An AI-powered recruitment assistant tool designed for a technology consulting club
Role
UX Designer
Timeline
5 Months
Team
1 Project Manager
5 Software Analysts
1 UX Designer
Platforms
Figma
React
Firebase
BACKGROUND
The Why
In today’s recruiting landscape, success is no longer driven by simply identifying open roles and submitting applications. The most meaningful opportunities come from building relationships- connecting directly with recruiters, understanding a company’s values, and crafting outreach that feels human and intentional. Yet without efficient tools, this process becomes fragmented and inaccessible. At Atlas Digital, we observed that highly capable candidates were struggling to make these critical connections. Hours were spent scouring LinkedIn for contacts or sending generic cold emails, often resulting in silence. Our talent was not being seen- not because it lacked merit, but because it lacked visibility. We needed an internal system that would streamline recruiter discovery, personalize outreach, and turn passive applications into proactive conversations.
RESEARCH
Competitive Analysis
[AD] Emailer: Automates recruiter email retrieval using Apollo.io’s API, stores contacts in Firebase for long-term access, and generates personalized outreach emails using GPT. Integrates with Mailgun/Resend for direct sending, reducing long-term API costs. (save recruiter emails in Firebase, so you don’t have to keep paying Apollo.io to fetch them repeatedly. Once stored, you can access them anytime without extra API costs. Instead of using Apollo.io for email sending, Mailgun/Resend is cheaper/free)
Simplify: A job search automation tool that helps users apply to jobs quickly. Lacks automated recruiter email retrieval and outreach but provides some email templates for job applications.
Apollo.io: A lead generation platform that finds recruiter emails but requires continuous API usage. Strong for prospecting but lacks long-term email storage and automated outreach customization.
RESEARCH
Understanding Users
As an internal consulting project for Atlas Digital, we had the rare advantage of studying our own members as the primary user base. Throughout the design process, we conducted informal interviews with 8 interns and software analysts and surveyed 20 additional members to capture broader trends in internship outreach. This mix of qualitative and quantitative feedback gave us direct insight into the daily realities of our users.
To validate our observations, we drew on Closing the Doors of Opportunity (Hora et al., 2022), which highlights systemic barriers such as limited internship availability, demanding course loads, and the necessity of working paid jobs. These findings closely mirrored our members’ experiences. Many described spending hours tracking down recruiter contacts, relying on generic email templates that lacked impact, and having no centralized place to store or share information. The result was an outreach process that felt fragmented, repetitive, and often discouraging- leading to missed opportunities despite the strength of our talent pool.
Key insights:
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Atlas Digital members lacked an efficient way to locate and connect with recruiters.
Over 75% reused generic email templates, losing the opportunity to make a personal impression.
Nearly all respondents said they wished there was a shared database to avoid duplicating effort across the club.
Members echoed concerns raised in the research: finding time and energy to secure internships was often more difficult than the internship itself.
SYNTHESIS
User Persona
ABOUT
Jane is an ambitious and highly capable student actively preparing for the summer internship cycle. She balances a full course load, involvement in extracurriculars, and ongoing internship applications. Despite her qualifications, Michelle often feels stalled- not because of a lack of skill, but because of the behind-the-scenes friction in the recruiting process.
PAIN POINTS
Spends excessive time digging through LinkedIn or Slack threads to find recruiter contacts.
Lacks confidence in writing compelling outreach emails and often defaults to generic templates.
Frustrated by duplicated effort- realizes others in the club may have already contacted the same recruiter but there’s no way to know.
