How I helped a product find PMF by strategizing and designing an end-to-end AI solution for job seekers + employers.
Quick facts
Artificial intelligence
B2B
B2C
Strategy
User research
UX writing
Heuristic evaluation
Process
Product design
Wireframes
Communication
UX
UI
Research
Usability testing
Components
Interaction design
Information architecture
Efficiency
Prototyping
SaaS
How I redesigned a career coaching platform from fragmented functionality to a cohesive product that unlocked recurring revenue and sustainable growth.
🔙 Background
Careerspan had a powerful AI-driven career coaching concept but struggled with execution. Previous designers weren't delivering results, and the product felt disjointed—scattered features with no clear story or user journey. Hiring teams were interested but confused. Job-seekers didn't understand how the pieces fit together.
The Company Challenge
Hiring teams needed to justify ROI but couldn't articulate the value
Users engaged with isolated features without understanding the full value proposition
The platform had multiple disconnected tools: resume optimization, AI coaching, job tracking
No clear path from onboarding to value realization
Missing crucial B2B features to serve institutional clients
✅ Goal
Transform Careerspan from a collection of disconnected features into a cohesive platform with clear value propositions for both users (B2C) and coaches/hiring managers (B2B), ultimately enabling recurring revenue and sustainable growth. Increase market share and retention.
💪 Challenge
How do you redesign a product when the product strategy itself is still evolving?
I needed to:
Understand and articulate what makes Careerspan unique (semantic optimization, AI coaching depth)
Create design systems and flows flexible enough to support strategic pivots
Balance immediate fixes with long-term vision
Design for two distinct user groups: job-seekers and career coaches and hiring managers
Build features that would unlock B2B sales while improving job-seeker experience
👩💻 My role
Be a designer who could not just create screens, but think strategically about product direction, user experience, and business model—someone who could guide them through pivots and help define what the product should be.
As Founding Product Designer + Product Manager working directly with the CPO and Founders to shape product strategy, information architecture, and all user-facing experiences.
I was responsible for:
Redesigning the entire user experience from onboarding to core workflows
Creating and maintaining the design system
Establishing design processes and QA standards
Collaborating on product strategy and feature prioritization
Designing new revenue-generating features (employer portal, direct apply)
🤝 Worked with
Chief Product Officer (product strategy and business requirements)
Engineering team (implementation feasibility and technical constraints)
Founders - CEO + COO (vision alignment and partnership needs)
Job seekers + employers (user research and feedback)
📸 Snapshots - design peek
I plan to add more storytelling, but making the tradeoff to get this out the door and start conversations sooner.
These are the overall most recent designs - there's a lot more process, nuance, and pivots I worked on and through behind the scenes.
Employer portal
MVP prototype for employers to self-serve, create direct apply links, review candidate insights and manage their hiring pipeline.
Employer portal
Prepping for application + fill in the gaps with AI chat
Reviewing deep AI generated insights and telling stories to accurately reflect your experience to improve your chances of getting an interview.
Prepping for application + filling in the gaps
Get to know your narrative
Based on what users have told us, it's time to understand how you're perceived and how you can represent yourself.
Get to know your narrative
Direct apply
After all of that it's time to apply. Think easy apply, but with deeper insights that actually have candidates considered.
Direct apply
📕 Reflections + impact
Strategy and design are inseparable in early-stage products. Your job isn't just to design what's requested—it's to help figure out what should be built.
Information architecture is product strategy. How you structure information shapes how users understand value and how businesses communicate it.
Design for flexibility when working in uncertainty. Strong foundations with adaptable patterns beat perfect solutions that can't evolve.
🔬 What I learned
Design leadership goes beyond screens: The most valuable contributions weren't always the highest-fidelity mockups—they were the strategic insights that shaped product direction. Sometimes the best design work is helping a team understand what they're actually building.
Flexibility in process: Working with a company through multiple pivots taught me to build design systems and patterns that could adapt. Creating rigid, perfect solutions would have wasted time—instead, I focused on strong foundations with room for evolution.
B2B requires different thinking: Designing for institutional clients (career services offices) required understanding their success metrics, reporting needs, and decision-making processes. The employer portal wasn't just "admin screens"—it was a sales tool and retention driver.
The power of narrative: Reframing the product around "storytelling" wasn't just marketing—it fundamentally changed how we approached information architecture, feature prioritization, and user flows. Finding the right conceptual model unlocked everything else.
🪜Next steps
Advanced analytics for employer portal
Integration architecture for ATS platforms
Enhanced interview preparation flows
Have questions? Want to work together?
Or find me on LinkedIn + rochelpolter@gmail.com.
