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Design and Product Executive · Portfolio and Program Leadership
Strategy that ships.
From reimagining a 1,000-application enterprise portfolio at CSX to launching LinkedIn Recruiter's first generative AI product.
Led at
LinkedInIBMCSX
Industries
Enterprise Technology & SaaSHR & Talent TechCybersecurityTransportation & LogisticsHealthcareGovernmentTelecommunicationsConsultingAdvertising (including Sports & Entertainment)
20
direct reports across Design, Engineering, Product, and Project Management
450
applications launched or rebuilt after rationalizing a 1,000+ app portfolio
$100M+
annual client accounts where I led C-suite design engagements at IBM
40%
higher InMail acceptance from LinkedIn Recruiter's first GenAI product
Selected work
Each case covers the strategy behind the work and the execution that got it shipped: the bet, the org, the hard calls, and what changed.
Illustrative recreation
Launching LinkedIn Recruiter's first generative AI product
A 0-to-1 bet on AI-assisted outreach. 40% higher acceptance, 11% faster responses, and 82% of generated messages rated good by recruiters.
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From fragmented tools to one role-based platform
Field crews juggled 5 to 7 apps. One role-based platform, launched on tablets during COVID. Access time cut from 24+ hours to the same day, with 40% fewer credential calls.
Read the case
One standard for an enterprise built by acquisition
600+ icons, 30+ app icons standardized, and new engineers productive on day one instead of two weeks in.
Read the case
Rebuilding the customer front door
A 25-field first contact, 44% drop-off after a single FAQ page, and a help system rebuilt around what customers came to do.
Read the case
Illustrative recreation
A Follow strategy across 12 to 15 product pillars
One cross-pillar strategy for how members grow their networks. A double-digit lift in member-to-member follows and more engaged feed sessions.
Read the caseAward of Excellence in Public Safety · NAPSG Foundation
CSX Rail Respond
As the UX leader, my team was tasked with taking over the initiative from a third-party vendor. We brought clarity, untangled the complexity, put a clear process in place, and saved time and money, delivering an award-winning application.
Gives first responders near-real-time contents of any rail car on a CSX train, with emergency response guidance and protective action distances, on any phone, tablet, or desktop.
“A dream come true for incident commanders.”Former Battalion Chief, Charlottesville Fire Department
How I lead
Built teams from zero, ran portfolios of hundreds of applications, and led designers, engineers, and product managers from strategy to release.
Strategy and execution are the same job.
A roadmap only matters if it ships, so every engagement runs from executive alignment to the delivery plan to the release.
Build the system, not just the screens.
Design systems, governance, career ladders, and operating rhythms are what let quality scale past any one person.
Grow leaders, not dependencies.
Teams of designers, engineers, and product managers who own decisions, raise the bar, and keep raising it.
Enterprise scale or early stage: building the first design team, standing up 0-to-1 products, or bringing order to a sprawling portfolio.
See the operating model
Perspective
Short pieces on design, product, and leading through change.
Design belongs at the strategy table, not after it.
Why the best product outcomes start with design and product shaping the bet together.
ReadScaling design inside a legacy enterprise.
Building a Center of Excellence from zero inside a 1,000-application environment.
ReadAI that earns trust.
Data choices, onboarding, and what changed after the first ramp of an AI launch.
ReadAbout
Design and product leader across enterprise platforms, consumer products, and executive consulting. Builds the teams, systems, and operating rhythms that turn complex technology into products people trust.
More about Karyn
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LinkedIn Recruiter · Generative AI · 0 to 1
Launching LinkedIn Recruiter's first generative AI product
Recruiters were spending hours researching candidates and rewriting the same outreach. The bet was that AI could do the personalization at scale without sounding generic. I led the design team that took it from first concept to a live pilot.
Pilot results
40%
higher acceptance for AI-assisted InMails than standard single messages
11%
faster time to acceptance
39%
more accepted InMails with automated follow-ups
82%
of generated messages rated good in product
Adoption: 75% of pilot contracts and 25% of seats tried the feature, and 16% of single, non-templated InMails from pilot customers used AI-generated content.
Inside the work. These are working artifacts from the build: explorations, review rounds, and iterations on the way to launch. They're shown to make the decisions visible, not just the final pixels. Product screens are illustrative recreations; the originals are confidential.
01 StrategyThe bet
Personalization was the problem, not writing speed.
Recruiters told us the same three things: researching each candidate took too long, staying on brand was hard, and personalizing at scale was nearly impossible. Before designing anything, we ran foundational research to find where AI would actually earn its place.
