Dover Hiring Planner

A self-serve hiring planner inspired by Dover's marketplace.

The app helps a founder answer four questions before opening a search:

• what will this hire likely cost on Dover's marketplace
• what comparable searches look like
• who should help first
• whether Dover marketplace is the right route

The demo is built from Dover's public 901-row cost-per-hire dataset and deployed as a working full-stack app.

Stack

• Frontend: React + Vite
• Backend: Django + Django REST Framework
• Database: Postgres
• Deployment: Vercel + Neon
• Data: normalized benchmark seed data derived from Dover's public Airtable export

Local development

Install dependencies:

./venv/bin/pip install -r requirements.txt
npm install

Start the Django API:

./venv/bin/python backend/manage.py migrate
./venv/bin/python backend/manage.py bootstrap_planner
./venv/bin/python backend/manage.py runserver 127.0.0.1:8000

Start the frontend:

npm run dev

Seed data

The repo ships with a normalized benchmark seed at backend/planner/data/benchmark_hires.json.

Re-export the frontend fallback data artifacts from that backend seed:

./venv/bin/python scripts/export_planner_data.py

Environment

Copy .env.example and provide:

• DJANGO_SECRET_KEY
• DJANGO_DEBUG
• DJANGO_ALLOWED_HOSTS
• DJANGO_CSRF_TRUSTED_ORIGINS
• CORS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS
• DATABASE_URL
• DATABASE_SSLMODE
• VITE_API_BASE_URL

Vercel deploy

Frontend project:

• root directory: .
• framework: Vite
• uses vercel.json
• env: VITE_API_BASE_URL=https://your-backend-project.vercel.app

Backend project:

• root directory: backend
• zero-config Django deployment on Vercel
• uses backend/vercel.json
• envs:
  • DJANGO_SECRET_KEY
  • DJANGO_DEBUG=false
  • DJANGO_ALLOWED_HOSTS=.vercel.app
  • DJANGO_CSRF_TRUSTED_ORIGINS=https://your-frontend-project.vercel.app
  • CORS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS=https://your-frontend-project.vercel.app
  • DATABASE_URL=postgresql://...
  • DATABASE_SSLMODE=require

The backend deploy runs migrations and imports the bundled dataset automatically via backend/vercel.json:

"buildCommand": "python manage.py migrate && python manage.py bootstrap_planner"

That means Neon is populated on deploy without a separate manual import step.

Notes

• .gitignore excludes local databases, virtualenvs, build output, and .env files.
• Raw source exports are intentionally not tracked in git.
• The shipped app is Django-backed. The frontend JSON planner remains as a fallback path if the API is unavailable.