Age: 22

Abby just graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Ohio State University, GO BUCKEYES! She does not know what she wants to do in the future but in the mean time travels from city to city to visit friends, party and work random jobs for money. Abby’s dream job is to have her own TV show based upon her adventures called J.A.G- Just a Girl.  For her travels, Abby carries with her a bag of clothes, a Mac Book, a camera phone and an iPod. Abby currently is in New York City staying with her best friend Malena and is working as a guest bartender twice a week at Bar None and promoting events or working catering jobs once a week, making about $400/week. She plans to leave NY in a couple days and make her way to Boston where she got a gig through her friend Steve to work as a stage assistant for the Justin Timberlake concert. From there she will make her way down to Miami for her friend Doug’s big birthday bash.

Abby is constantly searching online looking for jobs in the cities that she intends to visit. She has many friends that are big promoters and will always notify her of major events. Abby is very social and loves meeting new people. She actively uses MySpace for self-promotion, potential employment, keeping in touch with friends and family and for social networking.  She has past experience working as a hostess, food runner, bar runner, server, bartender…the list goes on. For job searches she uses Google, Craiglist and goes through her extremely large network of friends on MySpace.

The major issue Abby encounters while job searching is timeliness, she usually needs a response from the employer regarding a job about a week in advance given that she is not in the area but only needs about a 24 hour notice if she is in the area. Another problem she has is lack of internet connection. Since she is constantly on the road it is often hard for her to check her email to see if she received a response from an employer.

Goals:

• Have fun, enjoy life and work random jobs to pay for her travel
• Find work easily from place to place by maintaining and expanding her contacts
• Update information about current availability quickly and easily

Justification:

Abigail is an important persona to this project because she represents the prototypical temporary worker who has no full-time job but relies on short-term ad hoc positions to make just enough income to get by. Abigail demonstrates the need of finding temporary work that is location specific. She requires timely notification from potential employers about open positions and relies heavily on social networking and word of mouth to find opportunities. Abigail’s persona will help the team develop a user-interface that will capture the absolute needs of a temporary service professional to ensure people like Abigail will use the system. This may include backpackers from abroad who come to the States looking to travel and work. Abigail will need to use our system several times a week to browse different postings. The interface will have to allow her to search for jobs easily based on location and time constraints. Abigail would most definitely benefit from having a large social network of friends that would refer her to employers. It is important that the system can notify Abigail about jobs even when she does not have internet connection. Abigail’s time sensitivity, need for location-based search, and real time notification from employers makes her the primary user persona for our system.

Age: 44

Catherine is the owner and manager of a small food catering business located in Berkeley, CA that is usually called upon to provide its services for events organized by nearby hotels, companies, and the University of California at Berkeley. She employs a group of 10 people full time: 4 assistants and 6 staff. In addition to the core staff, Catherine also employs about 25 UC Berkeley college students part time.

Catherine is very concerned with the efficient managing of the part time employees since the turnover rate is quite high. Currently she has set up a system where the students will sign up for different shifts on a sign-up sheet located in the office. In the event of no-shows or sickness, Catherine has to frantically make phone calls to other students or temp agencies in order to fill in for those who will not be able to make it. Sometimes, however, the core staff is forced to work overtime to compensate for missing people. Matters are worsened during exam periods, as most students are unavailable at those times.

Catherine is not overly strict in the hiring process for temporary working. She tends to look for respectful individuals with good people skills and a willingness to serve. Certain missing attributes can be compensated for others and individuals can be moved around depending on their skills (for example, kitchen vs. serving). Catherine does prefer to have some sort of positive reference (from word-of-mouth or staff recommendation) for potential employees but in certain cases, is forced to take whatever she finds.

Catherine considers herself as an “intermediate” computer user. She is able to use email, create/edit documents, and navigate the web. She has no “coding” abilities. In addition, with the exception of references to a certain “My Space” made by Sheryl, her 15yr old daughter and occasional visits to “Craigslist” to search for potential employees, she does not actively participate in the online social networking movement. In addition, most of her office work is done without much use of the computer. However, she is a fast learner, and will usually welcome any novel means that will make her job easier or more efficient.

Goals:

• Make sure all catering events run smoothly
• Find extra helping hands quickly and without much hassle or stress
• Manage both core staff and temporary workers effectively 

Justification:

Catherine, the primary employer persona, is essential to our design process since her biggest concern revolves around the management of her temporary staff. She would like an easy and efficient way to perform tasks such as finding new potential employees and finding replacements for last minute cancellations. She is also not an advanced computer user and will, thus, need a program that is easy to understand and use making the user interface design critical to her adoption of our solution.  

