Design and develop MVP features for a new type of digital product, demonstrating its potential to guide business candidates at every step of their professional growth.
DEFINING AN ORGANIZATION BUILT ON A LEGACY OF TRUST
For nearly 75 years, the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) has supported people on their higher education journey. As a global, mission-driven association of leading graduate business schools, GMAC provides world-class market intelligence, professional development opportunities, and admissions assessments (GMAT) for the graduate management education (GME) industry.
“At the heart of this project, is our vision to support users in the long run as they navigate an overwhelming sea of options to find the right fit for their business education.”
PIVOTING TO A CANDIDATE-FIRST STRATEGY IN A SKILLS-BASED ECONOMY
As interest in traditional MBA paths shifts and new business-oriented programs flood the market, candidates are faced with a myriad of options when applying to business school. GMAC saw an opportunity to evolve with these changes and better support the candidate’s full journey.
We partnered with their team to move beyond one-off interactions and instead imagine an overarching experience that stays with candidates for six months and beyond. This vision kickstarted the Career Skills Builder project.
UNDERSTANDING A CANDIDATE’S JOURNEY IN A SHIFTING BUSINESS LANDSCAPE
We conducted 1:1 interviews with a range of potential business candidates, to uncover key insights into their needs, goals, and decision-making processes. These findings revealed the cyclical nature of the candidates’ journey to accessing management education and the steps they go through to find the right path.
The All-In Stage comprises the milestones a candidate considers in their next big career move, from exploring possible offerings to determining the most suitable ones and preparing to apply.
“The period between deciding to pursue GME and enrolling in a program or course felt like the portion of a user’s journey where we could create the highest impact.”
SMART-MATCHING THE GMAC ECOSYSTEM WITH A CANDIDATE’S JOURNEY
To accommodate diverse user needs, our ideation operated within a set of core principles while tapping into GMAC’s robust database of business-oriented offerings. This led to 24 concrete product concepts that spanned from simple features to entirely new offerings. The overall vision focused on crafting a contextual experience that candidates could make their own with GMAC acting in the role of a trusted advisor.
The vision for the new consumer features included 24 product concepts. Select features were shortlisted for development into fully functional prototypes.
PROTOTYPING THE INITIAL VISION
To ensure a comprehensive experience, we proposed relevant features tailored to each stage of the career-building journey from identifying available offering(s) to examining selected requirements.
The application captures a candidate’s job status, skills, aspirations, and known gaps. These insights inform personalized features, including auto-filled fields, filters, and tailored suggestions throughout the experience.
These insights are then matched to potential business offerings with the particular combination of skills a candidate is seeking to gain or improve upon.
At the point of determination, candidates see a customizable view of selected GME options, with intelligent defaults based on the information they’ve already shared.
INTEGRATING MVP FEATURES INTO A FULL JOURNEY PROTOTYPE
Expanding on the vision of the previous iteration, we worked on refining existing features while introducing new ones. This rounded out one full “cycle”, bringing value to candidates throughout their journey by supporting them in assessing, defining, and building their skills for a career in business.
THE FOUR MAIN SECTIONS OF GMAC SKILLS BUILDER
In its latest iteration, the early-innovation project held the core functionalities of the forthcoming web app’s Beta version including features for the Preparation phase and refinements to the UI language.
Uncover information about a user as they build their profile by responding to questions about background, personality, and aspirations.
Browse GME recommendations and save the desired ones to custom lists.
Compare offerings in a list across many data points to select the ones to pursue.
Organize key dates and requirements for each offering into a plan to complete the application process.
LAYING THE GROUNDWORK FOR A NEW CONSUMER-FACING PLATFORM
Career Skills-Builder was foundational in aligning the organization’s new product vision with the current business landscape. The MVP features we built from scratch were shared internally, as well as tested and validated with users to produce insights informing a future MVP, which has since been launched as GMAC Advancery.
