Delighting Hiring Managers with User-Friendly Workforce Technology

The number one factor that determines whether hiring managers adopt your contingent workforce program or “go rogue” and staff their assignments outside your program is the quality of their user experience.  

Many hiring managers interact with your program – via your VMS or extended workforce platform – only a few times a month or even a few times a year. If that experience is too difficult, too confusing, or too frustrating, they will simply find a way around it, regardless of company mandates. 

To encourage enterprise-wide adoption of our client’s programs, Beeline set out to create a totally different Hiring Manager Experience – one that would be easy and intuitive to use and provide all the visibility into the staffing process hiring managers are asking for. 

Understanding what hiring managers really need 

Our first step toward a new Hiring Manager Experience was to listen to program managers and hiring managers at businesses of all sizes and across multiple industries. We also talked with MSPs who interact with hiring managers daily and help them use our technology to fill and manage their assignments.  

In one of the most important insights from this research, we learned that of more than 100 features and activities Beeline offers, more than 80% of hiring managers regularly engage with only five. With these, they: 

1. Create requisitions
2. Manage approvals
3. Review candidates
4. Manage assignments
5. Create reports

Armed with this knowledge, we created a user experience that took all the workflows and features associated with each of these activities and arranged them as “microapps.” Each app is immediately accessible as an icon on the hiring manager’s home screen. Clicking any of the five icons opens the corresponding app and guides the user through all the necessary steps to complete that activity. 

“Game changing!”

The response from our user community was immediate and positive. But we didn’t stop with that initial re-design. We contacted more than 6,000 hiring managers and sat with users at financial, technology, telecom, transportation, and e-commerce enterprises to see how our new user interface worked for them. And from a feedback widget accessible throughout the new apps, we gathered – and continue to gather – real-time user reactions. 

They told us what they liked and didn’t like. And we responded. They told us they like our new, simplified home page and navigation. They like Global Search, Bulk Approvals, Reports Out, and other features, as well as our AI-powered Resume Visualizer that normalizes all resume formats and highlights relevant skills and experience. Most of all, they like the fact that the same user experience is available on desktop and notebook computers, tablets, and mobile phones. 

Anytime, anywhere, from any device

Wherever they are, hiring managers can click the appropriate app and take any necessary action. They can create requests, select start dates and duration, and submit their requests through their client-defined approvals process. As one hiring manager user described the experience, 

"I love how the approvals are face up when I open Beeline. This is my most frequently used page, and the view is very user-friendly and simple to review and approve. You guys have done a phenomenal job.” 

New UI/UX for other personas in Beeline’s pipeline

Creating a new Hiring Manager Experience was the top priority for our extended workforce platform UI/UX team, but it is not the only new user experience on our roadmap. We are also developing new, comprehensive, microapp-based user experiences for three other user personas: 

• Program Managers
• Staffing Suppliers
• Talent

Each one of these new user experiences will make it faster and easier to connect businesses to the remarkable talent within the global extended workforce. And because Beeline Extended Workforce Platform uses cloud-based technology, we will be able to deploy UI/UX enhancements to our entire user base faster than ever before. 

Today, nearly half of the average workforce worldwide consists of non-employees. With this ever-growing extended workforce, having the right technology in place is critical for acquiring and managing contingent talent. Without enterprise-wide adoption of your contingent workforce program, your company is missing out on visibility, cost control, compliance risk mitigation, and access to the best talent.  

The best way to ensure adoption by all hiring managers in your organization is to give them the best possible user experience. To see what the world’s best Hiring Manager Experience looks like, contact Beeline to schedule a demonstration today.   

About the author:  

Judy Bumgarner is Vice President of Product Strategy for Beeline. Responsible for Beeline’s evolving product portfolio, she oversees the transformation of the company’s flagship vendor management system to a cloud-based, microapp-enabled Extended Workforce Platform with connectivity to an expanding contingent workforce ecosystem.