Why We Stopped Using Third-Party Recruitment Tools and Built Our Own

Hiring great talent is one of the most important and time-consuming parts of building a successful team especially in the early stages. But like many growing companies, we found ourselves facing an all-too-familiar challenge: our hiring process was slow, fragmented, and manual, and we had dependencies on the not so customized tools that required part of our budget.

So we decided to do something about it.

We built an internal HR recruitment automation tool, not just to fix our own hiring workflow, but to understand what modern HR should actually look like in a world where speed, transparency, and data matter more than ever.

In this post, we’re sharing our biggest lessons, what we learned along the way, and how automation is reshaping the future of people operations.

Manual Hiring Is Broken

Before building our internal tool, our hiring process looked like this:

• Applications came in through different platforms (Google Forms, LinkedIn, emails, referrals)
• Candidate info was stored across spreadsheets, inboxes, and chats
• Status updates were manual, inconsistent, and often lost
• Interview scheduling was messy and uncoordinated and often fell on the hiring managers to organize most of it by themselves which was costing time
• Tracking progress across teams was requiring async communication instead of just checking the process in a designated place

This led to delays and, worst of all, missed opportunities to hire great people.

We realized what many peoples’ teams are experiencing: manual systems can’t keep up with modern hiring demands.

On top of that, we explored a few third-party recruitment tools but most of them were either too expensive, over-engineered, or not customizable to fit our specific workflows. We didn’t want to pay for features we wouldn’t use, or force our process to adapt to someone else’s (rigid) system. We needed something lean, efficient, and tailor-made for how our team actually works.

Building a Smart Internal HR Tool Ourselves

We didn’t set out to reinvent the wheel, we just wanted to make it roll smoother. So we designed and built an automated recruitment tool that centralizes, streamlines, and accelerates the entire hiring process.

Here's what it includes:

• Real-time application tracking: Automatically update and display the status of every candidate
• Stage-based interview workflow: Track progress through 4 clear interview stages
• File uploads: Centralize resumes, portfolios, and additional documents
• Team & role assignment: Know exactly who the hiring manager is and what team the candidate is for
• Location & contract type fields: Whether remote, full-time, or freelance, everything's captured
• Integrated with Google Forms & LinkedIn: Pull in applications without friction
• Custom dashboards & reporting: Visualize data to track hiring speed, candidate sources, and drop-off rates

What came out of it is simple; less time spent managing applications, more time focused on talent.

Why Building Custom Tools With Pythagora Is the Future

We're not alone in this shift. More companies are embracing building tools that:

• Eliminate repetitive tasks
• Reduce time-to-hire
• Centralize hiring workflows
• Improve the quality of hires through better visibility and data

The modern recruiter doesn't want to spend time copying resumes into spreadsheets. They want to build relationships, evaluate talent, and make smart hiring decisions. Custom-built tools that match their exact workflow give them the space to do exactly that, by eliminating tedious manual tasks and centralizing information where it's most useful.

Build for Your Own Needs First

The best products solve real pain points - starting with your own. When we built our recruitment dashboard, we weren't thinking about making a product to sell - we were scratching our own itch. This approach naturally led to a tool that solved exactly what we needed: centralized candidate visibility.

Simplicity trumps complexity when solving specific problems. We didn't need enterprise features or bloated workflows. By focusing only on our actual pain points, we created a straightforward solution that did exactly what we needed.

Using your own product reveals insights no testing can uncover. Using Pythagora internally to solve our HR challenges revealed practical issues we never would have discovered through theoretical use cases. The visibility gained accelerated our hiring decisions while showing us how to make Pythagora even better for others.

Ready to Transform Your Hiring Process?

We'd love to share what we've built. See how automation could revolutionize your hiring workflow.

Try Pythagora Today.