WorkNumber 04Insight Global

A hiring platform shaped around four kinds of hiring manager

Research, strategy and design for Hope, a platform that lets a staffing firm's clients find and book candidates themselves, with recruiters still in the loop.

Role: Product strategy, user research, interaction and visual design, prototyping, pitching
Team: Two designers, a product director, a product manager, an operations lead, three engineers
Platform: Mobile and desktop web
Year: 2021

The Hope dashboard on desktop and on a phone

The problem

Hiring through a staffing firm runs on people: account managers, recruiters, phone calls. It works, but every search has to pass through a person.

The opportunity was a self-service product. Let clients search and shortlist on their own, use matching to do the sorting, and free recruiters for the conversations where they add the most. The risk was ending up as one more job board.

What I did

As one of two designers, I worked across the whole arc: interviews with fourteen hiring managers, a study of how a job requisition actually gets written and filled, competitive positioning, four personas, the information architecture, mobile wireframes, and the visual design.

The research produced the idea the product is built on: hiring managers are not one audience. There are four, they want different things, and the product had to work for each.

Three views of the same process

Hiring managers: Fourteen interviews about what matters most to them when they hire.
The firm's own process: A deep dive into the many steps it takes to craft a requisition and fill it.
Leadership: Where the platform could move the business, looked at from the top down.

The interviews kept returning to the same strengths: recruiters who are well trained and resourceful, a firm that can enter almost any market, and sheer volume of candidates and openings. Hope had to add to those, not replace them.

Where to play

We mapped the field from full-service staffing through talent marketplaces to job boards, on what each competes on: most jobs, most candidates, best jobs, best candidates, best match, and service. Job boards play on the first two. The position we drew for Hope is on matching and service.

Matrix comparing a staffing firm, talent marketplaces and job boards on what each competes on, today — The field today.

The same matrix with the staffing firm's column extended to cover matching and service — The position Hope aims for.

Four hiring managers

Each persona got a name people would remember in a meeting, an illustration, and a short list of what Hope should do for them.

Illustration of a small figure looking up at a huge wave, titled Fishing With Dynamite — Fishing With Dynamite. High-volume hiring managers under pressure to find good people quickly, on budget, with stakeholder approval. For them: tools to refine the requisition, shortcuts, and progress they can watch in real time.

Illustration of a person pushing a unicorn in a shopping cart, titled Purple Unicorn Hunters — Purple Unicorn Hunters. Niche and highly selective; they'll know it when they see it. For them: filtering that goes beyond the resume.

Illustration of a hand with crossed fingers, titled Post and Pray — Post & Pray. Trying their best. For them: assisted self-service. You're in control, but you're not alone.

Illustration of two hands with gold rings and a watch, titled Big Dogs — Big Dogs. Directors and above, who don't hire directly but hold the gate. For them: visibility and influence over the whole process.

User flow diagram for one persona, from landing page through search, shortlist and scheduling — Each persona had its own flow through the product. This is the high-volume hiring manager's.

Structure

The personas turned into a feature list, and the feature list into an architecture. Search is the spine, filtered by role, location and rate. A sidebar holds what people return to: notifications, profiles, the dashboard, messages.

Tree diagram of the platform's features grouped by area — Feature list.

Information architecture diagram from landing page to dashboard, sidebar and menu — Information architecture.

Mobile first

The wireframes follow one job from start to finish: search, narrow, compare, open a profile, book an introduction.

Decision

Keep the recruiter in the product

The home screen opens on picks from the client's own account manager, labelled with her name. Self-service starts from a human recommendation, which is the firm's advantage over a job board.

Decision

Suggest the next move when a search comes up short

A narrow search returns a prompt and not a dead end: raise the maximum rate slightly, or include remote candidates, and see how many more people that opens up.

Wireframe of the home screen listing the account manager's picks — Home: picks from your account manager.

Wireframe of the search screen with a rate range slider — Searching by rate.

Wireframe of search results as detailed candidate cards — Results as cards.

Wireframe of search results on a map — Results on a map.

Candidate profile.

Wireframe of a calendar for booking an introduction meeting — Booking an introduction.

Visual design

The visual direction is clean and modern, with a consistent color scheme and type. Contrast and legibility were held to WCAG guidelines.

The dashboard on desktop with candidate cards, open positions and schedule, and the same content on a phone — The dashboard: recent, relevant candidates first, then the tools for tracking a hire.

Search results on desktop as a table of candidates with ratings and rates, and on a phone as cards — Search results on desktop and mobile.

What I took from it

A persona earns its place when it changes a decision. These four did: they are why the product opens on a recruiter's picks and not an empty search box, and why a director gets a dashboard while a high-volume manager gets shortcuts.