SEMICOLON / ENUM AFRICA
Enum is an end-to-end talent matching platform that will automatically sifts through applicants and match them with the most suitable job roles for recruiters.
Product Design
Visual Design
UX Research
Brand Design
Enum was originally designed to solve the internal problem of managing applications and onboarding trainees, but it evolved.
In 2020, Semicolon (parent company) built an internal tool to help the admissions team screen and onboard individuals from a pool of about 10,000 applications for their software engineering training programme. This tool solved the problem significantly and Semicolon decided to scale this solution to other businesses. But first, the product team decided to validate this idea
Problem
We figured that, unlike Semicolon, most businesses would require this service for recruitment. Even though it was very similar to sorting and filtering applications, the rules for recruitment were quite different.
Since we wanted to build an end-to-end solution for major parties involved in recruitment, we focused on two user groups:
Applicants (or Job Seekers)
Recruiters
Applicants
For this research, we chose to use surveys and user interviews to get as much information.
We outlined their major pain points to be:
No feedback from recruiters.
Long recruitment process
Fear of fake job postings which could lead to kidnapping
Frustration from having to enter their information multiple times
Recruiters
To understand the problems organizations faced with hiring, we chose to approach two groups of hiring managers:
HR in companies (in-house)
Agency HR
After several surveys and interviews, we outline their pain points as:
Difficulty reviewing and short-listing candidates from a large pool of applications
Inability to accurately validate the applicant’s competency/skill
Screening candidates took up so much time.
Solution
After brainstorming ideas with the team, we analysed our ideas to build our new requirements:
Goals
Reduce screening time for recruiters
Give applicants feedback on their applications
Save applicants information for easy job application.
For Recruiters
Predefined Screening Tests: We curated a pool of predefined test questions (Skills, cognitive, psychometric, and personality questions) so that HRs and Team leads could easily pick and save time.
Customisable Stage Filters: in stages for sorting through applications so the recruiter only reviews QUALIFIED CANDIDATEs. For example, filters could be by Location, Years of experience and curated assessments.
Automated Rejection Emails: for people who didn’t make it to the next stage and we ensured recruiters who rejected candidates added a reason. After, the hiring process ended we also sent automated rejection emails to candidates who weren’t hired.
For Applicants
We saved their application information on their profile on Enum.
We verified companies to ensure they were legit.
We sent feedback when necessary.
We launched the first version in a private beta to some of the HRs we interviewed earlier on and other recruiters in our network.
In the first 2 weeks after we launched the private Beta, we onboarded 10+ recruiters from 10 companies, we curated over 5 screening tests mostly personality and psychometric tests.
Takeaway
Scoping: we couldn’t add some features e.g. allowing recruiters to upload their own tests.
Partnerships: we discovered similar products that we could partner with for the screening tests.
Extensive research and/or failing fast: we discovered better ways to handle certain things after many deliberations.
