Newton Software, a startup building innovative, easy-to-use, applicant tracking software, presented to a packed house last night at DLA Piper’s Silicon Valley headquarters. The event, a monthly showcase of new technology startups, drew a diverse crowd of Silicon Valley engineers, business people, vendors, lawyers and venture capitalists. Newton was among the 4 lucky startup companies selected to demo their applications this month.


As the co-founders of Newton led the audience through a short demo of their product, it became evident that design and usability are indeed the knockout features of their system. Newton is designed to help you organize and manage your corporate recruiting program so nothing slips through the cracks. When you sign up for one of their affordable pricing plans, you’ll receive a fully branded careers page, free job advertising, an easy-to-use collaboration platform, and amazingly powerful, real-time analytics dashboard all the same day.

Newton’s VP of Marketing, Joel Passen, emphasized that Newton requires very little training to get started and that you can be up and running the same day you sign up for the service. During the demonstration, Joel took attendees through a 30 second mock training of Newton to emphasize Newton’s ease of use. “If you like the candidate, press the green button. If you don’t wish to continue with an applicant, push the red button. Green means go. Red is no. It doesn’t get much simpler than that”, chimed Passen.

While the founders started the company in January of 2009, they’ve been developing and improving Newton since 2004. Originally conceived to run a recruiting services business, Newton has been deployed to thousands of users prior to the official launch of the company. The current version of Newton is designed for corporations, mainly small and medium sized businesses, to manage internal hiring programs. The founders say they are working on a version for recruitment outsourcers that may be ready for release as soon as Q1 2010.

So what can Newton customers expect to see before the end of the year? Steve Hazleton, Newton’s CEO and Head of Products, promises his design team has been anything but complacent lately. “We’ll be shipping a feature later this month that’ll significantly improve the applicant experience while also allowing recruiters to be more efficient. And, for companies that need to track EEO information, we’re releasing the industry’s most advanced EEO/OFCCP compliance and reporting feature before the end of the year.”, said Hazelton in a post-demo interview. Hazelton also hinted at an extensive roadmap that will feature additional thoughtful features designed to continuously improve recruiting and to constantly enhance the applicant experience.