Making flexible
hiring easier.
Company
NOWJOBS
Role
Product Designer
Timeline
2025 - 2026
01
Summary
NOWJOBS connects employers with flexible workers across a wide range of industries.
I redesigned the vacancy creation flow to better support different hiring needs, from last-minute shifts to recurring and seasonal work. Through stakeholder interviews, customer research and usability testing, we created a more adaptive flow with clearer questions and more relevant branching.
Alongside this, I helped rebuild the design system in Figma and improve collaboration between design and engineering.
02
Understanding the organisation
2.1 Learning before designing
During my first weeks at NOWJOBS, I took the initiative to speak with Product Managers, Team Leads and colleagues of the design and engineering teams.
My goal was to understand how the organisation worked, where teams experienced friction and which parts of the product offered the greatest opportunities for improvement.
These conversations showed that the challenges were not limited to individual screens. There were also gaps in the way design decisions were documented, communicated and followed up during development.
2.2 Closing the gap between design and engineering
Designs were often delivered to engineering, but there were too few recurring touchpoints to review the implementation afterwards. As a result, the released product did not always fully reflect the original design.
This was reinforced by an outdated and insufficiently documented design system. Many styles had been hard-coded over time, making inconsistencies increasingly difficult to correct at scale.
Together with the design team, we rebuilt the design system in Figma using reusable components and design tokens. We aligned these foundations with engineering and gradually started replacing existing components.
03
Research
3.1 Where does the existing flow fall short?
I first spoke with internal stakeholders to understand the problems they encountered in the existing vacancy creation flow.
NOWJOBS serves employers in hospitality, retail, food production and many other industries. Each of these customers recruits differently, yet the existing flow captured their needs in largely the same way.
This meant that important details were sometimes missing or expressed too generally. When the platform does not fully understand what an employer needs, it becomes harder to connect the vacancy with the right candidates. This can create frustration on both sides of the marketplace.
3.2 Talking to employers across industries
Internal knowledge gave us a useful starting point, but I wanted to understand how employers actually recruited in practice.
I conducted in-depth interviews with customers from different industries, including hospitality, retail and industrial food production. The interviews explored:
how they currently plan their workforce;
when and why they use NOWJOBS;
how they build and maintain a pool of workers;
which devices they use;
which information matters when creating a vacancy;
where the current experience causes uncertainty or unnecessary work.
Each interview was documented in Miro and Confluence, making the recordings, observations and key takeaways accessible to the wider organisation.
04
Different employers, different needs
4.1 Filling an immediate gap
Smaller hospitality businesses often already work with a familiar pool of students and flexi-job workers. They mainly turn to NOWJOBS when someone cancels or when they need to fill a last-minute shift.
Speed is essential in these situations. The employer usually knows exactly when someone is needed and wants to publish a vacancy with as little administrative work as possible.
One restaurant owner we spoke with worked from the kitchen and managed staffing through the mobile app. Notifications even reached him through his smartwatch while he was cooking. Sitting down at a desktop to complete an extensive recruitment flow simply did not fit his reality.
4.2 Building a reliable talent pool
Larger employers often have a dedicated HR or planning department and operate very differently.
Companies such as retailers, restaurant chains and industrial bakeries continuously need to maintain their pool of flexible workers. Students graduate, availability changes and flexi-job workers move into other permanent roles.
These employers are not always trying to fill one immediate shift. They may be looking for people who can work during school holidays, return every weekend or remain available over a longer period.
They also tend to work more frequently from a desktop, where vacancy creation is part of a broader administrative workflow.
4.3 Mobile and desktop both serve a purpose
There had been internal debate about the continued relevance of the desktop experience.
The research showed that this was not a question of choosing one platform over the other. Device usage was closely connected to the employer’s context.
Small business owners often manage staffing between operational tasks and depend heavily on mobile. Larger organisations are more likely to have employees working from a desktop throughout the day.
The product therefore needs to support the same underlying recruitment process across both environments without assuming that every customer works in the same way.
05
Designing for time
5.1 One question with many possible meanings
The most complex part of the flow was capturing when an employer needed someone.
A vacancy could represent:
one or more specific dates;
a continuous period;
a recurring need on particular days;
an immediate shift that needs to be filled;
a broader search for people to add to an existing pool.
The original experience did not distinguish clearly enough between these situations. Trying to capture all of them through one generic sequence created ambiguity for employers and limited the quality of the vacancy data.
