Using JavaScript Technologies to Build a Competitive Recruitment Software

The importance of proper recruitment and selection of candidates can hardly be exaggerated. On the one hand, these are people who achieve company’s goals and their discretionary behavior gives a huge competitive advantage to any business. On the other hand, insider threat – starting with the breach of security and finishing with careless use of technology and falling for fishing attacks – can ruin your business. No wonder, companies are eager to use intelligent HR software to help their recruiters and HR managers make the best hiring decisions.      

Join the discussion of our recent case to find out what challenges a start-up faced when developing an IT solution attempting to address these needs and how Agiliway helped it secure its niche on the competitive market of HR software.   

Background  

Understanding the great potential of building a modern HR software, a start-up came up with an IT solution for automation of certain recruitment processes. Nevertheless, the developed product had serious omissions and performance issues and did not have enough features to make clients interested in buying the solution. More than that, the start-up lacked the engineering resources and could not work to the release schedule. Since the existing solution had rather complex architecture and used several technologies such as MongoDB and JavaScript (Node.JS and Angular), finding specialists knowledgeable in these technologies was a very challenging task and could take the start-up weeks or even months. This made the predicted time to market too long and prospects to return the investment poor.  

Desperate to finally release the product and return the invested money, the start-up followed the advice of their acquaintance and invited Agiliway to work on the project. Agiliway has much experience in developing comprehensive IT solutions and has experts with the Node.JS and Angular skills on its team, so we took up the project right away.   

Challenges 

Having analyzed the solution and the market needs, Agiliway defined the following project goals:   

System stabilization. To stabilize the system, it was necessary to set up dev/test environment and launch continuous integration (CI) and continuous development (CD) so that new changes are released quickly and do not cause any performance issues upon release. Then, our team had to optimize the hosting of the software and address the existing bugs and issues.   

Development of new features. It was necessary to research and implement new features that would automate process of recruitment and selection to make the recruitment software more competitive.   

Provided Solution  

Agiliway leveraged its expertise in software development and processes automation, set up an effective Angular and Node.JS team, and made major improvements to the HR solution. In particular, the work done by our software engineers included:   

1. Setting up unit tests. Unit tests check the code for validity, which allows early identification of errors. The new code is not released on the production server unless it is validated, so no issues in the performance of the software can emerge upon the release.  
2. Launching CI and CD.  CI and CD launched by our DevOps specialists have dramatically cut development time and, thus, time to market of the product. 
3. Fixing of SSO issues. Single Sign-On(SSO) is a useful feature that allows users to access the recruitment software without spending extra time for authorization. Fixing the SSO issues, we have made the product more user-friendly.     
4. Optimization of frameworks. We have optimized the performance of NodJS responsible for the server part of the solution and Angular carrying all business logic.  
5. Optimization of hosting and data storage. We have optimized the storage of BI data on MongoDB database and hosted the software on Heroku. 
6. Development of API. We have developed an API for the recruitment solution so that it can be integrated with corporate software or popular HR systems recruiters commonly use as a single point of work.  
7. Development of new features. Out engineers have added new functionality or improved the performance or scope of the existing features.

Now, the HR software automates the following recruitment processes:  

• Writing of job description. Using the system, a recruiter can automatically analyze the structure and the wording of a job description. Following the tips of the system, recruiters can perfect the job description and receive maximum responses.  
• Resume reviewing. The system automatically hides information on the name, age and gender of applicants in their resumes, so a reviewer gives critical and unbiased consideration to applicants’ skills and experience.    
• Prioritization of job skills. A recruiter of an HR manager gives each job skill a value. When tests or interviewers assess the skills of applicants, the system automatically calculates an objective score for each applicant. If a manager decides to change the priorities and assign a different value to this or that skill, the scores are automatically recalculated. 
• Structured interviewing. The system gives suggestions on the interview questions that align to the hiring criteria set forth by a recruiter. Such solution makes interviews more effective and greatly reduces preparation time.  

Value Delivered  

The input of Agiliway had a decisive role in the success of the product and the start-up:  

1. The solution has been stabilized in a very short term and continuous integration and continuous deployment facilitated and speeded up further development efforts; 
2. New features have been released according or ahead of the schedule making the investor believe in the product again;
3. The start-up has concluded a deal with a large world-known brand and is in negotiations with other prominent companies interested in using the software.  

Eventually, a start-up that has recently been on the verge of failure is celebrating success and contemplating ambitious plans for the future.