The human resources world has gone high tech. Hiring pros are turning to on-demand, AI-driven digital platforms for video, voice and SMS interviewing. This changes the entire recruiting landscape for Harqen customers.
Since 2007, the Milwaukee-based company has given both employers including Fortune 100 corporations — and candidates — an efficient way to approach hiring in the cloud. Prospects and hiring pros can connect through on-demand recorded interviews delivered through a web-based interface.
Backed by big data, Harqen’s platform delivers targeted reporting through deep analytics and intelligence that hiring organizations can use to improve and speed up the hiring process. This includes automated candidate scoring and ranking that enables recruiters to prioritize candidates and strengthen efficiencies throughout the hiring process.
Its on-demand, web-based interviewing solutions keep the hiring process moving by giving candidates the ability to record a video or voice interview — or participate in an SMS interview from any mobile device or computer on their own time, within a specific deadline. There’s no need to juggle schedules between hiring managers and candidates.
One major entity that keeps all of this vital web-based technology accessible, secure and reliable is the cloud. Harqen had embarked upon a real-life lesson in Cloud Adoption 101.
Moving from On-Prem to Google Cloud Platform
As Harqen’s demand grew, the IT team soon realized its aging on-premise environment wasn’t delivering the connectivity and reliability needed to meet day-to-day business needs, let alone future growth. It was time for a cloud computing revolution.
“We were renting a rack in a local shared space with a network that was up and down,” says Harqen CTO Mark Unak, a Yale University undergrad and University of Chicago PhD. “We had spotty connections; we needed something dependable.”
Dependability was just one factor why Harqen decided migrating to the cloud was the answer. Moving away from a CapEx cost model, along with reduced capacity management and zero equipment costs in the cloud also made Harqen’s decision to move off-prem an easy one. The company’s platform includes a telephony stack that would only run on Google Cloud Platform. Harqen had already adopted Google Workspace, so its IT team was familiar with Google products. They weren’t familiar with Google Cloud’s solutions partners, so Unak set out to find the right company to help Harqen plan a cloud migration.
Deciding which cloud provider to use also was simple. When Google Cloud recommended Onix, Unak quickly reached out to start a conversation about moving to the cloud. The Onix cloud team traveled to Milwaukee to conduct an architecture review and validate the company’s existing environment. During this process, they kept an eye on ways to improve the solution architecture.
Since Harqen’s internal IT team includes experienced engineers, the company managed its own migration of virtual machines to GCP. These mostly included Linux/Ubuntu Debian servers.
Onix remained alongside the Harqen team, providing guidance and support during the migration — and helping to implement cloud security. This included using Cloud IAP for managing user access to applications with https instead of VPN. Onix also implemented Check Point Web Application, API Protection (WAAP) — and Cloud Guard Dome 9 for security and compliance verification.
Harqen also wanted to ensure that its apps were accessible and scalable in the new cloud environment, so Onix assisted by designing and implementing a load-balanced Kubernetes cluster, complete with a Stackdriver logging dashboard.
Now Harqen uses version control for their infrastructure changes; they can deploy application code as many times a day as they desire, allowing them to improve customer experiences more quickly and efficiently.
Implementing Managed Services for Google Cloud Platform
Going forward, Harqen and Onix have a managed services provider (MSP) agreement that is designed to maximize the new Harquen Google Cloud Platform environment as well as its internal IT team.
Within the program, Onix cloud experts provide proactive monitoring and alerting of all Harqen GCP assets. This includes Google Compute Engine (GCE) with GlusterFS and PostgreSQL, Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Stackdriver, Cloud VPC, CloudVPN and Cloud Identity Access Management (IAM).
Harqen also benefits from ongoing optimization and Site Reliability/DevOps services under this agreement, ensuring that its Google Cloud Platform architecture undergoes continuous improvements.
The MSP also covers break fixes for cloud services, infrastructure code and emergencies. All of this is bolstered by Onix’s 24/7 Helpdesk Support and ticketing portal that prioritizes response and resolution time based on event severity.
Had Harqen’s internal team managed all of this, they would have been stretched thin while also trying to address the day-to-day needs of the company’s cloud-based solutions. Now they can focus instead on the task at hand, delivering a solid platform that helps clients conduct their hiring in the cloud.
“We had questions about whether we were using the right services, and Onix answered those for us and took care of the managed services,” Unak says. “We’re comfortable with that because we didn’t want our people doing 24/7 first-tier support; we wanted to free them up for things that can be monetized. We’re glad to be going down this cloud journey with Onix. The team is a core part of what we’re doing.”
