Rethinking Recruitment: Co//app at the Heart of Innovation
Co//app: Built by recruiters, for recruiters.
You’ve probably heard us talk about Co//app. But have you ever wondered where the idea came from?
We sat down with David and Sébastien to explore the story behind Co//app: who, what, when, how, and, most importantly, why.
In an industry where access to information, speed, and transparency can make all the difference, Co//app brings a fresh perspective to recruitment.
By combining technology with a human, personalized approach, the platform makes recruitment more transparent, collaborative, and efficient. It helps recruiters and hiring managers gain a clearer understanding of the talent market, including the often-overlooked potential of passive candidates.
With its intuitive interface, Co//app simplifies the complexities of talent sourcing, giving teams the tools they need to identify, track, and engage talent while keeping everyone informed throughout the process.
So, how did it all begin? And where is Co//app headed next?
We asked David and Sébastien to take us behind the scenes.
To start, could you briefly explain Co//app’s mission and purpose for those who aren’t familiar with the platform?
Sébastien: From the beginning, our goal was to bring greater transparency to our sourcing and recruitment processes. We wanted our clients to have access to the same information our recruiters had throughout an assignment.
It’s important for clients to see not only the candidates we’ve presented but also those progressing through the hiring process. They also want to know how many people we’ve approached and where those profiles were found, whether that’s a particular company, industry, or market.
Beyond the results themselves, what really reassures our clients is having a complete picture of the search as it unfolds.
Ironically, it’s often when our recruiters are working the hardest that clients hear the least about what’s happening. Co//app solves that problem by giving them real-time visibility into every stage of the assignment.
David: The platform addresses one of the biggest frustrations clients have with recruitment agencies.
When we ask clients about negative experiences they’ve had working with agencies, the same issues come up repeatedly: a lack of visibility into what’s being done, limited transparency, and insufficient follow-up.
Co//app’s primary mission is to eliminate that frustration. Whether an assignment is going well, exceptionally well, or facing challenges, the goal is to communicate that information clearly and consistently.
Can you tell us how the idea for Co//app came about? When did that lightbulb moment happen?
Sébastien: Initially, we had two objectives:
- Make our team more productive.
- Improve the client experience throughout our sourcing assignments.
When we first started offering sourcing services, we produced weekly reports for our clients. Preparing those reports involved a significant amount of manual work.
Watching several sourcers work on different reports at the same time, we realized there had to be a technological solution that could improve productivity while giving clients access to information in real time rather than once a week.
The idea didn’t come from one sudden flash of inspiration. It developed gradually as we worked on assignments, constantly looking for ways to improve transparency and efficiency.
Eventually, we realized the concept had enough potential to justify building Co//app.
How does Co//app make the day-to-day work of recruiters and talent acquisition professionals easier?
Sébastien: Saving time, collecting data automatically, improving follow-ups and feedback, increasing transparency, and documenting processes. These are all things recruiters want, and that’s exactly what Co//app delivers.
The platform makes it easy to share information clearly and efficiently with hiring managers or, in our case, external clients.
It also improves client satisfaction because they can see all the work that goes into identifying those few “green” profiles, meaning candidates who are genuinely qualified for the position.
David: When we designed the platform, we wanted to move away from the solutions already available on the market.
Our goal was to make sourcing functionalities accessible to any sourcer.
We’ve always emphasized the importance of sharing information, but we also wanted to address another frustration clients had with traditional applicant tracking systems (ATS): they’re not particularly collaborative.
With Co//app, clients and hiring managers can actively participate in the pipeline through comments and our star-rating system.
It’s not just a static dashboard. It’s a genuine collaboration tool.
That’s actually where the name Co//app comes from.
How do you position Co//app compared to an ATS?
Sébastien: Co//app complements an ATS rather than replacing it.
An Applicant Tracking System manages the flow of applicants and interested candidates throughout the recruitment process, right up to the point of hire.
Once someone is hired, a human resources management system typically takes over to manage employees, benefits, payroll, performance, and so on.
But there’s a gap before the ATS comes into play.
