Recruitment App Case Study
My Role
UX Research | Design sprint facilitator | Visual Designer |
I have led the overall design and project management of the Bizlee mobile app by collaborating with 6 developers, a marketing expert, and a content writer.
Contribution
Expert interview, Flowchart, Lightning Demos, Crazy 8s, Mind Mapping, Art Museum, Heat Maps, Storyboards, Wireframes, High Fidelity Mockups, Usability Testing.
The Problem
Coming up with a perfect recruitment app flow for solving the real bias and candidate-recruiter communication problems. We run a Design sprint to validate new recruitment ideas and reviewing already developed recruiter flow.
Total project time: 4 days.
Scope: Redesign the recruiter flow of the BizLee app
Tools
Adobe XD : Visual design & Rapid Prototyping, and user testing.
Mirro (Realtime board) : Data presentation, team remote voting, and effort impact graph.
Google meet: Remote expert interviews and coordinating with the product owner.
Trello : Maintaining common sprint schedules and LDJ’s findings to the team.
Google forms, campaign monitor: Inviting user doe testing and getting survey feedback.
Other: Pen, paper, Whiteboard, post-its, time timer, mobiles (user test recording devices), scissors, different color voting dots, and sharpies.
Current solution
Existing flow’s problems :
1. No communication feature between recruiter and candidates.
2. Missing of the detailed and informative Candidate profile.
3. No feature to manage candidates in various steps of recruitment.
4. Throughout the flow, the content is not related to recruitment.
5. There is no Easy and informative dashboard.
6. No recruiter engagement through the main feed.
7. Posting a job is not easy.
8. There is not a wide variety of questionnaires while posting a job
etc….
Plan and schedule
I use a detailed plan of 4 days from book Sprint and ajsmart for scheduling and planning recruiter flow design sprint.
Who are my users?
- Recruiters who want an easy and effective recruiter platform.
- Professionals looking for new opportunities.
- Professionals who find it difficult to reach recruiters for improving skillsets and communication.
1. Monday
Training for the team about the design sprint
The first thing which I did before jumping into the design sprint is to train the team. The understanding overall process of the design sprint helps the team to participate confidently.
Step 1: Initial kickoff call & remote expert interview
We kicked off by jumping on a conference call with Leena Sahu from Norway (Human resource expert) and Mahmoud Douhi from Qatar(Product owner), intending to get as much information about the recruiter challenges and bias exists in the recruitment process.
We went through exercises to find the key challenges of the project that we should tackle first in this opening sprint;
the entire team asked questions to the recruiter through google meet and took notes as How Might We format.
How might we — rewrite problems as challenges
We record all potential problems with the product in the HMW format. It is a way of reframing a problem into questions so that the team can start thinking about the solution.
Some of the HMW notes taken by the team:
- How might we integrate various tests in the recruitment process?
- How might we automate the JD posting?
- How might we integrate templates while posting jobs?
- How might we introduce auto-reply to rejected candidates with reasons?
At the end of this, I have categorized it and then the team voted for their favorite spatter
Long term goal
First, we defined a long term goal, how everything might optimistically look 2 years from now:
“In two years, we will be the best recruitment platform that’s more convenient than trying out multiple platforms for finding talent and job”
Sprint goal
Questions for the sprint are:
- Can we make it clear that we are not just dealing with job applying and posting a job?
- Can we make bizlee recruiter module more interactive between candidates and recruiters to remove all the bias?
- Can we make the recruitment process more empathetic?
Map
⚡ Lightning Demos
Get inspired by others’ solutions.
Look at great solutions from a range of companies, including yours. Three minutes per demo. Capture good ideas with a quick drawing on the whiteboard.
We reviewed other products to find the best patterns that we can use in our product. The team has come up with the best solution for the features and challenges!
Examples like :
- Scheduling, location/file sharing from Zoho Recruit.
- Feed from Airbnb & Google files. etc
2. Tuesday
Creating the first concepts and vote
we took some time to work individually and generate ideas through
4 part sketching, crazy 8’s, 3 step concept, heat map vote, solution presentation, straw poll vote, decider vote.
My team has come up with lots of concepts.
Once we are ready with self-explanatory hand-drawn concept sketches then we started voting.
Some of the moments captured in these steps:
Art Museum and Heat Maps
Solution presentation
User test flow
The User Test Flow exercise, helps the Sprint team to agree on basic storyline for the recruiter user test. It turns those messy discussions into a step-by-step instruction list for the Storyboard. This activity will give clarity and easiness for the facilitator to draw the storyboard.