Age: 27

Jeff is currently a full time anthropology student at UC Berkeley in his first year back at school. After he graduated from college, he worked for the Museum of Natural History in Chicago. For his PHD he is focusing on coastal archaeology. He feels that the contacts that he is making in school will serve him well in his future career, and never misses a social event. Also, he is a passionate biker and spends much of his free time cycling in the hills.
 
Jeff would like to pick up a little extra cash when it is convenient, but it is not a priority for him. He has done a few odd jobs in the service industry, working as a server, bar back, and occasionally as a runner for an acquaintance’s catering company. He is a very good worker, always prompt, responsible, and willing to “fill in the gaps”, but has declined offers of permanent positions,  “because you never know when something great might be going on a Tuesday night.” He doesn’t mind going wherever the job may be, relying on public transit and his trusty bike to get him just about anyplace in the city.

While Jeff likes not being committed to a regular job, he does not work often enough to take advantage of the word-of-mouth connections among other part-time workers. For that reason, he finds work primarily through Craigslist, generally a couple of days in advance, but sometimes only a day or a few hours. He would love to find an employer who will value his work ethic, so that he doesn’t have to prove himself over and over again, but will understand that he has other commitments that come first.

Jeff considers himself a pretty computer-savvy guy, having made heavy use of databases at his museum job. He is online about 10 hours a day, between classes and schoolwork.

Goals:

• Make extra “pocket money”
• Find work that does not interfere with school or social activities/hobbies
• Capitalize on his good reputation among employers

Justification:

Jeff’s persona typifies the user for whom extra money is a luxury, not a necessity. He is an infrequent user and will not spend the time to learn to navigate a complex interface, probably only taking advantage of the most immediately obvious features. Reputation is important to him, as is timing.

Age: 38

Anna is a Restaurant Manager at Indigo restaurant which features California-Mediterranean cuisine. She handles all administrative work including payroll, schedule and staffing inventory. She started out as a waitress at Indigo and after years of hard work eventually got promoted to the position of Restaurant Manager. When she is not busy managing the restaurant Anna likes to attend live jazz concerts and watch romantic-comedies. She graduated from California State University where she majored in broadcasting. Anna is currently working to get experience in the service industry and eventually wants to open up her own bar/lounge that serves food and offers trendy lounge jazz.

Anna has around 25 to 30 people working under her at the restaurant, each of who do 2 to 3 shifts a week. The restaurant hires approximately 10 people per year and the turnover rate is one person a month. She doesn’t worry too much about being able to find people since people drop off their resumes all the time. Word of mouth and walk-ins are common means that potential employees use to search for jobs. If the restaurant needs someone and Anna doesn’t have a backlog of resumes, she will post advertisements. Anna believes newspapers are no longer the most effective way to communicate job openings and mostly posts job advertisements on Craigslist.

Flexibility, a positive attitude, past experience and skills are the major criteria Anna uses to evaluate employees. Anna has had some bad experiences with employees lying on the resume, having a bad attitude and being unreliable and believes strongly in references. Although high educational qualifications are a good thing, it is not a major selection criterion since past experience and a positive attitude matter more to her. Anna thinks it is important to train her employees thoroughly, especially about menus, alcohol selection and standards. She believes in giving her employees a relatively stable schedule, and assigns servers shifts according to their strengths and weaknesses.

Anna has experienced situations where she needed servers at the last minute due to people backing out. In such a situation she calls everyone and anyone she knows and if nothing works out she takes the shift herself. An online resource where she can find potential employees would definitely be useful. In particular such a resource would be very valuable when restaurants do seasonal hires which are quite common in the restaurant industry. Anna is computer savvy, checks her email often and would be comfortable using such an online resource.

Goals:

• Ensure good communication with her staff
• Wants to find a good match to replace an employee who backs out at the last minute
• Would like a system where she could find trustworthy and reliable employees in an easy and efficient manner

Justifications:

Anna is one of our personas that would benefit from the system. Although restaurants typically do not hire on a temporary basis, Restaurant Managers like Anna would definitely use such a resource in situations of last minute emergencies which characterizes the restaurant industry. Also since the system will provide a scheduling tool, Anna can use this system to manage temporary employees as well as their core staff and identify open shifts immediately. Anna cares a lot about finding reliable and flexible employees and is likely to use such a resource.