I’m talking about managing talent communities and maintaining long-term relationships with passive candidates. These are people who aren’t necessarily looking for a job today but could become excellent candidates down the road.
Co//app fills that gap by adding a layer of talent relationship management before those individuals even become applicants.
What kind of feedback have you received from recruiters using Co//app? What impresses them the most?
Sébastien: Co//app’s greatest strength is its simplicity.
Whether you’re a recruiter or a hiring manager, and whether you work in talent acquisition, human resources, or operations, the platform is designed to be immediately intuitive.
Our colour-coded classification system, green, yellow, and red, makes it easy to understand where each profile stands.
It’s an incredibly straightforward tool, and we intend to keep it that way.
What impresses users most is how simple and clear everything is. It makes tracking candidates and making decisions much easier.
Co//app, originally known as the Sourcinc App, launched in 2017. What have been the biggest milestones and achievements since then?
Sébastien: We’ve certainly faced our share of challenges over the years. But I tend to see them as different chapters in the platform’s development.
In the beginning, we had a fairly naive idea: we wanted to create something like a living Excel spreadsheet.
A document where clients could see the results of our searches in real time.
The first version was developed relatively quickly, and that’s exactly what it did.
But we soon ran into problems.
Our sourcers were generating so much data that the database quickly reached its limits.
Our developers realized that the original architecture simply wasn’t designed to handle that volume.
So, our first major challenge was understanding the amount of data we were dealing with and rebuilding the database to support it.
We needed to make sure the platform could handle the rapid growth in both the number of projects our team was creating and the number of profiles being added to those projects.
We ended up redesigning the entire application architecture.
The second chapter focused on improving the user experience.
From the visual design to the way information was organized, we wanted clients to be able to find what they needed, organize it, and understand the work we were doing.
The third chapter has been all about continuous improvement.
We started developing new features that weren’t part of the original platform.
The Chrome extension, star-based profile ratings, and comment sections are all key features today, but none of them existed when we launched.
We’ve also significantly improved the statistics section over the years.
We realized that some of the statistics and KPIs we considered important weren’t necessarily valuable to our clients. Meanwhile, other information we hadn’t included turned out to be essential to them.
So, we adjusted the platform to better reflect their needs.
Over the past seven years, a significant portion of Co//app’s improvements have come directly from client feedback.
How do you see Co//app evolving over the next few years?
Sébastien: We have a very clear vision of where Co//app could go in the coming years.
But that vision is constantly evolving.
When I compare today’s platform with what we had seven years ago, it’s already better than anything we originally imagined. And yet, there’s still so much we want to develop.
Recently, we’ve invested considerable effort into improving our sourcing assignments.
We’ve introduced an entirely new user type that gives clients greater autonomy in managing their pipelines.
Looking ahead, we’d like to explore automation features that could simplify certain maintenance tasks, improve communication through Co//app, and even suggest relevant profiles when new projects are created.
There are some really exciting possibilities ahead.
David: Artificial intelligence is obviously a major topic right now.
And it brings us back to a fundamental question: What exactly do we want Co//app to be?
Do we want it to automatically source candidates for users, or do we want it to remain a collaborative dashboard?
The answer will influence which features we choose to develop.
We’ve also been thinking about how to communicate information more effectively.
Should users access updates by logging into Co//app? Should we send notifications by email, Slack, Teams, or even text message?
Co//app’s purpose is to increase transparency and make the time spent on an assignment more efficient.
The longer a candidate stays in a recruitment process, the greater the risk of losing their interest.
That’s why we need to explore different ways for recruiters and hiring managers to collaborate and keep things moving.
We want to develop features that make communication faster and more agile.
Sébastien: At the same time, there are countless features we could build to make recruiters’ lives easier and improve their performance.
But every decision comes down to two questions:
Will it save users time? And will it make their lives easier?
If the answer is only partially yes, we don’t move forward.
If a feature genuinely saves time while remaining extremely simple to use, then we’re definitely interested in developing it.
You mentioned the statistics available in Co//app. Can you walk us through the different types of data the platform provides?
