TipStart was set up with the mission to "take the old boys out of the old boys' networks". Using modern technology to revolutionise how a mentoring programme operates and benefiting everyone involved. I was brought in at an early stage to lead and guide the Brand, Marketing and Products of TipStart, eventually being given the title of co-founder.
Through conversations with the founding team of TipStart as well as the Advisory Board many different user groups got thrown onto the table. Through interviews and surveys with different stakeholders as well as potential future users, three main groups emerged to help us separate people into three user groups.
Professionals that are now in work within a sector. They can be in small or large companies, at junior or senior positions; the key is that they have experience in the working world as a full-time employee.
Graduates or final year students who face barriers to entry in making that jump from University into their first job in their dream sector. It was important to us to include Race, Sexuality, Family History & Impairment as eligibility conditions.
HR professionals that work within companies bear the responsibility of hiring and developing employee talent. The HR department is a key decision-maker and influences the path and image of modern companies.
TipStart started as a pure non-profit organization during the first 2020 Covid lockdown and grew into a SaaS HR-tech product. We found that people liked the service but TipSters prefered it to be run directly with their employer. This allowed interested companies to combine a CSR product and a slow socially-responsible recruitment tool into one.
With a product that was purposely different to what people had experienced in other mentoring schemes and a small budget, it was important that we learnt as much as we could from the actual people that used the product.
Throughout the actual TipStart Programme we got people from each of our three main groups to give us feedback. We used surveys with both open and targeted questions, phone and video interviews as well as giving the platform to a new user and performing Clickstream Analysis. To be able to see how first-time users interacted with the platform.
Research Methods Used
• User Interviews
• Customer Feedback
• Email surveys
• A/B Testing
• Clickstream Analysis
The wider TipStart brand was intended to represent an antithesis against the expected worlds of HR and consultancy. Using the secondary colour palette and the TipStart shapes to bring in a more colourful and playful aesthetic to the world of tech and HR. On the product applications the secondary colours where pulled out from the background and used sparingly to grab your attention when needed, as well as in moments of celebration such as matching.
A company can sign up for TipStart via the website without any need to call a recruiter. Through the sign-up process, they fill in information about themselves as well as their company. As the final stage, they fill their roster with company employees that can act as TipSters to be matched.
TipSters and TipStarters both go through the onboarding process on their phones. We wanted to make the TipStart Programme as easy and simple as possible so it's not perceived as a 'hassle'. They answer simple information questions and a basic personality test to enhance the quality of the matches we can make.
Scale was something that from day one at TipStart was a key differentiator between the existing mentoring schemes. With technology, it was possible to create a platform that works for a company with ten employees and a company with ten thousand. With that possible discrepancy, the HR portal had to be designed so that admins can see and control all the moving parts without creating an extra burden.