“There is a need to create an intelligent platform which can filter only relevant matches”, says Sarvjeet Ahuja, CTO, hirist.com & iimjobs.com

Coffee with CTO – In conversation with Sarvjeet Ahuja, CTO, Hirist.com & iimjobs.com

Can you elaborate on your personal journey to where you are today?

Since the early days of my life, I had always been fascinated by the use of computers and software in solving business problems in most cost effective way. I always tried to build software keeping in mind the usability from the user’s point of view- always build something which is very user friendly. Keeping this in mind, I have been fortunate enough to work with different business domains to learn about the businesses themselves.

Can you please tell us a bit about the technology stack used at Hirist.com and how you decided on it? Is there any technology that you’re personally betting on to help you scale up?

At Hirist, we use a very traditional technology stack. We have core PHP with a small custom framework written on top of it. In back-end, we have MySQL as database. We use a lot of caching using Redis. For front-end, we use bootstrap for responsive layout. Our search is based on standard Solr implementation.

Hirist and iimjobs, both run from a single platform. Faster and agile development has been the basis on which we have selected our technology stack. Quick scaling of the platform and the technology team has been the second criteria.

Mobile is a big segment, but there is no mobile app for Hirist. How soon do you intend to launch the app and what major functionalities will it offer?

Frankly, we are running behind schedule on launching our mobile application. Initially, we were focusing on providing quality jobs and quality resumes to our stakeholders and bringing them on to our platform. Distribution is something we have started focusing on now and the first step will be launching the Hirist mobile app soon. We hope to get it out by the beginning of 2015.

According to you, what are the major ICT challenges faced by online job portals and the key technological trends to watch out for?

I think most of the job portals have failed to provide a better match between job seekers and the job, particularly when they scale up. There are thousands of jobs and millions of job seekers; however, it is not an easy task to create perfect synergy between the two. One reason for that can be the involvement of non-measurable aspirations of recruiters and job seekers. Hence, the need right now is to create an intelligent platform which can filter only relevant matches.

One of the key trends we are seeing right now is the use of big data in understanding the job seeker’s affinity towards the kind of jobs, organizations and some other less important attributes. Most of the technological advancements will happen in finding highly relevant jobs. Another important trend is virtual tests and virtual interviews using job portals. Video based recruitment is not far away as it looks like.

What are some of the attributes you look out for in prospective technology employees?

At Hirist, we always give importance to the commitment over the skills. We try our best to ensure that the Engineers we hire understand what they are building and feel happy and pride doing that. Once that is in place, we believe that skill set can be completed by constant learning. Willingness to contribute and eagerness to learn are the criteria which supersede the skill mapping.

How do you personally keep up to date with the latest happenings in the technology world? Any piece of advice for the techies out there?

I have been fortunate enough to keep my hands-on skills up to date as of today.  I try to keep myself hands-on for at least couple of hours in the day (or night, usually). Also, there is a lot to read and understand for what has been happening on tech front irrespective of the recruitment. My advice to all the techies out there is to keep themselves immersed in the day to day programming, infrastructure management and continue reading what the latest going-ons in the technology world. Secondly, don’t be scared of using anything new out there. It’s fun to learn something new by trying it, rather than by reading it.