Hiring hasn’t changed much in decades. Recruiters wade through endless resumes, candidates struggle to showcase who they truly are, and companies rely on paid demos and clunky trial processes. We wanted to flip the script: create a platform that surfaces exclusive, vetted talent, highlights personality and skills, and streamlines the recruiting process. That vision became ReelCV.

Here’s how we built it, month by month, behind the scenes.

March – First Steps Toward ReelCV

March marked the true beginning of building ReelCV. What started as a rough vision began to take on structure, functionality, and form. The team focused on the foundational elements: profile scoring, recruiter workflow improvements, and the first working version of the platform.

Profile Scoring Discussions

Early in the month, conversations circled around how recruiters actually think about candidates. Chris and Ryan explored the idea of profile scoring — a way to quantify both “red flags” and positive signals in a candidate’s career journey.

• Red flags: unexplained employment gaps, frequent job-hopping, short stints in multiple roles.
• Positive signals: long-term employment, steady progression, MSP-relevant experience.

The vision was clear: instead of recruiters manually scanning for these patterns, ReelCV would apply weighted scoring automatically, surfacing candidates most likely to succeed while flagging potential concerns. These discussions planted the seed for one of ReelCV’s most important differentiators: a data-driven way to evaluate people, not just paper resumes.

UX & Admin Improvements

Ryan had begun improving the user and admin experience inside the Hirexe platform. The focus was on precision over volume: rather than overwhelming recruiters with dozens of irrelevant candidates, the system would present a handful of highly relevant profiles.

The work included:

• Flexible search filters combining multiple criteria.
• Mapping recruiter workflows through recordings to understand real usage patterns.
• Admin-side UX updates designed to save time without breaking existing recruiter habits.
• Early profile designs aimed at being both functional for recruiters and engaging for candidates.

This was the first step toward shaping ReelCV as a practical tool recruiters could adopt quickly, rather than a flashy product that disrupted workflows.

Layout Changes & Recommendations

Chris provided critical feedback on design and layout. His recommendations emphasized clarity, structured experiences, and small usability enhancements like CV view tracking. These insights were vital in keeping the product grounded in what recruiters actually needed, not just what looked good on paper.

Version 1 Goes Live 🎉

By March 15, ReelCV hit its first major milestone: V1 was officially ready. This was more than a prototype, it was the foundation on which every future iteration would be built. Recruiters could log in, create candidate profiles, and begin to see how ReelCV might reshape the hiring process.

Bottleneck: Video Uploads

A week later, however, a problem surfaced. Despite video being central to the ReelCV vision, candidates weren’t uploading their videos. Technical friction, strict validation, and unclear guidance caused drop-offs. Without videos, the “Careel” (career reel) concept couldn’t deliver on its promise of dynamic storytelling.

Chris flagged this as a bottleneck, and on March 20, Ryan implemented a solution: video upload became a required step in profile creation.

This change forced adoption while ensuring every profile included the key differentiator that set ReelCV apart.

Skills and Future Improvements

Toward the end of March, discussions turned to how candidate skills should be captured and displayed. The team began planning for V2 improvements, including more intelligent skill extraction, tagging, and presentation. These early conversations foreshadowed the refinements that would come in April and May.

Takeaway

March was all about building the bedrock of ReelCV. From scoring models to recruiter workflows, from layout tweaks to the first working version, the month ended with a product that was both usable and promising. Challenges like video uploads revealed the gaps, but they also pushed the team toward solutions that strengthened the platform.

ReelCV had officially moved from idea to implementation.

April – Humanizing the CV

If March was about laying the foundation, April was about giving ReelCV its personality. The focus shifted from raw functionality to human-centered design, finding ways to showcase candidates as more than static resumes and making the recruiter experience feel smooth, modern, and intuitive.

Early Homepage & Signup Flow

At the start of April, the team reviewed the original homepage layout. It felt functional, but more like a traditional database than a modern hiring platform. Chris and Ryan began redesigning the flow, emphasizing search as the entry point. Instead of navigating menus, recruiters would land directly on a search-driven homepage with prompts to start finding candidates right away.

Ryan demonstrated updates that made the experience more engaging:

• Highlights during uploads kept users occupied while waiting, reducing friction.
• A revamped signup flow added steps for profile images, socials, CV uploads, and video capture, ensuring richer candidate data from the start.
• Company dashboards were redesigned around search functionality, making it faster for recruiters to move from AI Candidates Search → shortlist → interview.

The shift was subtle but significant: ReelCV started to feel less like a form-filling system and more like a dynamic tool that guided recruiters and candidates forward.