Abby is currently in New York City and is about to leave for Boston in 2 days. She is super psyched that her friend Steve found her a job as a stage hand at the Justin Timberlake concert. The concert is in 4 days and about 3 weeks after the concert Abby plans on flying to LA for her friend Sabrina's wedding. Abby does not have enough money for her trip to LA so desperately needs to find work as soon as she gets to Boston.

When Abby arrives in Boston she will be staying with her friend Carrie, a senior at Emerson College. Carrie works as a part-time bartender at a bar called the Big Easy in downtown Boston. Abby signs onto her account at SkillShop.com and immediately does a job search by employer name and location and finds that the Big Easy is looking for servers to fill in a couple shifts this weekend. She applies for the job right away. Abby then goes to “My Network” and finds her friend Carrie Burger who is in Abby’s network.  She clicks on Carrie’s profile and selects “Request Recommendation”. The request goes to Carrie’s in-network mailbox where Carrie opens the “recommend me” email from Abby and confirms the request. This action automatically adds Carrie to Abby’s list of In-Network References. Abby is now not only in Carrie's network but Carrie is now acting as an official reference for Abby. This increase in the level of formality gives Abby a huge advantage over other applicants because now when the hiring manager views Abby’s job application she can see that Abby is “Referred by” a Big Easy employee.

Abby just got off the phone with her best friend Sabrina. Great! It Sabrina’s wedding in about 3 weeks and she has to fly to Los Angeles for the celebration. Abby has to worry about finding Sabrina a gift as well. Her last job in Boston ended 4 days ago and she has just enough money to buy a one way ticket on JetBlue to California. Abby really wants to go to Sabrina's wedding and be able to buy her a special wedding gift.  Abby has not been on the west coast for a long time and is really looking forward to catching up with her friends in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. If time and money permits, Abby wants to try attend her friend David’s big birthday bash in San Ramon next week. All she needs is some extra pocket money so she can buy Sabrina and Doug a gift, and of course buy herself a nice dress for the wedding.

After contemplating for ten minutes, Abby decides that she will fly to San Francisco in a week, work there for 2 weeks and then head to Los Angeles in time for Sabrina’s wedding. She can live with her friend Emily who lives in downtown San Francisco. Gulping down her juice quickly, Abby reaches for her laptop and logs onto to SkillShop.com. She logs into her account and performs a search for temporary jobs in San Francisco. Apart from location details, Abby searches for jobs based on day and time. She prefers taking only morning shifts so she can socialize with her firends in the evening. The system immediately gives her 12 results for jobs in San Francisco, requiring morning shifts for the next week.   Abby selects 5 of the job postings and clicks on “Apply for all checked jobs” button. On the subsequent page, she chooses the option of being notified via text message. She clicks on the “Update Profile” tab and changes her location and schedule information, so that her name shows up when San Francisco employers perform a search themselves.

“Thank Goodness I have SkillShop.com”, she thinks to herself, jumping back into bed. Abby is sure that she will have a job in San Francisco by next week and starts wondering about what she should get Sabrina…

It’s early Monday morning and Catherine arrives to her office at 8:30AM after dropping her kids off at school. The first item in her to-do list is to get familiarized with SkillShop features in order to take full advantage of the application. Last week she created a profile for her catering company and had the details uploaded to SkillShop.

She turns on her desktop computer and sips on her coffee as she waits for the machine to boot up. She is very excited about the fact that she will be able to manage most of the hiring work online now. She launches the browser and types in the URL for SkillShop. The profile along with the photo she has uploaded looks pretty nice. Last week she walked all the employees through the SkillShop application and requested that each of them create their own account and maintain their updated schedules. She clicks on “Schedule” and finds that all the employees have already updated their schedules. From the schedule she is able to see that two weeks from now she needs to find three more people for an upcoming catering event. Catherine plans to post the job requirements on SkillShop by the end of the day today. She is extremely relieved that she no longer has to sort through the paper sign-up sheets to determine her employee’s schedules.

It’s a beautiful Sunday morning outside as Catherine unlocks the office door. She decided to swing by to make sure everything was in order for the big event that evening. Although most of the staff that were on call had confirmed that they would be available, Catherine thought she would play it safe by double-checking with everyone the morning of. Today she was very glad she did. After checking her email and messages, Catherine discovers that she is 3 workers short, one of these being a core staff member.

