HireVue | HireFlows
UI / UX Design
End-to-end Strategy
HireFlows was created, almost accidentally, from a side project that looked to expand and integrate a recently acquired chatbot company into our main core product, HV Core. As we realized and evangelized the hidden potential of the integration, this side project grew into a company-wide initiative that would capitalize on current functionality to create an improved and seamless end-to-end recruiting experience.
As one of the Sr. Product Designers on this initiative, I was responsible for the strategy, user journey diagramming, user research, and supporting Michaela, the other Sr. Product Designer, with any of the UI/prototyping needs (e.g., creating components, etc.) We also collaborated with Lauren, the Sr. Product Manager, to develop requirements and phases for implementation.
Timeline: 18 months
Role: UI/UX, Strategy, Research, User Flows, Prototyping
Platforms: WebApp
Category: Human Resource
Recruiter Experience Setting up a HireFlow
Research and Discovery
We started with a mission to integrate multiple workflows into a single dashboard, empowering recruiters with unmatched flexibility and efficiency. Through extensive brainstorming sessions and meticulous flow documentation, we continuously asked ourselves how the envisioned experience of one dashboard would align with our customers’ needs. To unravel the complexities, we surveyed product managers in charge of various initiatives. We interviewed Professional Services team members, seeking their insights to shed light on the intricacies of both platforms (Chatbot Hiring Assistant, HHA, and HV Core).
I also worked on keeping track of knowns and unknowns to help guide our research efforts. I also kept a list of key terms with their evolving definitions as we learned and iterated on this project.
List of key terminology and their updated definitions, as well as questions of unknowns to guide research.
Research learnings
In our research, participants were most concerned with Roles and Permissions and how this would affect how those are set up today. HireVue has a complex matrix of roles and permissions, allowing various user types to access parts of the app based on individual positions. We had three Roles and Permission considerations that were noted to be especially aware of:
1. Admin: Admins need complete access and control of the end-to-end process for compliance reasons, as determined by years of research and data analytics.
2. Recruiter: In general, Recruiters only have access to the jobs they are hiring for. Currently, of their many responsibilities, they spend most of their time creating the individual stages of each job requisition in HV Core, which is redundant and tedious.
3. Candidate: Candidates have enough stress in the interview process, and we didn’t want to add more. We aimed to maintain their experience while working to improve it over time.
User Journey Flows
During this exploration, we also realized a crucial component to our eventual success: the chatbot utilized status triggers, intricately mapped to the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and powered by a rule generator called JRA (Job Req Automation). However, there are challenges with JRA because it frequently malfunctions, leading to bugs that require significant Engineering and Customer Support resources to resolve. Finally, our customers have expressed a strong desire for branching capabilities, enabling them to customize workflows by allowing certain candidates to bypass specific steps in the hiring process. To accomplish branching today, customers must purchase a separate bot and funnel candidates to that particular flow, adding additional maintenance and complexity.
Integration flow that helped us understand that status updates could make this a realistic solution.
Our Hypothesis
If we can trigger status updates in HV Core via integrations to HHA, we can utilize existing HV Core functionality to bypass the need for JRA.
Additional benefits would include:
• The opportunity for multiple workflows in a single bot.
• Reduce customer implementation time significantly.
• Reduce engineering and customer support debugging time immensely.
• Decrease the requisition setup time for Recruiters.
This would be no small feat given both platforms’ complexity and current reality.
Design process
Michaela worked on creating a captivating prototype that would bring our vision to life. I helped build components in Figma and added them to our Design System for future use.
Collaborating closely with engineering leadership and cross-functional experts, we discussed technical constraints and identified any missing elements that would be crucial to our success. With a shared determination to inspire and gain support, we presented our prototype to the Professional Services and Customer Success teams. Using these teams as proxy users helped us understand concerns and use cases. They started volunteering customers they thought would be interested in participating in a walkthrough, which allowed us to gain more meaningful insights.
Persona flow in Product Team Offsite
Sketches of UI that I worked on
Architecture flow created with engineering
Obstacles to success
As with any ambitious project, we encountered hurdles along the way. Some team members initially needed help to grasp our solution’s unique advantages. In multiple meetings, we patiently explained and shared our insights, aiming to illuminate the value we were presenting. This pushed us to consider our biases and deepened our understanding of the necessary elements required to bring the project to fruition.
In presenting our high-fidelity mocks, some challenges we faced included that some team members thought these were ready for hand-off to engineering. In contrast, others had difficulty understanding which parts of the UI were designed for which user persona (Admin vs. Recruiter) and weren’t grasping its total value.
Despite these challenges, we continued iterating on our presentation, enhancing our prototype, and refining our message to ensure our vision resonated with the broader team.
Our breakthrough
Our prototype evolved through multiple iterations and continuous learning, showcasing the abstract and complex concepts we aimed to solve. We recognized that we should approach the solution from the perspective of the Recruiter first, helping to narrow the focus to the highest impacted user persona and allowing us to address the other personas later.
We addressed tough questions by our engineering counterparts by leveraging our extensive research and deep understanding of the problem space. We provided answers that resonated with them, helping them to grasp the vision and better realize the technical requirements. With this pivotal breakthrough, the engineers became enthusiastic advocates, driving the project’s progress as they began to share their perspectives with leadership.
Prototype walk-through of the Recruiter Experience
Impact
With growing momentum and an increasing understanding of our solution, we gained a strong network of supporters who could evangelize our project’s value and potential impact. Working closely with Lauren, our dedicated Product Manager, we evaluated iterations, prioritized vital features, and identified necessary contributions from other product areas. As our project gained visibility at the executive level, it was elevated to a company-wide business initiative, eventually presented in our annual Global Kick-Off. Product lines and roadmaps were reevaluated and reprioritized to align with the scope of this transformational initiative.
Learnings and Results
In an unforeseen turn of events, HireVue acquired the company Modern Hire, which offered a competitive feature known as “Blueprints.” This development introduced an additional layer of complexity, raising questions about the future direction of the combined platform. While uncertainties remain regarding the direction of the central platform, our project, HireFlows, has undoubtedly made a significant impact, paving the way for enhanced hiring experiences within HireVue and potentially shaping the foundation of future innovations.
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