New Dawn Recruitment

website design

Helping job seekers and employers connect faster through streamlined recruitment.

Project overview

New Dawn Recruitment (NDR) provides ethical recruitment services across multiple industries and offers supported living to help young adults transition toward independence. The goal of this project was to design a user-friendly recruitment platform that makes applying for jobs and posting vacancies simple and fast, without unnecessary logins or complicated processes.

The Challenge: NDR’s previous website made it difficult for candidates to access jobs and for employers to post vacancies efficiently.

Project Scope: The project aimed to create a fast, intuitive platform that makes applying for jobs and posting vacancies simple for both job seekers and employers. It also focused on establishing a professional, trustworthy online presence for NDR.

Industry
Recruitment

Duration
2 months

Tool Used
Figma
WordPress

Design Process

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Competitor Insights
User Research
Personas
Journey Map

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Card Sorting
Colour Palette

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Wireframes
Usability Test

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Brand assets
Launch

Discover

The project began with a deep dive into the needs of job seekers and employers, alongside a review of the competitive recruitment landscape. Understanding these factors was essential to ensure the design addressed real-world challenges rather than assumptions.

Competitor Analysis

I analysed key recruitment platforms to see how they structured user experiences and differentiated themselves. This process revealed common frustrations, such as complex applications and unclear job details, and highlighted opportunities for NDR to deliver a smoother, more inclusive platform. These insights directly informed early design decisions and shaped the foundation for a user-centered experience.
A competitor analysis table comparing recruitment platforms, focusing on user experience, job application flows, and market differentiation.

Key Takeaway: The research underscored the importance of intuitive navigation, clear industry positioning, and technology-driven solutions to streamline recruitment for both job seekers and employers. These insights became the foundation for the design strategy.

Target Personas

To guide design decisions and ensure the platform addressed real user needs, I developed two core personas, supported by journey maps and empathy maps. These tools helped me visualise pain points, goals, and behaviours for both job seekers and employers.

By focusing on Sara Adelivia, a care assistant seeking a clear, efficient application process, and Garry Eason-li, an employer needing qualified candidates quickly, I was able to translate their frustrations and motivations into actionable design solutions. This approach ensured the platform would deliver a seamless experience for all users.

Pain Points

Research revealed recurring frustrations for both job seekers and employers that directly influenced the design direction. At first, it was challenging to prioritise which pain points to tackle first, given the variety of user needs. Working through these challenges helped me identify the most impactful features and workflows to create an intuitive, efficient, and user-focused platform:

Limited Access:

Job seekers found it difficult to find and apply for roles online, which reduced opportunities and slowed their job search.

Unmanageable:

The reliance on PDF registration forms made applications time-consuming to track and documents harder to manage.

Brief Details:

Many job descriptions lacked essential information, leaving candidates unclear about responsibilities and requirements.

No Job Posting:

Employers couldn’t post vacancies directly on the site, forcing them to depend on manual processes that slowed down hiring.

Ideate

Building on persona insights and pain points, I explored solutions to make the platform more intuitive and efficient. Key features included a streamlined ‘Quick Apply’, redesigned job detail pages, an intuitive ‘Post a Job’ form, pre-screened candidate options for employers, and automated updates designed to deliver a seamless experience for both job seekers and recruiters.

Card Sorting

To validate these ideas, I conducted card sorting sessions with representative users. This helped me understand how content and features should be organised and ensured the navigation aligned with real user expectations. It was challenging at first to reconcile different user preferences, but iterating based on feedback allowed me to prioritise key actions and make the interface intuitive and easy to use.
Visual of card sorting exercise showing how users organised content based on decision influencers, pain points, goals, usability, and feedback/preferences.

Colour Palette

Building on the client’s existing brand colour, I crafted a complementary palette to enhance usability, hierarchy, and overall aesthetic. Darker tones added structure and sophistication, while interactive colours guided users to key actions. Soft background shades created a welcoming, accessible environment. Every choice was deliberate, supporting both usability and brand perception while delivering a cohesive, professional, and engaging experience.

Brand Colour (#1EB0E6)

It conveys trust and professionalism, and anchors the overall aesthetic.

Header | Footer (#141522)

Structural elements like headers and footers, adding strength and sophistication while framing content.

Buttons (#344999)

Buttons and interactive elements, guides users toward key actions and ensures visibility.

Background (#F1F9FE)

Page backgrounds, creating a soft, welcoming, and accessible environment.

Prototype

Building on the moodboard and colour palette, I translated key ideas into wireframes, beginning with low-fidelity sketches and iterating toward high-fidelity designs. This process allowed me to experiment with layout, hierarchy, and navigation before committing to polished visuals.

To showcase this evolution, I included an interactive slider so viewers can compare the rough wireframes with the final designs. This not only illustrates the transformation of the interface but also highlights the deliberate decisions made at each stage to improve usability, clarity, and the overall user experience.

Try it Yourself

Drag the slider left to reveal the polished, high-fidelity design, and right to revisit the early wireframe, tracing the evolution of the interface.

Usability Test

Once the prototype was built, I conducted usability testing with real users to understand how easily they could search for and apply to jobs. Observing their interactions revealed friction points in layout and navigation that weren’t obvious on paper.

Iterating based on this feedback, I refined the interface to make key actions more intuitive and workflows smoother. The results were encouraging: 80% of users were able to complete an application in under 2 minutes, confirming that the process was both efficient and user-friendly. This stage reinforced the value of testing early and iterating, ensuring the final design truly met user needs.

Define & Deliver

After prototyping and usability testing, I delivered polished, responsive mock-ups for desktop, tablet, and mobile, along with key brand assets such as colour palettes and typography. The redesign clarified NDR’s services and created a platform designed to guide visitors toward action.

Completing this project was highly rewarding — seeing the design come to life and knowing it addressed real user pain points reinforced my skills in user-centred design. The process of research, iteration, and creative problem-solving gave me confidence in tackling complex, dual-audience platforms like NDR.

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