Product Concept
Shared Candidate Sign-In
Product concept · Fictional proposal
One candidate login accepted by every participating employer’s career site. Sign-in is shared while candidate data stays in each employer’s system.
- Role
- Product manager
- Context
- Self-directed case study
- Year
- 2026
[ Problem ]
A job seeker applying to ten companies through the same recruiting platform creates ten accounts. Duplicate accounts, forgotten passwords, and drop-off at account creation all stem from identity being isolated along with each employer’s data. I've applied to enough jobs this year to have opinions about this one.
[ Approach ]
- Mapped four stakeholder groups: job seekers, employers, platform, and security/legal, including what each wants and fears.
- Separated shared identity from shared candidate data. Employers can trust the same verified login without being able to link records.
- Designed a federated sign-in model with a private identifier for each employer. Each company sees a different ID for the same candidate, so nobody can match records across employers.
- Wrote core flows, requirements, risks, mitigations, and a phased validation plan.
[ Proposed outcome ]
- Hypothetical north-star target: improve application completion by 8 to 12 percentage points against baseline.
- Proposed pilot: five to eight opt-in employers in one region, with weekly guardrail reviews.
- Each open question has a validation method before any build begins.
Background: I've troubleshot SSO, SAML, and OAuth sign-in failures in production, including on partner-facing booking sites.
[ Tools & skills ]
Product StrategyProduct Requirements (PRD)Stakeholder ManagementRisk AnalysisIdentity & SSOPrivacy by DesignSuccess MetricsPilot Planning
[ Documents ]
Case study briefPDF · 1 page
