New Hiring Process: Mapping Workflows to Align Teams

METHODS & ARTIFACTS

  • End-to-end (E2E) mapping

  • Future vision journey map

  • Near-term future process map

  • Near-term future service blueprints

  • Process flows

  • Milestone mapping 

  • Maps for communication/education

  • Maps as deliverables/documentation

  • Maps as exercises/activities

KEY OUTCOMES

Simplified Complexity: Communication of complex processes in digestible ways for multiple types of audiences, including senior leadership and hands-on product teams

Cross-Team Connectivity: Connecting details across phases and teams to ensure consideration of the full end-to-end experience for both front- and back-stage users

User-Centricity: Storytelling from a user-centric perspective rather than from a tech- or tool-focused view to evoke empathy and understanding in stakeholders

Future Reference Materials: Documentation that created lasting impact and value by setting the context for multiple user research studies since the pilot was launched over two years ago

CHALLENGE

This engagement began with a simple request: to articulate and visualize the north star vision of a new hiring process aimed at attracting top technology talent (Fig. A), as well as to visualize the broader north star vision of a larger technology talent strategy looking across the entire employee lifecycle (Fig. B).

As stakeholders began to see the value of the shared visualizations and the structured organization of information I created, the engagement naturally evolved. Over time, this led to the creation of a series of additional maps—serving both as deliverables for communication and documentation and as dynamic tools for ongoing collaboration.

APPROACH

This ongoing case study has involved multiple cycles of engagement with stakeholders to visualize and communicate their ideas—across different levels of detail and at various points in time.

After the initial future visions mapping, I remained involved as the team refined and finalized their pilot hiring process. In addition to producing further maps as communication artifacts (Fig. D), I also helped map the entire end-to-end process workflow to ensure alignment across all phases and team, and across all user touchpoints in the front and back stages (Fig. C).

Over time, I was re-engaged for additional rounds of mapping to support user research studies—both after the launch of the pilot and again more than two years later to inform ongoing process improvements (Fig. E, Fig. F).

OUTPUTS / DELIVERABLE

  • Creation of a single-slide journey map that was used to promote the future vision to leadership and adjacent product teams (Fig A) and higher-level strategy

  • Creation of a more detailed map to communicate the higher-level strategy and how the new hiring process connects to the other HR-wide initiatives (Fig B)

  • Facilitation of detailed process-mapping working sessions that connected the experiences from start to finish across 8 different user groups to ensure all decision points were thoroughly thought through (Fig C)

  • Creation of a set of single-slide service blueprints to tell the story to leadership about what the pilot process will look like for the five main user groups involved (Fig D) - these maps were also used years later when looking to improve the process (Fig E)

  • Simplification of the process flow which was used in multiple communication materials, including a candidate-facing FAQ document and public-facing job postings on LinkedIn

  • All of the above enabled a new hiring process to launch first in the US, and later globally

  • Additional journey maps for select user groups were created to inform a listening strategy during the beginning of the pilot

  • 2+ years later, milestone mapping was used to document the now-current process to inform user research studies about process improvements (Fig F)