BrightHR - Recruitment
I designed BrightHR’s recruitment platform from zero to a high-frequency, embedded workflow used by 60K+ users across five international markets.
Tools
Figma, GA4, Pendo, Hotjar
Duration
6 months
Deliverables
Product Design, UX, Research, Strategy
Current State
- BrightHR had no recruitment capability.
- Customers were managing hiring through spreadsheets and email.
- Competitors were launching recruitment features, creating both a product gap and a commercial risk.
Desired State
- A lightweight, structured recruitment workflow embedded within BrightHR that replaces spreadsheets and email.
- Close the competitive gap by delivering recruitment capability that meets market expectations.
- Enable SMEs to manage hiring with minimal complexity while maintaining structure and visibility.
- Seamless integration with existing BrightHR workflows, particularly onboarding.
Discovery & Research
I led discovery to understand how customers manage recruitment today, where workflows break down, and what to prioritise for an MVP.
1. Behavioural Research (700+ Admin Users)
What I did
Designed and launched in-product surveys via Hotjar (UK) and Pendo (international markets).
The survey was intentionally lightweight to maximise response rates and capture behaviour in context.
Survey questions
- How do you currently manage recruitment?
- What is your role in the recruitment process?
- How could BrightHR help with your recruitment process?
Users were also asked to opt into follow-up research, allowing for deeper qualitative exploration.
Who
- 700+ BrightHR admin users
- HR, business owners and hiring managers across multiple markets
Key findings
- 55% managed recruitment via spreadsheets and email
- Very low use of dedicated recruitment tools
- Hiring is shared across roles (HR + managers)
- Many users couldn’t clearly define what a “better system” looked like
- Even where tools like job boards were used, workflows remained fragmented
2. Qualitative Insights (User Interviews)
To deepen understanding, I ran qualitative user interview sessions with customers, including Rishi, a franchise owner managing a fast-scaling, high-turnover business.
Key findings
- Recruitment was a paperwork-heavy, manual process
- Significant time spent on:
- job descriptions
- contracts and compliance
- onboarding admin
- Managers often struggled with these processes
- Tools like Indeed were used, but did not reduce internal admin burden
Rishi had explored tools that automated:
- Job description generation
- Job board publishing
- Contract and document creation
- Applicant → employee transition
He noted that applicant tracking alone would not be enough to justify switching.
3. Feature Prioritisation (Card Sorting)
What I did
Designed and ran a remote prioritisation study (Feb 2022).
Who
- 33 participants (key accounts, advocates, engaged users)
Results
Top priorities:
- Move applicants into BrightHR without rekeying
- Track candidates through stages
- Basic reporting
Lowest:
- Recruiter integrations
4. Product Direction
Based on this, I defined the product as:
- A lightweight, structured recruitment workflow
- Embedded within BrightHR
- Focused on replacing spreadsheets first
Outcome
Discovery ensured the product:
- Solved a real, widespread problem
- Was scoped to deliver in 2–3 months
- Balanced structure with simplicity
- Aligned with actual user behaviour
Designing the MVP
The critical decision was positioning. Were we building an applicant tracking system? No. That would put us in direct competition with established enterprise platforms, and frankly, our customers didn't need that level of complexity.
What we were actually building was simpler: a structured, lightweight recruitment workflow that lived inside BrightHR.
I was the sole designer working with a cross-functional team, running in two-week delivery cycles. We moved fast. The MVP went from concept to launch in around two to three months, shipping in November 2022.
The core product wasn't complicated, but it had to work properly. Vacancy management let hiring managers create and manage roles, track who owned what and keep tabs on status. Applicant tracking captured candidate data, tracked progression through hiring stages, and gave managers a place to record notes and feedback. Reporting was basic but functional, giving visibility into hiring activity without overcomplicating things.
Results
From November 2022 to February 2026, the numbers tell a clear story. Over 2.82 million events. 60,000 by managers. An average of 46.6 events per manager.
But raw numbers don't really capture what's happening. This isn't passive usage. People are actively working in the product.
There have been over 670,000 applicant edits, which means ongoing pipeline management. 441,000 applicants added, which represents real hiring activity. Nearly 480,000 job detail views, showing deep interaction with individual roles. The dashboard alone has been accessed 357,000 times by 49,000 different managers. And managers have created over 100,000 notes.
When we launched, BrightHR had roughly 50,000 businesses and 500,000 users. Recruitment achieved broad adoption across that customer base, with high-frequency repeat usage that's been sustained over multiple years.
Outcome
The product did what it needed to do. It closed a competitive gap that was becoming increasingly problematic. It expanded BrightHR's value proposition in a meaningful way. It increased platform engagement and introduced a genuinely new, repeat-use workflow.
But more than any of that, it transformed recruitment from a fragmented, improvised process into something structured and embedded. That was the real achievement.
The hardest part was balancing competing pressures. Simplicity versus capability. Speed versus scalability. Feature delivery versus system design. Every decision involved trade-offs.
What we ended up with is a product that feels lightweight but functions as core infrastructure. It doesn't announce itself. It just works, and people rely on it.
What I learned
After launch, the work didn't stop. I kept iterating based on what our customers were actually doing, not what we thought they'd do.
I simplified job creation flows because they were causing unnecessary friction. Note-taking turned out to be one of the most frequently used behaviours, so I set about improving that significantly by updating the note fields to support markdown formatting.
On the efficiency side, we added the ability to duplicate jobs, which saved hiring managers a surprising amount of time. We refined vacancy and applicant management based on observed patterns.
But the most important change? Converting applicants directly into employees.
This single feature removed duplicate data entry and connected recruitment straight into onboarding. Recruitment stopped being a standalone feature and became part of the platform itself.
Introducing AI
When recruitment first launched in 2022, AI tooling wasn't really viable yet. By 2025, that changed. The ecosystem had matured enough that real opportunities existed to make existing workflows genuinely better.
I designed and built a proof of concept for AI-assisted job description generation and integrated it directly into job creation. The goal wasn't to add AI for the sake of it. It was to augment something people were already doing frequently, and make it faster and better.
This became one of BrightHR's first AI-powered features. Within six months, it generated over 6,000 outputs and achieved roughly 50% adoption within job creation workflows.
What that proved was simple: AI can enhance speed and quality without adding complexity, as long as it's integrated thoughtfully into existing patterns.