As per recent research, employment is the domain that experienced the most serious impact of the world health crisis. Both finding a job and hiring the right candidates have never been that difficult. That’s when matching the right person for the right kind of job became a new black with many advantages.
Codica team is happy to have participated in creating the anti-crisis Wowner job matching system for the Netherlands market. The benefits the solution brings to its users include identifying the strong and the weak points of the job seeker, minimizing the hiring mistakes, and others.
In this article, we will show you how Codica’s experts deliver custom software development services in action, including product design and tech stack choice. Read on to find out how we made the client’s idea happen and delivered the Wowner product.
Reshaping the job search market
If you were looking for a new job recently, you would notice the significant shifts in the job search industry. Most of these changes were dictated by the pandemic and its results. Some of these changes are only at their source, so we’ll see their progress in years to come. Let’s look at the significant shifts in the job search industry from both recruiters’ and job seekers’ perspectives.
The job industry changes from a recruitment perspective
The main priorities of recruitment professionals for the coming years are going to be:
- Improving the quality of hire with smart search systems;
- Increasing general retention rate;
- Growing talent pipeline;
- Improving time-to-hire;
- Hiring more diverse candidates.
Source: Finance Source Online
The job search industry shifts from the jobseekers perspective
The global unemployment wave was caused by mass businesses shutting down and profit reduction. Big and small companies did their best to adjust to the new reality and shift to remote work safely. Sure thing, not all businesses survived, but those who did, came out with new internal processes for their current and new employees.
Below are the leading job market trends for job seekers.
- Online interviews are here to stay;
- Networking is moving online;
- Creating a daily routine is a key to stability feeling;
- Remote or hybrid work formats are gaining momentum;
- Improving the quality of job search is the main market priority.
How technology is changing the way people find new jobs
Technology has been playing a huge role in employee recruitment. Social media data usage, video conferencing, and tracking software help speed up and organize the process.
Candidates use tech to discover new job opportunities and apply for new jobs from PCs, tablets, and phones. Personalized job match systems with filters and career advice are getting popular to find new relevant jobs.
About 10 years ago, it was highly unlikely to search for a job online using a mobile phone. But today, it’s a new normal. Currently, many job search apps connect recruiters and hiring managers with candidates.
And today we want to tell you about Wowner, a job matching portal that the Codica team created. Let’s find out how the idea of a Wowner appeared and turned into a working product.
Wowner job matcher: what’s behind the product idea?
Spring 2020 was a difficult time because of the Covid-19 rapid boost worldwide. Many businesses had to either close or survive in the new reality and support their employees and end-users.
That’s when Geert-Jan Waasdorp, Co-Founder of Wowner, shared with us his idea of an individual job matching portal for people working from home.
Unlike a standard job search website, the idea behind Wowner was to use a resume matching algorithm for an accurate, intelligent search.
Customer’s challenges before building individual job matching portal:
- Launch the product fast, while this theme is hot on the job market, with minimal risks.
- Build a modern career matcher for the Netherlands market that works smoothly on any device.
- Implement an intelligent job search based on skills, location, and other preferences.
- Create an intelligent search system that will analyze the job market, matching skills to jobs.
So, the main challenges were making the job search 100% accurate, fast, and comfortable to use on any device. And we’re proud to say that Codica’s experts succeeded in helping our client solve these challenges.
Creating a job search platform: key aspects
First off, for every new project, we recommend a Product Discovery stage. This way, we analyze and validate our customer’s ideas before providing any web app development service.
What were the benefits of the discovery phase in the Wowner job match system case? We identified customer’s challenges and minimized extra costs for mobile apps development.
We also successfully used the same approach when working on an activity booking marketplace for PlanMyKids.
Thanks to the thorough Discovery stage, productive cooperation with our client, and Codica team’s expertise in building marketplaces, we managed to deliver the MVP for PlanMyKids under budget.
Progressive web application development
One of the biggest customer’s pain points was to create a solution for all platforms, especially mobiles. The choices were: creating a web platform and two mobile apps (for Android and iOS); or create one progressive web app (PWA) that works well on all devices.
Since our customer needed a fast and mobile-friendly solution within a short time period, we advised going with a mobile-friendly PWA.
So what’s a PWA and what are the benefits of this technology for businesses?
The progressive web app is a new developing technology from Google. It combines the best from both web and mobile tech for a new-level customer experience.
The main advantages of progressive web application development service are:
- Reliable app work: thanks to pre-caching, a progressive web app can work without an Internet connection;
- Increased users’ engagement due to instant push notifications;
- Improved conversion: the pages are fast loading, which means fewer leaving customers;
- Smooth user experience across devices and operating systems;
- Faster development: since PWA is a website, only one development team is involved.
Speaking about the Wowner project, implementing a PWA was crucial for a fast and precise job search. As an extra to the speed, you can search online and find a new perfectly-matching job even on your mobile.
Web application design of a job-matching platform
We also paid extra attention to product design, from prototyping to font selection from the very beginning. Below are some important moments that needed attention from our design team, since in the PWA design, you need to make sure that the app works smoothly on all the devices.
The user flow
Following the registration in the app, the user was asked to fill out a questionnaire with 5 questions. It was crucial to make the filling process convenient from any device, especially from mobile phones. The main challenge in website UX design was to make every step simple, clear, and not overloaded with questions so that the user would not get tired and leave.
