EP327: How Recruiters Can Save 40% of Their Working Day - Lawson Leefe, CVME & Hedera HiringEP327: How Recruiters Can Save 40% of Their Working Day - Lawson Leefe, CVME & Hedera Hiring
The Recruiter's Recruitment Podcast
Recruitment leader and tech founder Lawson Leefe talks about how CVME aims to cut CV sourcing and formatting time dramatically while keeping recruiters focused on human conversations. The discussion looks at AI’s role in recruitment, brand consistency, and how reclaiming hours each day could reshape how consultants work.
32:17•8 Jun 2026
Saving 40% of a Recruiter’s Day with CVME and Hedera Hiring
Episode Overview
- Manual CV sourcing and formatting can consume up to 40% of a recruiter’s working day, significantly reducing productivity.
- CVME automates CV formatting by converting multiple documents into fully branded templates in seconds, saving consultants substantial time.
- The platform integrates with around 21 CRM and ATS systems, allowing formatted CVs to be pulled in and written back seamlessly.
- An AI-powered search tool linked to a UK database of about 25 million CVs can assess roughly 9,000 profiles a minute against custom criteria.
- Lawson stresses that AI should remove repetitive tasks and give time back, while critical candidate and client conversations remain human-led.
“If a day's like eight or so hours and you're losing two to search and say an hour to formatting, it's like 40% of the day is gone.”
What secrets to maintaining sanity in recruitment can be uncovered when tech actually saves you time instead of adding to your workload? This conversation with Lawson Leefe, Director at Hedera Hiring and the mind behind CVME, gives recruiters a practical look at how much of their day is quietly slipping away on low-value tasks.
Lawson shares his journey from leading a team at Cordant to teaching himself to code because he was sick of watching consultants lose hours to sourcing and CV formatting. He spells it out bluntly: "If a day's like eight or so hours and you're losing two to search and say an hour to formatting, it's like 40% of the day is gone." His solution? Build tools that cut that down to seconds.
You’ll hear how CVME lets recruiters drag and drop up to ten CVs of any design and have them "boom, come out" fully branded, in the agency’s own template, in about ten seconds. Lawson and host Lysha Holmes chat about the real cost of having senior consultants spending 30–40 minutes prettifying each document, and how that time could be better spent meeting clients or deepening candidate relationships.
They also talk about CVME’s search engine, hooked up to a UK database of around 25 million CVs and capable of assessing roughly 9,000 profiles a minute against editable criteria. Lawson is clear that AI should give time back, not replace humans: he’s sceptical about candidates or clients wanting to deal with "agents" instead of real recruiters for big life decisions.
For anyone in recruitment wondering how to reclaim a chunk of the working day without sacrificing brand, candidate care, or quality, this chat offers a grounded, real-world look at what’s actually working. Could freeing up that 40% be the nudge you need to work smarter, not just harder?
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