case study

My most recent work in design has been focused on UI/UX design for my employer IQTalent's enterprise platform, IQRecruit. This case study is a Candidate Monitor feature I developed in 2021, which is currently on the roadmap.

The IQRecruit platform is an enterprise SaaS application for the Recruitment industry. At it's core, it operates similar to an applicant tracking system, where users create client engagements, and within those engagements are multiple requisitions for the different roles users are trying to fill for their client.

These requisitions are candidate pipelines, tracking their progress through the interview process, from identification to hire. Adjacent functionality in the platform include visualizations of pipeline metrics, outreach campaigns, enriching candidate information with third-party data integration, and exporting features to share work with clients or import into other ATS systems.

new feature

Create a candidate monitor for active candidates in the engagement pipelines to improve the information input experience for users, therefore increasing user adoption of already-established functionality.

This feature also addresses a business goal to have more information about candidates be recorded inside platform vs the current norm of storing in OneNote notebooks.  
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My thinking is, easier access will lead to richer information being stored directly on candidates in IQRecruit vs. in OneNote, as well as a way to organically track activity on all candidates in the Screening/Submitted stages, which tends to be the focus of user activity, with less 'clicking around' to get to the candidates.

problem statement

Users looking to add information to candidates in the system have to navigate to the requisition where they are housed, and then through their candidate information modal to get to the correct place to enter data. So clickthrough creates a problem with realtime recording of information while on client calls (as they often handle large numbers of requisitions and jump back and forth in the conversation a lot).    

visualizing the solution

From that initial problem, I designed my initial sketches of a feature that would sit on the platform dashboard. This process had some competitive research on the frontend as our company has access to other recruiting platforms (AKA applicant tracking systems), from which to derive useful insights. I sought to restrain design to what could be accomplished with the current Bootstrap framework the platform is currently built on, since that would affect Once completed, presented them to the rest of the product team and the Director of Technology:

product team review

The team had one issue they thought could be a factor for this type of feature: loading that candidate data across all requisitions might be an issue for users with larger engagements. So we set up user interviews with team leaders on those larger engagements to get their feedback on the feature itself, as well as this particular issue, before including feature on the product roadmap.  
 
One solution we brainstormed in the meeting was creating a place to house the candidate monitor on the requisitions themselves instead of the dashboard, to reduce the data load burden, in case it were to be an issue. I decided to create another design mock-up of this, so going into user interviews I could A/B test between the two options and gauge the pros and cons of each approach according to their feedback.

Candidate Monitor Dashboard Prototype (click top right to expand)

follow up from feedback

I followed up with the Product team after completing the interviews. While the feedback was mostly affirming we were on the right path with the product, one thing that stood out was Emily's feedback on notes timestamping (included above). We all agreed that this functionality would be useful, so I adjusted the UI to support this new behavior in the feature. This is now included on the product roadmap as a major update that's currently in development and set to release later this year.

Updated Candidate Monitor Requisition Landing Page Prototype (click top right to expand)

additional IQRecruit support

I've been involved with the product design, management, and UX research of the platform since it's inception, in what could modestly be considered an intern capacity. So, mostly product management and UX research during the alpha stage (interviewing users about expected functionality and using that feedback to prioritize product roadmap with Director of Technology). Leading the Beta stage user testing rounds to prepare for launch, and subsequently serving as a Subject Matter Expert in the training of internal employees and external contractors after launch. Based on the reported success of the platform for internal usage, the company is now working towards releasing the product to the B2B market in 2023.