USER RESEARCH • USER EXPERIENCE • INTERFACE DESIGN
10.5+ Million tests held on HackerRank Platform in 2021. Companies want to evaluate well prepared candidates attempting their Hiring tests. Candidates want a destination to prepare for specific companies and get familiar with the testing experience.
Candidate Prep, a new initiative by HackerRank, focussed to cover the Preparation and Assessment journey of candidates.
User research, design, prototype testing
2 designers, 1 engineering & product manager and 15 developers
Jan 2022 - June 2022
We did extensive primary research and initial prototype testing with 15+ developers. I understood-
• The stages of job application and preparation journey
• Motivations, desires and frustrations of candidates in the preparation journey
• Similar products and resources which candidates use in preparation
• Identified behavioural patterns in the early talent group (0-4 years)
Two types of early talent personas observed in the market. For the scope of MVP, we only focussed on understanding the first persona.
• Practice as many questions as possible.
• Requires more time to prepare
• Looking for general SDE1/SDE2 roles
• Practice limited number of hard questions
• Requires less time to prepare
• Looking for expert roles
To understand how well prepared candidates usually are before taking Hiring assessments, I made a detailed journey map identifying the various stages where the candidate directly/ indirectly practice their skills.
Candidate start preparing atleast 1-3 months before they actively start applying for jobs.
Candidates tend to spend more time to brush up their strengths and then improve on weak areas
Candidates usually skim through the questions and only solve Medium to Hard level questions
Use Mock test as a way to gauge their preperation with a real test enviroment.
Our main goal for MVP was to focus on Preparation and Assessment journey of the candidate under strict deadlines.
Keeping in mind the future scope of the project, a left panel with tabs was included to clearly separate the various sections and hiring test rounds.
To keep the candidate motivated, a progress card on the right is introduced highlighting a roadmap for them.
Candidate is presented with company specific questions which are approved by the companies to help them prepare better.
A timed mock test for candidates for quick prep. A detailed analytical report highlighting their strengths and shortcomings is provided after.
The candidate is landed to the portal through the invite mail for Test Assessment. There was a gap in the knowledge of the user, as they expected to open a Test link, but they landed in an overwhelming portal.
The information under the different tabs on the left panel were redundant. And it had little visibility for the main preparation material and the hiring test for the candidate.
The users were getting confused between Challenge Questions and Mock Tests. Their intention was to check out questions, but because of the highlighted Mock test CTA, they clicked the same.
Any candidate applying to a job, is already aware about the company and the job requirements. Candidates also want to know specifics about the HR policies, Funding, Product roadmap/ vision of the company.
I explored various Visual styles for the revamp. Some adhering to the HackerRank Design System Guidelines, some out of the box! Shortlisted ones-
We have emphasized the main aim of the user, the Hiring test part by giving it bolder CTA and more visual space to not let the user wander much unless desired. And a layout with no scrolls.
In our earlier designs, we realized the list of questions given was redundant on the landing page as it did not give any context about the type of question of the skills assessed. They are later included in the new flow.
We wanted to give the users a balanced side-by-side view of 2 prep materials to choose from. Mock test for Quick prep and Challenge questions for Focused prep.
For any additional information about the company and job, companies preferred to give PDFs or external links for the candidate to explore.
As it was a new product to be released in the market, getting to implement the “end-to-end” design process was the highlight for me. From Primary Research, to Prototype testing with users. From making Personas and Journey Maps to doing UAT sessions with the dev team, it was a very wholesome experience! :D
