I have been doing some development work recently for a staffing agency and was shocked by how much money they were going to pay for software that would help them track their job orders, candidates, and employers. A company by the name of SkillMatch was willing to charge them in the upwards of $9,000 for a multi-user, web-based applicant tracking system. The owner of the staffing agency came to me wanting to know if there was by chance an open source solution that could help with this. Thanks to Google I was able to come across CATS - Open Source Applicant Tracking System. Beautiful find!
CATS - Open Source Applicant Tracking System
CATS is an open source tool for staffing agencies that helps them track their job orders, candidates, and employers using a web based tool similar to a CRM. It of course can do many more things, such as reporting, sending emails, user management etc. Here is a full list of the main features:
- Candidate Management
- Job Order / Position Tracking
- Full-Text Resume Search
- EEO / EOC Data Collection and Reporting
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- Job Application Workflow
- E-Mail Notifications
- Dashboard and Live Reports
- Calendar
- Website Integration
- Career Portal with Online Applications
I installed the application myself on my Bluehost server and everything went perfect. I had no problems whatsoever during the installation process. There are a few plugins you need to configure on your server if you want to have the ability to do the “full-text resume search”. This is basically utilizing some open source tools that convert for example a Word Document into searchable text by the system.
Clean/Usable Interface
I was very surprised to see how simple, clean, and intuitive the interface for CATS actually was. It was so good in fact that I was asking myself during the time I first was testing out why there isn’t an open source CRM application this simple and good.
So if you are have a staffing agency of your own, or are helping a staffing agency this open source tool is perfect for you. It’s by far the best open source tool that I could find for the Staffing industry. Check it out and let me know what you think.
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Entries (RSS)
February 9th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
[...] had them begin using it. I was so thrilled with the application that I wrote a blog about it called Open Source For Staffing Agencies. I was fooled. And apparently many other people have been as well. My client began using the [...]
April 15th, 2008 at 5:41 am
Hi guys, as per your earlier commenter, the Open Source ATS offering from CATSONE is now withdrawn, however the terms of the license (CPL 1.1) permit it to continue to be redistributed - therefore the Open Source version (as last released) is now available at http://www.catsone.co.uk - so pay a visit and let the fun begin again!
RussH
September 17th, 2008 at 7:51 am
This will help staffing companies a lot of money. There are many systems out there that have some crazy pricing structures that companies have to pay ongoing fees for the life of the system.