What Are Projects?
Projects are containers that group related recruitment activity together. If tags help you organize individual jobs, projects help you organize entire workflows. A project typically represents a client engagement, a hiring campaign, or a recruitment assignment — anything that involves multiple searches, jobs, and outreach efforts working toward a common goal. For example, you might create a project called “Acme Corp - Q1 2026 Tech Hiring” that contains all the searches you have run for Acme, all the jobs you have saved, and all the outreach you have executed. This gives you a single place to see the full picture of your engagement with that client. Projects create a hierarchy that flows naturally from broad engagement down to specific actions:Why Use Projects?
Without projects, your recruitment data is scattered across individual searches, jobs, and outreach flows. Projects bring structure to this data by creating a clear organizational hierarchy.Aggregate Visibility
See all searches, jobs, and outreach statistics for a client or campaign in one place, instead of piecing together information from separate screens. The project detail page becomes your single source of truth for each engagement.
Progress Tracking
Track how your recruitment effort is progressing across all related searches. How many jobs have you found? How much outreach have you completed? Are response rates improving? The project aggregates these metrics automatically.
Team Coordination
For agency administrators, projects provide visibility into which team members are working on what. You can see activity across the project without needing each person’s individual context.
Clean Organization
Keep your search list manageable by grouping related searches under projects. Instead of 50 ungrouped searches, you might have 8 projects with 5-7 searches each — much easier to navigate.
Creating a New Project
Navigate to Projects
Open the Projects section from the main navigation. This shows your project list with any existing projects, their statuses, and linked search counts.
Enter a Project Name
Choose a clear, descriptive name for the project. Good project names typically include the client name and a qualifier that distinguishes this engagement from others for the same client:
- “Acme Corp - Backend Team Expansion”
- “TechStart BV - Series A Hiring”
- “Q1 2026 General Pipeline Building”
- “FinServ Group - Data Engineering Division”
Add a Goal (Optional)
Describe the project’s objective in a sentence or two. This helps you and your team understand the purpose of the project at a glance. Good goals are specific and measurable:
- “Fill 3 senior backend positions by end of Q1”
- “Build a pipeline of 50+ frontend candidates for ongoing engagements”
- “Map the Dutch fintech hiring landscape for business development”
- “Source 10 data engineers for immediate client need”
Project Properties
Every project has the following properties:| Property | Description | Required |
|---|---|---|
| Name | A descriptive label for the project. Should include the client name and scope. | Yes |
| Goal | A text description of the project’s objective. Helps you and your team understand purpose. | No |
| Status | The current state of the project (Active, On Hold, Completed, Cancelled). | Yes (defaults to Active) |
| Created Date | When the project was created. Set automatically. | Automatic |
| Updated Date | When the project was last modified. Updated automatically on any change. | Automatic |
Projects are owned by the user who creates them. In an agency context, admins can view all team members’ projects through the Team Projects view, but each project belongs to one recruiter.
The Project List View
The project list provides an overview of all your projects with key information at a glance:- Project name and status badge (color-coded for quick identification)
- Number of linked searches — how many searches are associated with each project
- Creation date — when you started the project
- Goal — a brief description of what the project aims to achieve
Searching Projects by Name
When your project list grows, the search function helps you find specific projects quickly. Type any part of the project name in the search bar to filter the list. For example, typing “Acme” would surface “Acme Corp - Backend Team,” “Acme Corp - Q1 Hiring,” and any other project with “Acme” in the name. Typing “Backend” would find all projects with “Backend” in their name regardless of client.Editing Project Details
You can update a project’s name, goal, and status at any time. There are two ways to edit:- From the project list: Click the three-dot menu on a project card and select “Edit.” A dialog opens where you can update the name, goal, and status.
- From the project detail page: Click the “Edit Project” button in the header. A modal opens with the same editing form.
Project Detail View
When you open a project, you see a header with the project name, goal, status badge, and an “Edit Project” button. Below the header, four summary cards display key metrics at a glance:- Total Searches — number of searches linked to this project
- Total Jobs — total job count across all linked searches
- Outreach Steps — total outreach steps with a breakdown of completed vs pending
- Completion Rate — percentage of outreach steps that have been completed
Tabs
The project detail page is organized into four tabs:Overview Tab
Shows project information (name, status, goal, creation date, last updated) alongside outreach statistics. The outreach section includes a progress bar showing overall completion and a breakdown by channel (email, LinkedIn, phone) with completed and pending counts for each.Searches Tab
Lists all searches linked to this project. Each search shows its title, job count, and creation date. This gives you a clear view of how many different approaches you have taken for this engagement.Jobs Tab
A consolidated view of all jobs across all the project’s linked searches. This single list shows every opportunity associated with the project, regardless of which search surfaced it. You can favorite, delete, and manage tags on jobs directly from this view.Analytics Tab
Displays an outreach analytics chart that visualizes your outreach activity over time, helping you identify trends and momentum in your recruitment effort.Outreach statistics are calculated in real-time from the actual outreach flows on jobs within the project’s searches. There is no manual data entry required — the numbers update automatically as you and your team complete outreach steps.
