Director and Head of Design @Innovapptive
Domain Study
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Basics of recruitment
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Sources of recruitment
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Process of recruitment
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Different recruitment strategies
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Factors affecting recruitment
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Recent trends in recruitment
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Recruitment process outsourcing
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Poaching / Raiding
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E - Recruitment
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Online recruitment models
- Online portals with their own database
- Online job search engines
- Social recruiting
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Applicant tracking systems
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Online recruitment management systems
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Recruitment Vs Selection
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Recruitment – Major challenges
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Head hunting
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Types of recruiters
- In-house recruiters
- Consultancy recruiters
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Types of job seekers
Process of Recruitment
Job Analysis
The general purpose of job analysis is to document the requirements of a job and the work performed. Job and task analysis is performed as a basis for later improvements, including: definition of a job domain; describing a job; developing performance appraisals, selection systems, promotion criteria, training needs assessment, and compensation plans. This information is captured in a job description and provides the recruitment effort with the boundaries and objectives of the search.
Sourcing
Advertising about the job through the possible mediums, Proactive search of the passive candidate based on the need and demand.
Short listing the candidates based on the qualifications, skill set, location, experience and other additional factors are collectively known as screening. It is been done manually as well as using application tools (both online & Offline) based on keyword matching.
The short listed candidates are invited to attend a preliminary test and are assessed to eliminate the candidates lacking the required basic skill set and knowledge
The candidate is been evaluated for their knowledge, behaviour and communication skills.
Happens just after the Interview phase or mostly within 1 or 2 weeks after Interview.
Screening
Testing and Assessment
Interview
Job offer
Naukri Platform Study
Naukri Portal is a platform where the recruiters and job seekers meets each other based on their own preferences and gets benefitted. Recruiters will be searching for potential candidates and the same way job seekers will search for a matching job of their preference. It contains a huge data set for both job seekers and recruiters.
Naukri Recruiter’s Portal Study
The system for Recruiter’s contained three major modules:
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Resdex - Resume Data base Access
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Job Posting and Basic Response Manager.
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E-Apps - a paid Response Manager
Naukri Web Analytic Data Study
It contains all the click level information on the usage of different primary and secondary features available in the different modules of naukri portal. The major features and functionalities of interest were search options, Filter Options, CV views, Downloads, Mail statistics, Login details, Usage of the response manager, Candidates contacted, number of job posted, number of responses etc.
An analytical study on the data helped to identify the user preferences and common behaviour. Number of clicks on certain features seems very less than what is expected. Certain features were used very frequently by users. All the comparative study led to generate a set of primary features required for user and to rethink on why certain features are not used. The web analytical study gave a completely different perspective on how the user research need to be conducted.
Competitors Study
The major competitors of naukri.com are;
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Monster.com
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Timesjob.com
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Shine.com
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LinkedIn.com
All the job portals Monster, Times and shine work with the same model as Naukri.com. All these portals have a number of jobs listed in it. Job seekers can register, can upload their resume, they can apply to any of the job of their preference. The recruiter will get a response of the application in their mail and recruiter will get back to the candidate if the resume matches the requirements. The other way is the recruiter starts searching in the data base for a potential candidate. Then he sends Job description through mail to the candidate. The candidate if interested in the job get back to the recruiter.
LinkedIn is a competitor with a completely different model of recruitment. LinkedIn offers a professional networking platform along with the job search an applying. The professional networking facility of LinkedIn makes it a platform for high profile job seekers who are not active in other job portal. Moreover linkedIn has turned into a brand which any professional want to be in to socialise and for a public status.
User Research
Aim
Aim of the research was to understand following from the users:
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User Behaviour & Mental Modal
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Touch Points
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Frustrations.
User Set
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Inhouse recruiters
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Consultancy recruiters
Questionnaire
Two sets of questionnaires were prepared for the purpose of user interviews - A form with closed ended questions and another set of questions mostly subjective ones targeted at deeper understanding. The questions focused on the following:
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Personal demographics
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Feature usage in Naukri recruiter’s portal
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Priority of features
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Managing responses / Resumes
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Methodology for shortlisting
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Collaboration between users and team dynamics
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Process of recruitment in their organisation
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Recruitment process management
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Related online / offline software usage and purpose w.r.t recruitment
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Competitor comparison from user perspective on various aspects
Research Summary
The recruiter’s over all work flow is a mix of certain number of online and offline processes. The research ended up in identifying a set of needs and pain points of users/recruiters. Major pain points are listed here.
Major Pain points
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A lot of fraud and outdated resume available in the search result. Each Click on the candidate profile to view CV or phone number costs for the recruiter based on their subscription
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Have to use multiple filter options to get the most appropriate candidate especially for junior level and IT candidates, since the number of results are huge.
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Tracking the status of CV view is a problem. They end up clicking multiple times on the same CV, which costs.
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The phone call and the response of the candidate is not recorded. Recruiter by mistake can call the candidate second time. Teammate from the same company can repeat the same mistake.
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The mailing and response is not stored in the system. The response is not there in the system for future reference. Teammate from the same company can repeat the same mistake.
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Updating the status of a mandate (whether they got enough candidates etc.) with their colleague who is also working on the mandate is not possible through the system. Currently they do it offline.
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The further process of short listing is done offline. It is not recorded in the system. Short listing is a real challenge when there are response through Job Posting also, which comes in thousands.
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All discussions between team members working on same mandate happens over phone, mail and face to face. The system is nowhere helping them in short listing.