Where could GenAI make messaging more efficient?In personalizing the standard messages recruiters already send.
What worried recruiters about AI-written outreach?That messages would read as generic and get rejected.
What most limited how many candidates they could reach?The time it took to compose each message.
Data first, then design.
The quality of the output depended on what we fed it. I partnered with Data Science, Product, and Marketing to decide which data should shape a message, starting from what recruiters already trusted: their own saved templates, the candidate's profile, job details, and company information. We validated output quality against sandbox data before committing to the final approach.
Because this was the first generative AI experience in Recruiter, we designed it as a pattern that could scale to later releases, not a one-off feature.
02 ExecutionHow it shipped
An operating rhythm built for a high-visibility launch.
Every design decision had a clear path to a decision-maker. I owned the quarterly design planning cycle with cross-functional partners and set the review cadence for the team.
WeeklyDesign critiques and design reviews with product managers and engineering
OngoingShow-and-tells with the broader Recruiter team
QuarterlyDepartment office hours with the Sr. Director and design jams with the VP and pillar leads
MilestonesExecutive and VP marketplace reviews
Two hard calls.
Risk
A design system in flux
Components we needed were changing during the build. We worked with the design system team to stabilize what the launch depended on, built on mature components, and planned the larger Recruiter update separately so the launch didn't wait on it.
Obstacle
Disclaimers
AI-generated content needed clear disclosure. We designed it to inform recruiters without interrupting their flow, then used post-launch data to simplify the experience and remove the banner.
03 The experienceWhat recruiters do
Five steps from blank message to personalized outreach.
Select a step to walk through the shipped flow.
About the candidateJob detailsCompany info
EditSave as templateSend
The recruiter opens a new message to a candidate from search or a project pipeline.
Illustrative recreation of the shipped experience.
04 IterationAfter the first ramp
Adoption lagged, so we changed the front door.
The first ramp showed recruiters weren't finding the feature. The value was there once they used it; the entry point was the problem. We reworked onboarding before expanding.
Version A · First ramp
- Recruiters had to click a draft prompt to start onboarding
- Disclaimer sat on top of the experience
- No persistent entry point once a message was typed
Version B · Revised
- Onboarding appears as soon as the composer opens
- Disclaimer removed after the post-launch review
- Persistent personalization entry point in the toolbar
Illustrative recreation of internal iterations.
Customer voice
“This helped me send detailed personal emails to candidates and save time. I am so glad you created this!”Pilot customer, in-product feedback
“I really appreciate the AI feature especially for those who may have trouble typing for someone like myself.”Pilot customer, in-product feedback
“It saves time by letting the Recruiter create a customizable message that can be sent to candidates quickly.”Pilot customer, in-product feedback
In the press
My team designed and launched the first phase in 2022. LinkedIn continued to evolve and expand the experience, with public coverage as it grew.
05 ImpactWhat it changed
A pattern for AI in Recruiter, not just a feature.
The launch proved recruiters would adopt AI when it personalized their own work rather than replacing it. The data foundation, the onboarding pattern, and the cross-functional review model laid the groundwork for how the experience expanded.
UX Strategy: From fragmented tools to one role-based platform
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CSX · UX Strategy · Role-based experience
From fragmented tools to one role-based platform
Decades of mergers left train and engine crews switching between five to seven applications to do one job, with access granted by hand. I led the strategy and delivery of a single role-based experience that put each worker's tools, documents, and data in one place.
Results
Same day
access for new and reassigned workers, down from 24+ hours
~40%
fewer calls checking credentials and training in the first 3 months
5–7
separate apps per task consolidated into one role-based view
2020
first release on tablets, under COVID physical distancing rules
Inside the work. These are working artifacts from discovery through launch: field research, concept screens, and the before and after. They're shown to make the decisions visible, not just the final pixels.
01 StrategyThe bet
Organize the enterprise around roles, not applications.
Every acquisition had added its own tools. Field workers lost time hunting across systems, several apps had never been brought up to our UX standards, and onboarding meant requesting access one application at a time. The fix wasn't another app. It was a different model: start from what a person in a given role needs to do their job, and assemble the experience around that.
- One place to work
- A dashboard by role that pulls data from several systems into one view, so workers stop switching between apps.
- Onboarding by role
- Reusable access profiles, so a new or reassigned worker gets the right tools on day one.
- A framework, not a project
- Built so other roles could follow without starting over.