Deleting Projects
When a project is no longer needed:- From the project list, click the three-dot menu on the project card.
- Select “Delete.”
- Confirm the deletion in the confirmation dialog.
Best Practices
- One project per client engagement. Each distinct piece of work for a client should be its own project. This keeps analytics and tracking clean. If you have multiple engagements with the same client (backend team + data team), create separate projects for each.
- Name projects descriptively. Include the client name and the scope of work. You will be grateful for clear names when you have 20+ projects. “Acme Corp - Backend Q1” is far better than “Backend hiring.”
- Set a goal for every project. Even a brief goal like “Fill 2 positions” gives the project purpose and helps you measure success. A project without a goal is harder to evaluate.
- Keep the status current. Update project statuses as engagements evolve. An accurate status list helps you prioritize your workload and gives agency admins visibility into progress.
- Link searches immediately. When you run a search for a client, link it to the project right away. Linking after the fact requires more effort and means your project analytics are incomplete in the meantime.
- Review project analytics weekly. The aggregate view of searches, jobs, and outreach within a project is one of the most valuable tools for managing your recruitment effort. A 5-minute weekly review per active project keeps you on track.
Advanced
How Projects Work Under the Hood
Projects are stored as their own entity with an ID, user_id (owner), name, goal, and status. The connection between projects and searches is established through a foreign key (project_id) on the search entity. This means:
- A search can belong to at most one project (or none)
- A project can have many linked searches
- The relationship is one-to-many from project to searches
project_id field is updated to reference the project. When you unlink a search, this field is set to null.
Project Deletion Behavior
When you delete a project, the system does not cascade-delete the linked searches. Instead, it sets theproject_id to null on all searches that were linked to the deleted project. This “unlink rather than delete” behavior is intentional — it prevents accidental data loss. Your searches, saved jobs, and outreach history are always preserved.
Aggregate Statistics Calculation
Project-level statistics (total jobs, outreach counts, channel breakdowns, daily activity) are calculated dynamically by aggregating data from all linked searches and their jobs. This means:- Statistics are always current and reflect the latest activity
- Adding a new search to a project immediately includes its data in the project totals
- Removing a search from a project immediately excludes its data
Connection to Tags
Jobs within a project’s searches retain all their tags. When viewing the project jobs list, tags are loaded using the batch loading mechanism (get_tags_for_multiple_jobs()) to avoid performance issues. This means you can use tags for fine-grained categorization within a project — for example, tagging some jobs as “High Priority” within a client project to identify the most promising opportunities.
Connection to Agency Features
For agency administrators, projects are the primary unit of team-level visibility. The Team Projects view shows all projects across all team members, with filtering by member and status. This allows admins to understand workload distribution, identify bottlenecks, and ensure all client engagements are progressing. Individual recruiters can only see their own projects. The team-wide view is exclusively available to users with Admin or Admin Member roles.Status as Metadata, Not Logic
Project status (Active, On Hold, Completed, Cancelled) is purely metadata. Changing a project’s status does not affect the behavior of its searches, jobs, or outreach flows in any way. An “On Hold” project’s outreach flows continue to function. A “Completed” project’s searches remain accessible. The status is an organizational label for your benefit, not a system control. This design means you never need to worry about accidentally pausing or disrupting work by changing a project status. It is always safe to update.Power-User Tips
- Use projects for prospecting too. Projects are not just for active client engagements. Create a project for business development activities (e.g., “Market Research - Fintech NL”) to track your prospecting searches and opportunities.
- Cross-reference with tags. Use project-level organization for client scoping and tag-level organization for individual job attributes. A job in the “Acme Corp Q1” project might also be tagged “High Priority” and “Backend.” The two systems complement each other.
- Monitor the search-to-job ratio. If a project has many searches but few saved jobs, you may need to adjust your search criteria. If it has many saved jobs but little outreach, you need to ramp up activity.
- Archive rather than delete. Mark completed engagements as “Completed” rather than deleting them. Over time, your completed project list becomes a portfolio of your work and a reference for similar future engagements.