down and costs skyrocket.

Research shows that filling an entry-level role often takes up to 30 days. While that timeline might work for permanent jobs, seasonal employers cannot wait a month. A farm preparing for harvest or a retailer staffing for Black Friday needs workers in days, not weeks. Delays mean empty shifts, lost sales, or unpicked crops.

The scale of seasonal recruitment highlights this pressure even more:

• In the United States, more than 380,000 H-2A visas were issued in 2024 to bring foreign seasonal farmworkers.
• In the United Kingdom, around 35,000 seasonal visas supported the agricultural sector.
• In Spain’s Andalusia region alone, strawberry and berry farms employ up to 100,000 seasonal workers every year.
• Across Europe, agriculture depends on an estimated 10 million seasonal workers annually, with Spain, Italy, France, and Germany leading the demand for harvest labor.

Behind each number lies a massive recruitment operation: sourcing candidates, verifying documents, making phone calls, and scheduling interviews — often within a compressed timeframe of just a few weeks. Traditional HR teams struggle to keep up, and businesses that fail to reduce hiring costs with AI or accelerate decision-making risk falling behind competitors.

Meanwhile, recruiters spend up to 62% of their time on repetitive tasks: screening résumés, calling candidates, updating HRM systems, and rescheduling interviews. With such workloads, HR teams burn out while applicants wait days — sometimes weeks — for a simple response. Many describe the process as a “black hole,” where applications vanish without confirmation or feedback. For seasonal industries, that delay is fatal: motivated candidates often accept faster offers elsewhere.

Seasonal Hiring Agencies: Who Handles the Volume?

Behind the millions of seasonal workers stand specialized agencies that coordinate recruitment on a large scale. Farms, retailers, and hospitality companies often outsource the most labor-intensive phases of hiring to intermediaries who source, screen, and deliver ready-to-work candidates.

• Concordia (UK) – one of the leading operators under the UK Seasonal Worker Scheme, supplying thousands of agricultural workers every year.
• HOPS Labour Solutions (UK) – places up to 12,000 seasonal employees annually for British farms.
• AGRI-HR (UK) – focuses on horticulture and agriculture, handling documentation, logistics, and recruitment.
• Pro-Force, AG Recruitment & Management, Fruitful Jobs (UK/EU) – all recognized by the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board as trusted providers for farms.
• RE Recruitment and MorePeople (EU/UK) – cover a broader spectrum: from farm laborers to packhouse and warehouse staff, even administrative roles.
• Seasonal Worker Europe / Galaxy Seven (EU) – specializes in cross-border recruitment, including paperwork, transport, and housing for workers from outside the EU.
• USA Farm Labor (US) – supports more than 1,400 clients each year, managing the full H-2A visa process and workforce placement.

These agencies illustrate the true scale of seasonal hiring: tens of thousands of candidates recruited, screened, and mobilized within weeks. Yet even with such resources, agencies face the same bottlenecks as HR departments — endless calls, document checks, and scheduling tasks.

Here, AI recruitment tools can step in, helping agencies pre-qualify candidates more efficiently, update databases automatically, and alleviate the manual workload on recruiters.

How Agencies Currently Handle Seasonal Recruitment

When a farm, retailer, or hotel needs seasonal staff, the request usually lands on a recruitment agency’s desk. From that moment, the process unfolds like this:

1. Client request

   The employer explains how many workers they need, for what period, and under what conditions (salary, housing, shifts). The agency then commits to delivering this workforce within a tight deadline.

2. Building and using candidate databases

   Most agencies operate in two ways when it comes to sourcing candidates:

   Inbound model: candidates come to the agency themselves. They apply through online forms, social media, or local recruiters in their home countries. For example, Concordia in the UK collects applications from workers who want to join the Seasonal Worker Scheme. This flow keeps the database fresh but still requires verification of who is truly available each season.

   Outbound model: Agencies use their existing databases, which are lists of workers from past seasons. Recruiters then call each candidate directly to check availability, legal status, and willingness to return. In practice, this means dozens of recruiters making thousands of phone calls at the start of every season. Agencies admit that much of this time goes to waste because many numbers are outdated or candidates have moved on.

   Both models feed into the same problem: when the season starts, agencies must “revive” their databases under enormous time pressure. This step alone consumes weeks of recruiter effort before actual hiring can even begin.

3. First contact and screening

   Recruiters manually phone candidates to confirm:

   • Are you available for the full season?
   • Do you have the physical ability for the work?
   • Do you already hold a work permit, or do you need visa sponsorship?

