The making of assignment tool
One day, when I was doing user interviews with employers (who use Internshala for hiring interns and freshers), a grunted employer told me that its insanely difficult to send and track assignments on Internshala.
Wait, what? This was my initial reaction. The conversation got stretched, I talked with multiple employers afterwards and we decided to build assignment tool.
1. Assignments are important for hiring fresher/intern
Since interns & freshers lack experience, resume is a sort of junk information that can’t be verified easily.
Employers want to test the real skill of the candidate before hiring them and hence assignments come handy for them.
2. What was the friction in the product and how did we solve it?
Let’s check the entire user flow of creating & sending assignments on Internshala —
A. Creating assignments
- Employers used to send assignments via bulk chat option. Since, they use chat, they had to copy + paste the assignment again & again in the chat window.
- They couldn’t keep a track of the candidate to whom they have already send the assignment and ended up sending the same assignment to the same candidate multiple times.
How did we solve this?
- Employers can create assignment using Send assignment modal. They can add attachments and submission deadline too and we pre-fill the details of the assignments based on the last assignment sent for that opening.
- Since employers ended up sending same assignment to same candidate multiple times; we made it easier for employers to —
a) visually figure out the applicants to whom they have already sent the assignment
b) figure out candidates who haven’t been sent an assignment
B. Tracking & evaluating assignments
- Employers received all the assignments over the chat and tracking it became super messy in the product. Most employers used third party tools like Trello, Google Forms, Google Sheets to keep a track on the assignments.
- Employers evaluated & added feedback on the assignments in the third party tools and it was hardly shared to the candidate.
How did we solve this?
- Employers now receive all the assignments submitted by the applicants at one place.
- They can add evaluation notes and add intermediate statuses too — Is the assignment evaluated? Should they consider it for future consideration?
C. Sneak peek — How it looks in real-time?
D. Impact
*Update*
- 1 million + assignments have been sent since launch. It has been just 6 months since we launched this feature.
The one shared by our CEO!
Tada! This was the most exciting project I have worked recently. Thanks to all engineers (Amar, Dileep, Uddeshya, Prashant, Sumit) designers (Smriti, Trinkush), Product Manager (Purnima), Rabani, Vikram & Sarvesh for making this dream into reality.
I am just a step away on Twitter and Linkedin for any feedback.
