MarineMan is a digital ecosystem for the maritime industry, developed by AvadaCRM for Marine Man Ship Management.
The platform consists of two interconnected parts: a public web portal for seafarers, shipowners, and industry specialists, and a closed internal HRM system through which the customer's team manages all operational work.
This case study focuses on the development of an internal HRM system —the platform's operational core.
Customer and context
Marine Man Ship Management is a crewing company specializing in recruitment and crew management for shipping companies. The nature of the business requires working with large specialist databases, a constant flow of applications and vacancies, and the need to simultaneously communicate with seafarers and employers.
For such a business, standard HR tools are not suitable: a solution tailored to industry specifics is needed, capable of processing a large number of profiles and vacancies, while also providing the HR team with real tools for daily work.
Challenges and objectives of the project
During the analysis phase, we thoroughly examined the crewing company's processes and identified the key tasks the system was designed to address:
- centralise data on seafarers, vessels, companies and vacancies in a single, manageable environment;
- Automate routine HR processes and speed up the recruitment cycle; provide recruiters with tools for mass and targeted communications with the database;
- ensure a full cycle of vacancy management – from publication to closing;
- establish content moderation: profiles, vacancies, reviews of vessels;
- implement the mechanics of promoting profiles and vacancies within the system;
- Connect the public portal and the internal system so that data is synchronized automatically, without manual transfer.
Combining all of this in a single product is no trivial task. That's why we developed a system that is essentially a hybrid of an industry portal, a database, and an HR tool. We'll explain how it works below.
MarineMan Public Portal
MarineMan, as a public platform, is an industry-specific web portal for the maritime industry. It features directories of seafarers, shipowners, job openings, and mentors with filters and detailed profiles, a vessel database of over 750,000 vessels with reviews, and personal accounts for seafarers and companies. All entities are interconnected and interact with each other.
This resource is managed by the Marine Man Ship Management team through an internal HRM system and an admin panel developed by AvadaCRM.
HRM system: functionality
An HRM system is a closed work environment for HR managers and recruiters: it's where they work with candidates, process applications, publish job openings, and manage communications. Here are the capabilities we've built into the system.
Integration of the portal and the HRM system
The portal and HR Admin work with a single database, eliminating duplication and manual data transfer. Any action on the website is instantly reflected in the internal system, and vice versa:
- a sailor registers on the portal - his profile immediately appears in HR Admin;
- the company creates an account - recruiters see it instantly;
- the application for the vacancy has been submitted - it is already in the queue for processing;
- Status, mentor, feedback—everything is synchronized in real time.
Working with the sailors' database
Specialists work with three streams of candidates: those who registered on the portal themselves, those added manually, and those collected through the built-in parser.
The parser is a separate module we developed specifically for this project: it automatically collects profiles from open sources and populates the database without any manual effort.
Searching and filtering by specialization, experience, documents, region, and availability allows you to create the desired selection from thousands of profiles in just minutes.
Each sailor can be assigned an internal status—favorites, ex-crew, ex-crew left us, potential—which turns the database into a tool for personnel reserves, rehiring, and strategic work with personnel.
Mentor system
One of the non-standard features is the mechanics of assigning mentors.
A specialist can assign mentor status to an experienced sailor. Afterward, their profile is labeled accordingly and appears in a separate directory on the portal.
This expands the platform's capabilities beyond traditional recruiting. Experienced specialists have the opportunity to share their knowledge, while aspiring sailors gain access to industry expertise. This mechanism builds a professional community around the product and enhances its value to the audience.
Working with vacancies
The system supports the full cycle: job creation, editing, status management, and closing. Within a single interface, the team manages both Marine Man Ship Management's own job openings and those posted by companies through the portal.
Job openings can be promoted to the top of the listing for priority management. And linking to the candidate database makes the opening the entry point for an active search: after opening a position, the recruiter immediately begins filtering the database and working with suitable profiles.
Bulk mailings
The system has a built-in messaging module—a tool for direct communication with the candidate and company database.
