• ⭐️ Propel was born in 2023 from 1848 Ventures; the company's venture studio has innovated to elevate the construction industry.

    ⭐️ The first iterations of the product, Version 0.5, involved early user discovery and testing to gather feedback and insights from experts in the construction industry.

    Why?

    🚩️ HR teams receive several hundreds of applicants per job.

    🚩️ Companies struggle to find high-quality candidates with the overwhelming number of applicants coming in and narrowing down to the best qualified ones.

    🚩️ All ATS tools are outdated, not fitted for the team’s needs, and slow down their timeline when companies are already overwhelmed.

    Solution: Propel accelerates the teams’ hiring process while finding higher-quality candidates, seamlessly integrating into their partnered tools.

    🏆 Propel utilizes AI to filter candidates based on the job description provided, instantly cutting time for HR teams.

    🏆 By utilizing text-to-apply for candidate applications, Propel lowers the bar for language barriers and online users while accelerating their hiring pipeline.

    🏆 Through integrated partnered platforms, such as LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter, Indeed, and more, Propel allows companies’ hiring process to fit into their workflow seamlessly.

    🐬 So let's dive in!

  • Primary Users for Propel People:

    ⭐️ HR individuals or team leads working full-time within a construction company.

    ⭐️ Target companies are around 100 employees; therefore, HR teams are small and sometimes just one individual struggling to handle all roles.

    🚩 Their pain points are receiving too many applications, not finding high-quality candidates, and usually having too much work on their plates.

    🏆 Therefore, the goal for this user is to find high-quality candidates fast since turnover in the construction space is fast!

  • ⭐️ Designed and delivered high-fidelity UI for all core features, aligned to the product roadmap and dev-ready for engineering handoff.

    ⭐️ Led user research end-to-end: created interview guides, hired and coordinated with a sourcing agency, and conducted informative sessions, while analyzing insight-driven data to define the target market and sharpen product–market fit. Findings directly informed OKRs shared with investors.

    ⭐️ Directed our marketing agency on product positioning and storytelling; shaped product demos that spotlighted features most valued by early adopters.

  • 🛠️ Designs were built in Figma while mapping and collaboration sessions were conducted with FigJam.

    🛠️ Research was conducted with Read.AI tracking, Fyxer.ai, and synthesis was analyzed with Dovetail.

    🛠️ Documentation was tracked in Monday then moved to Notion.

    🛠️ Ticketing with Engineering was in Trello and then moved into Linear.

  • ⭐️ Helped Propel secure $3M in seed funding, directly supporting investor materials through research insights, UX strategy, and feature demos.

    ⭐️ Launched v1 with strong early adoption—10+ paying customers and hundreds more engaging via the free resume scoring tool.

    ⭐️ Built momentum through community engagement and smart integrations—driving retention and making it easier for hiring teams to plug Propel into their existing workflows.

    👓 What’s next? Propel is scaling its user base, refining features based on real-world feedback, and continuing to evolve toward product–market fit.

  • ⭐️ A top US Bank wants to improve its internal client-facing service process & client approach. They need a service blueprint that will help map out their process and consolidation opportunities.

    ⭐️ Our consulting super squad took on conducting internal research on how the bank currently handles its client services and touch points to their users.

    ⭐️ The final handoff is a snippet of the service blueprint seen below this accordion section. See more details in the Solutions section just below here. 👇

    Hypothesis

    🔎 To help increase primary banking relationships with clients as their needs evolve, our digital servicing tools should connect to our human-powered engagement so that we can enable products, services, and features at the right moment for clients as they move through life stages.

    Opportunity Areas

    🚩️ There were six opportunity areas discovered, covering areas such as clarity of client communications (both proactive and reactive), client tiering organization from the bank's perspective, and improvement of client engagement tools.

    Challenges

    🛑 Service Design Blueprints are so large and complex, that when it comes to filling in the data, it’s hard to know what information is most important to include. There were challenges of collecting too much data in one area, data that wasn’t important, or the need to hunt down data that was missing. Luckily, the team was able to reach out internally to find collaborators to help fill in those areas. As the Blueprint started to come together, clear opportunity areas started to stand out.

    Solutions

    🏆 The service blueprint produced, shown below this accordion, maps the current state process for how the client engagement team of the bank identifies when their client has a new need and the steps taken to set the client up with a new product or service. The steps are agnostic of a specific product or service and are meant to illustrate the stages.

  • 🏦 Key impacted users are client services within the bank, changing the process and approach to reaching out to clients.

    🏦 Within the bank, client engagement roles are Relationship Advisors, Relationships Managers, Product Advisors, and Solutions Advisors. All have different expertise that can be seen by having differing touch points with the client.

    🙋 The end users that are impacted are banking clients receiving feedback loops of information from their bank that best support them through the products, services, and features offered to them.

  • ⭐️ Supported & conducted research efforts for and with the client. Script creations, note taking, reformatting informational architecture, and systemization. Supported through collaboration efforts and ran synthesizing workshops.

    ⭐️ Led the visual design and creation of the service blueprint maps based on informational architecture from the research synthesis.

    ⭐️ Supported branding and hyper-organized files for client handoff.

  • 🛠️ The primary service blueprint was created in Figma.

    🛠️ Other tools included FigJam, Miro, and Airtable for tracking and research work.

    🛠️ It's crucial to keep in mind that consulting work has to be adaptive to the client tools, so our teams switched to working in their communication platforms and tools.

  • 🏆 The banking client loved the service blueprint and highlighted pain points and opportunity areas that created a positive impact with their clients!

    🏆 Reduced client attrition rates by ~12% through consolidating the internal client-facing service.

    🏆 Work continued through refining opportunity areas, conducting research with banking clients, creating prototypes in different banking tools, and testing that with the client engagement team.