IncogniHire

IncogHire

Framing the Problem

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

The problem we are trying to solve is bias and discrimination in the recruitment process, where candidates are often judged based on personal details such as their name, gender, age, or background rather than their actual skills and abilities. This can lead to hiring decisions and a lack of diversity in workplaces.

It affects both job seekers and employers so candidates may feel discouraged or excluded from opportunities, while employers may unintentionally overlook talented individuals who could contribute significantly to their teams. By removing personal identifiers and focusing on skills, our platform helps create a fairer, more inclusive hiring process that benefits everyone involved.

Idea Explanation

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

Our idea is a job search website that allows candidates to apply for roles anonymously, using a unique ID instead of personal details like name, gender, or background. Employers create skills cards listing the abilities and qualifications needed, and candidates respond with a written statement explaining why they’re the right fit.

An integrated AI Buddy automatically removes identifying information to prevent bias and provides personalised feedback to unsuccessful applicants.

This approach tackles unconscious bias in recruitment by focusing purely on skills and suitability rather than personal characteristics. It promotes fairness, diversity, and inclusion, ensuring all candidates have an equal chance to succeed. By making hiring more transparent and skill-based, the platform benefits both job seekers and employers who want to build diverse and talented teams.

Implementation

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

Our recruitment platform is designed to create a fair, inclusive, and skill-focused hiring experience by removing personal identifiers such as name, photo, age, and race, ensuring candidates are judged solely on their skills and potential.

On the frontend, users interact with a clean, intuitive interface. New users answer a brief questionnaire to help the system understand their skills, interests, and goals. They then receive personalised job recommendations, displayed through an engaging swipe-style card system that allows for quick browsing of job opportunities or candidate profiles.

The frontend communicates with the backend through secure API requests. The backend handles application logic, authentication, and communication with the database, which securely stores user profiles, job listings, skills, and employer feedback.

When employers review candidates, they can submit feedback on hiring decisions. This data is processed by an AI system, which generates personalised feedback for candidates, turning rejection into an opportunity for growth.

Overall, each component works together to deliver a transparent, skill-based, and equitable recruitment process, connecting the right people to the right roles efficiently and fairly.

Challenges

One of our main challenges was developing and refining our idea. At first, we had many creative directions but struggled to clearly define the problem we wanted to solve and focus on the most important aspects of the project. Through teamwork and discussion, we narrowed our focus and shaped a clear, actionable concept.

We also faced time constraints, which meant we couldn’t fully code the website as planned. Instead, we focused on designing a clear visual prototype in Canva, demonstrating how the platform would work, including the AI feedback feature and skills-based matching system.

Despite these challenges, the process taught us valuable lessons in planning, collaboration, problem-solving, and communication, and we enjoyed creatively bringing our idea to life in a meaningful way.

Accomplishments

What did you learn? What did you accomplish?

Through developing our project, we learned how bias and discrimination can influence the hiring process and how thoughtful design can help create a fairer and more inclusive system. We explored how removing personal information and focusing on skills can lead to more equal opportunities for all candidates.

We also developed our skills in teamwork, research, and presentation, and learned how to communicate a complex idea clearly and persuasively.

Using Canva, we created a visual prototype of our platform, showing how an anonymous, skill-based recruitment system could look and function. While we didn’t build a working website, we successfully demonstrated the concept and user journey, highlighting how technology could be used to promote fairness, diversity, and inclusion in recruitment.

Next Steps

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

The next steps for our project would be to develop a functional prototype of the website by building both the frontend and backend systems. This would allow users to interact with the platform in real time, creating profiles, applying anonymously, and receiving AI-generated feedback.

We would also aim to collaborate with developers and AI specialists to refine the anonymisation process and ensure data security. User testing would help us improve the design, accessibility, and overall user experience based on real feedback from both candidates and employers.

In the future, we could add features such as skill assessments, diversity analytics for employers, and more personalised AI coaching, helping make the platform even more engaging, fair, and impactful.

Presentation link: https://www.canva.com/design/DAG1hpZ2se8/lWF4pfOz06vmQKDXDzpKtw/edit?utm_content=DAG1hpZ2se8&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton

Design link: https://www.canva.com/design/DAG1fmkM1wQ/wQsKx_aj8Ek2KrUzarnXeA/edit?utm_content=DAG1fmkM1wQ&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton