Recruitment
Synca
Synca
Thorough analysis of the product and suggestion for technical solutions to the Japanese team
overview
Synca is a recruiting matching service run by a rising startup WARC in Tokyo, Japan. WARC was founded in 2017, by two professional consultants experienced in Ernst & Young, KPMG, and a former CFO of IGNIS Japan. WARC provides consulting services, high grade headhunting services, and matching services, and their core competencies are in business development and building service models that leads and fits fast moving sharing economy.
challenges
Senior management team created frameworks and business plans for their new service platform, and their inhouse software architects and developers designed the basis and its plans.
The platform WARC envisioned required a large resources of full stack engineers, PMs, and DevOps. It also required a tightly running team working in high productivity as many other startups would do.
Given that the core competency of their business is not software development, realistically it would be difficult to attract talents quickly and efficiently. Among many alternatives they have decided to pursue embedding near or offshore development teams into their development team.
As their development team members had challenges in English communications, initially they have looked for resources in Vietnam where they offer N1 Japanese bridge SE, and quickly learned that bridge SE would become a communication bottleneck unless the bridge SE needs to be a superb PM before N1 Japanese skills.
The initial solution for Synca’s platform was developed in Golang and Vue.js. There was a lot of legacy code from the start of the project which was making performance and scaling problems. For a startup like WARC is understandable because they were in a testing phase and trying to find the best solutions for most of the features.
When Web Factory joined as an integrated part of their team, we immediately tried to help them stabilize the solution but after some consultation with WARC’s CTO we all decided that we should rework the whole solution from scratch.
We decided to go with Ruby on Rails as a fast growing and most famous framework to work with in Japan, great for prototyping and MVP. For the frontend part we stick to Vue.js as before. Together with the client we were building the system from scratch and we knew the end-goal, it was much easier to decide on many things during our journey about architecture, DB, and features.
Our team worked on the Backend solution for both B2B (and frontend) and B2C platforms, perfectly aligned with the WARC team that worked on the UI/UX product design, B2C solution and Synca cube.
It was critical at this stage to provide the best solution having in mind that WARC’s plans were to grow fast with new clients and businesses and so they did.
The infrastructure is set on AWS which is owned by WARCs team but supported by Web Factory's DevOps engineers.
solution
WARC went through selection processes of choosing the right partner and had in depth discussion with Web Factory MK to see and evaluate the development skills, abilities and communication skills. Though it would mean the communication will be English based, WARC felt comfortable as the Web Factory MK side PM will own all communication within their side to avoid repetitive or lack of communication, so WARC will only need to communicate to a single point of contact. Also the team formation wise Web Factory MK proposed less head counts compared to others offshore developers as productivity levels are high and well organized team members.
Synca for Business, as well as Synca for Clients is developed in Ruby on Rails on Backend and the Frontend is developed in Vue.js. The solution for this application, offers not only job offers posting and resumes availability for the clients, but it is also calculating the matching rate between clients and companies, by taking into consideration different types of skills the users have, and the companies are looking for. Additionally, there is a possibility on the client’s side of the application, to calculate the minimum and maximum salary the client should expect by answering multiple questions related to client’s skills and work experience.
Backend
Layered architecture following domain driven design principles implemented in Rails.
Frontend
Modular and flexible Vue single page application, built with TypeScript which enabled the creation of a well organized codebase following object oriented best practices.
QA
Test cases and automatization is used in the testing process of the application, by previously analyzing requirements and creating test strategy.
In person meeting at WARCs office
Product analysis
Formation of development team
Intensive learning of Golang and Vue.js by Web Factory’s team
Ruby on Rails
Due to legacy code issues, Web Factory’s team, together with the WARC development team, made a presentation to Japanese team’s CTO that we should rework the whole solution from scratch and go with Ruby on Rails. Suggestion was accepted.
Backend team starts with development of the API for both B2B and B2C platform
Frontend team starts with development of the B2B platform in Vue.js
Vue.js
QA
QA team starts with requirement analysis, planning and creating test cases
Detailed documentation has been developed by the team
Warc’s team visit to Web Factory MK
Working together
Working together with the visiting team for a couple of months in planning and defining scope of work
Frequent changes of UI/UX according to both sides’ feedback
Very tight collaboration between Web Factory and Warc’s backend team
B2C platform goes live on Japanese market
B2B platform goes live on Japanese market
More than 1000 B2C platform users
First users on B2B platform, who constantly share constructive feedback that is used for constant improvement of the platform
Frequent releases in sprints of every two weeks
Numbers of users are constantly growing on both platforms, although B2B platform still hasn’t had an official marketing promotion.
Performance and collaboration
WF’s team consistently shows high levels of performance and collaboration. The team produces superior results in all technologies and aspects of the project
QA continuous to automatize the entire testing process of the B2B platform
Team Formation
Our team worked on the backend solution for both Synca B2B & Synca B2C platforms. The engineers were perfectly aligned with the clients team that worked on the UI/UX product design and the B2C solution.
Todor Panev
Single point of contact
results
Results
Synca is a full solution for back office job matching. The platform has an end user (job seekers) panel that is full of features including offline-chat, job application progress status, multi parameter profile setup for better matching with business needs. There is a business platform which gives businesses panels to post jobs and communicate with potential candidates. Main features are offline-chat, reviewing process that can be performed by many members from the business team (assignments), matching algorithms that help the companies find their best match.
In general the solution is with modern, modular and agile UX/UI improved every day since day one. Main focus was put on the matching algorithm and User Experience which we are sure were delivered.
Synca at the moment serves more than 1000 clients on the B2C side of the platform and more than 20 companies on the B2B. All these users on the B2B platform are gained organically, although there still hasn’t been any official marketing campaign.
Currently Synca is only operating in Tokyo, Japan and soon in other countries and industries.
1000+ B2C users
Modern, modular and agile UX/UI
Job application progress status
Numbers of users are constantly growing on both platforms
Organic growth
Multi parameter profile setup for advanced match with business needs
1000+ B2C users
Modern, modular and agile UX/UI
Job application progress status
Numbers of users are constantly growing on both platforms
Organic growth
Multi parameter profile setup for advanced match with business needs
Webfactory has expertise in varieties of technology. Working with them is like we have another development branch.
Project Highlights
1.
We build a job matching platform from scratch together with the WARC team. The business is having organic growth, many companies and job seekers recognized this solution for job matching
2.
The team composition was adjusted to the client’s needs, all missing roles were covered by our team and worked as integration, embedded skills to their team
3.
Part of team WARC were guests at Web Factory in Macedonia for a couple of months to work together on the solution. Same happened a few months later in Japan
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