Sébastien: We offer two types of statistics: quantitative and qualitative.
Quantitative statistics mainly include:
- The number of profiles sourced.
- Response rates.
- The exact number of profiles in each category (green, yellow, and red).
- Salary information, including the lowest, highest, and median salaries identified during the search.
These metrics are particularly valuable to clients because they provide a clear picture of the financial and quantitative aspects of a search.
Qualitative information, on the other hand, gives clients more insight into the work we’re doing.
It includes:
- The action plan for the following week.
- Comments and observations.
- Information tailored to the specific search.
Every assignment is different, so providing that context is essential.
Together, these elements give clients a complete overview of their search on a single page.
They can see how many profiles have been identified, salary insights, which companies have been targeted, and the sourcer’s observations.
Everything they need to understand what’s happening.
How is Co//app helping transform recruitment processes and the recruitment industry as a whole?
Sébastien: Many studies suggest that roughly 30% of the talent market is actively looking for a job.
These are people who have their résumés ready, browse job postings, and apply for opportunities.
But the remaining 70% consists of people who are currently employed and aren’t actively looking, even though they could be excellent candidates.
Our approach assumes that clients are already managing the active portion of the market.
People who are interested in their job opportunities and see them as an employer of choice should already be somewhere in their database.
At some point, they may have submitted a résumé or started following the company’s social media pages.
At Sourcinc, we focus primarily on passive candidates.
That’s where we invest our efforts: identifying people within that 70%, engaging them, and organizing the information in a way that helps clients better understand their talent market.
Co//app makes it possible to document and visualize that passive talent market.
David: It’s important to distinguish between Sourcinc’s mission and Co//app’s mission.
Just because a client logs into Co//app doesn’t mean they’ll automatically gain access to that entire 70% of passive candidates.
Co//app is a tool that helps sourcers work more efficiently to identify, collect, organize, and share information about passive talent.
To wrap things up, how would you describe Sourcinc’s company culture, and how does it influence the way you develop and market Co//app?
Sébastien: Sourcinc has a very open culture. We encourage people to speak up and tell the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable.
Feedback from our team about their experience using Co//app is incredibly important to us.
David: And that doesn’t mean only positive feedback.
Sébastien: Exactly.
It’s essential that our team feels comfortable pointing out problems.
Otherwise, you risk creating a false sense that everything is working perfectly.
In an environment where people hesitate to share their opinions, it’s easy to believe everything is fine when it really isn’t.
David: At Sourcinc, the feedback we collect is always supported by statistics, facts, or concrete actions.
We’ve built that same philosophy into Co//app.
You can see how your pipeline is evolving, whether things are going well or not, and that information is always backed by actual data.
Instead of simply saying, “Things aren’t going well, and we don’t know why,” we can say, “Things aren’t going well, and here are the facts that explain why.”
Response rates and the reasons candidates aren’t interested are examples of data that help guide our decisions.
And our clients really appreciate that level of transparency.
Sébastien: As our tagline says, Co//app is built by recruiters, for recruiters.
Every core feature was designed to address a real need.
And when something isn’t working, our team lets us know right away.
After all, they’re the platform’s first and primary users.
That makes them deeply involved in both the decision-making process and the continuous improvement of Co//app.
Any final thoughts?
David: If we were having this conversation again in a year or two, you’d probably see a lot of changes.
We’re constantly adapting to what’s happening in the market.
When we created Co//app in 2017, artificial intelligence wasn’t even part of the conversation.
Today, it would be almost unthinkable not to consider it.
I’m not saying we’re necessarily going to integrate AI into Co//app, but we absolutely need to explore what value it could bring.
Sébastien: Exactly.
Co//app has endless possibilities, and the challenge is to keep exploring them without sacrificing simplicity.
Every innovation we introduce opens the door to new ideas and opportunities we hadn’t necessarily considered before.
The recommendations we receive are incredibly valuable.
And we’ve learned that something that isn’t a priority today could become essential tomorrow.
That’s the mindset we’re bringing to the future of Co//app.
