ITV

When ITV approached us looking for a brand new careers portal which would integrate with their existing Intranet, we knew we’d need to harness both our technical development expertise and strong design edge to pull off the project. Here’s what we built…

Envisioned to serve over 6000 ITV employees, the television network’s new careers portal would give staff access to information about employment within the company and open up career paths at ITV. The key objective? To give staff the information and tools required to actively manage their careers within the network.

Discovery was key to the function of the new careers portal. Those important “next steps” are not always clear or obvious in our professional lives. With this in mind, we agreed with ITV that the portal’s navigation should be designed to help staff uncover new routes and fresh directions they may not have otherwise considered. Developing and honing a loosely structured navigation that enabled exploration was a huge priority from the very beginning of the project.

• Build an intuitive web application that encourages users to nurture their careers at ITV
• Implement a design that meets the ITV brand guidelines
• Develop a platform that encourages users to explore the widest possible range of content
• Build the careers portal on a Drupal CMS framework
• Support video within the portal to boost dynamism and user experience
• Integrate the new portal  with the existing ITV intranet
• Integrate and merge the new portal with ITV’s existing job listing platform
• Allow ITV employees to access the careers portal with a single sign in

With plenty to get their teeth stuck into, the JBi team decided to first invest time in imagining a structure for the portal which would enable employee exploration and discovery. As a crucial aspect of the brief, we worked hard to develop a vision for the portal’s navigation which would make the system enticing and enlightening to explore. The structure we came up with underpinned every element of development and design we built on top.

The design of the portal itself was based on clear direction from ITV’s brand guidelines, which included the network’s strong colour palette. We did have some design freedom when it came to page layout and user experience (UX). We designed these elements to be as dynamic and compelling as possible in order to further encourage exploration of the resource.

To integrate our shiny new platform with ITV’s existing intranet, we chose to build it on a Drupal CMS (content management system). The new careers resource incorporates a large number of Drupal core modules, including user management and CMS, which have been customised to suit the project. This was not a straightforward development task. With numerous integrations and security planning to consider, the entire portal called for a detailed approach and considerable expertise.

We developed a careers portal that ITV employees love to use and actively want to explore. The new portal makes managing and envisioning career paths at the television network enjoyable and easy, hopefully nurturing plenty of professional growth within the company. After completing phase one of the project, we now have lots of exciting new ideas that we’d love to apply to phase two.