New Dawn Recruitment

Website (UI/UX)

Helping job seekers and employers connect faster through streamlined recruitment.

Project overview

Career progression is an emotional journey. New Dawn Recruitment, an ethical boutique healthcare agency; needed a digital platform that honours that growth. Building from the ground up to replace a defunct site, I designed a frictionless UX that strips away unnecessary login barriers. The result is a scalable, premium hub that respects a candidate’s time and drives fast applications.

The Challenge: Transforming a static information site into a high-performance recruitment platform with a seamless, account-free application journey.

Project Scope: I led the complete rebuild, designing a custom job board, a modernised cyan UI, and a frictionless layout that ensures visual impact regardless of vacancy volume.

Industry
Recruitment

Duration
2 months

Tool Used
Figma
WordPress

Design Process

Competitor Analysis
User Research
Target Personas
Journey Mapping

Card Sorting
Colour Palette
Workflow Mapping
Design Systems

Wireframes
Interactive Mock-ups
Usability Testing

Brand Asset Pack
Site Deployment
Project Launch

Discover

The current job market is tough, and looking for a job or trying to hire the right talent is stressful. Job seekers are constantly trapped in that frustrating loop of needing experience to get a job but needing a job to get experience. Simultaneously, businesses are struggling to find people with the specific skill set requirements for their niche, often without the time to look for them. I started by auditing the old website to see exactly where users were getting stuck and where the agency was losing potential candidates.

My goal was to bridge the gap between their hands-on recruitment expertise and their online presence. By doing this, the site could become a tool that breaks that frustrating cycle and kicks off a real career growth journey.

Competitor Analysis

As a specialist care and community support agency, New Dawn Recruitment occupies a unique space in the market. To see how to differentiate the platform, I audited both large-scale corporate agencies and specialized care providers. This research revealed common UX frustrations, such as complex application flows and unclear job details on the larger sites, alongside a total lack of personalized candidate support. These insights directly informed my early decisions, highlighting a major opportunity to design a smoother, more inclusive, and high-touch premium experience tailored to the care sector.
A competitor analysis table comparing recruitment platforms, focusing on user experience, job application flows, and market differentiation.

Key Strategic Takeaways

Personalised Support Gap:

Major platforms like Blue Arrow prioritise high-volume automation over human connection. This leaves a massive void for candidates and clients who want tailored, one-to-one guidance.

Self-Service Friction:

Platforms like Care.com rely on a self-service model that shifts the burden of vetting and filtering onto the user. This feels cold and transactional, creating a major barrier for high-tier talent and busy businesses.

Boutique Opportunity:

By stripping away the “digital factory feel” of these larger platforms, I could position NDR as a human-centred alternative. The focus shifted to designing a premium space that restores trust, confidence, and community care.

Target Personas

To bridge the gap between corporate automation and boutique service, I developed personas for both the job seeker and the employer. By mapping the specific frustrations of Sara (the job seeker) and Garry (the employer), I identified that the real problem wasn’t just finding a job or filling a vacancy. It was overcoming the repetitive, impersonal friction of legacy recruitment platforms.

Pain Points

Analysing the friction points for both Sara and Garry revealed a common enemy: time. While their daily needs differ, both users were being drained by a lack of clarity and repetitive data entry. Sifting through these symmetrical frustrations forced a major shift in my design direction. Originally, I was heading down a standard path to build a high-volume, generic job board.

However, realising that raw digital noise would only worsen Sara’s application fatigue and Garry’s screening burnout, I pivoted the strategy entirely towards a specialised, high-touch boutique experience. To achieve this, the design focus shifted away from generic layouts and towards solving four critical architectural hurdles:

Accessibility Barriers:

Legacy workflows made it difficult for job seekers to discover and apply for roles quickly, leading to high drop-off rates.

Administrative Friction:

A heavy reliance on manual, PDF-based registrations created an administrative bottleneck that made tracking applications highly inefficient.

Information Gaps:

Vague job descriptions left job seekers uncertain about role requirements, resulting in a high volume of mismatched inquiries.

Manual Vacancies:

The lack of direct, digital posting options forced employers into a slow, manual recruitment cycle.

