Personnel consultancy Rau Consultants uses Microsoft 365 Copilot to save time and reinvest in client relationships

Rau Consultants is a people-focused business in the most literal sense. The company specializes in HR consulting, recruiting, training, and coaching related to people in the food industry. Tim Rau, Managing Director, Rau Consultants, has seen the market shift over the years from retainer-based engagements to a contingency model that prizes speed and efficiency. “We set ourselves apart through the quality of our placements and our personalized process, along with efficiency and pace,” says Rau. “We take our business personally.” 

How to marry those two seemingly opposite impulses—a personalized, meticulous process that is also fast? Rau and his colleagues began to explore Microsoft 365 Copilot and saw that it had great potential to grow the business. There was groundwork to do first, since Rau Consultants had an on-premises Microsoft 365 Business Standard solution. The time was right to move to the cloud with Microsoft 365 Business Premium and take advantage of even more services within the Microsoft 365 suite. “We evaluated various tools, including Google Workplace, but remaining in the Microsoft world made sense from a data protection point of view and in terms of interoperability with the Microsoft 365 tools we already use,” says Eldar Ibric, Recruitment Consultant, Rau Consultants. 

From zero to Copilot: A webinar proves transformational 

Christian Hahn, Founder of digitalhoch4 Beratungsgesellschaft mbH, a member of the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program, and his colleagues have delivered their live Microsoft 365 Copilot webinar more than 100 times. “I love how impactful it is to introduce Microsoft 365 and Copilot to a small business,” he says. “In our webinars, we help businesses find use cases for an AI solution.” For Rau Consultants, one use case emerged as a frontrunner for Copilot support: candidate profile creation. 

Candidate interviews are a core part of Rau Consultants business. “Each interview lasts about an hour and results in a five-page profile that we then share with our clients,” explains Rau. “We conduct about 800 such interviews a year.” These interviews take place via Microsoft Teams, with the interviewer asking questions and simultaneously typing up notes. “It was very difficult to divide your attention,” explains Ibric. The post-interview editing process could take an hour or more. Although Rau Consultants used a template to create these profiles, each interviewer had their own distinct style, resulting in slightly different profiles.

Creating candidate profiles in less time with Copilot 

Ibric immediately saw the positive impact that Microsoft 365 Copilot had on the interview process. “When we use Copilot to transcribe the interviews, candidates tell us how modern the experience is,” he says, noting that candidates are also reassured that their information will remain safeguarded within the Microsoft environment. Ibric notes, “With Copilot, I can have a better emotional grasp of the person I am interviewing. It’s the insight you can only have when you are looking someone in the eye, rather than typing notes.” 

Microsoft 365 Copilot then turns transcripts into candidate profiles. Rau explains, “We have a preset prompt for Microsoft 365 Copilot that creates a draft profile instantly. Our consultants can finalize the draft much faster than starting from scratch each time. This valuable time can be redirected toward sourcing more candidates.” Candidate profiles are also more cohesive, providing clients with a consistent experience no matter who authored them. 

In addition, Rau Consultants uses Copilot to help locate relevant information across Microsoft 365 apps, take down meeting minutes, draft job listings and proposals, and for its translation and editing capabilities. “Copilot helps us by adding follow ups, to-dos, and findings from in a recap from every meeting,” says Rau. 

From cumbersome versioning to modern collaboration 

Like many businesses, Rau Consultants had deeply ingrained ways of working that were often impenetrable for new employees, particularly for document collaboration. “As part of our engagement with digitalhoch4, we tested OneDrive and SharePoint,” says Ibric. “Everyone saw how easy it can be to collaborate, share data safely, and work in real time on the same document.” This new approach extended to customer communications. “In the past, we sent candidate profiles to customers via email,” recalls Ibric. “Often we would have to send multiple emails to accommodate the large file sizes. It was not ideal.”

Today, Rau Consultants simply makes a dedicated and highly secure SharePoint site for each client, creating a one-stop shop for candidate profiles. “The feedback from our clients has been really positive,” says Ibric. 

Up next: Agents and improved asset management

Rau Consultants is eager to try Copilot and AI agents to help automate repetitive tasks. “We want to use Copilot and agents to connect disparate systems and save our employees from manually copy-and-pasting data,” says Rau. An initial goal is to connect LinkedIn with the company’s ERP system, keeping its database of 30,000 candidates up to date without manual intervention. 

With all the time saved in the profile creation process, employees at Rau Consultants are rededicating their time to more impactful—and personal—work. “With Microsoft 365 and Copilot, we are more capable than ever. We use our time savings to focus even more on our clients and candidates,” says Rau. “It’s a refocusing on the personal side of our business that sets us apart.”

Discover more about Rau Consultants on LinkedIn.