Peeks Moonshot
Peeks Moonshot
Problem:
Charged with a time-constrained mission, our small and agile skunkworks team at Wellfound embarked on a journey to unearth growth opportunities. We embarked on this quest through an array of workshops and a comprehensive series of over 100 user interviews, aimed at identifying the core challenges in the contemporary employment landscape.
Through these intensive workshops and extensive interactions with job seekers, we quickly honed in on a critical problem plaguing both candidates and hiring organizations. The challenge that emerged is the inadequacy of traditional methods, such as resumes and interviews, in effectively evaluating candidate qualifications and competencies. This has been proven time and again through costly hiring blunders for organizations and considerable hurdles faced by job seekers.
Our findings, derived from the insights of these user interviews and workshops, underscored the pervasive issue of individuals exaggerating their skills and experiences on their resumes. This embellishment made it increasingly difficult for hiring managers to sift fact from fiction when assessing potential candidates.
Moreover, we uncovered a secondary challenge for candidates themselves. The task of maintaining an up-to-date and comprehensive representation of their work history across various platforms, including portfolios, resumes, and social profiles, was revealed to be a cumbersome burden.
These revelations have become the cornerstone of our mission to redefine the employment landscape, leveraging innovation to bridge the gap between candidates and hiring organizations, fostering transparency, and enhancing the accuracy of evaluating qualifications and competencies.
Interviews and Affinity Mapping
Building a prototype to test a media-based approach to the hiring process was essential due to the evolving landscape of recruitment and the shifting preferences of both recruiters and candidates. In the digital age, platforms like TikTok had popularized video content, clearly demonstrating the power of visual media as a communication tool.
By embracing a media-based approach, we were able to tap into this trend and create an engaging, efficient, and proof-driven hiring process. This approach allowed candidates to showcase their skills in a dynamic and compelling way, while recruiters gained deeper insights into candidates' capabilities. It was a solution that aligned with contemporary media consumption habits, ultimately enhancing the recruitment experience for all parties involved.
Prototype and Test
Our journey of testing the media-based approach revealed an intriguing and transformative development: both recruiters and candidates were yearning for a community experience within the hiring process. Candidates found immense value in discussing their work, skills, and experiences in a more dynamic and expressive manner, transcending the traditional, often dull, bullet points on a resume. They not only enjoyed the idea of sharing their professional narratives with colleagues and friends but also saw potential for monetizing their expertise and opinions, recognizing the growing market for professional influence.
Simultaneously, recruiters saw the potential in this community aspect. They considered candidates' follower counts as validation of their influence and expertise, which could provide valuable insights beyond a typical application. Moreover, they realized the opportunity to discover exceptional candidates who hadn't formally applied but were intriguing enough to consider pitching a relevant job opening to, thus broadening the scope of their talent search. This collaborative and community-oriented approach redefined the hiring process, making it more interactive, engaging, and mutually beneficial for all parties involved.