The recruiter filters the database by the required criteria—specialization, experience, region, status—to obtain a targeted selection and launch a mailing. Messages can be delivered via several channels simultaneously: through the seafarer's personal account on the portal, by email, and via Telegram. For this purpose, we developed a special Telegram bot for MarineMan—it ensures instant message delivery.
Similar mechanics have been implemented for working with companies: the team can communicate with registered shipowners, informing them of updates and services.
Working with companies
The system maintains a database of ship-owning companies. When a company registers on the portal, it is submitted to the HRM system for moderation—a specialist verifies the data and confirms the account.
The company then becomes available for work: you can find it in the database, view its profile, involve it in recruitment processes, and include it in a mailing campaign. All interactions with companies—from initial moderation to ongoing communications—are managed within a single tool.
Promotion within the platform
The system includes tools for managing post visibility. Specialists promote seafarers' profiles to the top of the database, and vacancies to the top of the listings.
This creates an internal promotion mechanism that solves several problems at once: it accelerates the filling of priority positions, provides clients with a tool for increasing visibility, and forms the basis for monetizing this service.
Moderation of vessel reviews
The system includes a module for managing seafarers' reviews of vessels. Vessel profiles on the portal contain ratings and comments—and the Marine Man Ship Management team manages this content through the internal system.
Administrators review incoming reviews, publishing, hiding, or rejecting them. This helps maintain the quality of information in the vessel database and creates a transparent environment for seafarers who use reviews when making employment decisions.
Development technologies
A team of 9 specialists worked on the project:
- business analyst;
- designer;
- SEO specialist and marketer;
- 3 front-end developers;
- 2 backend developers;
- 2 testers.
Even at the design stage, it was clear that the product would require a stack capable of handling large volumes of data, complex business logic, and constant exchange between the portal and the back-end system. We chose:
Vuexy HTML — for the frontend of an HRM system: a functional template with a rich set of components, providing a clean interface and high performance.
Python (Django) — for the backend: a stack proven in projects with complex business logic, multi-level role access, and scalability requirements.
Django Ninja for APIs: strongly typed, fast endpoints with minimal redundancy for continuous data exchange between the portal and the HRM system.
The chosen architecture provides the product with a good foundation for growth: new modules, an increased user base, and expanded functionality—all without reworking the system core.
Development stages
The work was carried out systematically – from deep immersion in the customer’s business to launch.
- Business process analysis. We studied the specifics of a crewing company: HR processes, the logic of working with seafarers, vacancies, companies, and vessels.
- Structural design. We developed the solution architecture and defined the division between the public portal and the internal HR system.
- Database and entity logic design. We developed the data structure for seafarers, companies, vacancies, mentors, vessels, and reviews. Interfaces and business logic were developed in Mockup.
- UI/UX design. We designed interfaces for HR professionals' workflows and developed a custom system design.
- Front-end and back-end development. We implemented the interfaces in HTML/CSS/JS, and the server-side logic in Python and Django. Development was conducted in parallel with the public portal, which reduced the timeframe and ensured consistency across all levels.
- Setting up integration logic. We linked the external portal and HRM into a synchronized, unified system.
- Testing and debugging. We verified that all scenarios worked correctly for both portal users and the HR team.
- Launch and further development. The system is operational and used in Marine Man's real business processes. The architecture was designed from the start with growth in mind: adding new modules and expanding functionality will not require reworking the core system.
Result
MarineMan is an industry recruiting portal, an HRM tool for the maritime industry, and a digital environment for seafarers and shipowners. Essentially, it's a specialized digital platform with integrated CRM/HRM functionality.
The solution allowed the public portal and internal management system to be integrated into a single environment, centralizing work with large volumes of data and automating recruitment in the maritime industry.
The client's team received user-friendly tools for recruiting and communications , and the product itself received an architecture designed for future growth. Vessel profiles with reviews, a mentor system, geolocation, and ratings increased the resource's value to the audience and transformed it into a fully-fledged professional environment.
As a result, Marine Man Ship Management has acquired a maritime ecosystem that works simultaneously for thousands of seafarers and hundreds of companies, covering the entire operational cycle of the crewing business.
