ZooKeep
Insights Driven Application Tracking System (ATS) for Startups and Enterprise
Company
ZooKeep
Industry
HR, Recruiting
Role
Full-time
Year
2024 - Present
About the Business
ZooKeep is a Tokyo based startup founded by a team of highly experienced recruiters. The company is a modern Applicant Tracking System (ATS) founded by a team of seasoned recruiters with the goal of making hiring fast, intuitive, and collaborative.
The product is built specifically to support fast-moving recruiting teams, especially in markets like Japan and Southeast Asia, where client and candidate expectations are nuanced and workflows vary. The platform enables teams to streamline candidate management, automate communication, and improve visibility across hiring pipelines.
Objective
As the Lead Product Designer on the team, my objective was to shape the product end-to-end — balancing the needs of recruiters, hiring managers, and candidates — while supporting a sales-led product development cycle. I was responsible for ensuring the design output not only supported the core user experience but also helped close deals, retain customers, and scale the product meaningfully.
Solution
I led the design of several core workflows from concept to production release — shaping experiences that directly impacted usability, scalability, and customer trust:
Insights Dashboard – Delivered a reliable, decision-ready dashboard that gave clients clear visibility into their hiring performance.
Candidate Scoring & Heat Map – Provided fast, intuitive signal to recruiters and hiring leads working through high-volume pipelines.
Candidate Stages – Reimagined stages as an action-based system, enabling task-like clarity while preventing missteps in the hiring process.
In-App Email – Enabled seamless communication with candidates directly within the app, reducing context-switching and improving tracking.
Email Templates – Supported consistent, on-brand communication at scale across large enterprise teams.
Job Template System – Introduced modular, reusable job templates that improved posting speed, tone consistency, and evaluation alignment across departments.
Personalized Dashboards – Designed tailored dashboards for each hiring role — from recruiter to hiring manager — to reduce noise and focus attention.
Bulk Actions – Simplified bulk candidate outreach and streamlined data cleanup across large talent pools.
Beyond these key features, I rapidly prototyped for custom client requests and sales demos, collaborated closely with engineers on implementation trade-offs, and aligned across functions with the GTM team, Head of Product, CTO, and Founder.
Results and Impact
The features I led were successfully delivered and are now core to the platform. The impact has been both tangible and strategic across the business.
Key Client Wins – My design work directly contributed to multiple major client wins. Features such as the Candidate Insights, Scoring System, and Scheduling tools became central selling points in enterprise pitches and renewals.
Improved User Experience – Recruiters now navigate candidate pipelines faster and with more confidence. The updated workflows reduced confusion, eliminated manual steps, and helped teams coordinate better internally.
Faster Feature Delivery – By building reusable patterns and driving clearer handoffs, we accelerated the speed of frontend implementation. Developers were able to ship faster and iterate with confidence.
Trusted to Lead End-to-End – I was retained as the lead product designer and continue to work closely with the engineering and product team. I’ve since expanded into growth-related projects — including onboarding, billing, and marketing — ensuring design remains cohesive across every customer touchpoint.
Learnings
Designing for a fast-paced, sales-driven startup taught me how to balance user empathy with business urgency. Unlike larger, process-heavy teams, our lean setup demanded speed, clarity, and strong cross-functional alignment.
Design as a Deal Closer – I saw first-hand how thoughtful design directly influences buying decisions. Enterprise clients were not just evaluating features — they were assessing usability, polish, and scalability. This shifted my mindset from just solving problems to designing solutions that sell.
Owning the End-to-End – As the sole designer on an agile squad, I learned to wear multiple hats — from research and UX, to writing UI copy, to overseeing final QA. This gave me a deeper appreciation of how design decisions impact every layer of the product lifecycle.
Designing for Growth – Supporting onboarding, billing, and self-serve flows showed me how design impacts revenue. I learned to shape flows not just for usability, but for conversion and retention too.
Note 💬
If you’re a business or hiring manager, this project is summarised and may not have dug into the details you might be looking for. I’d love to share more about any specifics of this project that may relevant to your context process, drop me a message and let’s chat!