Once you have your beginning and end steps, pay particular attention to the ideas in the sketch that you need to get feedback on, and create Action-Steps for the User to interact with that idea.
The goal of the exercise is to align the team on these “steps” using this exercise so that you won’t need to discuss them during the storyboarding session.
Storyboard
In this step, my team was pretty sure about the flow we are gonna prototype the next day.
I have used this storyboard to plan the entire high-fidelity prototype.
3. Wednesday
In this step, I have changed my role from facilitator mode to visual design and prototype mode.
After we’ve transferred the sketches to a storyboard and have decided on the user flow, it was time to build a realistic prototype — the one that we were going to use the next day while testing it with users. We used Sketch and InVision to create a simulation of the desired experience.
After I’ve transferred the solution sketches to a storyboard and have decided on the user flow. It is time to build a realistic prototype!
I have used Adobe XD, Unsplash, and Trello to create and manage prototyping tasks.
Priority screens to focus on :
Dashboard,Timeline, Folder management, Reminder, Broadcast sms, New profile, Add questionnaire/test, Schedule interview
Some of the high fidelity screens which I have done for this sprint :
4. Thursday
I have assigned 2 of my sprint mates to recruit 5 real target users (not their friends) for the final user test. they have used user interview invitation mail and calls to get connected with users.
Before setting up for the user test we have reviewed the entire prototype with the help of a storyboard.
User interview and prototype testing
I have assigned each one's responsibilities and started working on writing user interview scripts, Tasks, and NDA with the help of a content writer.
- Set up the live stream and interview space ready
- Get all the required testing devices ready for recording and testing.
- Get snacks and water
- Individual tasks for the interview
- Feedback form
User interview is divided into 4 part activities.
Activity-1
Friendly welcome: Obedient, honest, and put her at ease. Thank them for coming and being a part of this
We: Hi, Ms…….. , Good morning/ Noon.
Welcome to the BizLee office. Hope you didn’t find it difficult to reach.
They: ……………No
We: You are sitting at a place where we are building a product that simplifies connecting businesses and today/now we are going to take your valuable feedback on one of our processes that makes recruiters’ job easy.
They: …..
We: We are not testing you. We are testing this product. If you are stuck or confused anywhere, it’s going to be feedback for us that helps us to find problems that we need to address.
They: Sure….
We: Now that we are ready, let us quickly ask you few questions followed by showcasing our prototypes and designs.
Before we start, do you have any questions, please?
They: No/Yes
NDA signature
We would like to take a signature of yours on this NDA
Activity-2
General talk — Contextual questions
We: Usually how many days do you take to close a position? (if it’s less than 15days, which is the easy step)
(if it’ more than 15days, where do you feel difficult)They:……
We: How do candidates in Bangalore respond to interviews?
They: ……
We: what’s your opinion on current apps/websites that solve the recruitment process.They:
We: what do you like or dislike more? Why?
They:…..
Activity-3
Introduce prototype & app
We: Would you be willing to look at some of our prototypes?
They: Yes
We:
The prototype is in the final stage and while using it, if you run into something that’s not working, i will help you.There is no Right or Wrong while testing this, Since I didn’t design this, you can be honest in giving the feedback is most helpful.
ACTIVITY- 4
Tasks (some of the tasks which we asked )
1. Create your login Id
Hey, Anusha(recruiter name )just think that you came across bizlee on the play store. You want to explore the app. How would you begin with?
2. Create a business page
You have a business requirement. You found a business on Bizlee which may fulfill your requirement. You want to get connected to them. How will you do that?
3. Chat with a candidate to know his availability
You have shortlisted a group of candidates. Now you want to schedule interviews. How will you know the availability of a candidate for an interview?
Give some time to finish all the tasks.
We: What do you think of this(specify any of the tasks)
What do you expect that will do(specify a task)
What are you looking for(specify a task)
What’s your instant feeling after seeing this
To wrap up the interview
How does this app feel with what you used now?
What did you like about this?
What did you dislike?
How can you describe this to your friends?
Anymore to tell us something about the app
In existing app/services, did you face any difficulties? What are they?
We have given a certificate of participation and some goodies for the recruiters for coming and spending time with us for product improvement.
They liked this user testing process and accepted our invitation to be a part of the beta family!
Finding patterns and summarizing the results from the user interview
Design sprint deliverables to scrum sprint board for next spirit planning
Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed my process have any feedback, I’d love to hear from you. You can give your response to this post below or email me at rajcreation.designs@gmail.com
