The Salesforce 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. The existing web interface was on a third party hosted platform and did not offer any level of personalization for the users. The back-end required a high level of manual effort to manage the Insiders and candidates.
We set out to create a mobile-first experience that would connect candidates with Insiders that were most relevant to them, and a desktop platform for managing the Insiders and Candidates.
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.
Our findings challenged an existing assumption that candidates would be primarily interested in speaking with Insiders who matched their ethnicity, lifestyle, or interests. Rather, we found that in most cases, candidates are primarily interested in speaking with people who matched closely with their role or career phase or that to which they aspired. There was interest in also speaking with someone of a similar background, but that was a secondary preference.
Design
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.
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 frictionless, automated process for checking availability, booking, rescheduling or canceling a meeting.
Additionally, we designed improved workflows and automation for recruiting and managing employee volunteers to take part in the program so that the creation of profiles, availability selection, scheduling, and follow-up could take place with minimal interaction from the project management team. These processes were designed to be built within the Salesforce platform without the need for custom design and front-end development.
The result is an exponential improvement over the previously existing user experience for both job candidates, employee volunteers, and project management team.