Catherine quickly logs on to her Skillshop account. First, she needs someone with leadership and experience to fill the shoes of core staff member. Catherine clicks on her employees list and scrolls down to the “previous employees” section. The name “Jason Sands” catches her eye. “I remember him,” she thinks, “he would be perfect.” She clicks on Jason’s profile to check his availability and sees that he has marked Saturday and Sunday evenings as free. “Great!” she thinks as she writes down his telephone number from his profile.

A quick phone call later, Catherine manages to secure an adequate replacement for the core staff member and even an extra worker. Jason had recommend a friend of his that would also be available that evening. Only one to go and Catherine is not too picky about the last one. She goes back to her Skillshop account, this time clicking on the “Post new job” tab. She enters the appropriate information for the event that evening and indicates that she is willing to pay extra because of the short notice.

She knows that the hard part is over. All that was left to do was to wait for the replies and pick the best candidate. “I think I will go have a cup of coffee from the café next door while I wait, it so beautiful outside,” she thinks to herself.

It’s Tuesday afternoon, and with a busy long weekend behind her, Catherine looks forward to wrapping up the loose ends of the jobs completed in the last few days. She flips on her computer, sifting through a few miscellaneous petty cash receipts.  

When she logs in, she sees that she has an email from SkillShop, reminding her to post feedback on the employees she connected with through the system for the past weekend’s work. She clicks the link, and is taken to a page with profile summaries for each of the four workers. She quickly marks the first two as reliable, prompt and polite, her “standard” rating.  

For the next one, who she had used as a runner, she takes a moment to write a brief comment, outlining his willingness to help in all areas, whenever he was not occupied with his own duties. He had been exactly the kind of employee she tried hardest to hang on to. She adds him to her “preferred” list, noting that he is now a preferred employee for 8 employers, three more than he had been when she first selected him. He must have been working a lot. 

The last one takes a little longer. He had tended bar at a wedding, and she was not anxious to use him again. He arrived late, his shirt had stains on the sleeve, and every time she saw him throughout the event, he had a bored, aggravated look on his face. She hadn’t really wanted to hire him, but had needed a replacement on two hours notice, and he was the first to respond. Anxious to fill the position, she had accepted him despite his scant feedback. Reluctantly, she marks his job performance as “passable”. 

Catherine logs off of SkillShop, and turns her attention to finishing up the week’s payroll, pleased to check an item off her to-do list so quickly and painlessly.

Craigslist Website

Description:

Craigslist is an online community classified listing service, divided into urban areas. The job listings in most cities are free, although posting a job in some cities incurs a fee ($75 per ad for the San Francisco Bay Area; $25 per ad for New York, Los Angeles, San Diego, Boston, Seattle, and Washington D.C.).

Craigslist Screen Shot #1- Job Search Function

Craigslist Screen Shot #2- Recent “Retail/food/hospitality jobs” listings

Strengths:

• One of the most popular sites for employees to search, reaches a wide audience due to its broad coverage (users are familiar with craigslist from other services: apartment listings, items for sale, etc.)
• Free for employers in most areas to post listings

Weaknesses:

• Geographic search limited to broadly defined regions, difficult to narrow down
• “Retail/food/hospitality jobs” is the extent of job classifications, and although there is simple search capability, it is mostly limited to keywords
• No time-based search
• No reputation system

Takeaways for SkillShop:

• The simplicity of Craigslist is often regarded as one of the keys to its success. In this case, “power” features are sacrificed to maintain flexibility. However, with a specific target audience in mind, we should be able to maintain the straightforward feel, while still offering advanced functionality.

LinkedIn Website

Description:

LinkedIn is a social networking site, dedicated to maintaining and creating professional contacts. Users join LinkedIn for free and can post resumes, contact information, and recommendations.

LinkedIn Screen Shot #1- Job Search Results

LinkedIn Screen Shot #2- Advanced Job Search

LinkedIn Screen Shot #3- Job Search Results

Strengths:

• Free for job seekers to post resume
• Strong reputation tools – hiring managers can search for employees with recommendations by other good employees
• Can upload existing contacts from other sources (address book, spreadsheet, etc) to ease transition
• Can easily and independently check references

Weaknesses:

• Expensive to post a job - $145 per posting
• Geared toward full-time, long-term careers
• No time-based search
• Some features are not immediately obvious, most users probably do not take advantage of full array of tools

Takeaways for SkillShop:

• A trustworthy reputation system is vital to attracting both employers and employees.

