ZenDev

How do you maintain hiring excellence when you’re a growing IT company with 80+ employees? 

Over 9 years, ZenDev built a reputation for delivering high-quality software development services across diverse sectors – from healthcare to manufacturing.

What sets them apart is their approach to company structure. 

“Our development teams work directly with clients, which means they understand exactly what skills and qualities we need in new team members,” explains Angela, Head of Marketing. “Having them involved in hiring just makes sense.”

This collaborative model worked well when ZenDev was smaller, but as they expanded to serve more international clients, they faced a growing challenge: how to maintain their effective team-based approach while handling an increasing volume of applications?

ZenDev found its answer through an innovative approach where marketing, resources, and technical teams collaborate on recruitment activities – all unified through TalentLyft’s platform.

We caught up with Angela, Head of Marketing, and Farik Vrce, General Manager, to get the inside scoop on how they keep their hiring process running smoothly.

Challenge: Managing growth without a dedicated HR team

For a young, rising software development company, its unique organizational structure presented an interesting challenge. 

With recruitment and employer branding activities shared between the marketing department, resource manager, and technical team members, they needed a solution that could unite all these moving parts.

Before implementing TalentLyft, ZenDev managed their recruitment through a custom-built solution. 

“We had our own admin panel and handled applications through our website backend,” explains Angela, Head of Marketing. “But as we grew, we needed more features – better filtering, custom bulk exports, detailed analytics. Building these ourselves wasn’t sustainable.”

Why TalentLyft?

What made TalentLyft stand out? For ZenDev’s team, it came down to three key factors:

• A unified system that supports distributed HR responsibilities
• Quick, responsive support for their team
• Freedom from maintaining custom recruitment code

“During the demo, everything was explained clearly, and the workflow aligned perfectly with our needs,” shares Angela. “We wanted to focus on developing solutions for our clients and our SaaS products rather than maintaining our own HR tools.”

Data-driven decision making

For ZenDev’s marketing team, TalentLyft’s GA4 integration proved invaluable.

“As a data-driven company, our marketing team lives in GA4. The integration helped us understand which advertising platforms were bringing us the best candidates. This insight was invaluable in optimizing our recruitment advertising spend for a recent project where we needed to build a team of 8 people.”

“One of the biggest benefits is definitely the filtering capability,” shares Angela. “All applications that come to our website are sent directly to TalentLyft. Before we even post a new job ad, we can easily review candidates by the specific technologies we’re looking for at the moment. It’s not just talk when we tell candidates we’ll keep their applications for future opportunities – we actually do use this database actively.”

Responsive support makes the difference

Support quality played a key role in ZenDev’s decision to stick with TalentLyft. 

“From day one, the TalentLyft team has been incredibly responsive,” Angela notes. “What really stands out is how they don’t just solve our immediate questions – they often suggest additional ways to use the platform that we hadn’t considered. These extra insights have helped us get even more value from the tool.”

Leadership perspective

“TalentLyft feels like having an extra team member who never sleeps,” shares Senad Santic, ZenDev’s CEO. “The platform helps our teams work together seamlessly on hiring, making our collaborative approach even more effective. It’s become such a natural part of how we work that we can’t imagine our hiring process without it.”

Measurable impact

The impact was immediate and measurable:

• Time-to-hire decreased from 3 weeks to 2 weeks on average
• The interview-to-hire ratio improved from 1:30 to 1:15 over one year
• Achieved a record 48-hour hire for a senior full-stack developer position

“When it comes to time to hire, we’ve seen remarkable improvements,” says Farik Vrce, General Manager.

“Just recently, we had a case where our client in the golf industry needed to scale quickly. We were able to find a senior full-stack developer, conduct all interviews, and send an offer – all within 48 hours.”

The partnership between ZenDev and TalentLyft demonstrates how the right technology can enhance collaborative hiring approaches, delivering outstanding results through smart, unified solutions – even without a traditional HR department.