Designing an AI-driven recruiting CRM

The Challenge

Recruiting teams often struggle with fragmented tools and limited visibility into their hiring pipelines.

Common challenges included:

• Managing large volumes of candidates
• Difficulty identifying the best-fit candidates for specific roles
• Limited visibility into hiring progress
• Lack of analytics to understand recruiting performance

Phenom aimed to create a unified recruiting platform that connects candidate sourcing, pipeline management, communication, and analytics into one system.

My Role

I was the first product designer working on this product initiative, partnering closely with the Product Manager.

My responsibilities included:

• Designing the initial MVP
• Defining the core UX architecture
• Creating key design patterns for the platform
• Conducting customer research with enterprise clients
• Designing the main modules including CRM, pipelines, dashboards, and analytics

Once the MVP was delivered, the product was handed over to multiple squads to continue scaling the platform.

Research approach

To better understand recruiter workflows, I conducted research with enterprise customers in the US, including organizations participating in early product trials and POCs.

The research process included:

• Interviews with HR and recruiting teams
• Feedback sessions with early enterprise customers
• Benchmarking existing CRM platforms such as HubSpot and other enterprise tools
• Mapping recruiter workflows and hiring pipelines

These insights helped define how recruiters evaluate candidates, move them through pipelines, and measure hiring performance.

Candidate Management

Recruiters often manage hundreds or even thousands of candidates across multiple roles.

The Candidate CRM provides a centralized workspace where recruiters can review candidates, track their progress, and manage the hiring pipeline.

Key capabilities include:

• Candidate status tracking
• Pipeline stage management
• Quick evaluation of candidate fit
• Visibility across open roles

Candidate Profile

The candidate profile page consolidates all relevant candidate information in one place.

Recruiters can quickly review:

• Professional background and experience
• Hiring stage and role alignment
• Internal notes and interactions
• Candidate evaluation data

This reduced the need to switch between tools and helped recruiters make faster decisions.

Hiring Pipeline

Recruiters need clear visibility into where candidates are within the hiring process.

The pipeline interface allows teams to track candidates across hiring stages and understand the progress of each role.

This structure helps:

• Identify pipeline bottlenecks
• Prioritize promising candidates
• Maintain a clear overview of hiring progress

Candidate Communication

Maintaining consistent communication with candidates is critical throughout the hiring process.

The communication tools allow recruiters to:

• Track candidate conversations
• Manage engagement with applicants
• Maintain communication history across hiring stages

This helped improve candidate engagement and reduce communication gaps.

Recruiting Analytics

The analytics dashboard provides insights into recruiting performance and candidate engagement.

Recruiting teams can analyze:

• Job views and applications
• Candidate pipeline performance
• Geographic distribution of candidates
• Hiring trends and engagement metrics

These insights allowed teams to refine their recruiting strategies and improve hiring outcomes.

Impact

The MVP established the foundation for Phenom's recruiting CRM platform, enabling recruiting teams to manage their talent pipelines more efficiently while gaining deeper insights into hiring performance.

After the initial launch, the product continued evolving across multiple squads and product teams as part of Phenom's enterprise recruiting ecosystem.