Personality Capture

By April 8, the conversation turned to one of the most defining elements of ReelCV: capturing personality.

Chris, Ryan, and the team debated how to move beyond credentials and showcase people as individuals. The result was a new profile structure that highlighted hobbies, passions, and personality traits alongside professional skills. Design elements included:

• Hobbies, About Me and a My Future Section were implemented.
• Structured sections like “Who I Am” to surface values and motivations.
• The potential to search by personality traits in the future, aligning culture as well as skills.

This was a turning point: ReelCV wasn’t just solving efficiency problems for recruiters, it was creating a more authentic, human-centered hiring experience.

Career Profile Evolution

Mid-April saw refinements to the Career Profile, which became the centerpiece of the candidate experience.

Key updates included:

• Skills-first highlighting at the top, weighted against job matches.
• A streamlined layout with video prominently displayed and sections simplified into Background, Technical, and Achievements.
• A single left-hand timeline for career progression, replacing fragmented sections.

The team also debated the value of experimental fields like “About Me” and “My Future”, weighing authenticity against clutter. These discussions reflected ReelCV’s constant balancing act: depth vs. clarity, personality vs. professionalism.

Visual & Design Enhancements

As April progressed, design refinements gave the product a modern polish. Ryan rolled out updates that introduced:

• A black-and-white interface with orange accents reserved for critical highlights like “Top Match.”
• Progress bars, icons, and hover interactions for cleaner navigation.
• A consistent design language that bridged the candidate side and company side, with subtle adjustments for each audience.

Even small choices, like limiting orange usage to preserve impact showed how carefully the team was shaping ReelCV’s identity.

Takeaway

April was the month ReelCV began to feel alive. The platform evolved from a functional V1 into something with warmth, personality, and a clearer voice. Profiles were no longer just digital CVs; they became windows into a candidate’s story. Recruiters weren’t just searching; they were experiencing a more intuitive, guided workflow.

With these changes, ReelCV moved closer to its core promise: making hiring both efficient and human.

May – From Vision to Reality

By May, ReelCV began crossing the line from concept to working product. The month was defined by breakthroughs: long-discussed features finally became operational, and for the first time, the team could experience the platform end-to-end as a user would.

A More Dynamic First Impression

On the homepage, Ryan introduced a responsive globe animation, adding a sense of scale and motion. It wasn’t just a design flourish, it visually reinforced Hirexe’s mission of connecting South African professionals with global opportunities.

Building a Complete Profile

Work also continued on the profile creation process. Early iterations of the “Create a Profile” page were simplified and refined, ensuring that candidates were guided step by step without overwhelm.

One of the major wins was solving the Candidate Title challenge. Jurgen and Ryan collaborated on an API fix that allowed accurate job titles to pull through consistently, a small but crucial detail for candidate credibility and recruiter trust.

Another milestone was enabling a functional CV upload with live data. For the first time, the system could parse, process, and store actual candidate CVs, a leap forward from placeholders and test data.

The Video Breakthrough

Perhaps the biggest technical achievement came mid-month: video upload, capture, conversion, transcription, and AI analysis all became fully operational.

This was a defining feature for ReelCV. Video made it possible to showcase not just qualifications, but presence, communication style, and personality. AI-driven transcription and analysis turned these videos into structured, searchable data. The team celebrated this as a big win.

Smarter Profiles & Admin Controls

With the basics in place, attention turned to enhancing depth and usability:

• Ryan unveiled a profile rating system with skills assessment and experience editing, allowing recruiters to quickly benchmark candidates. The internal reaction captured the excitement , it was a true “wow moment.”
• On the backend, the admin dashboard advanced with tools for monitoring, editing, and managing profiles at scale. This ensured recruiters and Hirexe team would have the control needed to maintain high standards.

V2 Walkthrough

By the end of May, Ryan presented a walk-through of V2. The platform had moved far beyond its early wireframes: there was now a coherent candidate journey, from signup to video, from CV upload to recruiter-facing search and rating.

Internal Testing & Feedback

With so many core features working, May also marked the start of internal sign-up testing. Members of the Hirexe team created their own profiles, uploading CVs, recording videos, and stepping into the shoes of future users. Feedback was shared openly in Slack, often captured in quick videos or notes. These test runs revealed pain points, validated design choices, and built confidence that ReelCV was ready for wider trials.

Takeaway

May was the month ReelCV truly came to life. What began as scattered features in development matured into a functioning platform, tested internally and celebrated for its breakthrough on video. For the first time, the team could see and not just imagine the product they had been building toward for months.

June – Testing the Edges

By June, ReelCV was no longer just an internal build, it was being tested in real-world conditions. This meant progress, but also the inevitable roadblocks that appear when theory meets practice.

