--- title: "Beyond the Shortlist: MetaDay's AI Executes the Hiring Process" description: World Mobile filled a QA role in one working day with MetaDay. Founder Roi Elco on AI running outreach, screening and salary talks before the final interview. author: Darie Nani (Editor-in-Chief) date: 2026-10-06T12:25:18.050Z updated: 2026-10-06T12:27:44.492Z canonical: https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/how-to-speed-up-the-hiring-process image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/roi-elco-metaday-hero-beach-v5.webp categories: HR & Recruiting, Artificial Intelligence, Startups content_type: Spotlight region: London publication: Sovereign Magazine about: - type: Organization name: MetaDay description: MetaDay is a UK company that runs the hiring work between sourcing and the final decision. It finds and contacts candidates, holds screening calls and interviews, settles salary and terms, and negotiates, then hands the hiring team three finalists. Its AI Execution Engine for Hiring launched on 6 October 2026 and is patent pending. url: https://metaday.ai industry: Recruitment technology sameAs: - https://www.linkedin.com/company/metaday/ - https://x.com/metadayai - https://www.youtube.com/@MetaDayai --- World Mobile Group went from opening a QA specialist role to a signed hire, ready to start, within one working day, with MetaDay running every step between the hiring manager's brief and the final decision. > "Nobody spends the final interview on salary, start dates or whether the role is remote. Both sides already know the facts, so they can talk about what actually matters: ambition, chemistry, how this person will grow, and whether they want to build something together." > — Roi Elco MetaDay, a UK company, came out of stealth on 6 October with what it calls an AI Execution Engine for Hiring, after eight months of testing and validation with customers. Its founder and chief executive, Roi Elco, says AI tools have made candidates easy to find, and that hiring now slows down on the outreach, calls, screening, scheduling and negotiation each of them needs. MetaDay calls that work Hiring Execution, does it for the hiring team and hands over three finalists for the decision. "Time is the most valuable resource a hiring team has," Elco says. "MetaDay gives it back, so people can focus on the decisions that truly matter." Candidates can [settle salary, terms and start dates](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/ruth-ai-harris-poll-job-search-survey-trust-gap) with MetaDay's AI or with the hiring team directly, and 82% choose the AI first, according to the company. "AI doesn't have ego," Elco says. "There's no pressure, no posturing, no fear of saying the wrong number, so people are more honest, and both sides get to the real answer faster." ## The Rise in Job Applications per Recruiter Elco came to hiring about five years ago, when he joined a start-up that had just raised funding. It had around ten staff, and in under two years he led its growth to nearly 500 people. "The challenge was never finding candidates," he says. "The real work started afterwards: contacting, selling, screening, aligning, scheduling, following up, and keeping people engaged while other companies were trying to hire the same person." > "Everyone expected hiring to get easier. Instead, it multiplied the problem." > — Roi Elco [AI tools](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/hiring-without-the-hassle-can-ai-recruitment-tools-like-ann-balance-speed-fairness-and-human-insight) have since added to that work, and Greenhouse, the recruiting software company, reports that applications per recruiter have risen 412% since 2023, with the average opening on its platform drawing 254 applicants. LinkedIn handles around 11,000 job applications a minute, a 45% rise in a year, according to figures reported by The New York Times in June 2025. "A recruiter who managed twenty candidates a week could suddenly source two hundred, but all the execution work still had to happen," Elco says. "That's when I realized hiring never had a talent problem. It had an execution problem." The usual advice on handling too many job applicants is to reduce the number, with tighter job adverts, harder filters and fewer interview stages. Elco's view is that when many of the applicants are qualified, the time goes on the follow-up each of them needs, and he set up MetaDay to do that follow-up. ## The MetaDay Hiring Run, from Brief to Shortlist Each hire starts with one brief, in which the hiring manager describes the role. From that brief, MetaDay builds a run tailored to the role, drawing on hundreds of ready-made templates, or the manager can pick a template directly. The manager approves the boundaries, and MetaDay carries out the hire. Elco describes a run as "a plan with clear boundaries for the AI". "It sets everything the hire needs: where to look, who to reach, how to sell the opportunity, what to ask on the call, which criteria matter, and how far the AI can go on the offer," he says. > "We didn't design the runs in a meeting room, we built them in the market." > — Roi Elco MetaDay then searches for candidates directly and posts the role on the relevant job boards at the same time. Everyone who comes in, sourced or applied, goes into one ranked pool and is scored against the criteria the manager agreed at the start. MetaDay contacts each candidate personally and follows up until it gets an answer. The strongest candidates get "a real call, not a form", in which MetaDay sells the opportunity, answers their questions and aligns expectations on salary, timing and the role itself, "so nobody discovers a mismatch at the offer stage". It then screens and interviews every candidate against the same criteria and, when the time comes, negotiates. The manager can follow each step, and MetaDay comes back only when a decision is needed. "The manager sees a live run, not a pile of work," Elco says. Over the eight months before launch MetaDay tested the product across hundreds of thousands of candidate profiles, thousands of applicants and thousands of calls, while pilot customers and hiring managers helped shape each run around how hiring works in practice. Each completed hire feeds back into its run, so the next one is quicker and more reliable. ## Salary Expectations and Terms Before the Final Interview Hiring guides commonly advise putting a salary range in the job advert so that mismatches surface early. MetaDay settles the salary, terms, start date, notice period and working arrangements, whether remote, hybrid or on site, with each candidate before the final interview. Candidates can ask about the role, the team, the pay, the flexibility and what success looks like, at any time, and MetaDay answers within the limits the company set in the run. "So the candidate qualifies the company just as much as the company qualifies the candidate," Elco says. ## Structured Scoring