Building a Recruitment App: Software for Applicant Tracking Case Study

Discovering the right professional among the pool of candidates can be a challenging task, but acquiring top talent is the number one goal for any enterprise. For HR managers to have a competitive advantage, the company’s hiring processes have to be boosted. And what could save more time and accelerate recruitment better than automation in the form of a recruiting app?

A recruitment applicant tracking system (ATS) is vital for any organization’s efficient functioning. Custom recruiting software automates many administrative tasks, minimizes huge costs, and helps hiring managers to reach and onboard the best candidates hassle-free. 

The online recruitment process evolution has gone from simple job posting options to an automated service that you are in full control of, can adjust to your needs, and integrate with your company’s website for a seamless hiring experience. 

The information in this blog post will let you know how to enhance your business productivity by building such a custom recruitment app based on Apiko’s experience. Ready?

Why develop a recruitment app for applicant tracking: Top 5 reasons

Organizing applications your enterprise receives is an endless dilemma for hiring managers. There are different methods: recruiters can comply Excel lists in alphabetical order, by date received, label them as qualified/unqualified, potential/top, etc. Whatever method you try, manual tracking is just not that efficient.

According to Capterra, 75% of recruiters and talent managers already use some form of recruiting or applicant-tracking software. When it comes to administrative tasks, the automation recruitment software gives is truly impressive.

So, what are the benefits of custom recruitment app development?

1. ATS integration with your company’s website. Candidates can apply for the desired vacancy there easier and faster and read all the information about the company. Career Builder research states that for 86% of applicants an employer’s career website is highly important while searching for a job. Also, recruiters can create and add vacancies to the website effortlessly. 
2. Perfect for high-volume hiring. A recruiting app can deal with multiple vacancies at the same time, which is especially useful now, during the lockdown, while most of us are working remotely. The recruitment software keeps loads of data organized and allows hiring managers to quickly search the database for the right candidates by certain parameters. 
3. Meets your exact requirements. You can adjust your custom solution to answer your unique recruitment management needs. You'll get highly flexible and scalable software capable of sustaining your company's growth, even when your processes change or evolve. 
4. Effective cooperation. With automated recruitment app, your HR managers can improve communication with each other as well as with candidates. The system will unify all of the hiring operations so that your team can exchange feedback, leave comments, and be aware of each other's progress.
5. Higher productivity rates. With HR software development, you'll be able to find candidates and fill the positions faster. Shorten the time needed to create new vacancies, keep track of new and existing applicants, and communicate with them for swift onboarding and revenue-generating. 

As a constantly growing outsourcing software development company, Apiko deals with lots of recruitment processes. Hiring new employees is an essential part of expanding. To optimize the work of our hiring managers and increase the efficiency of our recruitment department in general while searching for and onboarding new specialists Apiko undertook recruitment app development from scratch. 

Interview with Apiko’s HR manager, Yurii Matiyshun, about the role recruitment app development plays in the company's growth

1. Yurii, during your long career as an HR manager at Apiko, what challenges have you encountered in the recruitment process? Why did you and your team decide to go from a traditional way of organizing data to an automated one? Why was the traditional way insufficient for the company?

When Apiko experienced rapid growth, the number of projects rose, our stack of technologies expanded, we realized that what we need is to reorganize the search for candidates and optimize their onboarding process. 

First and foremost, establishing cooperation between sales and production departments was really important for us, especially enabling our teams to keep track of in-house development team availability, communicate with specialists from partner organizations, and form teams for projects.

So, we came to the conclusion that in order to completely satisfy the customers’ wishes and optimize the hiring process in the company, traditional, existing recruitment apps are not the right fit for our needs. We needed an environment, where our team could clearly see our clients` journey from their first touch (whether it's a request from our website or our existing customer’s reference) to the end of the onboarding process.

2. How does HR software development meet your recruitment needs? How has its creation impacted the hiring processes at Apiko? What benefits have you noticed over time?

When you work with searching for and hiring the right people, one very important aspect of that work is information and its quick processing. 

The major functionality of the recruitment app needs to:

• Save information about candidates, their initial data and the results of different stages of the selection process (such as interview results, pre-employment tests)
• Process each candidate according to their status not to forget about anyone. That’s why it is necessary to add to your recruitment app the task management feature (added to the updated Apiko Recruitment app version) 
• Easily filter to search among the existing candidates in the database. 
• Support smooth integration with separate services of our company - sales, project management tools. It helps us form a development team for the client taking into the account duration of the project, number of experts required for each project, and experience of each employee. 

How has Apiko Recruitment app development impacted the hiring processes at Apiko? It’s hard to calculate in exact numbers, however I can safely say that the onboarding process of new team members has decreased by 1,5 times. We still want to make some improvements and achieve even better efficiency. Right now we are working on how to refine the process of conducting technical interviews.

3. Why was it helpful to develop a custom recruitment app rather than use an off-the-shelf software?

The story of developing our own custom solutions here at Apiko started a few years ago. At that time, it was an opportunity to practice and gain new experience working with different trending technologies. One of the first internal systems we built involving our project managers, business analysts, designers, QA engineers and developers was the sales management system. To cover our recruitment needs, we considered different ready-made solutions but none were functional enough and had all the necessary features. Also, though it seemed cheaper to start, in the long run we would end up paying much more. Therefore, custom recruitment software development was the only right solution for us.

