Term program candidate tracking, evaluation, and ranking system (RA Recruiting)
2020
Team size: 4
Role: Project Manager, Designer, Front-End Developer
The Research Assistant (RA) position at the Board of Governors is a prestigious two-year program that allows hands on experience working alongside PhD economists to prepare for a graduate economics degree or career. Twice a year in the Fall and Spring, job candidates go through a rigorous recruiting and application process that involve the Division Administrators (DAs), a screener, a rotating committee chair, interviewers, and rankers in the four economics divisions.
These various users were using two separate systems (Fall and Spring), which are intertwined and outdated, to track RA candidates through the process. In 2019, I led a research and design phase (involving 2 designers and a SME) and came up with a project plan to revamp the system by migrating the legacy code to Rails and integrating the two applications into one. Each season has its' own complex process and ranking algorithm that needed to be incorporated separately into one system.
The next year, as the project manager (and having just completed an MBA course in Project Management), I detailed the scope, communication plan, and work structure in a project proposal that was approved by the primary stakeholders (DAs).
Because the Lead Developer was also the SME, I worked closely with him to learn about the process and intricacies, which uncovered more complexities, such as deeper levels of permissions, additional seasonal states of the system, and the effects of changes in candidate states.
I used MS Excel to break down these complexities to get a visual picture of the situation, as well as communicate details that a wireframe would not be able to communicate easily.
The page layout was then designed in a high fidelity visual interface that included multiple roles. I tested these mockups with a sample consisting of all user types before delivering to the developers for implementation.
As developers implemented the basic layout and architecture of the mockups, I helped to style and implement the front-end code using our Bootstrap-based design system.
I planned and facilitated two Retrospectives throughout the project, using a template I searched and stole from the internet. I was looking for a way to ask more targeted questions to the team so that they will think of more specific things to talk about related to successes and challenges. This new way of holding a Retrospective proved to be effective and reused by other project managers in my group, due to its team-building effects.
The project was completed in scope and on time. We received heavy praise and a kudoboard from various divisions who were delighted with the resulting product.
There were several little lessons learned along the way around the theme of overcoming hurdles as a team. Project Manager and Designer role were too much to be a one-person combined role for such a hefty and complicated project. This was our first COVID project and we learned how to effectively work together remotely for the first time when pandemic infrastructure was not readily set in place. We were adaptable and open to trying new things, which was crucial for the success of the project. We are proud of the state machine solution for moving candidate statuses. We are proud of the team coordination through the GitLab Agile board. There were struggles with the designer and product owner opinions that have been an ongoing issue and slowly improving over time.
