Candidate assessment tooling

Nurole | B2B SaaS Tool | 2022

A platform dedicated to Nurole’s clients in order to review candidates, sift them and organise interview rounds.

Final result

Final result

The problem space

After listening carefully to our client users and our fellow Nurolers, we identified a lot of pain points with our assessment tooling.

Architecture

First, the tooling is embedded in our admin, therefore it is very slow, loads our full database every time, and has an overly complex navigation with a lot of irrelevant items for our clients.

Usability

There is no consistency with the rest of our tools, no clear signposting of where the user is, no easy way to navigate from the client journey to the member journey or even to News and Guides.

Design

At that point I had reworked a lot of our tools and created a fully digital universe and colour palette, but that was only visible on the member journey. It was now time to update this interface as well!

Discovery journey

  • Ask the experts

    I started interviewing all the experts (10) at Nurole across functions and teams (BD, CS, Ops, etc.). The objective was to learn what the main pain points in their everyday work when managing roles and using that tool to sift candidates in order to create their long list. But we also spoke to a few clients (3) to observe them open the tool for the first time and get their feedback first hand.

  • Insights gathering

    After having done the sessions I collected all feedback and categorised it in Notion. That allowed the team to be able to refer to any comment made either internally or externally. We also then prioritised feedback with the rest of the team to agree on next steps and which areas to focus on for the MVP.

  • A detailed chart titled 'Users stories' with multiple columns and rows, categorizing different user scenarios based on priority levels like High, Medium, Low, and On the fence, with additional labels such as Curated, Non-curated, and decision-making roles like Single and Multiple decision makers.

    User stories

    We did a lot of pairing sessions including PMs, Devs and QA from my squad but we also involved senior stakeholders to make sure we agreed on the core needs for our users. We also needed to design for our 2 types of clients: single or multiple decision maker.

Screenshot of Nurole online platform dashboard showing user milestones, including a message that the user's role is now live, with a small image of an hourglass, and a list of applicants with names and application statuses.

The tool before we worked on it

It was part of our admin tool, on the same repository. So the first task was to make it a separate service with a dedicated and simplified navigation.

Journeys & flows

We worked on many iterations of the core journeys to clearly map the interactions and navigation within our tool. We also had to make the assessment tool work together with the meet tool in a smooth and logical way.

Flowchart indicating user onboarding process, with steps including email invitation, registration, platform overview, and signing in.
Flowchart with a dotted grid background, featuring yellow circles with labels such as 'Dashboard,' 'Reviews status on posted role,' and 'Clicks on report,' connected by arrows. There are also blue rectangles representing dashboards or reports, and a gray circle with text 'Decides to add someone from their team to the assessment process.'
Flowchart diagram illustrating a process, including steps like candidate listing, filtering, clicking on a candidate, candidate detail review, application form, hierarchy and consumption of information, scoring, and note taking.

Wireframing

I paired a lot with the amigos (PM + Engineer) to ideate on many different ways to navigate and interact with the different features of that new tool

A grayscale collage of various digital interface screens, including candidate profiles, rating forms, feedback forms, and tutorial videos, with labels such as 'Candidate Detail,' 'Candidates Listing,' and 'Onboarding.'

After that very detailed and documented discovery phase, we were able to start building the MVP confidently!

Prototyping, testing and iterating

  • Prototyping

    From December 2021 we paired with the team on specific functionality for the tooling. We had a few essential topics to discover and prototype one including: giving ratings, being able to comment with the board, test blind assessment functionality, etc.

    To do so we had pairing afternoons where I worked on one topic with different devs and we shaped solutions together.

    After having validated different concepts we all went to an offsite to build the designs and test them directly with clients. It was very efficient and fast paced but we learnt so much.

  • Minimal Viable Product

    Having learnt a lot from our sessions with clients as well as our internal experts, we were finally ready to start building the MVP.

    Now that we have identified and agreed on the most relevant functionality and fixed some interactions and journeys, we prioritised the most relevant components. We simplified the scope to the maximum efficiency to release the journeys incrementally and decided to start focusing on the making the list more engaging and easier to browse through.

    We kept testing versions with our clients in order to get relevant feedback and keep iterating on the final version.

  • A project management timeline of CAT Project items and catch-ups displayed in a Kanban-style layout, showing tasks, milestones, and notes scheduled across June and July 2022.

    Meet tool

    We are now full steam releasing more and more functionality to our MVP, scoping phases and prioritising with 3 amigos involved at every stage: PM, Developer and Designer.

