A hiring platform for small businesses

Careers Pages is for businesses that hire without an HR team: cafes, shops and small offices across the UK. Apply Gateway, the company behind the JobSwipe app, wanted one place where an owner could post a job, get it in front of candidates and see the hire through.

We designed both sides of the product, the business app and the candidate app, for desktop and mobile. More than 100 screens, linked into four working prototype flows with nearly 2,000 connections.

Initially, there were two screens, a job list and an edit form, built on a stock admin template. We started with research: how small businesses hire today, which job boards they pay for, and where applications get lost. The hiring funnel began as a paper sketch and went through three layouts before it settled into tabs.

After the design direction was picked, we built the system around it: Open Sans, two primary colors, a status color for every hiring stage and a component library that covers every screen.

A business adds its logo, address and a short "why work here", picks one of eleven themes or builds its own, and the careers page goes live. It runs on a Careers Pages address or on the business’s own subdomain, with a step-by-step guide for the DNS part.

Plenty of good hires walk past the shop window. Owners can download hiring posters and print QR stickers, up to 21 on an A4 sheet, for windows, menus and counters. These codes then lead to the careers page.

Each job is a card with what an owner checks every day: live or not, views, applications and the boost it’s running. A boost sends the job to the big boards in one payment. Boost covers Indeed, JobSwipe and Reed, Super Boost adds CV-Library and Totaljobs, and Social Boost pushes it to Instagram and Facebook.

Applications land in a seven-stage funnel, from new application to hired. One click moves a candidate forward, back or out, and everyone who applies stays in a searchable talent pool. Plans, team invites and client accounts sit in the same menu.

Candidates apply straight from the careers page. A guest enters their details, drops in a CV and confirms a code sent by email. A registered candidate picks a saved CV, previews it and applies.

Their account lists every application with its status and keeps CVs to reuse, download or delete. Like the business side, every screen exists for desktop and phone.