The problem was never the workload

The brief

Fix a job board drowning in applications

By 2017 one-click applying had buried recruiters in resumes, and the good candidates got lost in the pile. I joined to improve the product, and ended up helping pivot it into something else entirely: an AI tool that matched roles to strong passive candidates instead of waiting for people to apply.

What I built first

Quality over volume

I designed around the moment recruiters actually spend their time, reviewing and validating matches. One candidate at a time, no endless filters, with required feedback on every rejection so the matching got smarter.

The reframe

The AI worked, and they trusted it less

Matching was accurate. The relief didn't last. The more the system decided, the more recruiters felt sidelined, like the part of the job they were proud of had been handed to a machine. The real problem was never the workload. It was agency.

The work

Put recruiters back in the driver's seat

I moved the matching criteria next to the results so recruiters could tune a role and watch matches update live, a tight feedback loop instead of a black box.

• 16 criteria types, each one includable or excludable, for nuanced roles.
• Plain-language criteria, so tuning the AI never felt intimidating.
• A candidate detail view that showed which criteria were met and why, with every resume reformatted into one consistent, scannable layout.

Impact

A job board became an AI recruiter in eight months

Recruiters found qualified people faster and with less bias, and candidates got a fairer read than keyword filters ever gave them. People didn't want a smarter machine. They wanted to still feel like the reason it worked.