Internal Tools & Recruiting Ops

Fortress™ — Recruiting Platform / Candidate Management System

Reengineered a legacy FileMaker-based recruiting database into a modern candidate management system—streamlining recruiter workflows, improving search, and enabling automation across multiple business branches with distinct styles and processes.

This platform is proprietary. The public case study focuses on process, workflows, and UX outcomes—without exposing sensitive data, internal screens, or client metrics.

Team OperationsInternal ToolsProprietaryRecruiting Ops

Role & Scope

Product Manager & UX Director
8-week engagement (Feb–Mar 2021)
Small third-party dev team + 1 UX Designer
Owned product direction, client management, UX strategy

Tools & Methods

Adobe XD for design/prototyping
Jira + Confluence for delivery
Remote shadowing & interviews
Heuristic evaluation

Goals

Replace legacy FileMaker experience
Standardize workflows across branches
Improve search performance and quality
Reduce duplicate records across locations
Improve reliability during high-volume recruiting

Project Overview

Fortitude provides recruiting and onboarding services across the United States and relied on a legacy FileMaker application to track candidates, requisitions, and recruiting activity. The system created daily friction: recruiters juggled printed requisitions, job board research, manual copy/paste into records, inconsistent formatting, and separate databases by location/branch—making it easy to duplicate effort and difficult to maintain consistent workflows.

We partnered with stakeholders to define a replacement platform that preserved what recruiters valued (powerful searching and fast candidate profiling) while removing the failure points: timeouts that lost notes, confusing navigation, limited filtering/sorting, and siloed site databases. The result was a redesigned recruiting platform that supported both outbound sourcing (company-driven recruiting) and inbound candidate requests—paired with automation to speed repeatable tasks and reduce admin overhead.

Key Constraints

Proprietary platform with limited ability to share internal details publicly
Needed to support multiple branches/locations with separate "modes" while maintaining shared UX standards
Required rapid delivery alongside active development (agile delivery with ongoing stakeholder approvals)

What I Led (Product + UX Direction)

End-to-end ownership from discovery through delivery, managing client relationships and cross-functional coordination.

Product Leadership & Delivery

Owned the plan end-to-end: scope, timeline, pricing, stakeholder approvals, and delivery sequencing across discovery → design → build support.

Client & Stakeholder Management

Ran working sessions, maintained alignment, managed tradeoffs, and drove approvals at each milestone.

Research & Discovery

Planned and led user engagements (shadowing + interviews), plus heuristic evaluation of the legacy tool to prioritize the highest-friction workflow failures.

Workflow Design & System Concepts

Designed the target workflows for candidate intake, profiling, search, requisition linkage, and recruiter task flows (including automation opportunities).

UX Artifacts & Dev Readiness

Produced personas, journey maps, flowcharts, wireframes, interactive prototypes, and detailed user stories/acceptance criteria to accelerate engineering.

Design Approvals & Quality

Reviewed/approved UX/UI, tested coded UI, and supported iterative refinement through development.

Research & Discovery

Mixed methods research to understand recruiter workflows, pain points, and opportunities for improvement.

Remote Shadowing

Observed real recruiter behaviors—how requisitions were managed, candidates sourced, and where breakdowns occurred.

Stakeholder Interviews

Gathered requirements and pain points from recruiters, managers, and leadership across multiple branches.

Heuristic Evaluation

Documented legacy FileMaker issues: timeouts, duplicate records, search limitations, and cross-branch visibility gaps.

Key Research Insights

Pipeline Bottlenecks

Research identified stages where delays frequently occur in the hiring pipeline.

Data Fragmentation

Analysis showed the use of multiple tools leading to context switching and data loss.

Communication Gaps

Findings indicated delays or lack of updates in communication between hiring managers and recruiters.

Persona Mapping

Touchpoint Analysis

Research Summary

Research combined remote shadowing, stakeholder/user interviews, and a heuristic evaluation of the legacy FileMaker experience. We mapped real recruiter behaviors—how requisitions were managed, how candidates were sourced and profiled, and where breakdowns occurred (timeouts, duplicate records, search limitations, and cross-branch visibility gaps). Findings were translated directly into workflow recommendations and a development-ready backlog.

We validated workflows through iterative prototypes and structured feedback loops before development sign-off.

Workflow Standardization

Configurable by branch—a consistent workflow model for candidate progress paired with rules and automation so each branch could maintain its own process while operating within shared platform standards.

Standard Workflow Stages

Applied / Sourced

Screening

Interview

Offer

Hired

The system emphasized clear handoffs, visible status, and repeatable actions that reduce recruiter admin time.

Branch Configuration

Each branch/company could maintain its own process modes while still operating within a shared platform standard. This supported distinct workflows and styles without fragmenting the user experience.

Automation Opportunities

Identified and designed automation helpers including note templates/taglines, reusable text snippets, and repeatable actions like call sheets to reduce manual overhead.

Workflow State Machine

Key Capabilities

Core system capabilities designed to address the highest-friction workflow failures identified in research.

Dual Search Modes

Keyword + Boolean-style searching with control over which fields are searched.

Advanced Filtering

Narrow large result sets by location, clearance/qualification flags, recency, and more.

Search History

Saved searches to reduce repeated setup for complex queries.

Cross-Branch Search

Multi-site search to reduce duplicate candidate records across separate databases.

Candidate Profiles

Clear status indicators, better resume handling, and structured notes.

Security & Access

Role-based access and 2-factor authentication UX patterns for secure access.

Additional System Improvements

Automation Helpers

Note templates, reusable text snippets, repeatable actions

Reliability Improvements

Auto-save patterns, clearer system feedback, fewer "lost work" scenarios

Prototypes (Lo-Fi → Hi-Fi)

Design progressed from low-fidelity workflow wireframes to interactive prototypes to validate search, results, candidate profiles, dashboards, and branch-specific modes.

Prototypes were used to run structured reviews and user testing, then translated into detailed user stories and acceptance criteria for agile development.

Primary: Adobe XD

Collaboration: Jira + Confluence

Prototype Evolution

Lo-Fi Wireframes

Workflow structure

Interactive Proto

Structured reviews

User Testing

Validation feedback

Dev Handoff

User stories + AC

Operating Mechanisms

Processes and systems for delivery coordination, stakeholder alignment, and quality assurance.

Agile Delivery

Jira + Confluence for backlog management, decisions, and visibility across the team.

Stakeholder Reviews

Regular reviews for workflow approvals and scope tradeoffs at each milestone.

Iterative Design

Prototype-based feedback loops to refine designs before development commitment.

Build Support

UI testing, feedback, and usability refinements during development.

Outcomes (Proprietary / Non-Numeric)

The replacement system shipped on schedule and successfully transformed the recruiting workflow. Post-deployment metrics are proprietary.

Key Outcomes

Successfully decoupled Fortitude from the legacy FileMaker experience
Streamlined recruiter workflows with improved navigation and reduced friction
Improved candidate search and visibility across branches/locations
Automation reduced manual overhead and inconsistency
Created a scalable foundation for continued enhancement

Stakeholder Feedback

Stakeholder feedback confirmed significant improvement to day-to-day recruiting operations
Recruiters reported less context switching and faster candidate profiling
Branch managers appreciated configurable workflows within shared standards
Platform positioned for future feature expansion