Free and open source php based applicant tracking system

As a hiring manager within your organization, do you sometimes feel overwhelmed by the requests made by various parties to hire new employees as well as to manage many resumes?

The entire hiring process usually involves defining requirements for the new recruit, advertising the position, screening through potential candidates, calling for interviews, and offering the job.

For firms planning to hire one or two new employees,  there’s usually not much to handle and manage.

But if your organization has multiple branches and departments with frequent requests for new hires, then you may benefit from implementing and utilizing an applicant tracking system (ATS).

Most job recruitment agencies nowadays have an entire recruitment management system to handle job ads from recruiters and applications from candidates.

If you rather have an internal system that is hosted within your own server, then this free and open source PHP-based applicant tracking system called OpenCATS may be right for you.

OpenCATS is an open-source and free applicant tracking system designed for recruiters who need to manage the recruitment process from job posting to candidate application, through to candidate selection and submission.

Some key functions within OpenCATS include:

Dashboard

When you first log into OpenCATS, the dashboard shows you a summary of all the important elements involved in the hiring process. The dashboard shows your recent calls, upcoming calls, upcoming events, recent hires, a hiring overview, and the statuses of candidate applications.

Job Orders Management

Job orders are created by recruiters once there is a request to hire new staff. For example, if the IT department needs to hire a fresh software developer, the recruiter would create a job order to enter key information such as the job title, salary, for which department or company, job description, etc. This key feature will give recruiters a centralized view of all the position that needs to be filled.

Candidates Management

All candidates who have applied for a particular job as created above will be listed here. Recruiters who wish to quickly search for potential candidates with certain key skills such as .NET programming can also do so via the Search Candidates feature. If a suitable candidate is found, he/she can add to the pipeline of a job order. Clicking on the details of a candidate also reveals his resume, activities, desired salary, personal information, etc.

Job openings via website

There is also an ability to publish all job openings within your organization on your company website. To make a job order public, all you need to do is check the public checkbox and the job order will be viewable by public users who browse your careers page. Potential candidates also have the ability to apply directly and automatically enter into a job order’s pipeline.

Some other features within OpenCATS include:

• Activities (call candidate, schedule interview, placement, etc)
• Calendar (easily view events such as scheduled interviews or calls)
• Manage users (create multiple recruiters for multiple access to OpenCATS)
• Companies  (add company details for recruiters recruiting for other companies)

OpenCATS can be downloaded from this Downloads page.

If you like the features provided by OpenCATS but lack the technical knowledge to implement this system within your office environment, feel free to check out the SaaS-based version of CATS.