Summary: I was selected to lead a lean team in an industry hackathon competition, serving as both a player and a coach. We successfully showcased our company in front of over 4,000 professionals and achieved a 2nd place win, surpassing IBM – a company renowned for its leadership in user-centered design and innovation.
Situation: I was selected to lead a team of top performers representing WTW at the HR Tech Industry Conference in Chicago, IL. WTW’s business goal in participating in the hackathon was to demonstrate the company’s ability to deliver innovation for our clients. The opportunity area we targeted was career pathing for internal employees. This was based on the premise that organizations face a key challenge of filling key positions with qualified internal talent, and growing internal talent. Additionally, internal employees want to grow their careers, but may not know what skills or experience they’re missing to advance. Our aspiration was to address both of these opportunity areas with a meaningful solution.
My Role: As a player/coach, my role was to lead, facilitate, guide, and actively contribute on the team. I championed our focus to deliver value to our users through a user-centric process, a clear understanding of our stakeholders, the problem space, and potential solutions. To ensure our team performed at its best, I cultivated a culture of safety, respect, and inclusivity. I also guided our team in overcoming obstacles, nurturing creativity, and sustaining focus on our goals, all within the constraints of very tight deadlines.
Our process: We began by empathizing with users and mapping out a typical job application process. As we did this, we started to notice disconnects for users. Additionally, we conducted desk research on competitors, identifying both disconnects and opportunities. To validate our analysis and premise statements, we conducted research by interviewing assigned industry experts and confirmed the following.
- Employee Candidates:
- Want to find internal jobs for which they’re qualified and grow their career
- Do question if they’re qualified and may not apply or know what steps they can take
- If they do apply, they are left wondering if they were qualified or what happens next
- They may be left feeling disconnected from the process
- Want to grow their skills to become more qualified
- Recruiting/HR
- Want to find more qualified internal candidates
- Want to support candidates through the process, but find it difficult to provide feedback
- Want candidates to feel supported
With clarity from our problem/need statements, we developed a prototype solution to address user needs. In the interest of time, we were limited to presenting the above to a panel of industry judges and for voting from over 4,000 professionals attending the conference.
Our Solution: The solution we created was called KOMPAS, which delivers value to both employee candidates and the recruiting/HR teams by addressing their respective needs. While some recruiting systems offer candidate skills gap analysis, we found them lacking in certain aspects. The unique value of the solution we created lay in its utilization of predictive analytics to identify skill, education, and experience gaps between potential jobs and internal candidates. These gaps are then employed to assist applicants in determining actionable steps they can take to enhance their careers.
Result:
- In front of over 4,000 industry professionals, we successfully showcased WTW’s user-centric expertise and process, as well as our commitment to delivering innovation and value for clients.
- We promoted engagement and team-building for WTW’s top performers and inspired WTW leaders and colleagues.
- We delivered a solid product idea that received immediate inquiries from conference attendees who wanted to buy our solution and engage with our team.
- We achieved a notable 2nd place victory, outperforming IBM in the competition.
