Our core research focused primarily on what we heard from students were blockers that limited their ability to find success beyond a degree. We reasoned that if we helped them to find out how to apply their education in a practical, focused manner - we could help them craft strategies and roadmaps to their end goal - employment. Churn became an afterthought once we focused our energies on value provision over value extraction.

Text Via Braintrust Whitepaper: The way we work is broken. Companies know they are only as valuable as their talent: the people who build the products, drive the processes, and imagine the innovations changing the world. Yet those same companies rarely give talent control over how they work or are rewarded for their work. They rely on extracting value but don’t return it equally to those who create it. When times are good, shareholders reap the benefits. When times are bad, workers take the hit. We have accepted this, simply because most didn’t have the power to demand better.

However, workers are increasingly abandoning that extractionary model. In the wake of a global pandemic that demonstrated that remote work is both possible on a mass scale and, in many ways, more efficient, workers are unwinding out of traditional employment arrangements to become their own nodes in sprawling freelance networks, a global phenomenon described as “The Great Resignation.” While that unwinding was already clear before 2020, it was accelerated by the pandemic that saw 36% of the American workforce working as freelancers —a significant increase from just 28% the year before.

Our ambitions were to create a strong foundation that embraced a rapidly evolving business and more diverse user base.

Our high level goals were to:

By dissecting the common apps Gen-Z used on daily basis, patterns emerged around gamification, quick and intuitive experiences, dopamine spikes, and fundamentally similar gestures, such as swiping. What came next resulted in something like LinkedIn's 'quick apply' meets Hinge, with a robust accreditation platform able to utilize a student's transcripts as well as verify their skillsets.

The initial wireframes were focused on iterating product features and technical specifications and detailed the prospective model we could go after. Considerations were made for how both mobile and desktop could utilize their individual strengths.

Above, the desktop flow showcases an onboarding flow. By utilizing an AI companion, we could effectively scrape skills and transcripts and make accurate suggestions on what career paths the student should/could engage with. Layered with Pearson's recently acquired skill verification company, Credly, the opportunity to verify and suggest upskilling assessments becomes a powerful tool for recruiters.

What if applying for a job was as simple as opening an app, and having 10 pre-vetted positions matched to your profile that you could either swipe left or right on, like your favorite dating app? With quick apply, students can immediately send their application to the job poster, or bookmark the opportunity to review later.

Each job listed relevant skillsets for students to further align themselves with a prospective position. When a student did not have a skill, they were prompted with an assessment relevant to the posting to fulfill the criteria of up to 10 skills.

Cover letters are an antiquated way to share enthusiasm and/or expertise, and the industry is rife with commentary on whether or not they are even necessary anymore.

Borrowing from much of the way our target audience has learned to share information about themselves, we utilized optional prompts to personalize the experience of hiring.