Arden Styles, CEO of BigGeo, talks to one of his employees on Monday. Approximately 12.5 per cent of smaller companies (under 100 employees) use AI tools, Statistics Canada estimates.AHMED ZAKOT/The Globe and Mail
At the beginning of 2026, BigGeo, a Calgary-based data company, was looking to dramatically expand its work force of 40 people. Recruitment had traditionally been a challenge for the business because of the specialized nature of its operations: analyzing and selling large chunks of location data and satellite imagery.
But this time – largely because of a slackened job market across North America – the company was flooded with resumes for the six positions that it posted.
BigGeo let go of its human resources personnel because the company recently adopted an artificial intelligence tool to handle the bulk of the recruiting work. According to Arden Styles, its chief operating officer, the tool saved him hundreds of hours he would have otherwise spent finding the right candidates for these roles. “We’ve only been using it for the last six months, but this tool has fixed one of our biggest bottlenecks: recruitment,” he told The Globe and Mail in a recent interview.
There is growing evidence that small businesses are increasingly adopting AI tools to ease workloads and improve efficiency across a wide range of tasks: recruiting, social media, website development and generating sales reports.
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Recent data from the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development showed that small businesses across Canada had been slower than their G7 peers to adopt artificial intelligence into their workflows in 2023 and 2024, but they are now using AI at rates that are rivalling those of small and medium-sized enterprises in Japan and the United Kingdom, and far surpassing American small businesses.
Statistics Canada estimates that approximately 12.5 per cent of smaller companies (under 100 employees) use AI tools. And according to a September, 2025, survey by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, or CFIB, approximately 23 per cent of small business owners have now allocated a budget for AI and another 25 per cent plan to over the next three years.
HR software, in particular, has gained traction, according to the CFIB, as an instrument for small businesses to scale their operations without spending money to hire the labour to conduct that expansion.
For Mr. Styles, outsourcing recruitment entirely to technology was a particularly effective solution given the fact that he was getting so much interest from prospective job seekers. “I think because Big Tech has been laying off many people like designers, coders, engineers, we got huge interest in our job postings,” he said. BigGeo uses an AI agent from the Australian payroll provider Employment Hero (which acquired Humi HR, a Canadian software company in January, 2025).
Employment Hero’s AI agent, called Hero AI, can design job posts when given specific instructions, post those jobs on multiple platforms such as Indeed and LinkedIn, then shortlist what it believes are ideal candidates for the job.
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“The tool will rank candidates, and tell me why it ranked candidates in a particular way. Then these candidates get an e-mail inviting them to an interview conducted by the AI agent, further narrowing down the pool,” Mr. Styles explained.
Employment Hero’s AI agent narrowed down 20 applications to three candidates whom Mr. Styles then met and performed in-person interviews with. He believes the AI agent was effective in choosing the best candidates.
Employment Hero’s chief executive officer KJ Lee said the company is targeting Hero AI at small and medium enterprises in particular because they are stuck between two extremes: either they are overwhelmed with applications, or they can’t fill roles fast enough. Mr. Lee says based on usage data in Australia, where the tool has been available for about a year, hiring timelines are already being reduced by 10 days.
Some small businesses are experimenting with generative AI platforms such as Claude to aid in hiring. Michael Duggin, a home renovation contractor in Pickering, Ont., had been attempting for months to find workers to expand his renovation business, but his job postings on sites such as Kijiji, Facebook and Indeed were not attracting much interest.
“I was looking for a few administrative staff and trained electricians, but I think my job postings were not written well. They weren’t showing up to people,” he said. He was advised by his peers to subscribe to Claude. He now uses the AI platform to help write job postings, and instructs it to post those jobs on websites.
If business takes off and he needs to further expand, Mr. Duggin said he would highly consider using an AI recruiting agent. He is among a sizable number of small business owners (35 per cent) who say they are actively planning to use generative AI tools and automation to streamline and improve HR tasks, according to the September, 2025, CFIB report.
“Anything I can outsource to AI, I will, because it frees me up to take on more clients,” he said.
Major brands, especially in sectors that have seasonal turnover or chronic labour shortages, are also racing to implement HR AI tech for hiring. In late 2024, Chipotle Mexican Grill introduced an AI assistant called “Ava Cado” to help speed up hiring for 20,000 seasonal roles at the fast food chain. The assistant would chat with candidates, answer questions about Chipotle, schedule interviews for hiring managers and send offers to candidates selected by the managers. The company has since said that it cut recruitment time by roughly 75 per cent.