Hiring Helper
Improving the recruitment process flow for WSIB Lab Employees
WSIB Innovation Lab | internship | Winter 2022
The Hiring Helper is a web application tool used by the WSIB Lab that aims to standardize the process of hiring.
For a company that needs to hire co-op students frequently every 4 months, sourcing the right candidates can be incredibly time-consuming and tiresome. Thus, redesigning this application meant finding a way to reduce the back-log when parsing through resumes and selecting potential candidates.
Before
After
of testing users (WSIB Lab Employees) felt more comfortable using the Hiring Helper for hiring needs in the future.
increase in time efficiency when reviewing resumes and taking interview notes as compared to before.
Hiring Helper isn’t helping employees achieve productive hiring, rather is stagnating efficiency.
The current process consists of grading resumes from Hiring Helper, switching to another tab to look at resumes, and then transferring information to a different application when interviewing applicants. The process ends up taking extensively longer than normal, leading to frustration and redundancy.
How might we enhance the reviewing and hiring process for WSIB Lab staff?
Solving this problem would mean that WSIB Lab Employees could quickly retain all application information in one centralized space to refer to, and also focus priorities on other major tasks that need to be done during working hours.
To get a better understanding of user pain points, I conducted 4 user interviews with WSIB Lab, who were managers and other co-op students.
After highlighting key points from the interviews, I used thematic analysis to contextualize the information and where to direct focus towards.
“It’s hard to go back and forth between viewing the matrix and the resume.”
Carter, Communications Co-op
“It gets really repetitive copy and pasting the same table when taking interview notes.”
Amirah, Design Lead
01 Scattered Information
Use of multiple tools amongst different parts of the hiring process makes it difficult to refer to information in a singular place and leads to impatience and additional time consumption.
02 Difficulty Finding Resources
Constant difficulty of finding candidate information and dysfunctional filtering and sorting options resulted in employees feeling frustrated when trying to find the information they want.
03 Feeling Insecure
The excess navigation and repetition of completing additional tasks such as opening and closing tabs led to employees skipping steps when reviewing applications.
By centralizing information, improving the way-finding experience, and diminishing repetitive tasks, we will have enhanced the hiring process.
There were some requirements and constraints that needed to be considered in informing what aspects to redesign.
1. Technical Constraints –– What changes could be made that were technically feasible? As a someone who had limited prior knowledge in front-end development, I needed to consider what was feasible.
2. Time Constraints –– In alignment with technical constraints, I had to consider how long each change would take within the time frame I was given to complete the project (before the end of the term).
01 Centralizing Information
To first understand how we can approach addressing this user need, I analyzed the current flow of how WSIB Lab employees hire and ideated ways where improvements could be made based on the previous user research conducted.
Based on the user research, employees wanted to be able to take interview notes within the application. So what was the best way to carry out this action?
Approach 1 – Interview Section Within Selected Applicants
Approach 2 – Interview Section on a Different Tab in Navigation Bar
Ultimately, I decided to proceed with the second approach for the design solution by adding an additional page in the navigation page for additional interview notes. I decided on approach 2 because:
- Had quicker navigation options and was more easily accessible
- Had limited disruption in the original UI of the resume applicant page
02 Diminishing Repetition
Enabling cross-referencing to improve productivity and reduce tab navigation.
From user research, there was difficulty cross-referencing the grading table and the resume at the same time. By allowing the resume PDF to be viewed simultaneously with grading, this would allow users to quickly review resumes and fill out the grading table increasing efficiency.
Reducing unproductive work by tracking user progress.
The final design solution uses a progress bar to incentivize users to complete the work. One of the main pain points was the time consuming and taxing nature of the hiring process, and this component will make this process a faster and more motivating experience.
03 Improving Way-finding
Making it easier for users to find necessary information and track candidates.
The majority of insights from the user research indicated that it was difficult to find the necessary information that an employee wanted through the current organization of candidates.
Remote moderated testing was conducted with Maze with the 3 available employees and key observations were implemented based on feedback from users.
“There’s no hierarchy between what I’m supposed to look at - the banner and buttons are distracting.”
Amirah, Design Lead
“The screen is very wide and it’s difficult to read all the information given about the applicant.”
Eric, Development Lead
01 Technical Constraints
On the technical side, I was able to learn how to code with React.js and CSS styling with this application, which allowed me to better understand technical constraints in order to maintain the same amount of impact with the initial changes proposed.
02 Bigger Picture
When considering the bigger picture of the application, prioritizing function is an important aspect in the overall impact of the project, so there was more emphasis on functionality over small styling components.
03 Constant Iterations
Throughout the entire process, I realized how crucial gathering constant feedback is before proceeding. For each stage of the project, I would ask WSIB Lab employees about improvements or comments that I could consider before continuing.
01 Prioritizing Certain Features
Because of the limited time constraints factoring into the project, only some features were able to be implemented. If I were to start this project from scratch again, I would prioritize certain features over others to save additional time and capacity.
02 Ask More Questions
Asking for mentorship and help earlier on the process would have improved the way I approached my issues and inform my redesigns and some of the development decisions I’ve made.
