Newton, Inc. Launches Their Next-Generation Online Recruiting Software to Streamline the Hiring Process and to Welcome Recruiting Into the Web 2.0 Era — A new breed of applicant management and recruiting software aims to shake up the human resources field. Newton, a new web-based hiring software application, launches with the intent of simplifying the hiring process and increasing collaboration between hiring manager and recruiters. Incorporating Web 2.0 design principles and 5 years of hands on development by recruiters, Newton’s recruiting software is guaranteed to increase productivity.
Newton, Inc. is a San Francisco-based enterprise software company that just successfully launched their first product, called Newton. Newton is a simple to use, web-based, applicant management and recruiting software application. The product is designed to organize and simplify recruiting programs through the use of modern Web 2.0 tools, making it easier for everyone to get involved with the hiring process.
Recruiting software is a niche that often flies under the radar, but can cost companies a bundle in IT systems and productivity. While many recruiting software vendors continue to tout features that aim to attract more candidates, Newton is designed to solve the bigger problem associated with streamlining the recruiting process: improving the communication and collaboration between recruiters and hiring managers.
“We are addressing recruiting software from a completely different angle,” says Joel Passen, co-founder of Newton, Inc. “Hiring lives and dies in two key areas: one, getting hiring managers engaged in the recruiting process; and two, empowering recruiters to collaborate with those managers and increase their accuracy.” Newton does both.
While Newton is a new face in the recruiting software arena, the application itself has been in development for nearly 5 years. Newton previously powered a successful recruitment outsourcing business run by founders, Steve Hazelton and Joel Passen. As the crown jewel of their recruitment service, Newton managed thousands of concurrent jobs, hiring managers and candidates, but only recently has the applicant tracking system been for sale to a general audience.
“Newton has been in the marketplace for nearly 5 years. We were able to test, design, redesign and gather feedback from literally hundreds of users before ever launching our product. This really allowed us to nail down usability before focusing on building out our feature matrix to make our marketing team happy,” says Passen.
Newton, which competes on the high-end with companies like Taleo and Kenexa, is built on the Flex platform with Ajax and a variety of open source tools. Newton is quite possibly the first Rich Internet Application designed for recruiting. “We chose Flex because it is makes Newton lightening fast, allowing us to build modules faster than our competition while retaining the simple user experience we are looking for,” explains Steve Hazelton, Newton’s CEO.
Hazelton is betting on Newton’s use of Web 2.0 technologies to win over customers. “The system resembles sites that you use in your everyday life as opposed to the clunky first-generation software that many companies force their employees to use,” he remarks. Hazelton created a company blog to highlight Newton’s design philosophy (http://newtonondemand.com/blog), which reads like a product manager’s manifesto to simplicity.
Today, Newton is targeted towards the 250,000 small and mid-sized companies in the U.S. The pricing for the online recruiting software varies depending on the number of administrative and staffing users, but an annual subscription generally costs under $2000. Newton also includes other perks such as expert support to help companies set up the system, import existing resumes and create a custom careers site.
Passen explains that the company is continually evolving Newton to meet the needs of the marketplace. One upcoming feature is a supplier management module that will allow companies to work with agency recruiters more effectively. Also in the works is an analytics module that utilizes the same user-friendly interface design principals as the core product, making reporting more visual rather than forcing users to rely on spreadsheets and pivot tables.
The founders of Newton are already looking ahead to other applications in the human resources technology space which they refer to as a “dusty corner.” “HR is evolving, but the tools of the trade have yet to make the leap,” says Passen. “We are interested in building simple software that makes people’s jobs easier.”
For more information about Newton please visit http://www.newtonondemand.com/
Matt Lafata, HRchitect
Posted by mattlafata 
