Google is shutting down its dedicated recruitment tracking service Hire from next year in order to focus resources on other areas of its cloud portfolio.
Aimed primarily at SMBs, Hire serves as a job application tracking app that integrates functions like applicant search and scheduling interviews into the wider G Suite.
Google has decided to discontinue the service from 1 September 2020, however, despite describing the app as “successful” in an official notice.
This announcement has also been made just shy of six months since the HR automation platform fully launched in the UK.
Customers will continue to receive support throughout the duration of existing contracts, and no additional charges will be levied for usage once contracts expire up until the end-of-life date. Contracts can also be terminated without penalty.
Meanwhile, there will be no new features developed for the service and all experimental features that have not been officially launched will be switched off within the next month.
A host of the features included recruiters contacting potential hires via Gmail, scheduling interviews and induction days through Google Calendar, and tracking progress through Google Sheets.
The Candidate Discovery function, in which hiring managers can trawl through several information sources to learn about potential recruits, was also considered one of the biggest draws.
Hire was initially released in 2017 following the $380 million acquisition of Bebop, founded by the former Google Cloud CEO Diane Green. The app’s closure will also be made just a few months after Green’s departure from Google’s cloud computing arm.
Despite targeting SMBs in the main, Hire is also used by a number of larger companies such as Cloudera and Atom Group.
The app’s closure doesn’t mark Google’s withdrawal from the recruitment tech sector entirely, however, with the company still committed to its Google for Jobs search tool, which is intended to rival the likes of Indeed.
Cloud Pro approached Google for comment but the firm did not respond at the time of writing.