November 04, 2025
Help Wanted: An Online Jobs Site That Works
Applying for a job with a state agency represents an excellent chance to serve the public. Managing these open roles and applications is challenging for many organizations, but even more so for one like the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC), which requires background screening, entrance exams, and certification requirements for many jobs.
Recruiters and applicants need an online platform that supports clear, accessible, and centralized workflows.
For GDC, a hiring platform must work across device types and within secure environments, such as correctional facilities. After migrating their primary website to the GovHub publishing platform in 2023, GDC partnered with DSGa again this year to examine their talent recruiting platform. What began as a usability review revealed a comprehensive overview of the agency’s systems, processes, and people.
Discovering the Possibilities
Initially, DSGa was called in to review their existing Jobs site. GDC staff wanted to ensure the navigation was clear, links were updated, and content was accessibility compliant. But soon after our initial review, the agency decided that this was a good opportunity to explore alternative platforms.
This pivot was a gift. Rather than having to work around any potential legacy issues, we had a clean slate to help GDC identify something better. That meant shifting our focus from auditing a site to looking at how the agency worked, how staff would need to interact, and what would best serve them.
To begin, we met with stakeholders, including:
- Agency administration and Human Resources management and staff
- Corrections Lieutenants on the front lines of hiring, often present at job events and within facilities
- Members of a Basic Correctional Officer Training (BCOT) group, new employees, and the most recent participants in the hiring process
The information gathered in these meetings helped us identify real-world constraints and expectations for supporting the hiring process with technology. We identified practical challenges across the application process, shaped by the secure environments GDC manages and by organizational patterns that could be refined for greater consistency. These findings guided our next phase: looking closely at where steps drifted apart and mapping how the agency's full process works as one connected system.
Building a Service Blueprint
Working in collaboration with GDC stakeholders, our team facilitated workshops and translated conversations into a service blueprint – one that the agency could own and expand upon. Our team uses service blueprints as a shared visual model. They show what users experience, from their perspective, and everything that happens internally related to that process. The blueprint allows organizations to assess how things work across departments, see what's effective, and ensure the process is consistent and healthy.
We like using service blueprints to help organizations see themselves as a cohesive system delivering a service. It can help highlight bottlenecks and show where users experience friction or get stuck. In government agencies, service blueprints provide a neutral space for different business areas to come together to solve shared problems.
Framing the Requirements
In the next phase, we turned our research into a Product Requirements Document (PRD), bridging what we learned with the solution’s purpose, features, and goals.
A PRD is a standard planning tool in product development, but our approach keeps it closely tied to real-world insights. Because our team works directly with both research and documentation, we can trace requirements back to user interviews and observed workflows. Starting from a service blueprint allows the PRD to outline functionality and ensure the solution fits naturally within the broader service ecosystem.
The PRD covered:
Business goals and success criteria
Functional and non-functional requirements
Dependencies and assumptions
Appendices with survey data, blueprint visuals, and job role mappings
We used a MoSCoW framework to label requirements as Must-haves, Should-haves, and Could-haves. This can help GDC prioritize core functionality while leaving space for future enhancements.
Team Takeaways
For us, this project reinforced the importance of stepping back from the screen to view the full picture. We dove deep into the operations of a large state agency, and combined human-centered research with structured analysis and documentation.
What we’ll carry forward:
Discovery brings clarity. Surveys, interviews, and mapping processes helped reveal how hiring works and how to improve it.
Collaboration accelerates insight. When agencies invite cross-functional input, the research becomes faster, richer, and more meaningful.
Technology succeeds when it fits the system. Viewing digital tools within the broader service ecosystem ensures long-term sustainability.
For our team, this work demonstrates our commitment to listen closely, move quickly, and help agencies connect the dots between people, processes, and technologies.
Mary Liebowitz, Lead Content Strategist, contributed to the writing of this blog post.
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