Jump In. | Devpost

Applicant: Popular job posts
Applicant: Create a new post to initiate a discussion
Applicant: Manage application status
Applicant: Job postings
Recruiter: Manage hiring status

The Challenge

Many have lost their jobs and may consider a career switch post COVID-19. While job opportunities such as cashier and retail sales associate have largely decreased during the pandemic lockdown, it is projected that there will be an increase in job opportunities when stores reopen. To make sure everyone’s job applications are reviewed fairly, this is where you can “jump in.” Despite laws against discrimination, research from US National of Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) shows that “job applicants with white names has a higher chances of callbacks for interview than non-white names.” According to the research, with the same professional experiences, if the applicants applied with white names, the probability of hearing back from an employer is 50% higher than that of applicants who applied with African-American names. People often associate names unconsciously with a certain image - not limited to race, gender, religion, or background. This is often when unconscious bias may slip in, resulting in a potentially biased and non-inclusive recruiting process.

Our Solution

To avoid biased decisions being made throughout the screening process, we came up with “Jump In.” Jump in provides a platform for applicants to apply for jobs without revealing their names to hiring managers until the last round of interview. During the screening process of the interviews, hiring managers are only able to see the applicant's profile with their experiences, skills and education. If the applicant is selected for a final round of interview, hiring managers will then be able to see the applicant’s names to schedule an interview. Additional Features for Applicants In addition to the feature of hiding the applicants’ names to hiring managers before the last round of interviews, we also developed the “category discussion board” feature for educational purposes. Even though applicants are able to filter out specific jobs and are able to view the job descriptions before they apply through current job search websites, a lot of times the filters are not very specific. Our “category discussion board” provides detailed job categories where applicants are able to discuss jobs or interviewing experiences on related boards. Additional Features for Recruiters From start to finish, recruiters are not only able to track each job posting's hiring status, but also track conversations with each candidate.

How we built it

Ideation With the aim to achieve inclusive hiring, we are inspired by job searching platforms such as LinkedIn and Jump Start, to remove unconscious biases during the hiring process.

Prototyping Prototyped UI and User Journey Maps with Figma.

Website Building We used HTML, CSS and BootStrap to build a demo site of our idea, and hosted it with github pages and domain.com.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

This platform successfully achieves our objective of removing unconscious bias and lower the barrier of access to opportunities. On the design aspect, the platform navigation is extremely well thought out for both the applicant side and the recruiter side. On the functionality aspect, our category feature of intelligent job post filtering enables job seekers to find useful posts regarding interviews, recruitment processes, and company culture. Our hiring management system enables recruiters to keep track of the hiring process for each job posting. In particular, not only are they able to manage each candidate’s progress with a “Trello Board” like structure [1], they are also able to manage their emails/conversations with each candidate, revolutionizing the traditional emailing process.

What we learned

While building this project, we learned that unconscious biases can serve as a major obstacle that hinders opportunities for all. Technically, we learned about website building, website hosting, and design prototyping with various tools.

What's next for Jump In.

Future opportunities include deploying the entire web service in scale, using cloud technologies, and connecting with recruiters as well as job seekers to use this service.

[1] https://trello.com/en