The CRM built
around the match.
Arca shortlists your entire candidate archive against a live brief in under thirty seconds. Purpose-built for boutique executive and specialist search.
Three hours to produce a shortlist
your client needed an hour ago.
Every boutique recruiter knows the sequence. Brief arrives. You open the CRM. You start filtering — sector, function, region, seniority. You discard candidates you know are wrong but cannot explain why to the system.
Enterprise CRMs were built for volume. They were not built for a boutique firm where the recruiter’s domain knowledge is the product.
Paste a brief. In any words.
Job spec, email, scribbled note — Arca reads sector, function, seniority, geography and the specific brief context.
Your entire database. Read end to end.
A two-pass AI judgment runs every candidate. First pass filters by taxonomy. Second reads enrichment records and ranks by genuine fit.
Per-candidate reasoning, not keyword overlap.
Each result arrives with why it ranked there — what's strong, what's borderline. You edit, reorder, send.
Your archive becomes a conversation.
"Who placed into manufacturing CFO roles?" "Available North, board-level exposure?" Arca answers from your live database.
One of our founding clients — a UK boutique search firm — runs every mandate through Arca. Four-person team. Daily commercial use.
Arca finds candidates I had forgotten I had on file. In a fortnight it has done what three CRMs in a row could not.
Everything a boutique desk needs. Nothing it doesn’t.
AI-native matching
The matching engine is the product, not an add-on. Two-pass AI that reads sector, function, seniority and placement history.
26-code position taxonomy
Executive, interim, specialist, sector-specific codes. The same language your clients use when they brief you.
Plain-English search
Type a brief. Get a shortlist. No filter form, no mandatory fields, no system that punishes domain knowledge.
CV intake with AI guards
Three-layer validation flags fields the AI is uncertain about rather than inventing plausible-sounding nonsense.
Per-desk pricing
Add a researcher without a per-seat step. No enterprise modules you'll never use. No support queues.
Nightly backup
Your archive backed up every night. You own the data. Full export whenever you want it. No hostage situation.
What you get with Arca, what you do not get elsewhere.
A short list of the capabilities that move the needle on a boutique desk. “Legacy CRM” stands for the seat-priced, sales-DNA tools the boutique world has worked around for fifteen years.
| Capability | Arca | Legacy CRM | Spreadsheet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plain-English searchType a brief, get the shortlist, no filter form. | Yes | No | No |
| Two-pass AI matchingWide net first, then ranked against your firm's codes. | Yes | Bolt-on | No |
| UK-hosted, no offshore handlingData stays inside Britain at all times. | Yes | Region varies | Yes |
| No mandatory fieldsUse it on day one without admin overhead. | Yes | No | Yes |
| Per-desk pricing, not per-seatAdd a researcher without a price step. | Yes | No | Yes |
| Re-engages forgotten candidatesSurfaces records you have not contacted in months. | Yes | No | No |
Built at a desk, not in a boardroom.
Arca is engineered alongside working senior UK recruiters on live mandates. Every screen, every prompt, every match score is broken, refined, and broken again on real briefs against real archives before it reaches anyone else.
Open the vault for seven days. No risk. No small print.
Sign your firm up, and we hand you the keys within a working day. If within seven days Arca has not surfaced at least three candidates you have not contacted in the last twelve months, write back with the word “close” and we retire your access without ceremony, without invoice, and without a sales call to extract a reason.
No card. No setup call. No automatic billing.