Connect assessed talents with companies
UI/UX | User Research | Web Design
Create an assessment system on job platforms to help companies evaluate candidates
Timeline
5 months
Team
Marketing(Dorcus Ruhab) Operations and Finance (Tyson Ronnie)
Manager (DaHee Kang), Product manager (Jessica Tagbajumi),
UX Researcher (Daplaah-Teng Aryene),
UX Designer (Yuriko Nakai, Dera A, Jane He)
UX Designer/Researcher (me)
Role
User Research / UI/UX Design
Tool
Figma / Notion / Miro / Slack / Zoom
African companies have faced challenges in recruiting suitable tech talent, resulting in wasted time and money on unsuitable candidates. To address this issue, LEDJA is developing a blockchain-based system that ensures the integrity of various types of contract bonding documents in the region.
Additionally, LEDJA is creating an assessment system to evaluate the professional backgrounds of job seekers. This will enable the company to establish a job search platform that connects skilled individuals across the continent and beyond with suitable job opportunities.
Problem Discovery
Enterprises complain about the difficulties in assessing the candidates about their actual skills.
Goal to achieve
Create an assessment system on the job platform to help companies find the right talents
Discover the problem
White paper research
Competitive analysis
Before diving deep into the project, we decided to conduct secondary research to get familiar with the topic. To learn more about how a common verification system works, we searched online to look at the verification process of governments and financial institutions.
The two main verification methods are:
Research on verification system —
Upload credentials/files to verify the validity of credentials
Take photos/videos to verify this person is really you
Research on job search platform —
To learn more about jobseekers in Africa and the typical job search process, we searched for data and papers to understand the demographics of jobseekers in Africa and the common requirements of working in Africa:
Most of them are young people aged 15-34
Young people with college or higher education are more likely to apply online
Language (preferred Afrikaans)
Evaluated qualifications by the institution
However, we also discussed the reasons why those platforms did not do so. If it’s a real problem that the companies are facing, why is there no business creating a verification system to help them solve the problem?
EXT-NG
Digital credential management platform
Brightermonday
Africa job search platform
What do we study about
Potential opportunity
User interviews
Working on the script
Although we have gathered some useful insights from the research we’ve done, we still think it’s necessary to directly speak to our potential users and to listen to their feelings and thoughts towards the recruitment and verification process. Since none of us were in Africa, it was difficult to find qualified respondents, so we recruited these companies from Ledja's network.
Based on what we’ve already known from previous research, we worked together to create the interview scripts. We asked questions to understand trends in why they struggled to find qualified candidates, their goals, and how they felt along the way.
Talk with interviewers
Define our solutions
Affinity map
We listened to recordings of all conversations, wrote down the things we thought were important on the Miro board, and then divided them into different topics.
Important insight different from our assumption ——
Gather things together
Propose solutions and vote
User persona
User journey
User flow
User story of a recruiter —
As a busy recruiter who receives hundreds of job applications every day, I want to use a job search platform to find the right candidates so that I don't waste time and money on the wrong candidates who don't have the skills they claim
User story of a jobseeker —
As a job seeker who applies for many jobs every day, I want to have an easy and fast job search process so that I can save time and reduce anxiety
Design starts
Recruiter’s side - Review, select
Feature 2 - Search, apply
How I got there
Design decision 1 - The progress card interface
In order to design this interface, I asked myself these questions:
How do the recruiters often review and select resumes?
What if there are hundreds of jobs?
What if there are hundreds of candidates?
Trade-off 2: Alternative selection methods
For companies that post a lot of jobs, recruiters can use the search bar.
For companies with fewer job postings, recruiters can simply select a job card.
To find a referred candidate among hundreds of candidates, recruiters can use the search bar.
I want recruiters to know if they review candidates to prevent unnecessary duplication of effort.
According to the number of different job postings, different selection methods are adopted to speed up the selection stage:
Design decision 2 - Wizard-like experience for posting jobs
Key takeaways —
The recruiters can feel impatient when posting jobs. Breaking up this complex process into a series of easy steps can make it less overwhelming.
Providing a progress bar lets recruiters know where they are and feel in control of the job posting process.
Once a job posting is nearing completion, their next natural step is to preview the job posting and get confirmation.
This process isn't necessarily linear, so the user should be able to move between different steps.
Design system
There are about 70 screens in this project. In the future, more screens will be added to provide more functionality, and jobseekers may need screens for mobile platforms such as tablets and smartphones.
Creating a design system of reusable components allows me to work more efficiently, keep elements consistent, develop applications easier, and meet future needs.
I work on mood boards, colour palettes and button guides by myself, and also contribute to the design of typography and other design elements.
What I learned
Understanding the real needs of users is the key
In the beginning, the LEDJA team thought that the biggest problem the recruiting team faced during the hiring process was the difficulty of verifying credentials. However, after speaking directly with our target audience of recruiters, we found that their real need was to make it easy and fast to assess a candidate's skills.
So we talked to our client about our thought. We discussed the importance of combing business goals with user requirements. It’s hard to make one product survive without effectively addressing user needs.
After the meeting, the LEDJA team agreed to revise the direction of the project. It turned out that potential users were satisfied with our revised project goals during subsequent usability tests.
Design system matters
Working with 4+ designers in different time zones makes it difficult to design consistently across screens. Having a design system helps keep design work consistent and creates a better basis for handoff to developers.
Result and outcome
10%
User error rate on key features
80/100
CSAT score for the entire site
30%
increased by Task success rate after iteration on screens
In the future, after the website is launched, more indicators will be used to measure the success of this project, such as the leading rate of website traffic, user retention rate, the proportion of users from the first page to the second page, etc.
Do more research if designing internationally
The user habits and wording of Africa can be different from North America. Before designing, we did some quick research and talked with local people to ensure our design met the standards.
It turns out that the local payment methods are different. In addition to credit cards, many Africans are using mobile phones to pay. Also, they prefer "credit" to "funds" or "balance" when they need to reload their account.