- Do no harm
- No one could lose access to an application or feature they relied on during the transition.
Access as a data foundation.
The role-based access model did more than simplify sign-on. Working with Security and the Chief Architect, we designed how authentication tokens and user profile data would be governed by role. That gave the data science team a trustworthy foundation for using machine learning to personalize the experience later.
Start where the work happens.
We used design thinking and the double diamond, and began with the field: site visits, shadowing, contextual interviews, and prototype reviews with train and engine crews. Their constraints set the requirements: gloves, glare, connectivity, and minutes between tasks.
Six principles guided every screen.
ReduceOrganizeContextTrustTimeEfficient
Before and after · drag to compare
BeforeAfter
The legacy crew app showed a list of fields. The new view brings the assignment, train times and performance, documents, required training, and a live map into one screen. Personal details are blurred.
02 ExecutionHow it shipped
COVID compressed the timeline. The plan held.
Federal rail rules required physical distancing, and crews needed information without crowding into shared workspaces. We shortened the design cycle and launched the first release on tablets for train and engine crews in 2020.
WeeklyExecutive presentations on progress with design, engineering, and the program manager
OngoingDesign scope and concept reviews with executive stakeholders in Technology and the business
QuarterlyStrategy, funding, and OKR checkpoints
LaunchHandoff on the CSX design system, QA against the style guide, KPI and service desk monitoring after release
A process for every kind of request.
To keep the platform from fragmenting again, we set up a single intake with a defined path for each type of work.
New applicationNew featureUX debtTech debtOptimization
One hard call.
Constraint
Secure documents on tablets
Crews needed bulletins and timetables in the field, but the existing PDF viewer couldn't meet security requirements on tablets. I worked with the Chief Architect, Security, and our UI architect to design and implement a secure way to view documents on the device.
03 ImpactWhat it changed
A framework other roles asked for.
- Centralized application and document access for field crews
- Reusable access profiles that removed repetitive onboarding steps
- Fewer applications, by combining use cases by role
- Field crews working from tablets outside crowded workspaces during COVID
- More roles requesting the framework after launch, all built in-house by the UX and technical teams
The work also shaped what came next: a scalable design system for future needs, and a move toward smaller, composable micro-apps instead of large monolithic applications.
Design Systems: One standard for an enterprise built by acquisition
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CSX · Design Systems · Developer tools
One standard for an enterprise built by acquisition
CSX hired me to build a design system that could scale across its applications. Over seven years it grew from a component library into the foundation for how the company designed and built software, and the role grew into leading Digital Experience.
Results
Day one
new engineers productive immediately instead of two weeks of setup
644
searchable icons with metadata in one library
30+
enterprise app icons rebuilt on one template
1
source of truth for patterns, code, and documentation
01 StrategyThe problem
Every acquisition brought its own interface.
Applications inherited through mergers looked and behaved differently, from search to navigation to labels. Rail employees who moved between several apps a day carried the cost in confusion and slower work. Developers carried it too, copying outdated code or inventing patterns because there was no standard to build on.
- Consistency
- One look and behavior across applications.
- Onboarding
- Easier for employees moving between apps, and for new engineers joining teams.
- Speed
- Faster development from approved, reusable components.
- Quality
- Better code by building on tested patterns instead of copies.
02 ExecutionHow it was built
Audit, standardize, document, govern.
- Goals and audit
- Aligned stakeholders, designers, developers, and product managers on objectives, then audited every component, type style, color, and icon in use.
- Guidelines and library
- Set principles for accessibility, scalability, and brand, and built a reusable component library with states, interactions, and usage rules.
- Documentation
- Centralized guidelines in one wiki connected to the CSX Starter Showcase, so designers and engineers worked from the same source.
- Governance and adoption
- A contribution and review process for changes, scheduled reviews, and training through UX University to drive adoption.
A hierarchy teams could build with.
Components as the basic building blocks, modules that combine them into working sections, and page templates for common layouts. The UX team also built custom modules for needs unique to rail, like a train route visualization.
StopStatusScheduledActual
OriginDeparted06:1006:12
Junction ADeparted08:4508:51
Yard BAt stop11:2011:34
Junction CScheduled14:05On time
TerminalScheduled17:30On time
03 ImpactWhat it changed
Speed to market, measured in people.
A senior project manager who had always budgeted two weeks of startup time for new team members reported they could start immediately. Engineers saw the same effect in their own work.
