How do you hire for a job that you don’t understand?
The design of Fulfil – a software as a service recruitment tool that enables recruiters to hire people for jobs that they know nothing about – required a full end-to-end approach from me, including brand architecture, service design and UX research, strategy and design.
1. The Problem Statement
The original objective for this project was to create a recruitment tool for the creative industries to improve the hiring process for both agencies and freelance talent. Based upon this objective, the problem statement that I drafted was:
An employer who feels uncertain about future revenue needs to balance flexibility in staffing levels with their clients’ immediate and unpredictable needs for specialist skills.
2. The Mixed-Method Research
In order to avoid overreliance on a single source of data I undertook research across four areas: qualitative interviews and a survey amongst creative agency employees, competitive analysis to understand the products already in the category (including those created domestically as well as those from overseas) and an online search behaviour analysis to examine how people look for freelance employment.
The value of my approach became clear when I saw just how quickly the creative services industry was changing. The business model has long been built upon long-term retainers, helping agencies to forecast revenue and staffing needs, but has quickly moved towards project-based work, mirroring the overall global trend towards the “gig economy”.
Each form of research surfaced a key insight, which was then distilled into a master insight:
3. The User Persona
Based upon my research findings, a persona was created to represent the product’s core user: human resources professionals in the creative industries.
So let’s meet Lani, the human resources director for the Australian presence of a global creative agency network:
4. The User Journey
So how does Lani currently find freelance talent for her agency? Well there’s some steps involved. Rather a lot of steps. Way too many steps.
In agencies’ efforts to move quickly to hire talent, they end up tripping over themselves and taking longer than necessary. Communication – internally and externally – is a challenge. Documents are filed in emails rather than locations that are accessible by all team members. The perfect talent is found, then found to have a prior booking when they are required. Talent have to chase up payment, again and again. Headhunters’ fees are too high.
There has to be a better way, for everyone.
5. The Brand Strategy
My MVP included three elements – a brand strategy, service design and finally sketches based upon both of these elements.
Because I was creating a product from scratch, the foundation was the brand strategy, including:
the brand’s purpose - why it exists, expressed as a mission (rather than simply “to be profitable”)
its positioning in the market - where the brand sits in people’s minds, relative to the other products on the market
vitally, its key emotion – how it is designed to make people feel. This element is different to other brand models, but important due to the importance of establishing an emotional connection with people (which is difficult with most brand strategy models as they are typically expressed in highly rational terms).
Once the brand strategy was complete I could name the product - Fulfil, due to the importance of the brand’s key emotion to those working in the creative services.
6. The Service Design Blueprint
Now that I knew what the product stood for, I could start to design how it would function. But rather than designing screens, I started with a service blueprint in order to see how it will operate and what this requires before I begin to design the functionality and what it will look like.
7. The Sketches
The first screen that I sketched was the dashboard that would be the hirer’s – Lani’s – homepage. This involved creating the site’s persistent navigation, something that I was keen to simplify as much as possible (to account for the range in users’ proficiency with online services, and the inability to offer on premises training to these users). In addition, I created a “key stats” strip that would appear on every page, alerting users to key tasks specific to that page. Systems that were traditionally done ad-hoc, such as communication (both internally as well as externally with job candidates) were designed during this phase to be part of the software itself, to reduce people’s natural tendencies to use email as their default filing system.
The employer’s homepage is designed as a dashboard, not the key stats strip at the top of the design, which is present across every screen.
The employer’s create job page assists users to select the right job title and description based upon the specific skills that they are looking for.
Employers view user profiles based upon the skills that they are searching for, these profiles are the talent’s online portfolio of work.
Traditionally messaging has happened via email or telephone, making it difficult for people to track. All messaging with Fulfil is done within the platform.
8. From Sketches To Sketch: Wireframes
Persistent bar that indicates key or new items for each page of the site
User-customised tiles/widgets for upcoming tasks
Ability to add more tiles/widgets
Persistent bar that indicates key or new items for each page of the site
User-customised tiles/widgets for upcoming tasks
Ability to add more tiles/widgets
Talent searches are focused on skills ahead of job titles, employers add the skills they want and are matched with talent based upon the skills that talent have listed.
Fulfill suggests skills, job titles and job descriptions from its database.
Job skills are listed as hashtags in alphabetical order. The database that contains these skills is constantly growing.
Job skills are defined in order to help people hire for positions that they don’t understand.
Based upon the skills entered, job titles are suggested by the Fulfil database.
Job descriptions are provided to help users select the most relevant job title.
Job titles are ranked by % match to the skills entered in the search.
The progress of hiring is tracked graphically.
Elements of the hiring process are given target dates, with completion dates being tracked for subsequent post-analysis.
Team members are assigned responsibilities.
The hiring process is entirely customisable.
Talent availability indicated to help employers avoid wasting time having to ask for it.
Employers can read reviews of the talent from past employers.
The match % (based upon skills) is indicated.
Talent’s portfolio (copy, images, video).
Instead of relying on external systems, video or audio-only calling is built in to Fulfil.
Employers can invite multiple staff members to join in a call.
A suggested interview guide is generated based upon the relevant skills / job title.
Similar to employers, talent manages their account through a customisable dashboard, with key items brought to their attention through a persistent bar (which shows items specific to each page).
Favourite employment-searches can be saved.
While Fulfil uses a system of auto-matching based upon skills, talent can also search for open positions manually, with favourite searches able to be saved.