Project Context

The Wise Seeker, a Spanish startup, wants to revolutionize the HR industry by validating candidates' skills through platform-based assessments, replacing traditional CVs with verified skills and professional tests. In this way, applicants can objectively showcase their abilities, with resulting scores automatically visible to companies seeking specific skills and work expertise levels. To reach all these goals, the company needs to approach a solid and seamless digital product that properly connects candidates with recruiters in the easiest, most comprehensive, and fastest way possible.

As a product designer, I conducted research on the needs of both candidates and recruiters, leveraging the findings to design a user-friendly digital platform featuring different interfaces for both candidates and recruiters. Additionally, I oversaw the product's production through agile methodologies (sprint planning) and provided mentorship to junior UX designers newly onboarded by the company.

Research

Given the innovative nature of The Wise Seeker's business model, identifying the target user segment became challenging. Therefore, my initial and central question was: "Who and how are the potential users that would cover job needs within this platform?" To answer this, I conducted 10 one-on-one remote interviews with candidates to pinpoint their primary needs regarding job applications and recruitment processes in a high level. Please note that initially, the plan was to implement the same process for recruiters. However, due to budget and time constraints, this was not feasible during my collaboration with the company.

As The Wise Seeker platform operates digitally, primarily utilizing digital assessments, the main candidate focus target was job seekers (recently or currently seeking) aged 20 to 45 with moderate to advanced computer proficiency. These interviews helped us also with the creation of Personas. I planned the interviews as follows:

‍Oganizing all the logistics to conduct the interviews:

• Planning the interview schedules and available slots.
• Creating screeners and discussion guides.
• Recruiting candidates participants from different roles. (Marketing & Sales, Programming, Administration, Project management, and Trades)
• Managing all participant communication regarding setup and interview details.

Conducting 10 one-on-one remote interviews

• Conducting, recording, and taking notes of each interview.
• Involving junior UX designers in these tasks to facilitate their learning and growth.
• Regular brief meetings with The Wise Seeker teams to expose inicial insights.

Gathering  and analysing the data:

• Rewatching the videos for further note taking.
• Gathering topics, creating/applying tags, and uncovering related insights via Affinity Wall and Excel.
• Reviewing these insights with The Wise Seeker teams in order to agree on hypothesis and final insights.
• Adding all the results in Dovetail to start a central repository as hub knowledge of the company in terms of research.

"For me it is vital that an offer is complete and realistic about the job. I need to trust the company"

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Please note the Primary Persona was assigned to Programming users as many of the assessments in the platform were programming oriented.

At a later stage, during the initial iteration of the designs, I also coordinated and conducted usability testing for recruiters and candidates using the UserTesting platform. Nevertheless, due to data protection reasons and to enhance this case study readability, I have decided not not present the details here. However, If you are interested in learn more about this Usability Test study, please contact me.

Findings

The interviews aimed us in identifying the differences between User Personas in terms of behaviors and attitudes, but also helped us understand the common needs and pain points that many of them expressed. They are the following ones:

• Lack of trust in job posts: Out of 10 participants surveyed, 7 expressed a lack of trust in job postings, claiming negative experiences where the position details were inaccurately described. The absence of salary information emerged as one of the main concerns.
• Absence of feedback after the application or the interviews: All participants stated frustration due to a lack of status during their application and no feedback after the interviews. They described feeling demotivated and having negative sentiments as a result.
• Extensive forms that lead to user bounce rates: 6 out of 10 participants found filling out long forms exhausting, with some admitting to abandoning the process halfway through.
• Age/appearance/experience biases: All the older participants (4) expressed frustration due to biases related to age, appearance, or overqualification.
• Difficulty in refining their job search: 8 out of 10 participants found very challenging and time-consuming the fact of refining their job search to apply to specific role positions.
• Work-life balance struggle: 6 out of 10 participants found it difficult to find job positions that offered a suitable balance between their work and personal life.
• Lack of guidance or friendly treatment from the companies: 5 out of 10 participants mentioned missing guidance and a more friendly treatment from the company side.

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Recommendations

After analysing the above findings, we came up with the following recommendations:

• Making sure that the salary information is added and highlighted in the job posts: Initially, we considered making the salary field mandatory. However, recognizing that some companies prefer not to include it in job descriptions, opting for a salary range could offer a more balanced solution, suitable for both recruiters and candidates.
• Creating a system of progress panels and notifications to inform candidates about their application status: This would involve also a system where recruiters could easily enter and update the applicants' statuses. The automatization to entering this status updates was was also a topic of discussion during the meetings with The Wise Seeker teams.
• Creating an appropriate filtering tool for applicants: This topic is key to assisting users in refining their specific roles without investing excessive time.
• Focusing on creating effective and user-friendly assessments: Creating seamless assessments encourages candidate completion, lowering bounce rates and mitigating CV misinformation, thereby reducing biases in the recruitment process.

Designs

Based on some of the findings and recommendations, we focused in the first instance on creating user-friendly and engaging assessments for candidates. These are the first design iterations to achieve part of this goal. (Please click the button below to see the full interactive prototype regarding candidates)

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