TalentTrail

Framing the Problem

What is the problem you are trying to solve? Who does it affect?

Currently job hunting is a painful, multi-platform process filled with ghost jobs and ghosting. From LinkedIn’s uninformative declaration of the number of applicants, to WorkDay’s new account for every application, finding active adverts and keeping track of your applications is a near-impossible task.

We want to create a one-stop-shop where candidates can follow the entire process from start to finish in one place — stress-free and supportive. The platform will include mindful breathing exercises, motivational prompts, and emotional support features to help users stay calm, focused, and encouraged throughout the often stressful journey of applying for jobs.

Idea Explanation

What is your idea? How does it fix the problem?

Figma Link: https://www.figma.com/design/ZngdYQygfHXC7Eo3e6K6nn/TalentTrail?node-id=2-2&t=XrwWgOluXoKBqMTa-1

Our idea is a single CRM type system, where recruiters can post their jobs and manage their applicants, and jobseekers can find open roles and manage their applications all in one place.

Candidate:

Sign Up: When a candidate signs up, they will be prompted to fill out a profile and upload their CV, all of which will be used later to make submitted applications as easy as possible. The skills section highlights in-demand skills that other professionals in the same field are using, helping candidates ensure they don’t miss key abilities and boost their chances of getting interview invites.

Sign-up also includes a verification process for multiple purposes:

• Preventing spam or duplicate accounts (hence no ghost jobs)

• Ensuring the authenticity of job referrals.

• Supporting a more human, trustworthy platform where applicants and referees interact safely.

They can also request a CV review with Addition+.

Preferences: In their preferences they will be asked to set their notification frequency (Immediately, Once a Day/Week/Month). The other preferences they set include role type, experience level, salary and preferred industries, and these will determine which roles are recommended to them.

Application Manager: The site centres around an application manager dashboard, which shows in progress applications, notifications, targeted new roles, and saved roles, with links to their profile, preferences, referrals, and past applications.

Search Jobs: Clicking on the ‘New Jobs For You’ card takes candidates to the jobs search page, with pre-populated filters according to their preferences and the skills listed in their profile. From here you can save jobs or click to view them in more detail.

Job Spec: Alongside the standard information on a job spec, each role page has buttons to Apply or Request Referral. If an application has already been submitted, the date of submission and application status.

Apply: The candidate has already filled out their profile and uploaded their CV in order to make applying as simple as possible. Instead of cover letters, if the company wants more information, they will have preset extra questions, which the candidate can fill in before they submit.

Referrals: Alternatively, if a company has requested a referral, the candidate can select referrers and send them a message. If they choose to provide the referral, the application will immediately be sent with no further action required from the candidate.

Progress Tracker: All In-Progress applications are managed in the progress tracker. For each open role, the recruiter can select the steps in their hiring process so that it is as transparent as possible for the applicant. All stages are linked (even if redirected externally) from within this tracker.

Mindfulness: In order to promote candidate wellbeing, before each stage of an application, the candidate will be prompted to complete a mindfulness activity.

On the recruiter side, they should be able to view all their applicants with an equivalent progress tracker for each role. Most of the ideal recruiter functionality would come under Next Steps.

Implementation

How do all the pieces fit together? Does your frontend make requests to your backend? Where does your database fit in?

This will be a straightforward full stack web application, comprising a JavaScript React UI, Java backend, and SQL database.

Challenges

What did you struggle with? How did you overcome it?

1. Figma Familiarity: All team members were new to Figma, which led to some technical difficulties during the design process.

2. Generating Innovative Ideas: Developing truly novel ways to improve the job application experience was challenging given the highly saturated market.

3. Team Availability: With a small team, we faced additional pressure when one member was absent on the second day.

4. Time Constraints: Limited time to design, prototype, and document a complete solution required prioritizing features and making fast, strategic decisions.

Accomplishments

What did you learn? What did you accomplish?

1. We successfully built a working prototype in Figma for the candidate side, that demonstrates as much functionality as we could fit in the time that we had.

2. Three team members have successfully completed their first Hackathon.

3. We were a very technical team, so we've developed our ability to be product-minded.

Next Steps

What are the next steps for your project? How can you improve it?

1. Rather than making candidates fill out their profile, ask them to upload their CV first and parse that as far as possible to autofill the profile, after which candidates can edit and confirm.

2. Prioritise notifications towards candidates actively seeking new roles - in preferences we could ask candidates to describe their current situation and stagger notifications accordingly.

3. If candidates edit their search filters, they should be asked if they want to update their preferences.

4. An internal calendly-style booking system to allow interview slots to be booked and managed directly from within the tracker.

5. Recruiter functionality:

   1. Prioritisation of candidates based on matching requirements.

   2. Autoreject candidates are a specified period of time (customisable), so that no candidate is left eternally hanging.

   3. Notifications prompting them to respond to candidates who's applications haven't been updated recently.