C A S E S T U D Y
Reimagining our candidates application process
Tools
Figma
Miro
Team
UX Research Manager
Skills
Qualitative Research
Personas
Process Flows
Journey Mapping
June - July
(2 Months)
Role
UX Design Research Intern
Timeline
Project Overview
Walmart, a global retail giant operating 10,500 stores across 20 countries and employing 2.1 million associates, faced a significant challenge in its recruitment process. Despite the company's scale, the job application process for internal and external candidates had a high drop-off rate, indicating a frustrating and inconsistent experience. To address this, our objective was to streamline the application process that would enhance the experience for all applicants, reduce drop-offs, and ensure a seamless journey from application to employment.
Problem Statement
Identified pain points and opportunities that would optimize how we search, match, engage talent, and drive efficient end-user processes that enabled us to move faster as a business. These solutions would also result in time savings for the recruiter and the business.
Outcomes
How Might We Statement
How might we streamline Walmart's job application process to create a more consistent and seamless experience, reducing candidate drop-off rates and ensuring that both internal and external applicants have a positive journey from application to employment?
Double diamond design process
Framework
Walmart employs the Double Diamond design process to identify problems and develop effective solutions. To foster creativity and innovation while staying focused on the core problem and its impact on end-users, I applied this methodology to this project.
Stakeholder discussion sessions
Discover
Kicked off the project by meeting with the product manager to understand business challenges, objectives, outcomes, and requirements for the Journey Mapping workshop. Also, to discuss the following OKRs (Objective and Key Results) and Target Measures:
Career site (enterprise) and pipeline conversions
CRM (recruiter-supported populations) productivity and usage
Stakeholder experiences and feedback
User research
What are the pain points of the current site?
To understand our users' pain points, I examined their entire sequence of steps to achieve a specific outcome. Developing process flows allowed us to visualize the overall scope and identify opportunities for streamlining, improving, or merging processes. I created five high-level process flows, which consisted of flows for External Candidates (HO/Corporate), External Candidates (Store/Supply Chain), and Internal Candidates.
This step also helped us structure the Journey Map for the upcoming workshop
Process flows
User interviews
Using the insights gathered from the process flows, I developed a script for the user interviews. I conducted 6 out of 10 interviews to identify users' goals, needs, pain points, behaviors, and opportunities, which informed the creation of three personas.
Define
Creating personas from Insights
Using the insights gathered from the interviews, we clustered and synthesized insights via affinity mapping to identify themes that informed the creation of three personas. These personas were instrumental in understanding goals, needs, pain points, behaviors, and opportunities for the upcoming workshop.
Develop
Journey mapping workshop
The primary goal of the Design Thinking Lab workshops is to help Walmart Associates reframe their approach to the challenges they face and drive transformation in both customer and associate experiences. We aim to achieve this by educating, equipping, and empowering associates with the tools, resources, and mindset needed to leverage design thinking and institutionalize it as a core practice.
To align with the objectives of this virtual session, we followed the '7 P’s' framework:
Purpose: Why are we bringing busy individuals together?
Participants: Who is attending, and are they the right people?
Place: Where will we gather, and is the environment conducive to collaboration and consensus-building?
Principles: What are the ground rules for the workshop?
Process: What is the agenda?
Preparation: What needs to be accomplished beforehand?
Products: What deliverables should be produced during and after the workshop?
During the 8-hour workshop, 17 participants from various areas within the enterprise came together to ideate and explore potential solutions that could be tested and iterated upon. The goal was to generate diverse ideas and refine them through feedback and testing, ensuring their viability and effectiveness.
I served as a co-facilitator, responsible for populating journey maps by clustering and identifying key themes related to opportunities and 'How Might We' (HMW) statements made by participants. These themes provided the foundation for ideation and solution development.
As it was my first workshop, I quickly adapted by learning on the go, observing my colleagues, and staying agile in a fast-paced environment. After the workshop, I proactively reached out to other teams to observe their sessions and further develop my facilitation skills.
Deliver
Next steps
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to stick around for this step. As much as I would have loved to have seen the outcomes my time with Walmart came to an end and it was time for me to say my farewells. 🥺
Retrospective
Key Principles Moving Forward
During this project, I compiled a few key principles moving forward:
Taking 30 minutes to create a plan for a project will give you a better understanding of the objectives and proper steps to take.
Be the transformational leader your team needs.
Build trust with your manager and peers.
Communication is key during projects.
Be agile In ambiguous situations, not every project will be smooth.
Reach out to be included in meetings when joining a new project.
When joining a team, learn how the team works and what everyone’s strength is to learn from them.
Never stop learning.