We also decided to demonstrate the filling progress, so that the user knows how many steps there are left.
The language
It was also necessary to take into account that the application is in Dutch. Why? Some words in this language are longer than in English; for example, “volgende stap” is the next step. That’s why we made the entire design in Dutch to have an idea of how the application would look and work. We double-checked if all the words fit into the buttons and whether everything looked neat.
The color palette and fonts
Colors come next in job matching portal app design. If you look on the Internet, average job websites are pretty reserved and official due to a neutral palette. We decided to add bold, bright, contrast colors to the job search process with Wowner.
Working on Wowner career matcher, our designers selected Poppins Google font. We made this choice because of its internationalist catch on the geometric genre. It supports both Latin and Devanagari alphabets. This font is perfect for modular and minimal websites like the Wowner individual job match system.
Tech stack choice for Wowner career matcher
We used React, Rails API, AWS, Redux, Sidekiq, Redis, Gitlab CI, TypeScript, and Material UI to create Wowner app.
The choice of such a tech stack was well-grounded. Here’s why:
React: We chose React for front-end development because it allows creating a top interactive user interface. Unlike Vue, React is chosen when you need to build a complex web app that tends to grow, like Wowner app.
Rails API accelerates the development of the product thanks to the huge collection of free open-source libraries, gems. Many functions are already written, thus making the development process faster.
Redux helps to manage the web app’s state in a single permanent place. It was used to keep changes more predictable and traceable.
AWS: We used Amazon Storage Service to ensure the safe storage of multiple objects.
Redis is a data-structured server. It was used to ease the load of relational or NoSQL databases and applications.
Gitlab CI: We used Gitlab CI to catch possible bugs and errors during the early development stages. It is also used to ensure that deployed to production code complies with the code standards.
TypeScript simplifies JavaScript code, making it easier to read and debug.
Material UI is a React component library based on Google Material Design. This adaptable system was used to make stylized web development faster and easier.
Core functionality in detail
A mobile adaptive job search platform
One of the main challenges was to cover all platforms, especially mobile devices.
For this reason, our team delivered a web product that meets modern web standards. Namely: top security, prompt loading, user- and mobile-friendly, manageable Progressive Web App (PWA).
This way, Wowner platform users can look for new jobs and apply using their mobile phones or tablets.
Detailed User Profile and Skills Passport
On registering, a user has two options: uploading a regular CV or creating a new one with Wowner job matcher. This new CV in the Wowner app has LinkedIn-like user data, including skills and all skills levels. A user indicates desired remuneration level, job preferences, and other different conditions.
The Wowner app asks to fill out a set of primary profile fields to be able to find jobs based on skills. No sensitive or restricted data is required. Just basic user information: full name, email, phone, recent jobs, skills, and the level of each skill. The more details a user shares, the more chances for a resume matching algorithm to analyze and find the perfect match.
When completed, such Skills Passport can be downloaded as a PDF and used to apply for jobs.
Intelligent Job Search based on user’s CV data
Wowner job matcher provides very accurate career opportunities search based on a user’s CVs data. To narrow down the search results, we used Google Maps API.
In addition, our development team integrated 3rd party databases of local Dutch job websites. It allows us to improve our career options.
Career Dashboard of job matching website
On completing their Wowner app profile, a user has access to the personalized Career Dashboard. This board has a user's vacancies pool, labor market score, education, and matching jobs based on the data indicated in the previous steps.
Wowner job match system has a list of matching jobs for the corresponding skills set and job requirements. If one or some skills level lacks proficiency, a smart system will offer a user to take the corresponding courses. On completing the needed course, a user can boost lacking skills and thus, improve their Skills Passport and finally apply for the desired job.
The pool of matching jobs
Every position on this job search website has a particular set of parameters. Among them: a date, description, responsibilities, and an opportunity to apply from the application. A user can star the most interesting job openings.
Results delivered when developing Wowner job search system
Below is the value our team delivered to the client.
- We developed a ready-to-the-market job match system within a short time frame.
- We designed and launched an individual job matching portal based on the PWA technology. Progressive web application development is a combination of web and native applications. It supports push notifications, offline working, and installing on the homescreen.
- We implemented an intelligent search system that makes job search by skills faster and easier. The search is based on the user’s hard and soft skills and requirements. Such as monthly/hourly rate, remote/onsite work, and work on weekends, night shifts, and so on.
- This intelligent job match system analyses a user’s career chances in the labor market based on the data provided. In case certain skills lack experience, the system offers related courses for professional development.
- Finally, we’ve done an integration with the 3rd party APIs. Namely, Dutch job websites databases. It was necessary for relevant job recommendations.
Final words
Finding a new job during the Covid-19 pandemic became very hard. And not only because of high unemployment rates. The job searching market has changed. We are witnessing such trends as hybrid work, virtual interviews, and smart job match systems with a personal job match.
Our team is happy to have participated in such interesting project as Wowner matching system. Take a look at the full case study to learn more about it.
Do you want to make people’s lives better? Get in touch with Codica’s experts, and receive advice about the best-suited solution for your idea. We will deliver a unique web product that meets all modern web standards.
Find out more about other web projects that the Codica team delivered for our customers worldwide. If you’re interested in the recruitment domain, take a look at this global recruiting solution that our team delivered.