4. Now, all the world is experiencing difficulties adapting to the new normal, which includes global lockdown and remote work. Share from your experience, has the recruitment process changed during 2020 and how? What new pitfalls have emerged and how does your HR team cope with them?

With the shift to remote work, many new opportunities became available to us. Our team continues to rapidly grow and we keep expanding our expertise. Moving online allowed us to realize all our plans regarding courses creation for Apiko Academy. In spring, we are going to lead training in React.js to grow new specialists and expand our team even more. 

5. In your opinion, what type of business would benefit the most from creating a custom recruiting app? What tips would you give those who want to engage in HR software development from scratch?

The development of a custom solution needs additional resources (actually a fully fledged team), and time. The recruitment app development is essentially the development of a startup that you need to carry through to completion. If you are ready to be involved, then such investment is completely justified and will work for the company’s good. Mainly: optimization of the internal work of the team, meeting the needs of your clients, motivated employees and higher efficiency. 

Apiko Recruiting App: Case study

To keep all of the candidates' data organized, we developed an applicant tracking system for Apiko HR team's own use. Here is the detailed study of its features and functionalities. 

Apiko Recruitment software is a custom solution built with our unique needs in mind. The functionality allows recruiters and admins to perform different tasks needed for convenient data arrangement and more efficient hiring. Candidates can apply through the Apiko career website and their application will be automatically added to the system.

Here is the list of the key Apiko recruitment app features that help our HR managers to source, hire and onboard top talent. 

For hiring managers:

• Create a vacancy

Recruiters create vacancies directly in the ATS, add descriptions, requirements, salary ranges, which applicants can see on Apiko career website. Also, you can assign someone who will be responsible for the job posting as well as set a deadline. 

• Search all the existing vacancies 

At Apiko Recruitment software, it’s possible for hiring managers to search vacancies by keyword or filter them for an easier search process. Filtering consists of such parameters as:

1. professional direction
• Human Resources
• Project Management
• Marketing
• Sales
• Designer 
• Other
2. Location
3. General status: open, redirected, stopped, closed
4. Visibility status: public, private

Some other information recruiters can see while viewing all of the vacancies is the deadline, person responsible, and the number of candidates who applied for each vacancy.

• View the vacancy

When hiring managers view a certain vacancy, they can immediately see all of the candidates who applied plus their resumes, read each other’s comments/feedback after interviews, and finally make the right decision for the company.

• Add candidates

Keeping the data about all the candidates is what really matters in recruiting. Therefore, applicants’ personal information, feedback of HR managers about the interviews, comments and pre-employment test results are of the utmost importance and value. 

Adding candidates manually can save the day when job seekers don’t apply directly through the Apiko career website. So, to keep them all in the database, recruiters fill in the form with the main information such as name, contact data, professional direction, experience, and skills. 

Filling all the information accurately allows our recruiters to easily filter and find the right candidates for different job openings.

• Settings

Settings are there to help recruiters customize their experience according to the company’s growing needs, and add new labels or filters to keep all of the information neatly organized. 

• Filtering resumes

HR team can find the right candidates from thousands of resumes with a simple and comprehensive filtering system. New job openings will remain empty not for long because of a large database of applicants. 

For applicants:

Because our applicant tracking system is closely tied with the Apiko career website, candidates can apply for any job opening from there. The career website has the following functionality:

• Search or filter vacancies. As we have many job openings, applicants can limit the number of vacancies displayed according to their professional direction or location. If they have found nothing relevant, candidates can simply upload their CV to be in our database. As soon as the relevant vacancies are available, recruiters will get in touch with them.
• Vacancy description. Here applicants are able to read all the details about the vacancy: project description, requirements to candidate, company and benefits as well as see other vacancies that may be interesting for them. Also, candidates can use contact information of the recruiter responsible for that job opening to get more information. 
• Apply for a vacancy. If job seekers are interested in the vacancy, they fill out the form with the necessary data and upload their CV for recruiters to consider their compliance with the requirements and to get in touch for next steps.

How to build a recruitment app with an applicant tracking system: Recap and next steps

Your company simply can’t afford not to have a recruitment app for applicant tracking. Saving the essential data about candidates and keeping it organized are a must in a world of information overload.

Creating a recruitment app for smooth hiring needs careful planning and a development team of professionals. Choosing all the necessary features is one of the crucial stages in the app development process. The app’s layout has to be well-planned to deliver the seamless user experience and fulfil the desired goals of end-users, both applicants and recruiters. 

Here are 3 steps on how to create the best recruitment management software for your hiring needs:

Step 1. Outline your current recruitment process. Calculate each step of your recruitment process (such as posting vacancies, receiving applications, reviewing candidates, etc.) in terms of time and money. Create a list of pluses and minuses of each step. Weigh all the disadvantages and advantages in order to decide what needs to be improved.

Step 2. Write down the requirements for your digital solution. Consider how you can automate the recruiting process with a recruitment app. Map out the solution with the necessary features and user flow in line with your end-goals. 

Step 3. Hire professionals to implement the digital transformation of your hiring processes. You’ll need a development team of experts to build a solution with all your requirements in focus. Custom, high-quality recruitment software will be able to serve the growing needs of your company for many years to come. 

Want to know more about building a recruitment app? Send us a line!