Ideate

Progressing from the persona insights and identified pain points, the immediate focus shifted to replacing manual bottlenecks with a streamlined, high-conversion digital pipeline. The core challenge lay in balancing a quick, simplified application for job seekers with the rich, structured data required for effective employer pre-screening.

Strategic Pivot

Redefining the job specification became the catalyst for balancing quick user applications. Progressing from persona insights and identified pain points, the immediate focus shifted to address the information gap. I conducted an A/B concept test comparing the client’s short descriptions against a structured, detailed format to determine which was more effective at drawing qualified professionals.

Short Description Baseline:

Testing confirmed that the brief, vague 5-line paragraphs left job seekers uncertain about specific roles. This lack of clarity was the direct cause of high drop-off rates and a flood of mismatched inquiries.

Structured Framework:

Splitting the information into three defined pillars – Overview, Duties, and Skills proved far more effective at building user confidence. To scale this success, I designed an employer intake form to automatically generate this rich data layout on the backend.

Card Sorting

To ensure the platform architecture felt intuitive rather than overwhelming, I conducted a card sorting exercise to categorize user needs and expectations. By grouping key drivers like Decision Influencers and Usability Requirements, I was able to map out a clear information hierarchy. This process allowed me to prioritize high-value features, such as automated job expiry and transparent salary expectations, ensuring the final design addressed the most critical friction points for both candidates and recruiters.
Visual of card sorting exercise showing how users organised content based on decision influencers, pain points, goals, usability, and feedback/preferences.

Key Strategic Takeaways

Building Trust:

Pain points like hidden fees and slow recruitment were major frustrations for users. The platform needed clear information and regular updates to build trust.

Simplifying Applications:

Users wanted a quick application process and an easy way to track their submissions. This made these capabilities the essential platform features.

Human Connection:

Feedback highlighted a demand for specialist advice and personalised support. This reinforced the importance of keeping human assistance easily accessible.

Prototype

With the brand identity and hierarchy established, I translated my strategic maps into a living prototype. This iterative process allowed me to stress-test the user journey, ensuring the quick-apply flow felt as seamless in practice as it did on paper. By moving from low-fidelity wireframes to high-fidelity designs, I fine-tuned the balance between boutique aesthetics and the functional clarity required for a high-traffic recruitment hub.

Try It Yourself

Drag the slider to trace the transformation of the interface—from the initial functional “skeletons” to the final, high-fidelity Boutique experience.

Usability Testing

To move beyond theory, I conducted a targeted usability study using Lookback to observe how a mix of 20 participants—split between active job seekers and recruitment leads—navigated the prototype. The goal was to pressure-test the new quick-apply flow and the employer intake form under real-world conditions. While the initial layouts were visually polished, the testing revealed subtle navigation blind spots that hindered the effortless flow I was aiming for.

Key Strategic Takeaways

Accelerated Completion:

An impressive 80% of users completed the full application under ten minutes. The simplified structure proved that reducing complexity directly enabled faster, stress-free engagement.

Refined Logic:

Smart form-field logic removed the navigation issues found in earlier testing. This allowed users to move through the process seamlessly without friction or confusion.

Professional Standard:

Feedback from recruitment leads confirmed the streamlined process felt more premium and professional. It successfully replaced outdated, PDF-based applications with a modern experience.

Define & Deliver

Following the prototype validation phases, I delivered a fully responsive ecosystem optimized across desktop, tablet, and mobile interface design. Moving beyond the UI, I provided a comprehensive brand toolkit featuring a refined system that completely clarified the agency’s service offerings. Completing this project was a powerful exercise in translating complex recruitment logic into a seamless, boutique digital experience.

By transforming fragmented user pain points into a polished, high-conversion platform, this strategy-first approach successfully eliminates core friction for both candidates and recruiters, delivering a scalable foundation that positions the agency as a premium leader in the high-end talent market.

Project Reflection

Drawing on my experience from both sides of the recruitment process as a job seeker and a recruiter, I understood first hand how easily communication bridges get blurred.

This perspective helped me design an empathetic, streamlined experience that respects the job seeker’s time while simultaneously improving efficiency for the agency.

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