Across Every Candidate Scoring every candidate against the same agreed criteria is standard advice for faster and [fairer hiring](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/the-hidden-bias-in-ai-hiring-how-automated-screenings-are-failing-neurodivergent-job-seekers), and MetaDay's runs are set up around it. The criteria are set at the start of a run. The hiring team can change them at any point, but because a change halfway through affects every candidate already in the run, MetaDay asks for the reason first. At one customer, halfway through a run, after a meeting with his team, a hiring manager went to change one of the scoring criteria. MetaDay did not block the change and asked him why. "He tried to explain, and realised he couldn't defend the change, so he chose to keep the original criteria," Elco says. The manager later told MetaDay that the system was helping his team, because it stopped them comparing candidates with each other and kept them judging each one on what they had agreed mattered for the role. "A good reason takes seconds to give. A weak one usually doesn't survive being said out loud," Elco says. "It keeps the process consistent, it keeps it fair to every candidate, and it keeps the decision exactly where it belongs: with people who can explain it." ## The Final Interview and the Hiring Decision MetaDay stops at a shortlist of three, and the final interview, the judgement and the choice belong to the hiring team. "It stops being an interrogation and becomes a real conversation between two sides who both want it to work," Elco says of the final interview. ## World Mobile's One-Day Hire and MetaDay's First Five Hires At World Mobile Group, the mobile network company, the hiring manager briefed Ryan, MetaDay's AI agent, in Slack and started the run. MetaDay sourced candidates, contacted them, ran the screening calls, aligned expectations and arranged the interviews. The chosen candidate completed the interviews, a validation step and an introductory call with the team, accepted the role, joined the company's Slack workspace and was ready to start before the end of the same day. "When we needed a QA Specialist, MetaDay's AI Hiring Execution took us from opening the role to a signed hire in one working day," said Micky Watkins, chief executive of World Mobile Group. "We made the hiring decision. MetaDay executed everything else. This is what I expect from AI: the work gets done, we make the call, and the business moves forward." "One day isn't the goal for every role, but it shows what happens when execution stops being the bottleneck," Elco says. MetaDay made five hires in its first 30 days in the market: the QA specialist, a key account manager, a go-to-market specialist, an ACCA-qualified accountant and a lead hydrogen engineer in clean energy, with the roles growing more senior over the month. "A hydrogen engineer and a key account manager have nothing in common, except that the execution behind hiring them is the same work," Elco says. Several more runs are live, and the company expects further signed offers by the end of October. ## Candidate Experience and AI Interviews "They should be wary," Elco says of candidates who distrust AI interviews. "Most candidates have had an AI interview that felt like talking to a wall: no answers, no context, no way out. That's not what we built." Candidates are told from the start that they are speaking with an AI, with transparency built into the product in line with the EU AI Act, and they can choose to speak with the team instead. Answers come straight away, at any hour. "Nobody waits a week for a callback," Elco says. MetaDay also gives the hiring manager what they need to close the loop with every candidate, so that nobody is left waiting for an answer. ## Mondzorggilde, Healthcare Hiring and MetaDay's Next Markets MetaDay is partnering with Mondzorggilde, one of the largest dental care groups in the Netherlands, and will begin running its hiring in the coming weeks. "Healthcare is a perfect example of why execution matters: the demand is constant, the roles are critical, and every week a position stays open has a real cost," Elco says. The company is also in talks with other large healthcare organisations. MetaDay's AI Execution Engine for Hiring is patent pending. Until the patent is granted, Elco is not going into the method, but he describes the principle behind it as the company defining the boundaries and the AI working inside them. "That's what makes it safe to let AI run a hire," he says. MetaDay is based in the UK, is live in the Netherlands and already has customers in Spain. Europe is its focus for now, with the US next. [A small core team](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/ai-startups-hiring-fewer-junior-staff), supported by advisers in hiring and go-to-market, sets the boundaries and makes the decisions, and MetaDay's own system does the execution work. "It feels like a team of fifty, because the execution never stops," Elco says. "Our goal is simple: to make Hiring Execution the standard. Every company should be able to hire this way." **About Roi Elco** Founder and CEO, MetaDay Roi Elco is the founder and chief executive of MetaDay, the UK company behind the AI Execution Engine for Hiring. He came to hiring after leading a funded start-up's growth from around ten people to nearly 500 in under two years. **About MetaDay** MetaDay is a UK company that runs the hiring work between sourcing and the final decision. It finds and contacts candidates, holds screening calls and interviews, settles salary and terms, and negotiates, then hands the hiring team three finalists. Its AI Execution Engine for Hiring launched on 6 October 2026 and is patent pending. [Website](https://metaday.ai) ## FAQ **Q: How can a company reduce time to hire?** Most of the time in a hiring process goes on the work after candidates are found: outreach, follow-ups, screening calls, scheduling and negotiation. Settling salary, terms and start dates before the final interview, scoring every candidate against criteria agreed at the start, and bringing the hiring team in only for a shortlist all shorten it. MetaDay runs those steps for the hiring team, and World Mobile Group used it to fill a QA specialist role in one working day. **Q: How should a hiring team handle too many job applicants?** Tighter job adverts and harder filters help when most applicants are a poor fit. When many are qualified, the slow part is the follow-up each one needs. MetaDay puts every sourced candidate and applicant into one ranked pool scored against the agreed criteria, contacts and screens them, and passes three finalists to the hiring manager. **Q: Why are recruiters getting so many applications?** AI tools make it quick for candidates to apply and for recruiters to source. Greenhouse reports that applications per recruiter have risen 412% since 2023, and LinkedIn handles around 11,000 job applications a minute.