Monster Website

Description:

Online global careers network where jobseekers can search jobs, build/post resumes and access career information and advice and where employers can access hiring tools -- post jobs, search resumes, and screen candidates.

Monster Screen Shot #1- Job Search Results

Monster Screen Shot #2- Create Search Agent

Strengths:

• Good location-based search with ability to search within a radius
• Support for extensive Boolean operators in keyword search
• Ability to save job and look at apply history
• Job search agents
• Very detailed job description with company contact details
• Search for all the jobs posted by a company

Weaknesses:

• Refining search is only possible after getting basic search results. No direct way of performing a narrowed-down query.
• Social networking is not available
• Profile creation requires target job title to be filled [mandatory]

Takeaways for SkillShop:

• Save job and look at application history
• Job search agents

Facebook Website

Description:

Online social networking service for students, corporate, and geographic communities. Features include news feed, social time line, and weblog options.

Facebook Screen Shot #1- Profile Page

Facebook Screen Shot #2- Friend's List

Strengths:

• Provides an extensive set of tools for communication with friends and family
• Large number of members that contribute very actively to the site
• Nice and easily accessible implementation of multimedia sharing features
• Revamped privacy section helps users manage detailed privacy settings
  

Weaknesses:

• Sheer number of features can be overwhelming, causing many to be invisible to the casual user
• Target audience, while once clear, has become blurry causing issues with feature implementation and raising privacy concerns

Takeaways for SkillShop:

• Use of social networking features
• Privacy tool

ServiceMagic Website

Description:

Service Magic is a web site that enables homeowners throughout the United States and Canada to get matched with prescreened and customer-rated home improvement contractors. There is no charge to homeowners using the service, and member contractors are charged lead fees to receive leads that match their geographic profile and job type preferences.

ServiceMagic Screen Shot #1- Find Contractors by Location

ServiceMagic Screen Shot #2- Directory with Ratings

ServiceMagic Screen Shot #3- Specific Contractor Description

Strengths:

• Customer rating system, which includes ratings for various categories of service
• Option of customers writing a review for the contractor they employed
• Search contractors by location and category of job
• Good Search results-very detailed contractor description with contact details and customer ratings
• In depth company profiles
• Request online option which leads to form asking detailed needs of the customer
• Easy to understand interface with step wise instructions for everything, new user doesn’t get confused
• Pre-screened contactors
  

Weaknesses: 

• No scheduling mechanism
• Can not search via contractor name, user has to go through location and category search only
  

 Takeaways for SkillShop:

• Trust worthy Reputation System: unlike other online ratings systems that can be submitted by anyone including the business itself, only previous customers are allowed to provide objective feedback on the particular contractor’s services
• In depth profiles of contractors
• Request online option

Caterer Website

Description:

Online recruitment company based in the UK, comprising of 10 job board businesses for the catering industry. Employers post jobs for a fee and employees search/browse for jobs and submit their resume online.

Caterer Screen Shot #1- Employer Directory

Caterer Screen Shot #2- Job Search Page

Strengths:

• Jobseekers can browse through an employer directory
• Jobseekers can search by job type, location, and employer type
• Jobseekers can post resumes
• Jobseekers can apply for jobs online via email

Weaknesses:

• Difficult for jobseekers to browse for available jobs
• Cannot further refine/filter high level search results
• Lack of consistency in job postings- need standard and required fields
• Expensive for recruiters to advertise a job- £90 per job posting
• Difficult for jobseeker to contact recruiter via alternative means besides email

Takeaways for SkillShop:

• The ability to browse jobs is an important functionality as well as the ability to filter and sort jobs based on specific criteria such as wage, location, employer type, and job type.

Catalyst Website

Description:

Catalyst is a calendar-based, on-line learning management system developed by the Graduate School of Management at the University of California Irvine. Catalyst creates an efficient calendar based channel of communication between faculty and students, allowing faculty to support courses online by including schedules, course materials, and more.

Catalyst Screen Shot #1- Student Current Enrollment View

Catalyst Screen Shot #2- Create New Event

Strengths:

• Ability to share personal calendar with members of the community
• Easy to create new events
• Ability to integrate data from multiple calendar applications at Haas

Weaknesses:

• Limited number of categories and is unfilterable
• No help or documentation on how to use the system- lacks a good tutorial or online demo
  

Takeaways for SkillShop:

• In order to have employers manage schedules more efficiently, employees must be able to share personal calendars