“Using the Showcase drastically lowered the development time.”Software Engineer, CSX
Rebuilding the customer front door
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CSX · Customer Experience · CSX.com and ShipCSX
Rebuilding the customer front door
For a prospective shipper, CSX.com was the first impression of the company, and it asked them to do the heavy lifting. I led the experience strategy to make the site easier to find, easier to act on, and clearer about why to choose CSX.
Inside the work. This is the diagnosis and the strategy: what we found, what we recommended, and the concepts that set direction for the rebuild.
01 StrategyThe diagnosis
The site made customers work to become customers.
Before recommending anything, we mapped business objectives against customer goals: stakeholder interviews to set the objectives, customer interviews to understand expectations, an expert review for usability problems, and a competitive analysis to see where CSX stood.
- First contact
- Prospects were sent to several endpoints and email addresses to request information, and the main form asked for 25 pieces of information in the very first interaction.
- Account setup
- New users at companies with existing accounts had no easy path to create their own ShipCSX login.
- Dead ends
- Links on mobile and desktop, including calculator pages, led to the wrong pages or to empty ones.
- Help content
- FAQs were scattered across pages, PDFs, and spreadsheets, each in a different format.
What analytics showed on FAQ pages
15+separate FAQ pages
44%dropped off after viewing a single FAQ page
1+ minaverage time on page, without finding an answer
Redrawn from site analytics, October to December 2020.
DiscoverRequest infoRegisterOrderWaitConfirmTrackReceive
Customer actions
Systems
Pain points
02 ExecutionThe plan
Fewer doors, clearer paths, one place for help.
- Simplify first contact
- One clear engagement route for new and existing customers, collecting only what's needed up front and gathering details after the inquiry.
- Fix the journey
- Find and correct every misdirected or broken link.
- Registration
- A redesigned ShipCSX sign-up so new users at existing customer companies can create accounts on their own.
- Help Center
- A reusable, searchable help hub organized by persona and goal, replacing scattered FAQs with a clear hierarchy of help paths.
03 ImpactWhat it set up
A front door built on what customers came to do.
- A customer-first case for the redesign, grounded in research and analytics rather than opinion
- One connected experience from CSX.com into ShipCSX
- Better discoverability for prospects who didn't yet know what CSX could do for them
- A clearer story about the value of CSX's services before a customer ever makes contact
Building the Network: A Follow strategy across 12 to 15 product pillars
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LinkedIn · Network Growth · Cross-pillar strategy
A Follow strategy across 12 to 15 product pillars
I led the Network Growth design team, which helped members create, engage with, and grow their networks. One strategy I led made Follow a first-class way to build a network, coordinated across every pillar that touched it.
Illustrative recreation
Results
~10%
increase in total follows
~8%
more visibility for followable members from larger recommendation cards
~11%
lift in member-to-member follows
~5%
more engaged feed sessions
Inside the work. The original designs are confidential, so every product visual here is an illustrative recreation of the concept, not the shipped screen.
01 StrategyThe bet
Members didn't know when to follow and when to connect.
Connection requests frustrated both senders and recipients, and many members didn't see the value of simply following someone. The strategy was to make Follow an easy, valuable first step: a way to learn from people before, or instead of, connecting with them.
- Follow as the primary action
- Let members make Follow the main button on their profile.
- Next best actions
- Nudge members toward useful follows at the right moments.
- Jobs to be done
- Focus on what members came to do and the quality of what they see.
- Community
- Showcase members, products, and business solutions more prominently to build community through Follow.
Follow becomes the main call to action.
Creators could make Follow the primary button on their profile. Members could keep up with someone's ideas without the weight of a connection request, and creators could reach people who wanted to hear from them.
Illustrative recreation.
Three member stories, one strategy.
Each pillar designed for a real reason a member would follow someone.
Profile
A member visiting a creator's profile follows the creator, subscribes to the creator's newsletter, and sees related people to follow.
Search
A member searching a topic finds experts and creators to follow, and content that matches what the member is learning.
Illustrative recreations of the concepts. Topic-first recommendations used what a member was already engaging with to suggest who to follow.
02 ExecutionHow it shipped
Coordinating 12 to 15 teams without slowing them down.
Risk
Overcomplicating it
Each pillar had its own ideas and its own resource limits. We mapped a shared roadmap with the product team, organized every use case in Figma for easy review, led specific pillar teams directly, and ran design jams with product and design leaders to keep alignment.
