FOR
IBM
ROLE
UX Design &
Lead UX Research
EXPECTED AVAILABILITY
2019
We embarked on this project to enable coordinators to schedule interviews and keep track of candidate interviews all in one place in IBM Kenexa BrassRing, an applicant tracking system. And for candidates to have a more modern, seamless experience when sharing their availability with the coordinator.
User Needs
Coordinating interviews can be a long, tedious process with a lot of back and forth between candidates, recruiters, coordinators and hiring managers. Interviews that take too long to coordinate can lead to a poor candidate experience and a slow hiring practice.
Coordinators need a more efficient and painless way to schedule interviews with prospective candidates. And candidates need a modern and user friendly way to share their availability with the coordinator.
Interview coordinator persona
Process
Our process was rooted in design thinking, to empathize with our users and craft a solution that will make their life easier. Design, Development, and Offering Management also worked very closely together through out the entire process to stay aligned and craft a solution together.
I created a research plan to interview more than a dozen interview coordinators, recruiters, and hiring managers across 11 client companies to understand the roles involved, user needs, and pain points during the interview scheduling process.
We learned a lot about the interview scheduling process from the initial research I did with 11 interview coordinators from our client companies. Currently, a coordinator’s day is filled with frustration and starts off the interview scheduling process on the wrong foot. A recruiter sends him an interview request, but it doesn’t have the information he needs to start the process, so he has to hunt for it. Next, the coordinator gets the interviewers' and candidate’s availability. Aligning everyone’s schedule is time consuming and there’s a lot of manual, back and forth.
Then as a team we reflected on the feedback to create a vision to improve interview scheduling. A UX colleague of mine took the lead creating a to-be design story based on the research I conducted. I worked closely with him to interpret the client feedback and to craft a story with medium fidelity sketches.
To-be design story in Invision
At this point we wanted to know what clients thought about the design story, before development got their hands on the design and started coding. I conducted a second round of research with the same group of people I talked to earlier. I got their feedback on the design story to see how well it addresses their needs. Clients were asked questions about the organization of the steps and process, perceived value of the proposed ideas, ease of use, and interaction patterns.
Clients discussed how the proposed solution would help or hurt their current way of scheduling interviews. Overall, clients said the tool is simple and easy to use. There was also a good amount of constructive feedback on how the solution meets user needs in some areas, but doesn’t go far enough in other areas. This was an opportunity to make the design story even better!
My “one-page” user research plan in Box. (I came up with this research plan template that I now use for ALL my projects!)
I shared the feedback results from the second round of research with offering managers and developers. As a team, we discussed the clients' feedback and ways to improve the proposed solution. This part of the process was definitely messy. The team met each week and there was back and forth to interpret client feedback. The team also spent a good portion of the meetings discussing how much we could realistically accomplish over the coming months. We ultimately came up with a rough plan for the first release to get our feet wet, and agreed to work in an agile fashion by continuing to gather user research and learn as we go.
Solution
Coordinators can now manage interviews in IBM Kenexa BrassRing
Coordinator can create a new interview and define all the details
Candidate sends their availability to the coordinator
Coordinator compares candidate availability to the interviewer
Coordinator can manage the interview and track to-dos