Roadblock: Video Uploads

On June 12, a critical issue surfaced: the system was not accepting videos reliably. This was a major concern, since video was at the heart of ReelCV’s value proposition. The team quickly identified the problem and began working through fixes, but it was a reminder that even celebrated features from May needed ongoing resilience under load.

Applicant Feedback

June also marked the first wave of external applicant reactions. A handful of candidates tried the new signup process, and their feedback — screenshots, notes, and direct comments — was captured and discussed by Ryan and Nakita in Slack. While not all reactions were glowing, the input was invaluable. It validated what was working while highlighting areas for improvement.

The Search Feature

On June 20, Ryan demoed an early version of the search functionality. Recruiters could now filter and find candidates more dynamically, surfacing profiles not just by job title but by a mix of skills, experience, and traits. It was an exciting glimpse of how ReelCV would empower MSPs to move beyond keyword-matching toward holistic talent discovery.

Another Roadblock: Google Errors

The month closed with a new technical hurdle. On June 30, the team hit a Google Console error that disrupted parts of the platform. While frustrating, the issue became another example of ReelCV’s resilience-in-progress, each roadblock was tackled quickly, with fixes rolled into subsequent updates.

Takeaway

June was the month of stress-testing. The product was in users’ hands, the team was watching real reactions, and the system’s weak points were being exposed. The setbacks, especially around video uploads and Google integration, were balanced by major wins: authentic feedback, working search, and proof that ReelCV could handle the messy reality of live use.

July – Smoothing the Edges

July was all about stability, refinement, and incremental wins. The product was now being used more consistently, but real-world usage continued to expose friction points and the team responded with targeted improvements.

Ongoing Roadblocks

The month kicked off with persistent issues in Google Console, limiting production capacity. The team was actively troubleshooting quotas and production limits, ensuring that new signups and CV uploads could proceed without interruption.

Product Reviews & Positive Feedback

Despite technical hurdles and multiple product review sessions throughout July on the 15th, 22nd, and 28th it showed encouraging results. Feedback highlighted improvements in usability and overall experience, reinforcing the work the team had done to stabilize ReelCV.

Production Deployments

A key focus for July was deploying solutions to recurring issues from prior months:

• ReelCV API Retry Logic: Introduced exponential-backoff retries (up to three attempts) for profile-rating calls. Any errors now trigger a Slack notification, allowing the team to proactively monitor failures.
• Account Deletion: Users gained the ability to delete their profiles from the dashboard, complete with confirmation popups, admin API integration, and automatic Firebase sign-out.
• Video Upload / Re-capture: The platform allowed users to upload a new video or re-capture an existing one during setup. Backup transcripts were automatically generated to prevent data loss due to AI or network issues.
• Signup Path Adjustments: Production updates included minor tweaks to ensure the sign-up process was smoother and less prone to errors.

Takeaway

July was a month of resilience and refinement. Roadblocks like Google Console limitations persisted, but proactive monitoring, enhanced retry logic, and thoughtful feature updates ensured users could continue building their ReelCVs without major disruption. Positive feedback during product reviews validated these improvements, highlighting that ReelCV was becoming a stable and dependable tool for both candidates and MSPs.

August 2025 – ReelCV Launch and Completion

Overview

August marked the official launch of ReelCV, completing the platform’s development and making it fully live. The team focused on finalizing workflows, enhancing the user experience, and ensuring all key features were functional for both candidates and companies.

Product Enhancements & Deployment

Significant improvements were implemented across onboarding, user registration, company creation, and search workflows. The onboarding modal and related dialogs were refined for a smoother user experience, with consistent styling and dark/light mode harmonization. User registration and company migration processes were strengthened with Firebase Auth integration, company data migration, and enforced corporate email and profile requirements. The FindUsers and Candidate Search features were upgraded with a new two-panel layout, server-side filtering, sortable tables, and editable recruiter ratings. Deliverable sharing, data migration, and Admin tools received security updates and functionality improvements, while ReelCV was fully integrated with the SQL backend. Minor bug fixes and styling tweaks were applied across the platform.

Testing & Feedback

The team conducted internal testing and monitored user sign-ups, capturing feedback through Slack. Errors and edge cases were reviewed and resolved quickly, ensuring the platform was stable and ready for public use. Positive product reviews confirmed the platform’s usability and overall experience improvements.

Takeway

By the end of August, ReelCV was fully operational, providing a seamless experience for candidates and companies. While the Admin side is still being fine-tuned, all core features are functional and live, marking a major milestone for the platform.

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