One of the worst inefficiencies in the world is hiring processes that end with candidates’ rejection: Companies use very valuable resources, which they get zero return on investment, and most of the time, candidates get no feedback and spend their time in very repetitive interviews.

Case in point: Even for positions in which the candidate was under-experienced clearly as a day, no feedback or no specific reason for rejection is presented.

Introducing external evaluators, a new role to the standard hiring equation: They evaluate job seekers’ application packages and create extensive reports on them. These reports are shared with job seekers; thus they finally get feedback that they have been looking for for a long time and can be shared with the hiring responsible in the companies that are interested in the job seeker in return for financial compensation.

Furthermore, companies that evaluated a candidate and spent valuable resources in the process can assume the role of external evaluators, and monetize their own evaluation reports, which enable them to get a return on their investment.

To understand the problems job seekers face before, during, and after the hiring processes they go through, I interviewed two people who were actively looking for a job and had interviewed within the last thirty days.

Both stated that:

To reach a broader population to verify these statements, see what other problems job seekers face, and understand the landscape better, I decided to conduct user questionnaires.

Back to the whiteboard, I decided to go over four key points I learned by then:

During a brainstorming session, I noticed that a new role, “external evaluator”, could be introduced to the standard hiring equation between job seekers and companies, immensely improving the current hiring practices.

Most importantly, any person can assume any combination of these three roles under certain circumstances.

After I completed the first iteration of VidBib’s prototype, it was time to test it with some real users. Yet, in addition to testing its usability, I had another motivation: To see how fast users learn to navigate through the website.

Even though I had done quite a good job with its information architecture, some power users would be switching between three roles constantly and very swiftly, thus how intuitive they find navigating through the product was very important.

With these two goals in my mind, I conducted an online unmoderated usability test with four tasks. All users were shortly briefed about VidBib before they started their tests, and as any task would start at the hiring responsible dashboard, instead of the product homepage where they could read about the roles, and the business proposition VidBib presents, etc., they would know very little about roles. While this is not clearly ideal for first-time users, this was intended to observe how fast they learn to navigate through the website, even when they have minimal information.

Companies and candidates can use VidBib as a one-way interview platform. Pre-answers enable candidates to create their own pages, as below, review their answers, and share them with external evaluators, and companies to review those answers and write (and share) their comments on them.

Job seekers can store their answers even before interviews, allowing them to work on their interviewing skills, share with external evaluators, and share them on their candidate pages.

Job seekers can share introduction videos, and "pre-answers" to interview questions publicly on their personal pages. Sharing those pages with the hiring responsible significantly reduces the time spend on pre-screening calls, or even interviews.

External evaluators can see the external evaluation ads that match their skill sets, not wasting time on unfit job listings.