MatchHR: A Cloud Platform for HR Assessments

Adin Poprzanovic
RUBICON Stories
Published in
6 min readJan 24, 2022

In partnership with Making Moves B.V., RUBICON developed a cloud assessment platform that covers the gap between psychometric profiling and hiring

“Quality and communication are the words which come to mind when I think about RUBICON. Since the partnership began, the website’s Google rankings and conversion rates have improved significantly. RUBICON’s dedicated work enables the business to grow more rapidly, stably, and efficiently.”

(CEO, Making Moves B.V.)

RUBICON’s Partnership with Making Moves B.V.

Having successfully collaborated in the past with our partner Making Moves B.V., we were ready to help them bring another business idea to life. This time, Making Moves B.V. wanted to bring a new product to the market called MatchHR. MatchHR is a cloud assessment platform that covers the gap between psychometric profiling and hiring. RUBICON’s software development team’s goal was to build an aesthetic and functional web and cloud solution for the product.

The Client — Making Moves B.V.

Making Moves B.V. helps customers reach their dream jobs. They specialize in software for human resource management solutions. Their products, mainly e-commerce platforms in the HR domain, are available in multiple countries around the world. Along with their latest product MatchHR, Making Moves B.V. has also created Assessment Training and Career Test Pro as tools for the HR industry.

To learn more about Making Moves B.V. click here, and to learn more about the product MatcHR click here.

The Project

In collaboration with the University of Cambridge’s Psychometric center, we created MatchHR. It matches companies with suitable candidates based on predefined personality characteristics, psychometric tests, and the organization’s culture. MatchHR measures the right competencies and skills to better support HR decisions for finding the right employees.

The client requested for RUBICON to develop a user-friendly web and cloud platform that gives HR professionals the opportunity to quickly assess and test candidates.

The Challenges

During the development phase of the project the following challenges were overcome:

  • Develop a cloud solution to support the requested requirements
  • Implement reliable API, handle integrations with client’s and Cambridge APIs
  • Multi-lingual support and ease of use for the content editor
  • Develop a simple, reliable, and smooth candidate testing application, used by candidates who go through job testing. Ensure best user experience for candidates on the platform
  • Develop a public site that onboards potential clients, explains what the product is, and how it is used (UX/UI efforts). Additionally, its goal was to explain psychometric tests in plain languages, the process, and the 5 dimensions of personality, or in short — the OCEAN profile:
    - Openness
    - Conscientiousness
    - Extraversion
    - Agreeableness
    - Neuroticism

The Software Development Process

The first step was organizing a hands-on workshop with Making Moves B.V. founders and Psychometric Tests domain experts in the RUBICON office. The workshop was a combination of a Lean Inception approach and the Design Sprint. Meaning, we went through the entire idea, analyzed all the features that need to be developed, and at the end of the workshop individually sketched the solutions for the problem. We worked together to define the product vision and goals, explore features and user journeys, and review the technical/business/UX components. By the end of the third day of the workshop, we had MVP ready for development with a set of clear guidelines and features.

Once we created the product roadmap and introduced the idea to the RUBICON team, we began onboarding the team members dedicated to the project. The roles that made up the team were:

  • Product Owner
  • Solution Architect
  • UX/UI Designer
  • Back-End Developer
  • Front-End Developer

Following the Agile framework, our team worked in Scrum by splitting up the workload into two-week sprints. The entire development process included daily communication with the client’s domain experts, which also involved constant and clear feedback to improve the product.

Web & Cloud Platform — MatchHR

With over 20 years of experience in the field of recruitment, Making Moves B.V. has developed a successful recipe for finding the best employee every time. Based on personality type, motivation, and IQ level, the client calculates the candidate’s suitability for the job position and company.

The web platform works in the way that the user (usually an HR professional) purchases a plan that involves a certain number of assessments. From the basic plan which includes 10 assessments to a business plan which includes 120 assessments, users choose the plan that best suits their needs.

Once purchasing a plan, the HR professional creates a job opening for the specific role they are looking to fill. The job opening consists of job position details, job demand, a best practice profile, education level, and motivational drivers. Once the job position is complete, the HR professional can send an assessment to the candidate for them to complete the tests that will qualify them for the job.

Powered by the University of Cambridge’s Psychometric Centre, MatchHR sends out the following tests to candidates:

The Personality Test

The personality test technology is based on the Big5 also known as the OCEAN model. It measures candidates’ levels of Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.

The Motivation Test

The motivation test is based on the Drives Theory by Dr. Clare W. Graves. Drives are about what people think is important to them, how they perceive their surroundings, what motivates them, and how this influences their behavior. The test measures, ranks, and provides insights into candidates’ motivational drives.

The IQ Test

The IQ test consists of Progressive Matrices-style items which measure cognitive skills and clear-thinking ability. It was developed by the University of Cambridge’s Psychometrics Centre.

Once the candidate completes the tests, the HR professional receives the results of a detailed report and is able to make a data-driven hiring decision.

Results

RUBICON’s software development team and Making Moves B.V. joined forces to build a user-friendly and functional web and cloud platform. MatchHR helps HR professionals speed up the hiring process by having candidates complete assessments quickly and efficiently in order to make the right hiring decisions.

Technology Stack

Back-end Technologies

  • Clean Architecture style
    - Separates different layers of the system and supports fast and testable development
  • ASP.NET Core Web API
    - C# based backend REST API application used for application/business logic and data persistence
  • Entity Framework Core
    - Object/Relational Mapping framework used by the backend API for data persistence enablement
  • xUnit
    - Backend unit testing library
  • SendGrid Email Service
    - Used by the backend API for email sending purposes

Front-end Technologies

  • Jamstack: Gatsby + Prismic CMS + Azure CDN
    - Used to develop the frontend static website, it completely decouples the frontend from the backend development, simplifies development and deployment
  • TypeScript
    - JavaScript based programming language which, using its compiler, enables more efficient development time
  • ReactJS
    - JavaScript based library, used to develop single-page applications in the MatchHR solution: Customers application, Testing application, as well as the public MatchHR website
  • Prismic CMS
    - Headless CMS that makes website content easy editable
    - Allows content creators/clients to edit translations (or any content on the landing page) without the need to change the code itself

Cloud and Infrastructure

  • Azure App Service
    - Hosts the backend API
  • Azure Blob Storage
    - Hosts the image content used on the frontend static websites, as well as the static websites themselves
  • Azure SQL Database
    - Relational database used for data persistence
  • Azure Application Insights
    - Monitors backend and frontend performance, user sessions, and event logging to improve the quality of the whole system
  • Prismic CMS
    - Hosts the content of the website

DevOps

  • Git
    - Version control and a multi-repository project structure were used. Each component of the MatchHR solution had its own repository and CI/CD pipelines.
  • Azure DevOps CI/CD
    - Pipeline used to implement continuous integration and continuous delivery of both backend API and frontend static websites

Project Screenshots

Information

Company: Making Moves B.V.

Region: Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Industry: Human Resources

Project Duration: 2020 — present

Project: Cloud & web platform

Originally published at https://www.rubicon-world.com.

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