massi
mass-hiring and job-seeking made fair and easy for everyone
Working with talent acquisition means partaking in a wide variety of activities: from helping the company understand its needs (and assessing whether or not those needs could be fulfilled with the acquisition of new or internally sourced talent) all the way to helping candidates communicate their own needs and desires in order to help ensure the best possible match.
The sheer scope of the work can quickly overload the hiring representative, even when it comes to hiring a single person or a small group of people. It goes without saying then that hiring hundreds of people simultaneously is no small feat.
Massi's goal is to support ethical mass hiring, that is: quickly finding and hiring suitable candidates at a low cost while keeping fairness at the forefront of the process.
My role
For this project, Yessica Bogado and I joined forces as a freelance design duo.
The project has two well-defined user groups: the hiring party and the candidate. My partner worked mainly on the hiring party tools and some operational aspects of the project while I took over managerial duties such as road mapping and strategy while also designing the mobile app for candidates. The project was carried out in a highly collaborative manner, with frequent work sessions with the team and business stakeholders, as well as prospective users.
The problem
After a long career in HR management, the client for this project identified a commonly occurring phenomenon in industries such as manufacturing, call centers, mass sales, and more: It often is a huge challenge to fulfill the constant need of hiring large numbers of people for entry-level positions, either due to expansion or turnover.
With the idea to build a set of tools to help with mass hiring, the client commissioned the design of an MVP under a limited freelance contract.
Problem statement
Hiring is hard because it's a complex process with many moving parts. Mass-hiring is an even bigger challenge due to the complications inherent to scale, hence the need for a product that enables hiring teams to manage their workflow in an efficient manner by automating as many parts of the process as possible while still allowing for personal and humanized operations.
Research
To kick off the project, we conducted a few research activities in order to gain a general understanding of the current market scenario, and the perceptions of prospective users.
Competitive analysis
The market for talent acquisition management software already has a few big players. We conducted a detailed competitive analysis based on online reviews, documentation, and community forum discussions, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of a selection of 4 of the most popular talent acquisition software based on company size, client reputation, and google search stats.
This analysis unveiled that although there are mature products already on the market, there are still gaps, especially on the candidate's front, with the majority of the products prioritizing the interests of the paying stakeholder, providing a sub-par experience to the people that are searching for jobs, who at the end of the day, are an integral part of the system itself.
Semistructured interviews
We conducted a series of semi-structured interviews with people from both sides of the product's scope: On one hand, we spoke to both in-house hiring managers and agency-based hiring professionals. On the other hand, we also spoke with people actively searching for entry-level jobs.
Some of the main findings are listed below:
People looking to hire
Many old-school practitioners are wary of the culture and work ethics of younger people.
Most of them identify digital channels as the main tool to reach younger folks seeking entry-level jobs.
Finding enough well-fitted candidates is often the biggest problem recruiters face when it comes to mass hiring.
People looking to be hired
Younger people often struggle to secure a “first job” due to a lack of relevant and general work experience.
The selection process is long, unaffordable, and exhausting for some candidates.
Candidates often feel unheard and powerless during the selection process.
Main findings
Mass hiring is hard because it can be expensive and time-consuming especially when one must consider the ongoing cultural shifts of the last few years.
Candidates face challenges as well, especially related to disadvantages inherent to seeking a first job opportunity.
Hence the need for a product that acts as a bridge between the 2 groups, offering quick and easy-to-use tools for the hiring party while also providing a fair and empowering experience to younger candidates who want their value recognized within a generally uneven power dynamic.
Design
Massi tries to solve a two-sided problem. On the one side, the hiring party needs to fulfill highly demanding business needs. On the other side, the job-seeking party needs to be looked at from a humanist perspective, which can be hard at a scale.
With this in mind, the design phase began with a co-design workshop aimed at bringing both sides together to find common ground.
Co-design workshop
With the findings from the research activities, we conducted a co-design workshop with participants from across Massi's prospective target demographic, including experienced and younger recruiters and people seeking their first jobs.
The activities within the workshop were deliberately designed to mitigate the effects of the unbalanced power dynamics inherent to the relatachioship between prospective employees and employers, due to the traditionally vulnerable position of the former.
