TelaSero was conceived in 2014 during a particularly challenging job search effort by the founder, Ken Sacco, after realizing that his current job was a good fit from a skillset standpoint, but the company not a good culture fit, with the intentions of bringing employers and job seekers together in a low-friction platform that is designed to give “culture-fit” a higher degree of consideration in the recruiting and application process. Poor culture-fit in the workplace can result in dis-engaged and unhappy workers, which negatively effects productivity and efficiency, and ultimately revenues. The website, and its accompanying mobile application, will allow typical resume and job posting capabilities, but with enhancements and additional information concerning the culture and work environment of the employers company and/or department that is being hired for, as well as the job seeker’s desired culture and work environment type. The mobile application is where the real revolutionary job search happens. The mobile application will be designed in a fashion similar to typical dating applications such as Tinder®, where the job seeker will have a brief but compelling profile, and the job posting will also be brief and compelling, highlighting workspace culture. Based on your resume, skills, and career information, in conjunction with employers’ applicant requirements, both job seekers and recruiters will be shown only applicants that fit their desired criteria. This will cut down the time spent sifting through irrelevant jobs and applicants. Using a simple and intuitive “swipe up for no” and “swipe down for yes” functionality, we believe TelaSero will revolutionize and simplify the job search and recruitment process for both job seekers and HR managers alike, and reduce the time that both invest under current antiquated processes.
This website is designed to support a small business venture that I have been building for four years, TelaSero. I believe that the recruiting industry largely ignores the importance of culture-fit in business and personal success, so I am designing a platform that puts culture-fit at the forefront of the process.
As this business is entirely dependent on the website and mobile application, it was very important that I lay a strong foundation of code and design to support the progression of the project into more advanced development. The first step I took, of course, was to dig deeply into our course assets, and absorb as much as possible. Beyond that, I spent a significant amount of time analyzing industry websites such as Glassdoor and Monster, looking for commonalities as well as differences, and applying them to my own needs. I also spent time going down the rabbit holes of W3Schools and StackOverflow, finding new and interesting html features, standards, and use ideas. Finally, I am incorporating my instructor feedback into this project. While there are a few recommendations that I will be re-instating for use after this class, most of the feedback has been appropriate and welcome.
Researching competitor websites, such as Glassdoor and Monster, resulted in significant influence on the structure, function, and design of the TelaSero website. With a focus on open whitespace and minimalist pages, my intention is for ease of use and intuitive navagation throughout the website. Additionally, some of the specific page designs (contact, join, login, pay, postjob, and settings) are merely placeholders until I can implement php, javascript, and a database, at which point these pages will become popup overlay elements. With the future popup and/or mobile use in mind, I formatted these forms with a #05386b to maroon color gradient, adding a pop of color that looks nice when the form covers the page on mobile. This gradient also mimics the color scheme in use on my website tables, which have a maroon body and #05386b caption. My color choices of white and #efe2ba (cream) base colors, maroon primary, and #05386b (dark blue) and goldenrod as secondary were influenced by my favorite color combinations, as well as the professionalism imbued in the maroon and dark blue. Additionally, there is the added benefit that this color schema falls within the Triadic color scheme parameters.
They typography utilized in the website consists of Lato for the majority of the content - inspired by Glassdoor's use of this font. It presents a clean, sans-serif, modern and professional look. Prominent page headlines utilize Freestyle Script to add a touch of professional whimsy. I utilized box-shadows in strategic spots to give a 3D look/feel to certain elements, notably the forms that will be migrating to popup overlay. Finally, This "About Us" page utilizes Times New Roman, serif, for the editorial text, in keeping with the narrative nature of this page. Due to the length and density of the text on this page, I increased the line height to 30px, along with using a larger 20px font size.
Additional page specific information is as follows:
Applicant Portal and Recruiter Portal
These pages were purposefully designed with identical formatting, typology, and design to give all user types (end-user consumer, and business) a consistent experience. Using a three column format to lead off the pages with enticing use benefits also aligns with target account generation. Employing page specific sub-menu navigation bars keeps the main portal pages clean and targeted. On the Applicant Portal and it's sub-pages, I have also inserted a small fixed tab to allow for quick resume upload (once this capability is activated with a database solution).
Browse Jobs, Careers, and Talent Search
These pages are designed with future mobile app usage in mind, utilizing "tiles" for each job/applicant listing. Each tile contains an avatar for visual identification, along with pertinent job/profile information.
Research Jobs
This page is currently under construction, and will be formatted similarly to the Applicant and Recruiter Portals, with a sub-menu navigation bar to aid the user in researching items such as salaries, company reputation and reviews, and general job research.
Investors
This page uses typical formatting and typography, with a focus on the embedded YouTube funding pitch video, as well as the downloadable TelaSero business plan, and investor contact link. When this venture goes live, this information will be replaced with typical SEC required financial reporting, along with sustainability and environmental reports.
Index/Home
The TelaSero Home page was inspired by my competitors Home pages - with the websites main function, job search, prominently on display before any other content. Secondary to the search bar, I have content that is compelling and pertinent to both cohorts of end-users, while also having synergies with our business mission, again in consideration of target account generation.
Moving forward, my intention is to use this website as a basis for the actual website that I will be using for my fledgeling company. While it's currently rudimentary in it's functionality, I plan to convert to php and obviously add javascript and jquery elements, along with incorporating a SQL database to store pertinent user/customer information, to enhance and activate much of the functionality that is not available in my website's current form. I am also currently in the process of developing mobile compatibility through the @media query CSS function (a few pages are complete/near complete).
Given more time, knowledge, and resources (in addition to actual customer profile pages and job postings), I intend to add individual dynamically generated user profile pages and job posting pages. Search bars will be converted back from the placeholder Google Search functionality. Resume file upload will be activated. We'll have developed an in-house culture/personality test which will replace the placeholder "16personalities.com" website that is currently linked to. I'll also be utilizing php/javascript to convert the "settings", "login", "contact", "join", "post job" and "pay" pages into overlay popup boxes, with blur effect over the underlying origin page. This particular "wish list" item highly influenced the design of those pages, with the forms representing the sole content on the page (since these forms will be converted to popup, the page itself will become unnecessary). The Recruiter and Applicant Portal pages are designed with synergy and consistency in mind, with an identical format, as I treat them as sub-home pages. Similarly, the "talent search" and "browse jobs" pages have an identical design to ensure consistency (also somewhat shadowing the "home page" design), along with anticipation of the future format of the mobile app, which will allow job and applicant search in a similar fashion to Tinder. Ultimately, my future goal is to add the appropriate functionalities to the website, clean up the design, and clean up my code a bit more - there are too many areas where I could probably have used my classes and id's better. I thoroughly enjoyed this project, as HTML coding is something that I have been interested in learning for, well, decades now.