Home Case studies Multi-role SaaS for Job Seekers, Recruiters and Hiring Teams

Multi-role SaaS for Job Seekers, Recruiters and Hiring Teams

Coferral is an innovative marketplace that helps early-stage startups hire top-tier talent through cash rewards for peer referrals. By combining modern UX with ATS integrations, it allows users to earn by referring exceptional colleagues, discover peer-endorsed talent with verified skills and goals, and track referral outcomes in real time. Visual Craft brought the idea to life by designing a multi-role system and delivering a secure, scalable MVP. The result is a seamless, data-driven SaaS platform built on trust.

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Client's Objectives

Modernize Recruitment Through Trusted Networks Enable job seekers and companies to connect through colleague-endorsed referrals, improving transparency and candidate quality.
Connect hiring companies with the top 5% of professionals, as endorsed by their colleagues, in a streamlined workflow.
Simplify Job Discovery and Candidate Referrals Streamline workflows for endorsing colleagues, open-source recruiting, and submitting referrals — with built-in cash-reward payment logic.
Empower Hiring Companies with Scalable Tools Provide hiringn teams with robust tools to manage jobs, referrals, and referral bonuses at scale — integrated with ATS systems.
Launch a Cross-User MVP With Full Role Support Deliver a polished MVP that supports individuals, recruiters, and hiring companies with tailored dashboards and referral mechanics.

Challenges

Turning a Startup Vision Into a Focused, Business-Ready MVP

As with many early-stage startups, Coferral began with a strong concept but no clear roadmap. The client needed a technical team that could challenge assumptions, prioritize features, and make sure every sprint moved them toward launch - not complexity. Their core challenge: How do we turn this into a real product people will use - quickly?

Creating a Trust-Based Referral System That Works at Scale

Coferral’s value depends on genuine recommendations - not just resume spam. The challenge was to enable users to recommend and refer only their most talented colleagues, without overcomplicating the experience.

Helping Hiring Companies Quickly Share Jobs and Track Applicants

To reduce time-to-hire, Coferral needed to make it easy for employers to bring their open roles into the platform - and track referred candidates as they moved through the hiring funnel. The client’s goal was to eliminate double data entry and manual status updates by syncing with the hiring companies' existing ATS systems like Ashby and Lever.

Earning User Trust With Secure, Role-Based Access

Coferral had to protect personal and professional data for all user types - individuals, recruiters, and hiring companies. The platform needed a strong security foundation and role-specific access controls to maintain privacy and ensure compliance.

Giving Users Clear Visibility Into Their Activity and Rewards

Referrals only work if users see the impact of their actions. The platform needed to offer clear, real-time feedback - how many referrals they've made, who got hired, and what rewards they’ve earned - to keep users motivated and coming back.

Solutions

A Product-Minded Team That Delivered a Focused MVP

Visual Craft worked side-by-side with Coferral’s founder to shape a realistic, impactful MVP:

MVP Scoping Workshops: Together, we separated must-have features (referral logic, hiring workflows, dashboards) from v2+ items (leaderboards, gamification).
Clear Business Logic Flows: We helped define the rules behind recommendation limits, rewards, candidate unlocks, and referral chaining - all mapped visually in Miro and Confluence.
Lean Technical Stack: We built scalable modules using a modern backend, REST APIs, and reusable Vue.js frontend components for rapid delivery and iteration.
User-Centric Testing: We tested signup, referrals, and ATS sync workflows with early users and refined based on feedback to improve activation and retention.

A Product-Minded Team That Delivered a Focused MVP

Building a Smart, User-Friendly Referral Engine

To bring authentic referrals to life, we designed an intuitive workflow that supported:

Role-based access and logic: Only users with prior recommendations could refer candidates, ensuring endorsements were only coming from high quality sources.
Guided flows: Clear UI steps for importing contacts, recommending users, and referring them later.
Live recommendation counter: Encouraged thoughtful selection with real-time tracking of remaining recommendations.
Referral message + resume upload: Users could include optional cover letters and documents to boost credibility.

This flow helped maintain referral quality at scale, giving users and hiring companies confidence in the talent pipeline.

Building a Smart, User-Friendly Referral Engine

Deep ATS Integrations With Automated Job Sync and Candidate Tracking

Visual Craft engineered full-featured integrations with Lever, Ashby and JazzHR, ensuring hiring companies could:

Connect their ATS accounts via secure API keys
Import job listings into Coferral with the ability to edit key fields like:
- Salary range (auto-calculated across multiple zones)
- Probation period and referral bonuses
- Job description formatting from WYSIWYG fields
Use webhooks to sync referral status changes back into Coferral in real time.

Deep ATS Integrations With Automated Job Sync and Candidate Tracking

Technical Highlights & Scalable Architecture

Dynamic Import Preview Page: Jobs could be previewed and edited inline before publishing. Fields were validated client-side and server-side for consistency.
Salary Range Calculation: Our backend parsed salary zone ranges from ATS APIs and generated a clean min/max range.
Referral Webhooks: Visual Craft set up webhook listeners to:
- Detect when a referred candidate moved to “Interviewing” or “Hired”
- Automatically update the candidate's referral status in Coferral
- Mark the job as filled and trigger backend payment logic for bonuses
Fallback Flows: For ATS platforms that lacked certain data endpoints, the system defaulted to Coferral-managed fields with optional edits.

This integration suite positioned Coferral as enterprise-ready - even during its MVP phase - and laid the groundwork for scaling to other ATS platforms in the future.

Technical Highlights & Scalable Architecture

Secure Architecture With Role-Specific Controls

We implemented rigorous security and privacy measures throughout the platform, including:

Role-Based Access: Three distinct user roles (Individual, Recruiter, Hiring Company), each with dedicated dashboards and access levels.
Secure Sign-Up: Email verification and robust password validation at sign-up, now enhanced with LinkedIn OAuth for a streamlined and secure registration experience.
Data Privacy: Referral visibility rules to ensure private data is only shared with approved users.
Session Security: Access token and session validation to safeguard every login and maintain session integrity.

These protections have strengthened user trust and support our roadmap toward achieving comprehensive enterprise compliance.

Secure Architecture With Role-Specific Controls

Streamlined Signup Flow + Smart Onboarding

We optimized first impressions with:

Minimal Signup Form: Required only company name, email, password, and LinkedIn URL. Clean validations and feedback messaging simplified onboarding.
Email Verification: Added security with a seamless verify-and-login process.
How-To Video Pop-Up: A personalized onboarding video was auto-displayed based on user type - educating users within seconds.

Together, these UX improvements reduced signup friction and increased completion rates among hiring partners.

Actionable Dashboards With Reward Metrics

To keep users engaged, we delivered personalized dashboards with real-time performance stats, including:

For individuals and recruiters:
- Referrals made and hired
- Referral bonuses and Account Unlock earnings
- Diversity of recommendations
For hiring companies:
- Open jobs, filled roles
- Time-to-hire metrics
- Quality score of referrals

These dashboards turned raw activity into motivating feedback loops, helping users stay engaged and goal-oriented.