Sungrow

Sungrow's European recruitment team manages around 140 open roles with a team of five recruiters. Hiring for working student, internship and other junior roles is particularly demanding, as application volumes can grow rapidly. For one or two roles alone, the team may receive as many as 250 applications within the first week.

Before introducing the Personio AI Talent Screening Agent, recruiters had to review every CV manually, checking key criteria such as location, field of study, language skills and relevant expertise. Their goal was to narrow the applicant pool down to a shortlist of four or five candidates and present the hiring managers with the strongest matches as quickly as possible.

Pre-screening questions offered only limited support, as applicants' responses did not always accurately reflect whether they met the role requirements.

Key challenges

• High application volumes with limited recruitment resources

• No quick overview of the most suitable candidates

• Limited reliability of pre-screening questions

• A time-consuming shortlist creation process

To identify just two suitable candidates from fewer than 50 applications, the Talent Acquisition Manager estimated that the process previously took at least an hour and a half.

The Personio AI Talent Screening Agent first analyses the job description to identify the role's key requirements. It then compares every incoming CV against these criteria and shows how closely each profile matches the position.

The Agent supports the recruitment team during the initial screening process, which was previously carried out manually under significant time pressure. Recruiters can also refine the assessment by adding additional role-specific requirements.

The team became familiar with the tool within just one week. For experienced Personio users in particular, the interface proved intuitive and easy to use.

Today, recruiters focus primarily on candidates with a high match score. Criteria such as location, language skills and relevant expertise are assessed consistently, making it less likely that candidates living outside the target region or lacking key qualifications will be overlooked. As a result, the initial screening process is based more consistently on the requirements that matter most.

Instead of spending the majority of their time reviewing applications that are clearly unsuitable, the recruitment team can now focus on the strongest matches. This leaves more time for personal evaluations and meaningful conversations with the most promising talent.

Sungrow plans to integrate the Personio AI Talent Screening Agent even more closely into its recruitment process. As soon as more advanced automated filtering becomes available, the team wants to process lower-scoring profiles more efficiently and provide applicants with feedback sooner. At the same time, suitable candidates will be able to move into the interview process more quickly.

Initial observations suggest that those with a match score of 75% to 80% or higher are also more likely to progress successfully through the later stages of the hiring process. Sungrow now wants to measure this correlation systematically and track how often these candidates ultimately receive a job offer.

With the Personio AI Talent Screening Agent, Sungrow can manage even high volumes of applications more efficiently. The Agent analyses each job description, compares the key requirements against incoming CVs and quickly highlights the most suitable candidates.

As a result, the time needed to create a shortlist has been reduced by 85%. At the same time, the quality of the shortlist has improved, as key criteria such as location, language skills and relevant expertise are assessed more reliably. This gives the recruitment team more time for personal conversations and allows them to focus on the candidates who are the best fit for the role.