Backstory: I’m looking to hire someone (@Jarland Is it allowed/a good idea to post the job offering?). Even if it’s only one job position and a few dozen candidates I quickly found out that text files in a folder structure just ain’t gonna cut it.
Ideally self-hosted, I’d like a FREE solution that allows attaching all sorts of info to a candidate profile, incorporates the concept of “stages”, and allows searching/sorting.
Info can include pictures, resumes, letters of introductions, answers to questionnaires, interviewers’ reports, extent to which key requirements are met…you know, all sorts of things. Stages go from “Hey, I found a promising profile on LinkedIn” to initial contact, phone interview, basic screening, video interview, and so on; some stages might be pretty standard but it should be possible to add to and customize the pipeline. Sorting means I should be able to quickly find out who offers the best bang for the buck, based on ratings and salary ranges. Searching means I should be able to list only those greenlighted by a particular reviewer.
HR is not my living, so I’m going to prefer something easy to setup and use, even if not very feature-rich. And I’m not looking to spend money on this, so no try-and-buy/limited offers aimed at acquiring a customer.
Not aware of anny self hosting solution.
But there’s this Vervoe and HR Partner. In your case I think Vervoe is the best fit as it’s exclusively for the Hiring process.
Thanks, but I’m not into free trials because I know I’m not going to buy anything. What I was thinking, in case there are no self-hosted Applicant Tracking Systems, was Breezy free tier or making do with Monica.
Funny thing is, eons ago I briefly worked on a software of this kind as a developer. Never thought I would end up needing it one day . I looked it up now: there’s just the hosted version, and no hint of the price.
I always like to start with a paid solution in mind so maybe I can search for stories of alternatives by name, or the right phrasing that the software might use to describe itself. This is what we used at DO and it was great: https://www.greenhouse.io/
Obviously not the solution, but maybe a good baseline for comparison and searching.
Thanks! Judging from the demo, this looks like it could suit my needs. I like that “We will not push anyone into any paid service, any time, ever”. They are also very frank about what one can expect of a free and open source applicant tracking system: will make the task easier, and that’s what matters to me.
First impressions on OpenCATS: clunky and humble, but does give a sense of things being a little more organized. There are options for customization (good) as well as obvious bugs (unfortunately): e.g. entering and displaying dates is utterly inconsistent, despite preference settings.
Clearly little maintained; if I continue using it I’m going to have to fix a few things myself in the PHP code. Let’s see how they receive pull requests.
For those who may want to try it out, don’t bother with the outdated releases, and take the installation instructions with a grain of salt. Checkout the git repository instead, and run composer install (will give lots of warnings). Also, fix an unescaped " in lib/Mailer.php and keep an eye on error logs. Even when you eventually make it work, there’ll be plenty of PHP errors and warnings.
I’ve started evaluating Zoho recruit, which is free for 1 recruiter. This limitation suits my use case just fine. Unimpressive interface, but seems functional enough and easy to use, too: I found pipeline management to be particularly intuitive. Coming from OpenCATS feels like a step up, admittedly not a big one but there are no obvious bugs and unfinished features in plain sight. Not having to contend with those certainly allows for a greater level of productivity.