   Because of the short timeline, screening often happens only superficially. As one agency admitted: “Short time frames and the pressure to perform often lead to weak screening of potential employees.”

4. Documentation

   For international workers, agencies handle visas, contracts, and travel. This step is slow and bureaucratic: one missing paper can delay the entire batch of candidates. Investigations have shown that workers sometimes face unclear fees or even debt because of poor oversight in this stage.

5. Onboarding and logistics

   Once workers arrive, the agency arranges housing, transport, and a short orientation. If earlier steps dragged on too long, this onboarding happens under enormous time pressure, with crops already ripening or stores already opening.

6. Ongoing coordination

   Agencies stay in touch during the season, handling replacements, conflicts, and worker support. Recruiters often describe this stage as firefighting — solving problems as they appear, because earlier stages left little margin for error.

Artificial Intelligence in HR: A Product-Driven Approach

Agencies and HR teams don’t have to stay stuck in endless calls, outdated spreadsheets, and rushed screenings. Artificial intelligence in HR already offers practical solutions that remove the bottlenecks from seasonal hiring. Modern AI recruitment tools replicate much of the operational work recruiters do every day — but at scale, with speed, and without fatigue.

AI candidate screening at scale

Instead of recruiters calling thousands of names just to confirm availability, an AI voice agent can reach out to every contact in the database within minutes. Candidates answer questions about work permits, availability, or physical readiness, and the system automatically updates their status in the HRM or ATS. What takes human recruiters weeks, AI completes in hours.

AI interview scheduling

Scheduling has always been one of the most time-consuming parts of seasonal recruitment. Some agencies even hire staff who only handle calendars. With AI, that burden disappears: conversational assistants instantly offer available slots, reschedule if needed, and send reminders. Recruiters stop wasting hours chasing confirmations and can focus on qualified candidates instead.

AI onboarding automation for seasonal workers

Seasonal employees arrive with many questions: housing, transportation, shifts, and safety rules. An AI-powered recruiter can deliver this information automatically — through calls, messages, or email — ensuring every worker gets the exact, clear instructions. That consistency shortens onboarding time and reduces confusion during critical peak weeks.

While AI agents handle calls and initial candidate screening, human recruiters focus on the tasks where accuracy and personal involvement matter most: collecting passports, processing visas, preparing contracts, and arranging travel. At these stages, even a small mistake — a misspelled name, a missing visa form, or an error in travel logistics — can block an entire group of workers from departing on time. Conversational AI assistants help manage this workload.

Conversational AI in Action

Apifonica brings these ideas to life with its conversational AI platform, designed specifically for high-volume and seasonal recruitment. Instead of HR teams making thousands of phone calls, AI voice agents take over the first contact, reaching candidates instantly, collecting essential information, and updating the database automatically.

The strength of this approach lies in scale and consistency. AI assistants don’t get tired, don’t miss details, and work 24/7. Candidates receive immediate confirmation that their application was processed, answers to basic questions, and even feedback in case they don’t qualify. Recruiters, meanwhile, see a ready shortlist of candidates who have already passed the initial checks.

Here’s how a typical interaction looks when hiring seasonal workers:

• Greeting and context – the AI introduces itself, names the company, and explains the position (e.g., strawberry picking from April to October).
• Availability check – asks whether the candidate is free to work during the required period.
• Document verification – checks if the candidate has a valid work permit or needs visa support.
• Readiness questions – confirm physical ability for the job and willingness to relocate if needed.
• Next step – if the candidate matches requirements, the AI forwards their data to a recruiter and may even schedule a live interview. If not, the assistant politely explains the rejection and keeps the record for future opportunities.

Apifonica’s AI voice agent manages the entire first stage of recruitment: it instantly calls candidates after an application, asks key questions about availability and documents, applies automated criteria to accept or reject, and updates the CRM/HRM. Qualified candidates move forward or get scheduled with a recruiter, while others receive polite feedback. Recruiters stay in control, stepping in for live interviews and final decisions, while AI handles the repetitive load at scale.

Real-World Results

Apifonica’s AI HR Agent already drives results for leading organizations, including BGK, Wakacje.pl, and Weegree. In practice, companies report up to 8x faster hiring, cost reductions of nearly 70% (roughly €360 saved per role), and a marked rise in candidate satisfaction thanks to timely responses and clear communication.

