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HubSpot- Recruiting Tools

Improving workspaces with elegant and seamless design solutions that solve for manual and repetitive tasks that are encountered daily.

Disclaimer

Unfortunately, due to confidentiality reasons, I cannot share a bulk of my work that I have done or am currently doing at HubSpot. For now, you'll have to trust that, as the lead designer, I am doing quite a lot during my time here.

Overview

Over the past few years, HubSpot has noticed their internal recruiters do not feel satisfied with their workspace(s) and work infrastructure. Additionally, there were concerns that recruiters will not be able to meet some of the company's goals and objectives due to the fact that their current resources not being ideal for their day to day tasks. 

The main goals for these projects, summed up as Recruiting Tools, were to create internal web applications that would (1) increase passive sourcing, (2) increase net promoter score from candidates, (3) decrease every day manual and repetitive tasks, and (4) streamline workspaces. 

Please note: Some of these projects were things I worked on as a contractor, and upon returning full-time, these projects have been iterated on.

The Problem

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The current tools our internal recruiters used didn't really provide a way for them to streamline their workflows or cross collaborate with team members or any relevant departments. So what does this all mean? Let's dig into an example: 

Meet Jane, a recruiter for Senior Software Engineering, who has about 2 hours a day to passively source candidates. She found out that she needs to increase passive sourcing by 20%. To passively source 1 candidate, she will have to:

  1. Manually dig through our database of candidates who have previously applied at HubSpot but didn't get the position and/or

  2. Go on recruiting platforms, such as LinkedIn, to manually search and find candidates

  3. Reach out to any qualified candidates

  4. Log the candidate's information and their activity into their system (this step is required)

  5. Follow up with the candidate

  6. And put them into a job funnel that is appropriate for the candidate

While these sound like simple tasks, each task is manual, repetitive, and extremely time consuming. On average, recruiters spend between 20-30 minutes to go through this entire workflow per candidate. EVERY.SINGLE.DAY. And this is in the ideal situation. In non-ideal situations, this workflow can take up to 1 hour per candidate.

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Now, keep in mind that this is only one example of a problem we solved for. While I would love to lay out all of the different problems my team and I tackle(d), due to an NDA, I am unable to talk about each problem and project in detail.

 

If you would like to learn more about products we build for Recruiting Tools, please reach out. 

Research

For all Recruiting Tools' projects, I gathered and conducted user interviews to uncover pain points and user stories, which served as a way to discover different personas, learn edge cases, and to gather product requirements. Through multiple interview sessions per project, I was able to have a greater understanding of the problems each persona carried, how different problems intertwined with each other, and how to solve for them in one comprehensive solution that satisfies the recruiting team as a whole.

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So what happens next?

Exploring Big Opportunities

How can we reduce manual efforts and automate recruiters' processes - both with external and internal people? What do recruiters care about when it comes to their work infrastructure and workflow? How can we optimize their time when handling tasks are time sensitive?

These are the types of questions that my team and I discussed in core team meetings and in calls with different departments recruiters came into contact with for their tasks. This helped us prioritize the most important aspects recruiters cared about, and our job was to create an experience that would address their needs. 

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We generated a lot of ideas and concepts from our brainstorming workshops, and many of these concepts were shifting the conversation of "How do we recruit?" and setting a new standard to these processes. 

The Solution

Again, I cannot talk about the actual solutions we came up with and its metrics. However, I can highlight some of the work I did, which ultimately was used to either create the initial solutions (MVP), and in relevant projects, iterate on designs and user experience to improve solutions from its MVP stage. 

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  • Designed the first iteration of an internal job tool, which automated recruiters' daily tasks that saved up to 5 days of work. Since returning as a full-time employee, I have conducted further research to learn what parts of the tools/experiences can be improved and is currently leading new design solutions. 
     

  • I led the entire design process, which not only consisted of user interviews with end-users, multiple design iterations, and usability testing but also synced with various stakeholders for road mapping and requirement gathering, driving strategic vision of seamless workflows for recruiting and people operations departments. 
     

  • Used research and existing data about internal platforms to paint a cohesive picture of pain points and user stories, which have been turn into various personas.
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  • Combined internal job tools to decrease the amount of context switching and manual work that went into completing a single task.

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Reflections

Something that I really love and respect about HubSpot is its desire to address problems. Without the company's vigilance and compassion, I can only assume that these are problems and pain points that would have stayed buried for a really long time, maybe even forever. 

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Through all Recruiter Tools' projects, I've learned, and still am learning, so much about the recruiting process and it has truly humbled me in angles I wasn't expecting. As these projects are getting 'meatier' with every user interview, with every cross functional collaboration, my team and I are excited to deliver tools that serve our recruiters, and not the other way around.   

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While I would have loved to show my designs and talk more in-depth about key findings and solutions, in the meantime, I hope my explanations are helpful!

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