5.2 Starting with the employer’s intent
Instead of immediately asking employers to select dates and hours, we introduced a higher-level question: when do you need someone?
Employers can choose between:
Specific dates
A period
Recurring
This first decision determines which questions appear next. Someone filling two individual shifts should not have to complete the same flow as an employer searching for someone every Saturday morning.
The shared structure keeps the experience consistent, while the branching logic allows each scenario to become more specific where necessary.
5.3 Iterating on the structure
We explored and tested several ways of capturing dates, recurring patterns and working hours.
The challenge was not simply to reduce the number of steps. Removing too much detail would make the vacancy easier to create, but less useful for matching. Adding every possible option upfront would make the flow feel overwhelming.
We therefore focused on progressive disclosure: asking only what is relevant at that moment and revealing more detailed questions based on previous answers.
06
Making every question count
6.1 Better vacancies lead to better matches
The existing flow included extensive lists of qualifications and requirements. Customers sometimes skipped these steps or completed them with little attention because the relationship between the information and the quality of their matches was not always clear.
We restructured the sequence so that related questions appeared together and at a more logical moment in the flow.
Instead of presenting vacancy creation as an administrative form, we treated it as a guided conversation that helps employers describe the person they actually need.
6.2 Writing like a conversation
We also changed the way questions and labels were written.
Rather than using internal terminology or abstract field names, the interface asks direct, human questions such as:
When do you need someone?
Which hours should they work?
How many people do you need?
Who can apply?
How much experience is required?
Answers are presented in language customers can quickly understand, supported by short explanations where needed.
This reduced the cognitive effort required to interpret each step and made the consequences of a choice more visible.
6.3 From generic to relevant
The redesigned flow starts with a common foundation, but adapts as more context becomes available.
The selected function, schedule and worker type can determine which later questions are relevant. This allows NOWJOBS to gather richer information without forcing every employer through one long, generic flow.
07
Validation through usability testing
Once the first direction was defined, I conducted seven usability tests with customers in different industries.
Participants worked through interactive prototypes based on realistic recruitment scenarios. During each session, I observed how they interpreted the questions, where they hesitated and whether the available options matched the way they normally planned their workforce.
The findings were fed directly into new iterations of the flow. We repeatedly refined:
the distinction between vacancy types;
the terminology used for dates and recurrence;
the order of questions;
the way working hours were entered;
the visibility of optional and required information;
the level of detail presented at each step.
Instead of treating customer research as a single discovery phase, we continued returning to employers throughout the design process. This helped us verify whether our interpretation of their needs also worked in practice.
08
A scalable vacancy creation model
The final direction combines one recognisable entry point with more specialised paths for different recruitment needs.
Employers no longer have to translate their situation into a generic vacancy format. The product first tries to understand their intent and then guides them through the information needed for that specific scenario.
This creates a stronger foundation for:
clearer vacancies;
more relevant candidate matching;
less unnecessary input;
better support for both urgent and long-term recruitment;
future sector-specific adaptations.
The main complexity of the project was not designing an individual screen. It was creating a model flexible enough to support very different industries without turning the experience into a collection of disconnected flows.
09
Collaboration and implementation
Throughout the project, I worked closely with Product Managers, engineers and other stakeholders.
The new design system helped us align design decisions more consistently and created clearer foundations for implementation. Components and styles were documented in Figma, while recurring conversations with engineering helped us account for technical constraints earlier in the process.
Rather than handing over one finished flow at the end, the project evolved through continuous collaboration, prototype reviews and customer feedback.
This was particularly important because the new vacancy model affected both the user experience and the underlying way vacancy data needed to be structured.
10
Conclusion
Redesigning the vacancy creation flow showed how much complexity can hide behind a seemingly simple question: Who do you need, and when?
Employers use NOWJOBS in very different contexts. A restaurant owner trying to replace someone before the evening shift has different expectations from an HR employee building a reliable pool for the upcoming summer.
By speaking directly with customers, we moved away from a generic form and towards an adaptive experience that better reflects those realities.
The project also reinforced the importance of involving engineering early, documenting decisions and validating assumptions throughout the process. A better interface was only one part of the outcome. The broader goal was to create a scalable foundation that could help NOWJOBS understand vacancies more accurately and, ultimately, improve the match between employers and candidates.