    The squad was finally able to work together on revamping and coupling the meet tool with the candidate assessment tool. That means that our clients were then able to organise interview rounds themselves without having Nurole to chip in. These were previously completely independent so it was great to be able to merge sifting and interviewing tools together for more efficiency and consistency in our Nurole ecosystem.

Here is the result of many months of discovery, iterations and collaboration within our Squad. You can see our Candidate assessment tooling as well as our Meet tool screens below.

Final designs

Screenshot of a user interface dashboard for Nuróle with sections for active roles in a hiring process, including 'Trustee' and 'Non-Executive Director,' displaying deadlines and candidate counts, and options to review candidates and view details.
Screenshot of an online platform with a green sidebar menu on the left and a main content area. The main content shows an organizational chart with icons of people and the message "Your role is live". There is a section about the user's role, deadlin
Diagram of an online platform dashboard with navigation menu on the left, main section displaying candidate list, and options for managing interviews.
Screenshot of a webpage showing a role management interface for a non-executive director at the Royal Opera House. The page lists candidates selected by Nurole, with their names, companies, and unread status. It includes options for inviting reviewer
Screenshot of a candidate review interface showing candidate profile, roles, skills, and review ratings with options to accept, reject, or meet again.
Screenshare of a professional profile page showing a candidate's current and previous roles, with a candidate review section and options to rate and write notes.
Mobile screen showing a page from the Nurole app with a list of roles, including 'Non-Executive Director' at the Royal Opera House, and options to invite board members or skip. There is a list of candidates with names and initials.
A screenshot of a mobile app screen showing a list of selected candidates with their names, profile pictures, and companies. The top has a green 'Start' button and a 'NO THANK YOU' option. The list includes candidates Annette Black from Starbucks, Di
Screenshot of a mobile app menu with options: Dashboard, Interviews, Invite reviewers, Account, Back to Nurole home.
A mobile app screen showing a list of candidates for a meeting. Dianne Russell from IBM is scheduled for an interview; Kathryn Murphy from Gillette has already been interviewed. Options to view application and select state are visible.
A mobile app screen showing a candidate profile for Kathryn Murphy from Gillette, with options to choose state, interview status, and feedback buttons, along with another candidate Arlene McCoy at the bottom.
Screen displaying a professional role setting with deadlines, decision date, options to recommend someone, start button, and view role specs.
Screen displaying a professional profile of Theresa Webb, General Electric, with her employment history listing roles at Telegraph Media Group, The Pool UK Ltd, and Future plc.
Profile page of Theresa Webb, a General Electric employee in London, UK, showing her current job as Chief Publishing Officer at Telegraph Media Group and previous role as Managing Editor, with a pending interview status.
Screenshot of a section titled 'Reason for application' with placeholder text in paragraph format.
A mobile app screen showing candidate profile details, including location (London, UK), email, phone number, LinkedIn profile link, button to download CV, and candidate review section with no ratings or notes.
Mobile app review interface with a question to rate an application using stars, a notes section for a review, and an invite reviewers button.
Screen showing a candidate evaluation interface with candidate name Darlene Robertson, a one-star rating, and options to mark as 'Mark to reject' or 'Meet'. Navigation buttons labeled 'Previous' and 'Next' at the bottom.
Screenshot of a webpage showing a meeting management platform for 'The Academy of St Martin in the Fields'. The page has sections for trustees and interviews, with buttons labeled 'View details' and options to archive meetings.
Screenshot of a digital meeting platform showing a meeting for trustees, with tabs labeled Settings, Candidates, Schedule, Send Invitations, and Activity. The meeting details include the title, duration of 60 minutes, and location as a video call. A
Screenshot of an interview management application showing a list of candidates, including Ton Christiaanse and Chris Deen, with options to view applications, remove, and add candidates, in a dark green-themed interface.

Data and insights

After 6months live, our data was already very encouraging and validated our rework of these tools.

Through that work, we significantly reduced the time spent per Customer Success person at Nurole. We also improved their headhunting time and efficiencies.

Pie chart showing email or meeting topic categories with a large segment labeled 'My organizations' and a total of 2,468, with categories including 'Organisation dashboard', 'Meeting round pending emails', 'Meeting round calendar', among others.

Summary of that project

  • Greenfield micro services and repository for both Assessment and Meet tools

  • Meet tool now used in all roles either by Nurolers or by our clients directly

  • We have driven adoption of client assessment tooling and noticed it through our very high Client CSat

More about my role as Founding Lead designer at Nurole

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