Anchor Experts (2025)
A B2B talent marketplace connecting global companies with vetted African engineers: a web dashboard for discovery, shortlisting and hiring, and a mobile companion for quick decisions between sessions.
Client
Anchor Experts
Role
Product designer: UI and UX for the web dashboard and mobile app
Timeline
12 weeks; first release shipped 3 weeks after the brief
Platform
Web Dashboard · Mobile App (iOS & Android)
The Challenge
What needed solving.
Companies already wanted African tech talent, with an average saving of 46% against equivalent Western hires. What stopped them was confidence. Anchor Experts already had flows for finding and hiring engineers; my job was to refresh them around the two things a hiring manager needs to trust first: is this person vetted, and can they work my hours.
The Approach
How I solved it.
I refreshed one product across two surfaces. The web dashboard is built for sustained hiring: filtering across four talent categories (Backend, Frontend, DevOps, CRM), managing shortlists and drilling into profiles with bios, stacks, résumés and technical videos. The mobile companion mirrors the five most frequent actions in a one-thumb, one-level-deep UI. Vetting sits at the centre of both, because a candidate pool is only as valuable as the trust it earns.
Key Insights
What shaped the refresh.
01 · Principle
Vetted status should be the first thing a client sees
A candidate pool is only as valuable as the trust it earns, so what vetting covers should never be a mystery.
What I did about it
So vetting status appears on every candidate, in the table, on cards and on the detail page, and the detail page defines it in one line: 'Identity, background & skills verified.' A client scanning 30 results never has to wonder what the badge means.
02 · Principle
Timezone fit is a dealbreaker, not a detail
For collaborative or client-facing roles, working-hours overlap can rule a candidate out before anything else is read, so clients shouldn't have to open a profile to check it.
What I did about it
I made GMT offset a primary column in the talent table, with the same weight as role and experience, and a tag on every talent card on mobile, so clients can check timezone fit without opening a profile.
03 · Principle
Shortlisting has to feel reversible
If saving a candidate looks like it notifies them or starts an approval workflow, clients hold back from shortlisting.
What I did about it
I split commitment into two tiers: 'Save to shortlist' is silent and undoable, shown as a heart icon, while 'Hire Candidate' is the weighted action that starts placement. The aim was for clients to shortlist earlier and more broadly, and reach the hiring step with a richer comparison pool.
Process
How I worked through it.
01
Refreshing the existing flows
Desk research and a review of Anchor's existing placement flows, working with the operations team, the PM and engineers to find where clients lost confidence between finding a candidate and making a hire.
02
Role-based architecture
The platform serves two mental models: a client hiring talent, and an Anchor admin managing placements and platform health. I designed separate navigation trees in one shared shell, with a sidebar that adapts to your role at sign-in.
03
Dashboard and candidate detail design
The Talent Portal leads with pool depth across all four categories, then a dense, sortable table for filtering by role, location, GMT, experience and vetting. The candidate page answers four questions in one scroll: are they qualified, where and when can they work, how do they sound in their own words, and are they verified? Everything else was cut.
04
Mobile companion design
The five most frequent actions (browse talent, review a profile, manage the shortlist, check analytics, manage clients) as single-thumb screens, never more than one level deep. The app doesn't replace the dashboard; it keeps decisions moving between desktop sessions, so a hiring manager can review a candidate on a commute and arrive ready to act.
Selected Screens
A closer look.
Mobile Companion
The app, up close.
Outcomes
After launch.
180
active clients at launch
30
placements, first quarter
500+
vetted candidates on platform
According to Anchor's admin dashboard, Anchor Experts launched with 180 active clients and 500+ vetted candidates, and confirmed 30 placements in its first quarter. Those are Anchor's numbers, and they reflect its sales and vetting work as much as the product. My part was making vetting status and timezone fit visible without opening a profile, and making shortlisting feel safe enough that clients compared more candidates before hiring.
Reflection
What I'd do differently.
I'd run unmoderated testing with real users before we shipped. The three principles came from desk research and Anchor's existing flows, so none of them was tested with hiring managers before launch. Even a short unmoderated test of the talent table and the shortlist would have shown whether the vetting chip, the timezone column and the silent save worked the way I intended.
Now you know.
A queue nobody trusts? A status that sends people to support?
That's the work I do, and I'm open to new projects. Tell me what you're building, and I'll tell you honestly if I'm right for it.
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