Amsterdam Standard

MrWork builds talent pipelines for recruitment processes. They provide the direct connection between the company and their target group, helping to attract candidates, creating personalized candidate journeys, and ensure that the right people apply for the company. With MrWork, companies are also reaching the candidates who are not actively looking for a job.

How it all started

The partnership with Amsterdam Standard started in 2015 with hiring just one developer for a part of their existing project. During the next 4 years, the number of developers has grown. Some of the developers were in-house in the Netherlands (mostly front-end) and some in the Amsterdam Standard's Krakow office (mostly back-end). The company was searching for a solution to manage the team in the most productive way.

MrWorks original system was built on technologies created in 2014, which didn't meet the requirements anymore as it was hard to make changes in it. They knew it was the right time to update it.

When it all changed

At the beginning of 2019, multiple significant changes took place. First, MrWork decided to rewrite the system from scratch, based on all the information they learned in these years, and to focus on their SaaS platform. The second decision was to organize the whole team in Amsterdam Standard’s office and (accepted advice) to hire a Scrum master close to them to improve the communication and workflow. And the third thing was to change the technology they used (Angular1) to React and Symphony. Moving to the newest technologies made it possible to find inspired and experienced specialists to work on the project and to deliver the new system according to the highest standards.

The team and the result of their hard work

Currently, the MrWork team consists of 4 full-time and 1 part-time developers and a Scrum Master on the Amsterdam Standard side and the project manager on the MrWork side. Due to the hard work of this team for almost a year, the new version of the system is released. From the beginning of 2020, all the existing and new clients are assigned to the new system.

The major technical changes

For the new system, the team is using the latest versions of technologies and frameworks, they have dedicated time for technology checks on the meetings to keep up with the updates. They fully automated the CI/CD process with code quality tools checks in place.

High code coverage with both unit and functional tests and enterprise-grade log collection and error reporting tools are also in place.

About the platform

Now MrWork is a SaaS solution for the automated job advertisement. The new system is fast, flexible, and reliable. It enables us to interpret any format of the client's feed to the system's setup, making the system very generic.

To exclude the appearance of repeatable content for potential employees, we have generated the smart solution. It consists of the content library which is filled out with the client content and a set of branded advertisement templates. Then the system automatically creates possible combinations and conducts A/B testing to reveal the best performers. This way potential employees always see fresh and engaging content.

Mannenmedia is the one and only digital men's network in the Netherlands. Mannenmedia was looking for a solution that would provide them business intelligence into all their monetizing techniques and platforms. 

They needed a dashboard that can be used both internally by Mannenmedia and externally by their publisher clients to provide direct insights into earnings. 

Our developers created the API connections between advertising platforms and the dedicated server for the Mannenmedia dashboard.

The developers were active with filtering, sorting and unifying data in all the different dimensions and macro's in-between diverse advertising platforms. They have used Symfony 4 as a backend framework and Angular as front-end technology. 

After 1 year of designing, developing, and numerous calls between Mannennedia and Amsterdam Standard teams, the dashboard was put into production. 

Mannenmedia now has the fast, reliable and scalable dashboard that provides the entire team with both overall and detailed insights into earnings. The functionality of the dashboard saves countless hours in creating reports each month for both commercial and financial teams. An additional benefit is that the Mannenmedia publishers have daily-updated insights into their earnings, so they are aware of what to expect at the end of the month.

De Nationale AI- cursus (The National AI-course) is a free artificial intelligence course for all Dutch people. This course got life due to a successful collaboration of the foundation AI for GOOD, the knowledge center ICAI and the company Elephant Road. The goal of De Nationale AI- cursus organization is to prepare all citizens for the future where we live with AI.

System challenges before working with Amsterdam Standard:

De Nationale AI- cursus is a brand new course created based on the Elephant Road software.  Elephant Road felt an urgent need for a design and user experience update. The existing courses platform had a difficult user experience, not clear navigation and outdated design. It was considered important to employ a modern, outstanding design for this new course and their renewed website.

The National AI course is a brand new course based on the existing Elephant Road software. Elephant Road was of the opinion that it was high time for an update of the design. The existing course platform offered a cumbersome user experience, there was no clear navigation and the design was now outdated. It was considered important for this new course to create a sublime user experience.

What solutions were provided:

The project started in May 2018 with the research and optimization of user flows. The next step was to design the framework. Our designers created a modern and intuitive interface for this course.

The project involved a total of two UI / UX designers, a backend developer, two frontend developers, an iOS developer, an Android developer, and the project manager. The existing backend has been improved and new functions have been developed. The front end is built with AngularJS. This course is made as a single-page application, allowing participants to switch to the next topic by scrolling, without having to click unnecessarily. Amsterdam Standard has built hybrid mobile apps for the National AI course in the Ionic Framework for both iOS and Android.

The project started at the beginning of May 2018 from investigating the user’s workflows. The first step in the designing process was the UX design to generate optimized flows. The next step was creating the wireframes based on the created flows. During this stage step by step sketches of each page were made. Throughout the process, wireframes were approved by the client. At the end of this stage, a working prototype was provided. The last stage of the designing process was UI design. Our designers created the modern, outstanding and intuitive interface for this course. But that’s not all the work which has been done, there are also a lot of changes “behind the scenes”. In total in this project was involved the team of 2 UX/UI designers, back-end developer, 2 front-end developers, iOS developer, Android developer, and project manager. Our development team has improved the existing backend application to make it possible for the client to have full control of orders, content and participants’ data of the course. New features have been developed to manage the latest methods used in this course. The front-end is built with the use of AngularJS to ensure a smooth user experience in various types of slides. This course is made as a one-page website, which enables students to switch to the next topic only by scrolling, excluding unnecessary clicking.

Amsterdam Standard had to build iOS and Android hybrid mobile apps in Ionic Framework for De Nationale AI- cursus. These apps communicate with the API of the backend application. Both apps are available in Appstore and Playstore. Cloud hosting of the backend- and frontend application is managed in Heroku platform.

What results are seen:

A new free AI-course was created! Any Dutch person can learn about AI from any device on the website or in the app. New outstanding design, an improved user-experience and implemented new features all together foster to a pleasant learning process.

More to come:

After successful work on The National AI course, Elephant road has decided to continue collaboration and apply a new design and technical changes to the whole website and their paid courses.

Top reasons why Elephant Road would recommend Amsterdam Standard to other companies:

The collaboration during the work was really important to us. With Amsterdam Standard, we feel that we are involved in the development. We have a weekly meeting with all members of the team to follow the process. We would recommend Amsterdam standard not just for their top experts, but also for their spirit of partnership and collaboration.