RECRUITER'S HoME
A brand-new platform designed to assist recruiters to create and maintain jobs on their career page and monitor the performance of their jobs.
The Challenge
Specialising in tailored career sites for multiple companies in Germany, the responsible teams for creating and maintaining these career sites face inefficiencies in managing their job listings and tracking their performance effectively. While there is an existing manager area to manage the career page and the jobs, it lacks overview and user-friendliness, causing delays. On the customer's end, making minor updates to the career page and their content requires contacting customer service team, leading to significant delays and reduced responsiveness to market needs. Moreover, the absence of clear data tracking impedes informed decision-making and optimisation of recruitment strategies.
The goal of this project was to develop a platform aimed at empowering both internal implementation managers and recruiters from the customer's side to independently create, maintain, and monitor jobs and content on their career page. The project was to initiate with the launch of the first product and subsequently enhance its features. After 6 months of design preparation, the initial launch occurred in the 9th month.
My Role
My team consisted of six members: a Product Owner, two front-end developers, two backend developers, and myself as the UI & UX Designer. I was responsible for conducting research, creating interactive prototypes, designing user interfaces, and developing a design library. Furthermore, I continuously gathered feedback using various research and testing methods, such as observation sessions, interviews, and usability tests.
The Process
01
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Research & Brainstorming
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02
Information Architecture & Navigation Design
03
Wireframing & User Interface Design
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04
Product Launch & Feedback
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05
Iterative Improvements & Future Development
The design process involved a thorough examination of existing software, followed by crafting information architecture and wireframes, leading to the development of the initial product release. Subsequent iterations focused on continuous improvement based on data and user feedback.
01 - Research & Brainstorming
The journey began with a deep dive into the existing software, analysing how current career sites were being developed, and understanding the use of the existing manager area. The manager area proved to be technical and overwhelming, lacking a clear overview of its functions.
The existing software
Due to its complexity, the initial version was scoped to prioritise job-related functionalities. The solution involved enhancing job visibility, eliminating unnecessary features, and simplifying the process of creating and editing jobs.
To establish this new platform with enhanced functionalities, the process began by brainstorming ideas. To ensure a comprehensive approach, I conducted an ideation workshop involving a multidisciplinary team, which facilitated alignment with stakeholders.
Ideation workshop with stakeholders
Subsequently, the ideas were refined into specific topics and used to define use cases. Among various others, some of the most crucial use cases included:
1
As a HR manager, I would like to edit my career site.
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2
As a HR manager, I would like to edit exiting jobs or create news jobs.
3
As a HR manager, I'd like to see the performance of my jobs.
4​
As a HR manager, I'd like to manage the users and organisations.
02 - Information Architecture & Navigation Design
Creating an information architecture was essential for shaping the product's structure, with particular emphasis on designing the new platform with intuitive navigation. With the help of initial sketches in pen and paper, along with simple digital wireframes, I identifying two viable concepts based on the use cases, and created quick interactive prototypes to test navigation usability at an early stage.
Navigation concept initial sketches
Navigation concept with use cases
The interactive prototypes contained basic content outlines, instead of detailed concept for individual pages. Conducting usability tests with internal users familiar with the existing manager area, I gathered valuable feedback on product comprehension. After finalising the information architecture and navigation, my focus shifted towards refining the content of each section.
Interactive prototype for testing navigation
03 - Wireframing & User Interface Design
After refining the navigation, the next step involved defining the user flow for the Login and the Homepage. Following multiple iterations, the concepts were finalised. I then developed a design library based on atomic design principles, which served as the foundation for creating the final product versions.
I moved to the Jobs and Performance sections, crafting concepts and corresponding UI designs for development. While most of the job-related functionalities were already existing in the current system, the concept of providing performance data for the jobs was entirely new. Through interviews, it became evident that users lacked the time and expertise to decipher complex performance data and were unsure how to utilise it. Thus, the objective was to present data in the most easily digestible and comprehensible format for non-expert users. These were refined through multiple feedback rounds with product owners, developers, and stakeholders.
As illustrated below, the initial wireframe for one of the performance pages evolved into the final product design, incorporating elements from the design library.
Concept wireframes to final designs
04 - Product Launch & Feedback
After 9 months, the first version of our product went live. During the handover of the product to the recruiters, observation sessions were conducted as the users logged in for the first time, creating or editing jobs and exploring their performances. Two weeks later, follow-up interviews were conducted to gather insights on product usage and identify any missed features or improvements.
Concept wireframes to final designs
05 - Iterative Improvements & Future Development
Feedback from observation sessions and interviews guided the team in enhancing the product further. I worked on new features such as sharing functionality, knowledge and services, and further performance pages. User engagement tracking, to measure product adoption and identify areas for improvement, were also incorporated.
In contrast to the previous manager area, we've now developed a commercially viable product poised to generate revenue for the company. Notably, we've received positive feedback from recruiters, witnessed increased Weekly Active Users (WAU) and Monthly Active Users (MAU), indicating a promising adoption rate. Recruiters expressed eagerness to participate in usability tests even before features were live, indicating strong engagement. Moving forward, our team's focus was to implement the most requested feature, content editing in the career site, after the successful launch of the Recruiter's Home.