John Click

Originally published on Medium in February 2024. This is the canonical record in the Blog Posts DB.

In the epicenter of the digital revolution, countless online technology startups are emerging as pivotal players, devising innovative solutions to bridge the gap in health equity. One such nonprofit, Project N95, has harnessed technology to fight health disparities effectively.

This article walks through our journey of bootstrapping an intricate candidate management system on Airtable — an endeavor that has not only saved us significant costs, but also streamlined the onboarding of over 400 volunteers since our inception in 2020.

The System Architecture

Project N95 was born out of necessity at the onset of COVID-19. Our mission was to provide PPE to frontline workers. As the organization grew, we quickly identified the need for a robust, adaptable system to manage our expanding pool of volunteers.

Our goal was to create a customized solution, analogous to platforms like Greenhouse, that caters to the peculiarities of our nonprofit's mission to promote health equity.

Key Features

Public-Facing Applications & Slack Notifications — Automated replies via Stacker integration, allowing candidates to enhance their profiles. Real-time Slack notifications ensuring the team is promptly informed of potential recruits.

Dynamic Role Management — Linking specific candidates to potential roles using Airtable's related fields feature, creating a dynamic system that matches candidates to roles best suited to their skills.

Automated Interview Scheduling & Okta Integration — Automated Calendly links for scheduling once a candidate is shortlisted.

React GraphQL and Gatsby Integration — Airtable also serves as a backend for our React GraphQL storefront, built with the Gatsby framework. This enables us to build fresh, specific GraphQL fragments for each nightly build, based on the latest data in our Airtable.

Expanded Functionality with Stacker — Transformed Airtable into a personnel file system where active and alumni members can privately update their records.

Real-Time Data Dashboards — Leveraging Airtable's dynamic interfaces for transparent insights into our candidate pipeline, demographics, and throughput.

This article documents the same Airtable + Gatsby architecture pattern that later informed the Notion + Gatsby CMS I built for my personal websites. The "operational database doubling as content backend" insight came directly from this work.