Storytelling Pitchbook

Nurse Recruiter Storytelling Assistance

Screen shot of user interface prototype landing page
Landing Page

WHAT

Web App

WHEN

February 2022

MY ROLE

Discovery Research
Design-Thinking Workshop Facilitator
Prototyping and Evaluation

TOOLS

Miro
Figma

OVERVIEW

Aspirant Management Consulting was contracted by a major hospital network to improve their nursing talent acquisition performance.

UX CHALLENGE

Matching Selective Nurses with a Major Hospital

Graphic showing a recruiter trying to pitch benefits of a position to a nursing candidate with other interests.

Against a post-pandemic backdrop of competitor offers and travel nursing, these recruiters needed to concisely pitch to candidates positions that matched their interests in pay, benefits, and type of work.

UX CHALLENGE

Merging Talent and Marketing Storytelling

Graphic showing the Aspirant Storytelling framework and recruiters applying it to Aspirant's Talent Acquisition training.

A collaboration between Aspirant's Talent Consulting and Marking & Innovation teams, this project needed to sell both teams' strategic brands, including M&I's Storytelling framework.

UX SOLUTION

Storytelling Pitchbook: Web App Guide for Nurse Recruiters

High-fidelity prototype of storytellling pitch book landing page, open to the 'Start the Story' tab.
Landing Page, open to the 'Start the Story' tab featuring refined Mind Maps created during our Design Thinking Workshop.

We introduced the Storytelling Pitchbook, a bespoke web app breaking down the recruiting process into 5 major steps:

  1. Start the Story
  2. Know the Candidate
  3. Find the Right Fit
  4. Get to Yes
  5. Close the Call

Detail of tab menu featuring the following tabs: (1) Start the Story, (2) Know the Candidate, (3) Find the Right Fit, (4) Get to Yes, and (5) Close the Call.
Hi-fi detail: Tab Menu. This menu outlines the sequence recruiters follow in their calls with candidates.

At each step, recruiters find a concise guide to telling the story of how their hospital is the right match for any candidate.


UX SOLUTION

Information Filtering

Leveraging the web format, two sections offer filters to help recruiters drill down to the most pertinent info:

In "Find the Right Fit," recruiters apply what they learned in 'Know the Candidate' to identifying the candidate's best match of nursing units.

Detail of high-fidelity prototype displaying the 'Find the Right Fit' tab contents
'Find the Right Fit' tab, where recruiters can apply what they learned about a candidate's interests in 'Know the Candidate' to a set of filters for available positions in the hospital network.

In "Get to Yes," recruiters filter through a library of talking-points to discuss benefits most likely to win over a candidate.

Detail of high-fidelity prototype's 'Talking Points' card.
Talking-points card, which dynamically highlights information most relevant to a candidate's background and interests.
Detail of high-fidelity prototype displaying the 'Get to Yes' tab contents

UX PROCESS

Semi-Structured Interviews

We conducted over 20 hours of interviews cumulatively with 40 recruiters, hiring managers, and nurses on the recruitment process and what new candidates are looking for.

Graphic showing a video call on a laptop and the text 'x 40'

New grads might be drawn to our prestige, but they're not all going to be satisfied on a Med-Surg unit.

Some of them only want Critical Care or Pediatrics and they know they can be selective about where they go.

Nurses coming from smaller hospitals are wary of being lost in such a big one.

The application process has got to reflect that we have both lots of resources and a strong family feel.

We analyzed their responses via affinity diagramming and used that analysis to structure our collaborative design thinking workshop.

UX PROCESS

Journey Map

We further synthesized our analysis into a journey map to validate our understanding of the recruiting process with our stakeholders:

Graphic showing journey of nursing candidate and recruiter in the hiring process
Journey Map for nursing candidates and recruiters.

UX PROCESS

Design Thinking Workshop

18 recruiters, hiring managers, nurses, recruiting administrators, and designers.

3 x 2hr sessions using Miro and Zoom.

Together, we co-created a suite of design artifacts to define nursing candidates' motivations and actions in the hiring process.

Empathy Maps

The workshop broke out into 3 smaller groups for its design-thinking exercises. Each group focused on an archetypical candidate of a specific level of experience.

Graphic showing a 2-year nursing candidate surrounded by notes describing her thoughts and feelings about the process.
Empathy Map for 2-Year-Experience nursing candidate completed during the workshop
Graphic showing a new graduate nursing candidate surrounded by notes describing her thoughts and feelings about the process.
New Grad nursing candidate Empathy Map
Graphic showing a seasoned nursing candidate surrounded by notes describing her thoughts and feelings about the process.
Seasoned nursing candidate Empathy Map

Personas, Mind Maps, Task Maps

These three further exercises helped us thoroughly define the candidate experience.

Graphic describing a 2-year-experience nursing candidate background and motivations.
Persona for 2-Year Experience nursing candidate
Graphic describing a 2-year-experience nursing candidate's tasks in the hiring process.
Task Map for 2-Year Experience nursing candidate
Graphic describing a 2-year-experience nursing candidate background and motivations.
Mind Map for 2-Year Experience nursing candidate

Storytelling

Participants wrapped up the workshop by mapping their insights onto the Storytelling framework from Aspirant's Marketing & Innovation team:

Graphic showing Aspirant's Storytelling guidelines, which suggest that any customer interaction go through the following steps: (1) Identify the Customer, (2) Set the Context, (3) Introduce the Characters, (4) Isolate the Challenge, (5) Identify Your Part, (6) Path the Resolution, and (7) Capture Lessons Learned.
Aspirant's Storytelling framework.
Graphic showing our workshop's results from its storytelling exercise for the 2-Year Experience nursing candidate
Storytelling exercise for 2-Year Experience nursing candidate

UX PROCESS

Lo-fi Prototypes

I produced two iterations of lo-fi prototypes to validate our design direction.

We showed the first, below, to our workshop participants in an informal I think, I like, I wish exercise.

lo fi screening prompts
Lo-fi Prototype: Screening Prompts. These prompts would help recruiters ask questions that get at a candidate's core needs.
lo fi talking points
Lo-fi Prototype: Talking Points. This design, expanded into a fully-featured filtering menu, helps recruiters drill down the most important points for a candidate to hear.

The second we validated with a Think-Aloud protocol with a subset of recruiters and hiring managers from our workshop.

usability testing
Think Aloud protocol with Lo-fi Prototype: Detail of post-its recording tester's comments.

Their feedback informed our final designs.