Salesforce Insiders
Connecting Job Candidates with Salesforce Employees
Challenge
The Recruiting team created the Salesforce Insiders program as a platform to connect potential new hires with current Salesforce employees to learn what life is like working at Salesforce. A temporary website was in place, but was not scalable and did not offer any level of personalization.
We set out to explore the space and create an experience that would connect candidates with Insiders that were most relevant to them, and a platform for managing the Insiders and Candidates.
Challenge
Old Landing Page Solution
The existing web interface was on a third party hosted platform and did not offer any level of personalization for the users.
Candidates were shown a long list of Salesforce employees to choose from in alphabetical order. There was no filtering or sorting; only a small search entry box that was mostly unnoticed and used inaccessible color contrast.
As privacy and trust were concerns, we also found it problematic that the site used the same password for everyone.
Challenge
Complex Manual Processes
One major obstacle to scaling the Salesforce Insiders program was the lack of automation and a number of manual processes related to managing the roster of insiders; setting their availability; coordinating meeting times; reminding candidates and insiders; gathering feedback and more.
Research
We conducted a series of research interviews with previous candidates who had participated in the Salesforce Insiders program as well as Insiders who regularly meet with candidates and key stakeholders.
This was a crucial step before moving into design. Our goal was to build a more personalized product that would meet the needs of a diverse candidate pool of varying backgrounds and career stages, having a deep understanding of our users was key.
Research
Process & Methods
The majority of our interviews were conducted using dScout – an online user research tool that for video meetings that allows stakeholders, developers, and other designers to watch the interview live without being visible to the interviewee. This enabled us to get realtime questions from the rest of the team to guide the conversation while maintaining the intimate and personal environment of a 1-on-1 meeting.
Scripts were prepared for each type of interviewee: prior candidates, Insider volunteers, and stakeholders.
All the findings from the research sessions were then reviewed and synthesized into a set of core themes and important outliers that could be used to shape the design of the product.
Research
Some Things We Heard
“What I remember being most influenced by was how long you’ve been at Salesforce, and the department you’re in. If I’m going into Sales, I want to talk to someone in Sales….at the end of the day I’m going to work with human beings.”
Former Candidate
“So from a technical side I could start off by saying the process wasn’t the best one. It was a manual process of filling out a spreadsheet and then they would submit it to us. Then I’d call the candidate at that time but I can’t remember if a calendar invite was created for me or if I ended up creating that myself. So that whole that whole process was cumbersome.”
Insider Volunteer
“There’s a lot of manual labor involved to scale the program. We want to go global with the app, so it’s important that we have the capability to handle as many people as (it needs to). ”
Stakeholder
Research
Insights
We gathered and organized the various insights collected during research and identified the opportunities for improvement related to each.
These formed the basis of many of the design decisions we made to shape the experience for candidates, volunteers, and program managers.
The key takeaway was that the new design would need to provide candidates with a dynamic matching system to search based on the parameters that mattered to them, and improve the automation on the backend management side in order to scale the app for wider use.
Design
Salesforce on Salesforce
The Strategy
The new solution would be built on Salesforce Communities, so we involved the development team in the design process and review every step of the way. In addition to the dev team, we brought in stakeholders and end-users for formal and ad-hoc feedback as we analyzed different approaches to the design of the interface and workflow.
We chose a mobile-first design approach since candidates would be receiving a text message invitation in addition to the email invitation, which many users would be seeing on a mobile device as well.
It needed to be flexible and dynamic to provide a flexible solution for matching candidates with Insiders based on any number of personal preferences.
Design
Iterative Process
We proceeded to rapidly prototype and iterate through user flow and process diagrams, wireframes, and interactive prototypes. This approach allowed the design team to test our theories and concepts for validation from users and stakeholders, while communicating functionality clearly to the development team along the way.
Design
Dynamic Matching
Based on the research insights, we designed a dynamic matching system that would allow users to produce a list of Insiders who matched with any and all of their preferences, regardless of what was most important to them.
Candidates first define which categories are important to them, such as work environment, diversity, etc. Then they are presented with questions about the categories that matter to them so no time is wasted with questions that are irrelevant. Their answers pre-populate filters in the that can be edited after results are populated.
Design
Booking Meetings
One of the main points of friction in the existing prototype solution was the process of booking a meeting.
There was a manual process that required a cumbersome amount of communication and management of the meeting booking process by candidates, Insiders, and project managers.
We designed a low-friction, automated process for checking availability, booking, rescheduling or canceling a meeting.
Design
Booking Meetings
One of the main points of friction in the existing prototype solution was the process of booking a meeting.
There was a manual process that required a cumbersome amount of communication and management of the meeting booking process by candidates, Insiders, and project managers.
We designed a low-friction, automated process for checking availability, booking, rescheduling or canceling a meeting.
Design
Desktop Designs
The Insiders App user experience was designed to be mobile first because the majority of Salesforce candidates primarily access email and text messages on their mobile devices. In order to accommodate users on desktop devices we scaled up the design for ease-of-use on computers as well.
Several modifications were made to make use of the screen real estate and aspect ratio of computer screens to create layouts that felt comfortable and native to the environment in which they are experienced.
