Oracle Recruiting Tool
Through an Oracle sponsored class at CCA, my team and I developed a HCM (Human Capital Management) tool that features emerging technologies and AI. By designing for trust, this tool builds a healthy relationship with it’s users, rather than dividing them.
Information
TEAM: Alvin Kim, Tia Huang, Anchi Hsu
Oracle Mentor: Bo Wang
DURATION: 1.5 MONTHs, 2019
SOFTWARE: Figma, Illustrator, Principle, KEYNOTE, PREMIERE PRO
KEY ROLES: USER INTERFACE, Wireframes, VISUAL DESIGN, Journey Mapping
Process
primary RESEARCH
SYNTHESIZE KEY FINDINGS
Develop Journey maps
Discuss with mentors
DESIGN and receive feedback
Brief
Recruiters are responsible for the staffing effort of a company. They create and maintain the talent sources that are aligned with the company’s business strategy. Hiring the right talent is crucial to a company’s success, but this effort is becoming more and more challenging to the employers in today’s competitive job market.
How might we automate the recruiting process to effectively identify the qualified candidate for an open position, while providing a good candidate experience and to minimize the time to hire?
Key Features
Virtual Assistant
The virtual assistant actively provide guidance during the hiring process, notify with updates, develop insights, and respond to questions for recruiters during any stage of the process.
Smart Categorization & Matching
This feature makes it easier to find applicants whose resumes fit the job description best without revealing any non-work related information (Only show applicant’s initials, Smart Ranking, Keyword Matching, Quick Actions).
Re-screen Candidates
Additionally, this platform recommends to re-screen rejected candidates who have similar attributes to the ones who have been selected to move on to the next stage.
Data Visualization & Insights
Lastly, hiring managers can see recommend candidates who match diversity goals and catch individuals’ bias based on hiring history.
Interviews
Aaron Kissman \\ Senior Manager of Academic Programs, Design Division, CCA
We interviewed Aaron Kissman, who is in charge of hiring for the Design Division at CCA. We wanted to get a closer look on how Senior Managers make decisions around recruitment, as well as learning about the timeline of the entire process. We learned about the biggest pain points, frustrations, as well as the most exciting parts of hiring within CCA.
Laura Ng \\ Project Manager, Academic Partnerships, Architecture and Design Divisions, CCA
We also talked with Laura Ng, who went through the hiring process at CCA in the last couple of years. As a team, we wanted to see the other side of the hiring process to see which parts stand out most and how much information is necessary in the application.
Hiring managers are aware of their response times because they want to respect the candidates’ time.
I reach out to candidates as soon as possible; within 3-5 days.”
- A.K.
It’s important to see how well the candidate lines up with the job’s location, salary, and work experience.
“Job descriptions are very generic, and it’s hard to tell how candidates would fit into the position.”
- L. N.
It’s hard to be unbiased, but hiring managers want to reduce bias within all stages of the hiring process.
“During some moments of the hiring process, bias automatically happens, but I want to reduce that.”
- A. K.
Current Journey
By mapping out the current journey of a hiring manager at CCA, we can see where the main pain points are. A majority of the pain points lie within the application review process. Not only are there dozens or hundreds of applications to go through, they struggle with filtering through candidates without bias. But lastly, they always have the risk of passing by a good candidate.
By looking at a service blueprint, we can see the interactions hiring managers make during this process. We can see hiring managers have to manipulate and manage various different platforms, constantly going back and forth. Moving between applications can get confusing and overwhelming.
We noticed there was an opportunity to improve the screening process and we framed our ideation around this question:
How might we help hiring managers find candidates with organization, efficiency, and reduced bias within the screening process?
Ideation
We had a brainstorm session on how we could create a smart hiring platform for recruiters. We decided to make our audience recruiters at CCA to make the scope of our project easier to manage.
After brainstorming, we grouped post-its that had shared similar ideas. The groups we came up with are the following:
Categorization
Often times, recruiters have mass amounts of applications to look through. With ways to categorize and filter through various applicants, it’ll make the screening process more streamlined.
Time
Recruiters prefer to respond to applicants as soon as they can in order to respect their time. Additionally, scheduling takes up a lot of time that could be used more efficiently.
Blind Bias
One of the biggest difficulties of being a recruiter is how bias affects their work. Innate biases are almost impossible to diminish. We tried to brainstorm ideas to reduce bias because it’s impossible to completely get rid of it.
Rescreening
Another way to reduce bias would be to implement an option to re-screen candidates who didn’t make the initial round.
Personalization
With emerging technologies, recruiters can rely on AI to provide personalized information for them or for the company they are recruiting for. Personalization would also be useful on the receiving side for applicants, so that their content is curated for them.
Proposed Journey
By implementing the key features listed out above, this is how it would improve the journey of the hiring managers. Though there are still a lot of applications to review, the new platform will make viewing them easier and understandable. Additionally, by reducing the amount of personal information that is displayed, hiring managers can focus on how the candidates work experience and skills fit into the position. Lastly, by adding a re-screening feature and diversity insights, hiring managers have more opportunities to find the right candidate.
Rather than hiring managers moving between various applications and getting lost, all the information and interactions stay in the same smart recruiting platform. The flow is clearly laid out and they automatically understand what stage of the process they are at.
Decisions on Trust
How does this product enhance trust?
Competence
By simplifying the hiring process, there is a reduced chance for human errors.Control
Providing guidance and recommendations without taking away one’s agency allows people to still feel in control of their decisions.Transparency
Visualizing and showing how data is analyzed, allows hiring managers to fully understand the hiring history.Alignment
Efforts toward achieving diversity goals goes toward improving the company image and culture.
Business Benefits
How does this product benefit the business?
Increasing efficiency and reducing hiring staff will reduce the candidate drop out rate. This causes more people to stay in the candidate pool and hiring managers have a greater chance of hiring the right people.
By showcasing candidates skills and experience, there is a greater chance of finding talents that fit the job more accurately.
How does this product benefit candidates?
There is a shorter job application process that allows them to feel seen and respected.
Finding a job that fits in terms of culture and skills.
Reflection
From this project, I learned about how to design for trust. Not all products are about creating the most intuitive interface or the most efficient flow. It’s important to consider the user’s journey and why they would want to continue to come back to a product.