In case you missed it, we’ve declared that full-stack business is the future of recruiting. One of the key components in this type of business is internally developed technology that supports the people, systems and processes surrounding it. Here at Rivi, this consists of a vision where we fundamentally change the experience of our three key end-users through enhanced technology: our recruiters, our clients, and our candidates. Solving first for our own recruiters, we’ve developed Sutro 4.0, an internal data aggregation platform that allows us to better engage with our clients and candidates. Getting to this point didn’t happen overnight – it has been an evolution, and there are more steps ahead.
As our vision began to manifest throughout the company, we were more frequently running into the limitations of the out-of-the-box applicant tracking system (ATS) that we had employed for years. We had a deep understanding of how we could deliver a better recruiting experience to our customers, but were lacking in tools to do so; our infrastructure needed to be changed which lead us to our early iterations of Sutro. When we initially started working on Sutro, we brought on a third-party development shop, eAlchemy, who were instrumental in getting the platform off the ground.
This decision was relatively straightforward as with many new initiatives: while we had domain expertise, we did not have the internal development resources to move forward on the project. Since we felt it was important to move quickly into the build, we didn’t want to put a hiring effort in front of the initial development. While this may seem somewhat counterintuitive to a recruiting agency, it was the best way to move quickly toward our core focus of ensuring we moved away from our third-party ATS and put the building blocks in place for our vision.
Now, we’re no longer building on top of a third-party app. Instead, we’ve developed our own internal software. Like any software development effort, there were a number of challenges in meeting the requirements of our internal users, the recruiters. We benefitted significantly from all their input and patience as we moved through this major endeavor; what we expect to be a definitive turning point in the evolution of Riviera. Since our launch of Sutro, we have continued to make down payments through additional feature functionality as we pursue our broader goal of changing the recruiting experience.
There’s a huge opportunity to improve the recruiting business, and a big piece of that revolves around technology. Developing that technology in house is one of the steps necessary to move recruiting into the future. Sutro is just one our critical tools allowing us to get to the next level of service; its unique aggregation and presentation of data and insights helps the recruiter make the best possible matches, which ultimately delivers a better experience to clients and candidates alike.