A 22-person SaaS company in Berlin was growing fast — the good kind of problem, until it landed squarely on the founder's desk. Every open role meant a CV pile, and every hire meant an onboarding checklist that lived half in the founder's head and half across a dozen scattered documents.
There was no HR hire yet. There often isn't, at this size — the headcount doesn't quite justify a dedicated role, but the workload very much does.
01What it was actually costing them
Screening alone was eating whole afternoons: reading CVs against the role brief, replying to candidates, scheduling first interviews. Onboarding wasn't much better — new starters routinely spent their first week chasing accounts and paperwork instead of doing the job they were hired for, because there was no one whose job it was to run onboarding the same way, every time.
02What changed
Zara took over first-pass CV screening against each role's criteria, scheduling first-round interviews for shortlisted candidates, and running new-hire onboarding — accounts, documents, a consistent first-week checklist — end to end. Offer decisions and anything touching employment terms stayed firmly with the founder and hiring managers; Zara does the repetitive, time-boxed parts of the process, not the judgement calls.
03The result
The company screened over 400 CVs in its first quarter using Zara, without adding a dedicated HR hire, and new starters now have a consistent onboarding path from day one instead of piecing it together themselves. The founder's time went back to hiring decisions and away from hiring admin.
04If this sounds familiar
If hiring admin is landing on a founder's desk because there's no HR hire yet, that's usually the first thing worth automating, not the first thing worth hiring for. See Zara's pricing or book a free AI audit.