- SOFI - SaaS Desktop Platform (2018) -
SOFI bridged the gap between companies and the most attractive candidates
SOFI was a desktop platform for IT recruiters that deciphered huge amounts of CVs in seconds to extract the best candidates for each open position using an accurate compatibility score. It removed the pain of the recruiting process with an innovative, seamless user interface. As the sole UX/UI designer at that time, My role was to research, design and test all UIs related to the project. I collaborated with the product manager, product development and engineering to launch this project within 3 months of its conception.
UX/UI: Gianfranco Azzaroccini | Product Manager/CEO: Ron Starinsky
Discovery | User Interviews
From a B2C to a B2B in 3 Months.
ICV’s first product was a mobile app for job seekers in the Israeli IT market. A decision was made to pivot to a B2B solution focusing on the Indian IT market. I was hired to design a SaaS platform for recruiters from the ground up. My mission was to create a user interface to test our matching technology and predictive analytics, before introducing them to potential clients in a major HR convention in India.
I was given 3 months to come up with a solution. I started out by conducting user interviews with 3 of our customer success managers in order to understand how they recruit, what tools they use, which layouts they like best and why. It was a real eye opener for me to see them go through so many irrelevant CVs, and how time consuming and inefficient this stage of the recruitment was.
Discovery | Competitive Research
Exploring the fascinating world of recruitment tools.
SOFI was to be a new SaaS, bridging the gap between job boards and applicant tracking systems (ATSs), and did not have any direct competitors back in 2018. Some ATS’s offered compatibility scores (mostly with a color or star index) but none offered the level of precision our algorithms achieved, and SOFI was not an ATS, so it was uncharted territory in a world full of tools that did not directly do what we wanted to do with this product. Researching ATSs and other recruitment tools was a great start to realize which layouts are most commonly used in the HR industry and my research included the top 5 most relevant competitors.
Design | Wireframes
One small sketch for man, one giant leap for human resources
I started out by designing low fidelity wireframes to think through the structure of the platform. I used Adobe XD to iterate through the design process. Working closely with the product manager and the CBDO, we used the wireframes to discuss product strategy and let our test group decide which of the layouts is more effective.
Design | Prototypes
Realizing the vision and bringing SOFI to life
The dashboard layout wireframe won by landslide, and since the deadline was looming, I had to quickly transform all wireframes into a high fidelity prototype, create a design system and test internally with the team. The response was great and I continued to develop the rest of the screens, particularly the analytics dashboard which was to be a major selling point that would showcase the power of the technology we offered and its predictive potential.
SOFI in action
Creating matches in minutes
This short video demonstrates how easy it is to upload huge amounts of CVs and positions in seconds, thus creating accurate matches that literally save days of going through endless amounts of irrelevant resumes.
SOFI in action
Working with your matches
Once your matches list populates you can browse your top candidates, take a closer look at their CV, export them seamlessly to your ATS, and even lock them from other recruiters for up to an hour and a half while you contact them.
SOFI in action
Export your top matches in seconds
SOFI was designed to bridge the gap between job boards and ATSs so it was very important to make exporting the top candidates simple and fast.
SOFI in action
Using filters to increase diversity hiring has never been so easy.
One of the powerful features SOFI was required to include was the ability to search with filters, for specific candidates. It was possible to search for women, certain degrees, experience levels, specific past employers, locations and more and save unlimited presets to make future searches simple and fast. After many tests and iterations, we decided to opt for a rollable patch on the top right side of the screen that can easily expand and retract.
SOFI in action
The power of analytics in predicting trends in the HR world
One of the most exciting portions of this project was understanding which of the data points our algorithms managed to extract could be relevant for the analytics tab and assist in predicting relevant trends for our users. This section proved to be very challenging and went through many iterations until reaching the stage presented here.
OMG, it’s ready!
After 3 months of no sleep SOFI was finally ready for development
What I learned
Working on SOFI gave me a chance to express my UX abilities by solving complex problems. I learned how to adapt and design a product focused on users with a different orientation & culture, understand their preferences and how to “speak” their language in a way that made sense. I enjoyed working with the front end developers, making sure the product maintained its pixel perfect design. In order to ensure this I created a design system that was constantly updated and shared with the stakeholders.
Insights
During the user testing process, I was surprised to see how many users misunderstood the icon based side menu bar. Adding text to the icons tested to be much more effective and straightforward and prevented confusion.
Main Challenges
The main challenge creating this platform was to make the usability intuitive, easy and simple. The ever growing requests for added features and functionality from the different stakeholders proved to be both challenging and exciting. The platform continued to evolve and grow as the years went by without compromising the quality, maintaining its simplicity of use and effectiveness.
Quantitive data to measure success
The data we collected focused on the experience and accuracy of the platform. It was tested over the course of six months with dozens of users in two of India’s largest corporations and two local IT giants. The response to the user experience was phenomenal, More than 95% of the users understood how to work with the platform, create and export matches within minutes, and scored the overall experience and ease of use in the high 90’s. As far as the technology is concerned, SOFI scored a 98% matching prediction accuracy with both Indian power houses, one out of two candidates were hired in one of the local giants and 50% of recruiter time saved per month with the other.
The part of the design process that I particularly enjoyed
While the whole project was a huge learning experience, I especially loved iterating on designs and testing those new designs on users. This tight feedback loop helped take ambiguity out of our designs, and it felt good to produce designs with the confidence that users would enjoy and understand it.