Co-design session in progress, while keeping everyone safe from COVID
A significant number of design implications across multiple problem areas for both the hiring and the job-seeking parties were revealed in the workshop.
We will be focusing on the most impactful ones on the job-seeker side in this section, but you can explore the full report (in Spanish) here.
Problem areas and design implications
Recruiters cannot always disclose some details upfront (e.g. financial), this uncertainty often discourages the candidate enough to not even apply.
The product must provide a mechanism that builds trust in the hiring party for them to provide these "sensitive" pieces of information, if not upfront, at least at a given stage of the process, letting candidates know that if they remain in the process up to the said stage, they will be informed about them.
According to recruiters, CVs are often not well crafted and are not sufficient for what they need to learn about the candidate.
The product must provide mechanisms and resources to help candidates provide all the information needed to give them the best chances at getting the job.
Candidates often feel lost and anxious about the process due to a lack of effective and accessible information from the recruiter.
The product must provide a duplex communication channel between the recruiter and the candidate, keeping in mind that scale might be an issue considering the volume of candidates at a given moment and the limited resources within hiring teams.
Here are some examples of how these implications shaped the product's design:
Sensitive information disclosure
It is often the case that hiring teams are not allowed to unveil some details about a job opening due to many constraints (e.g. higher-ups' traditional views, "strategic moves", ignorance, etc.).
Financial details are one type of information that companies are hesitant to share with candidates, especially with massive numbers of them. To mitigate the negative effect that this causes on the job-seeking party, massi addresses the issue by structuring each selection process (which is highly customizable by the hiring party) in different "stages", allowing the hiring representative to set up the unveiling of a determined piece of information to a specific stage. This way, the company can still control when the information is unveiled and who receives it, hence encouraging them to not gatekeep this information that can greatly affect the candidate's experience.
In this example, the candidate is looking at a job opening that does not disclose the compensation range, however, the hiring party has stated that this piece of information will be revealed at the next step in the selection process.
Here the candidate has already applied to the same job opening and is currently in the first stage of the process. Upon completing the next stage, she will be let know about the prospective financial details.
Insufficient information on CVs
One of the main complaints we heard from recruiters was that candidates often do not deliver the necessary information for them to make an informed decision in the early stages of the processes, forcing them to do a high volume of "manual" work.
Massi tries to help both recruiters (to reduce their workload) and candidates (to enhance their chances of being matched with the right job) by encouraging candidates to provide relevant and complete information upfront.
During onboarding, the candidate is encouraged to complete an exhaustive yet modular form. Then, she will be able to use the same info in as many applications as they need. In exchange for this effort, the app offers a printable version of the CV to encourage the applicant to complete the form.
During an application, the hiring party can request, between other documents, a PDF CV, although this is discouraged, it can happen, resulting in an opportunity to offer additional resources for the candidate to improve the information they provide.
Communication
Providing personalized information can be a challenge for hiring teams, especially with massive numbers of candidates. Massi approaches this issue with strategic information visualization, automation and access settings.
The candidate can always get an idea of all the applications they've submitted by glancing at the dashboard.
The hiring party can enable or disable direct messaging at a given stage of the process, these can be automated with bots or be set up for the messages to be delivered to a specific group of users within the hiring team.
Evaluation
Usability studies were conducted on both the hearing and the job-seeking parties. Samples of the protocols used to conduct these sessions can be found here and here respectively (both Spanish).
Almost no usability issues were found during these tests. The ones that did show up were mostly on the hiring party side and related to the lexicon internal to the culture of each hiring team/company. For example, there was some confusion around the meaning of certain elements—a button labeled "Publish" referring to a job listing, instead of "Send.”
This might indicate the need for customizability on a much deeper level, but additional research will be needed to establish the scope and possible impacts of this finding.
Next steps
Massi is currently seeking seed investors and will soon be built.
Additionally, a number of potential business opportunities surfaced thanks to the design process, including a marketplace for courses on commonly required skills in today's job market (excel, project management, etc). These courses could be offered by third parties in alliance with massi.