Obstacle
Time to explore
Product wanted fast approvals, and early use cases lacked detail. I worked with the product manager to reorganize design sprints so the team had room to explore and product delivered detailed use cases on time.
03 ImpactWhat it changed
Follow became a real way to grow a network.
- Following creators before sending a connection request led to about a 10% net increase in total follows and more engaged sessions
- Larger follow recommendation cards increased the visibility of followable members by about 8% on feed and profile
- Bundled together, the initiatives drove about an 11% lift in member-to-member follows and about 5% more engaged feed sessions
Launching LinkedIn Recruiter's first generative AI product
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Leadership
How I lead
My job is to align a team's work with what the organization needs, make sure everyone can see how their work adds value, and then get it shipped. The teams I lead are built on open communication, mutual respect, and steady improvement.
The operating model
The same four disciplines, whether the team is eight people or a center of excellence.
Plan
Planning and checkpoints on strategy, funding, and OKRs. Resource planning and staffing forecasts, and clear priorities across business partners competing for the same team.
Align
Executive steering committees, including standing up new ones and choosing the right stakeholders where none existed. Created business cases that secured funding for initiatives worth millions.
Deliver
A predictable review cadence of critiques, design reviews, show-and-tells, and executive reviews.
Grow
Hiring, career ladders, and promotion business cases for direct reports. Mentorship, coaching, and programs that keep people learning from each other.
Teams I've led
Remote, onsite, and hybrid teams across design, engineering, product, and program management.
CSX · Director, Digital Experience
20
Direct reports in a Center of Excellence built from zero
- Design, Engineering, Product, and Project Management, including other managers and leads
- About 70 peer stakeholders across the business
- $12M P&L
- Mobile (iOS, Android, PWA), web, and 12 corporate websites
IBM · Manager, Design & Strategy
14
Designers across government and healthcare
- Government (10) and healthcare (4) client teams
- Tier 1 clients with $100M+ in annual spend
- Coached teams on design thinking strategy and led C-suite workshops
LinkedIn · Sr. Manager, Product Design
8
Designers across Recruiter and Enterprise Jobs
- Recruiter product (5) and Enterprise Jobs (3)
- Design resourcing across five concurrent product initiatives
- Owned the quarterly design planning cycle with cross-functional partners
CultureWhat I build around the work
Programs that outlast any one project.
- UX University and Dev University
- Multiple training sessions that taught hundreds of technical and non-technical employees at CSX how to work with UX, the design system, and modern development practices.
- Company-wide hackathon
- Co-led CSX's first company-wide technology hackathon, sponsored by AWS and Microsoft, and partnered with business leaders so winning ideas could become funded initiatives.
- Code Bytes and UX Bytes
- Short, recurring sessions where teams shared techniques, plus community meetups, mini hackathons, and team outings.
- IBM Buddy Program
- Paired every designer with two teammates for three months to build rapport, share client experiences, and trade practices. Other teams asked to join.
- Remote team building
- At LinkedIn, team-building workshops for a fully remote team and in-person campus experiences when we could gather.
Working agreementHow the team works together
The team writes it, and the team keeps it.
At IBM, my team wrote a working agreement the same way we'd run a session with a client. Three commitments held it together.
Candor
Honest and respectful. We give feedback constructively and listen to each other's opinions.
Share ideas
Curious and always learning. We share experiences early and often, including what didn't work.
Communication
Clarity with each other, respect for each other's time, and room for every voice.
PeopleManaging individuals
- Understand motivations
- Learn what drives each person and where they want to grow, then match work to strengths.
- Empower and mentor
- Give people the support and autonomy to do their best work, and connect them with mentors across the organization.
- People first, anywhere
- Remote or onsite, keep communication open and make it safe to give and receive feedback.
“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”Maya Angelou
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About
Karyn Nesby
Design and product executive with a portfolio and program management foundation. Builds the teams, systems, and operating rhythms that turn complex technology into products people trust, across enterprise platforms, consumer products, and executive consulting.
Education
- MA, Management and Leadership, Webster University
- BS, Advertising, Kansas State University
Certifications
- UX Management certification, Nielsen Norman Group
- Project Management Professional (PMP)
- Certified ScrumMaster (CSM)
- IBM Enterprise Design Thinking
Speaking
- Conference speaker while at LinkedIn and CSX
- Workshops on AI in technology for Management Leadership for Tomorrow, on behalf of LinkedIn
- Host, Career Perspectives podcast
Community
- Former Board Chair, National African American Women's Leadership Institute
- Board member, Brown Girls Do Ballet
- Created a Tech Buddy program for an all-girls charter school, including the curriculum
- Certified coach for managers and designers
Key takeaways
- Design already does strategy work: framing problems and making the case for what should exist.