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Relevance of response to a posted job is very bad. For a single job posting they get thousands of response, and majority of them are irrelevant which they have to identify manually.
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Senior level requirements are not posted as a Job as very less people applies mainly because most senior level people are not active job seekers.
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No standardised method to track the status of a candidate after s/he responds.
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Managers do omit candidates even after their subordinates shortlists certain profiles due to lack of experience and expertise in the recruitment domain.
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Sometimes candidates are been rejected by client companies. Reasons are - 1) They identify candidate is not fit for the role even prior to the interaction or after few stages of interviews. 2) They already have candidates profile received from other sources. The second reason creates confusion in business.
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At times candidate takes time to Join the company which create an ambiguity between consultancy and the client. Also some candidates do leave even after joining, which leads to losing business for the consultancy.
Task Analysis
The data collected from research was utilised to analyse the tasks performed by majority of recruiters and recruitment teams and thus helped in identifying the problems and reasons for their frustrations. Naukri as an application was helping them to an extend but was not aligned to their offline workflows and processes.
Persona 1
Persona 2
Concept
The concept is to create a Recruitment Management System / Applicant Tracking System, with the following high level features:
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Capability to collect responses from job posting
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Capability to add candidate profiles from RESDEX to the mandate
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Manage entire recruitment process starting from creating a mandate till the candidates joining the organisation (Both for consultant recruiters and in-house recruiters)
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Help collaboration between the recruiters along with customised sharing and advised shortlisting
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Automated as well as manual update of status for any mandate & the candidates under the mandate
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Customised stages and statuses specific to recruitment processes and steps of the company
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Client involvement and feedback on shortlisted profiles before the target number of profiles get finalised
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Importing and managing profiles obtained from other portals
The below diagram shows a high level workflow of the system. The recruiter gets a requirement form a client / hiring manager within the company. They create a a mandate in the recruiters portal. The mandate would have an option to be posted as a job, so as to get responses from candidates.
Task Flows
The primary task flows to be incorporated in the application are listed below
Use Cases
30+ minor use cases were figured out to be possible in the design solution. Few are listed below.
Information Architecture
After a thorough analysis of the above use cases resulted in identifying overlapping nodes/navigation points, information and their logical grouping. The Information Architecture was created to give a big picture of the application.
Levels of System
From a depth perspective, it was decided out to have 3 levels for the system - Dashboard, List of Mandates and Resume/profiles shortlisted under each mandate. Additionally their would be hooks from the existing Naukri recruiter's application, to search and shortlist profiles or to post a job of job seekers to apply.
Page Content
For the identified levels, information design and their priority was the first step along with identifying the actions required to be there on the page and navigation points. Additional detailing was done with respect to the in app notifications.
Wireframe
Multiple layout options were explored for each pages through wireframes before finalising on few. The entire workflow were created for quick discussions and getting feedback etc. from the design team head, whom I was reporting to. A final version of end to end flow would later be used for usability study with real users and the updated ones were presented in front of the company management. You may have a look at the wireframe by clicking on it or please scroll down to read the usability study after this section.
Prototype & Usability Study
The entire work flow was built as a click through prototype using power point. It helped in a usability study of the system with a number of recruiters and a recruitment consultancy. The people participated in usability study involved HR executives and recruitment managers of various domain. The collective feed back from the recruiters were very positive and the detailed discussion gave light to certain factors which were unaware during the design.
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Phone number view was designed to minimise the content in the screen and to fasten up the process. It was been appreciated by all recruiters as it included the complete work flow of a recruiter at a screen. One user wanted a flow shift from the phone number view to an individual resume page or at least the resume preview. This will help in instant referring of resume. It is possible technically. So the feed back was taken and introduced in the design.
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About sharing, the recruiters were confused as right now Naukri system does not support customised sharing. Naukri is working on a system which support individual sharing. In that each recruiters will be provided with a profile (RP) which is going to be implemented soon. This will solve the problem.
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Inbox for recruiter within the system is very helpful to the recruiters as they don’t have to check mails from the candidates and keep a track separately.
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Feed back on the list of resume. They wanted the source of the resume to be displayed by default as resumes short listed from Resdex expires very soon as the access to Resdex is limited and costly. Feed back was taken and decided to show a visual separation on resume based on the source.
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The usage of an offline applicant tracking system called hire craft, very common in consultancies for managing resume, were hectic as they had to download resume then upload in that system then keep typing notes and status etc . They all were happy as this system can throw that completely away. This system allows everything at a place.
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View of the uploaded resume is not pleasing to the recruiters. The reason being the system don’t have or can not access the data on resume which is in word format. Also the parsing of the resume is not precise.
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The system have multiple ways for the work flow. There are many number of screens and views. This creates a confusion to the user or an information overload is happening.
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A recruiter commented generally the group tasks are less in number. Agreed to the point and the design proposal was to encourage group task through the system, and reduce offline work
Visual Design
Conclusion
Studying about the recruitment domain, understanding the Naukri recruiter's system, conducting user research, gathering user pain points, their known and unknown needs, concept development, wire framing, prototyping and testing with users, along with the constraints involved the whole cycle of design.
The project started from nowhere without a requirement definition. But the step by step process followed helped me to hit a set of problems and make functionally useful solutions focused at recruiter's mental modal and their workflows.
The project got immediate attention from the management and they hired a startup to get it implemented. It went on to make huge revenue within the first release covering few MVP functions. At present, after 8 years an evolved version my pet project is here for you to have a look at, in the name of Naukri RMS - https://www.naukrirms.com/