Case Study: Academic Recruitment Portal for The Francis Crick Institute
Background
The Francis Crick Institute, based in London, is one of Europe’s leading biomedical research centres, collaborating with academic, medical, and industry partners to advance understanding of how life works. Each year, the Crick attracts thousands of applicants from around the world for prestigious PhD programmes, summer and sandwich placements, and postdoctoral Group Leader roles.
The Challenge
Managing a large-scale, high-profile and rigorous academic recruitment process presented several challenges:
• Thousands of applications across multiple programmes each year.
• Need for a centralised, scalable, and secure platform.
• Time-intensive reporting for applicant demographics and selection progress.
• A requirement for secure authentication that reduced IT team management overhead for the Crick internal reviewers, while still allowing associate organisations to contribute to the review process on shared projects.
• User interface (UI) needs to be on-brand, responsive and optimised for accessibility in line with the Crick's commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion.
The Francis Crick Institute needed a robust, cloud-based recruitment solution to streamline processes, enhance security, and improve applicant and reviewer experiences.
The DataTherapy Solution
DataTherapy designed and delivered a custom academic recruitment portal built on the Platopus SaaS and Claris FileMaker platforms. This solution is highly flexible, supporting short-term placements, PhD recruitment, and Group Leader applications within a single system.
Key features include:
• Private cloud-hosted Claris FileMaker Server for advanced reporting and secure data handling.
• Custom PDF applicant summaries and on-demand demographic reports.
• XLS and CSV export functionality for fast data analysis by the Academic Recruitment Team.
• JSON API access for integration with the Crick's internal data warehouse and reporting platform.
• Seamless Okta Oauth authentication integration to reduce IT management workload.
• Mobile-friendly, accessible user interface to ensure usability for applicants and reviewers worldwide.
Results & Benefits
The Francis Crick Institute now has a scalable, secure, and efficient recruitment platform that supports tens of thousands of applications while being managed by a small academic recruitment team. The new system:
• Streamlines application management and reviewer workflows (for both the internal Crick Team and partner organisations).
• Delivers faster, more accurate reporting for selection committees and diversity monitoring for reporting to funders.
• Reduces IT overhead with secure single sign-on authentication.
• Improves the applicant experience through a responsive, accessible interface.
Does your business need a custom web portal?
At DataTherapy, we specialise in building custom apps for SMEs using the Platopus and Claris FileMaker platforms. Whether you need development, support, cloud hosting or are ready to go all-in on developing a new app from scratch—we can help.
✅ UK-based team of full-time professionals
✅ Certified Claris FileMaker Developers
✅ Platinum Claris Partners
✅ Experts in secure, on-premise and private cloud deployment of Platopus and Claris FileMaker
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Contact us today for a free consultation and discover how DataTherapy can help your team move faster, work smarter, and stay fully in control of your data.