- Brought in early, design makes tradeoffs visible while they're still inexpensive to change.
- Measure design by adoption and growth, the outcomes that drive revenue.
In many organizations, design shows up after the bet is made. Leadership picks the market, product writes the requirements, and design is asked to make it work.
By then, the most important decisions are locked in.
Design already does strategy work
When I started building the Digital Experience team at CSX, there was no formal product function yet. Design did that work by necessity: framing problems, deciding what to sunset or rebuild across more than a thousand applications, and helping partners build the business cases they took to their C-suite.
At IBM, I led design thinking sessions with C-suite clients in healthcare and government. The decisions about what to build were made in those rooms, with design leading the conversation.
The earlier design is involved, the more cost-effective every great decision becomes.
What design brings to the bet
Evidence from real users before money is committed. Tradeoffs made visible while they're still inexpensive to change.
Design also checks early whether the work can actually be delivered, because good design leaders think about systems, teams, and rollout, not just pixels.
What to ask for
Put design leadership in the planning cycle, not just the delivery cycle. Give design a seat on the steering committees where priorities get set.
Measure design by outcomes. Use Jobs to be Done to ground the work in research, Google's HEART to track the experience, and growth metrics like retention or a North Star metric to show business impact. That keeps the conversation on adoption and growth, the numbers that drive revenue, and not only on taste.
Bringing design to the strategy table brings the customer with it.
That's how products earn loyalty, and how loyalty becomes revenue.
Key takeaways
- Legacy systems aren't the obstacle. Missing decision-making systems and governance are.
- Standardize before you scale, and make the right way the easy way.
- Governance works when people want to be part of it.
When I joined CSX, the design team was one contract designer and me. The application portfolio ran more than a thousand systems deep, built up over decades of mergers.
People often assume a legacy environment is the obstacle. In my experience, the obstacle is the absence of a system and governance for making decisions.
1
Earn support with proof
Small, visible quick wins created the support to hire, and then to expand. Executives fund results they can see.
2
Standardize before you scale
We built the foundation first: shared components, an accessible color palette, a searchable icon library, and code developers could use directly.
A standard lets ten people move like one team.
3
Make the right way the easy way
Through UX University and Dev University, we ran multiple sessions for hundreds of technical and non-technical employees. People who understand the system defend it for you.
Governance works when people want to be part of it.
4
Build governance people want to join
A contribution process let teams propose changes, and executive steering committees made the hard calls. Where no committee existed, we chose the right stakeholders and stood one up.
5
Make portfolio decisions
With the system in place, we could decide across the whole portfolio what to sunset, what to revamp, and what to rebuild around the roles people actually do.
1,000+ → 450applications reviewed, and new or rebuilt applications delivered
6
Remove single points of failure
We cross-trained so no one person held critical knowledge alone, and brought UX into customer forums so the people we served could shape the work.
A legacy enterprise can move fast. It needs a system that makes good decisions repeatable.
Key takeaways
- Solve the real problem. For recruiters, it was relevance, not speed.
- Ground AI in data people already trust, and keep them in control.
- Watch adoption closely and fix the entry point before you scale.
When my team designed the first generative AI experience in LinkedIn Recruiter, the technology was the exciting part. The hard part was earning the trust of recruiters who would put their name on every message it helped write.
Solve the real problem
We assumed recruiters wanted to write faster. Research showed the real pain was personalization at scale, and a worry that AI outreach would sound generic.
That reframed the product around relevance.
Ground it in data people already trust
We started with what recruiters already relied on: their saved templates, the candidate's profile, the job details, and company information. We validated output against sandbox data before committing.
People trust AI that makes their work better and leaves the judgment to them.
Keep the person in control
Recruiters chose what to personalize, edited every draft in their own voice, and saved the best ones as templates for their team. Control is how trust gets built.
Disclose clearly, then get out of the way
We designed disclosure to inform without interrupting, then used real usage data after launch to simplify it.
Watch adoption, then fix the front door
Recruiters who used the feature valued it, but many weren't finding it. We changed onboarding before expanding: it appeared as soon as the composer opened, with a persistent entry point in the toolbar.
40%higher acceptance for AI-assisted messages in the pilot, with 82% of generated messages rated good
Trust comes from relevance, control, and transparency, designed in from the first decision.