What makes these outcomes possible is scale. The system can run up to 5,000 screening interviews at once, processing entire seasonal databases in hours rather than weeks. Candidates no longer wait days for a call, and recruiters avoid spending most of their time on repetitive work. Instead, they step in at the decisive stages — final interviews, contract preparation, and onboarding — where human judgment and accuracy matter most.

Denis Shirokii, CEO of Apifonica, shows a graph and explains in under a minute how AI HR agents outperform manual recruiting.

This quote captures the scale of the challenge: even corporations with thousands of employees can't cover all inbound and outbound interactions without customer support automation. That's why Salesforce talks about the Agentic Enterprise — a company where AI agents are embedded across processes, from lead outreach and ticket handling to logistics and workforce management. Salesforce itself is "customer zero" for this model, demonstrating tangible value by optimizing its own support and sales.

A Communication Platform, Not Just a Dialer for Recruiting

Apifonica’s solution works as a communication platform based on AI with a package of minutes that can be used flexibly across scenarios. Recruitment is only one of them. Within the same package, companies can run mass hiring campaigns, automate onboarding, send compliance reminders, confirm shifts, or even conduct engagement surveys. It all depends on how you design the workflow — the platform adapts to your needs.

This flexibility sets Apifonica apart from competitors. Others often charge per interview or per dial, reducing the product to a cost calculator. Apifonica focuses on something else: process optimization. Instead of chaos — thousands of calls, notes, and manual updates — employers get a lean, manageable system where every candidate interaction is tracked, automated, and under control.

The Technology Behind Apifonica

Apifonica’s strength lies in the way its conversational AI is built. Unlike simple dialers, the platform combines several advanced technologies that make every interaction natural, reliable, and scalable.

At the core are large language models (LLMs), GPT, which enable the system to understand not only keywords but full human responses. Thanks to intent recognition, the AI correctly interprets indirect answers — for example, when a candidate says “I’ve never worked with a big system”, it is marked as “no CRM experience” without confusion. In addition, entity extraction automatically pulls out key details such as dates, names, or availability and feeds them directly into the HR system.

Equally important are noise filtering and interruption handling. In real life, candidates often answer calls in noisy environments — on public transport, on the street, or in a store. Apifonica’s algorithms clean the audio signal from background noise to preserve speech clarity. At the same time, the ability to respond correctly to interruptions makes the dialogue feel truly “live”: a candidate can ask for clarification, rephrase, or correct an answer, and the system instantly adapts without breaking the flow.

Conclusion: Choose the Price for Chaos or Control

Seasonal hiring doesn’t have to mean chaos, endless calls, and unpredictable costs. With artificial intelligence in HR, companies can turn disorder into a streamlined, manageable process — faster recruitment, lower expenses, and a better candidate experience.

Apifonica’s AI HR Agent brings this transformation into practice. For a starting price of €2,350, employers get access to a full communication platform capable of handling mass recruitment, onboarding, shift confirmations, and compliance workflows. Whether that feels like a high or low investment depends on one thing: how much your business values order, predictability, and speed in the most critical moments of the year.

The choice is yours — continue relying on manual processes that burn time and money, or let automation bring structure and efficiency to your seasonal workforce management.

FAQ

How is an AI HR Agent different from a simple dialer or calling tool?

Most dialers only make outbound calls with scripted messages. An AI HR Agent conducts natural conversations, interprets indirect answers with intent recognition, extracts key details with entity extraction, filters background noise, adapts to interruptions, and integrates with ATS/HRM systems to update candidate data automatically.

How does Apifonica’s pricing model work compared to competitors?

Competitors often charge “per interview” or “per candidate,” which becomes costly during seasonal peaks. Apifonica uses a communication platform model: employers purchase a package (starting at €2,350) with minutes and scenarios that can flexibly cover recruitment, onboarding, compliance, or shift confirmations without per-candidate fees.

Can an AI recruiter really improve candidate experience instead of making it colder?

Yes. Candidates want speed, clarity, and respect. AI ensures instant replies 24/7, clear answers to FAQs, polite rejection messages, and confirmation that applications were received. This reduces the “black hole” effect and directly improves employer brand.

What parts of the recruitment process remain in human hands?

AI handles repetitive tasks like mass calling, initial screening, and FAQs. Human recruiters focus on judgment, accuracy, and empathy — final interviews, handling documents (visas, contracts, travel), and onboarding support. This balance prevents burnout and ensures critical tasks get the right human attention.