Gold Software Design · 2026
Akbank Career Recruitment Platform
by Akbank Design Studio Staff Channel
- A' Design Award 2026 Gold Winner in Software Design
- Awarded April 15, 2026
- CLIENT: Akbank T.a.Ş
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 31,528
- Verification code CDFA2C70AD · Verify this award
About Akbank Career Recruitment Platform
The Akbank Career is an end to end recruitment platform that transforms hiring into a unified digital experience. By connecting candidates, recruiters, and hiring managers within a single ecosystem, it positions experience as a strategic asset. Informed by data driven research, the platform enhances transparency, accelerates processes, and improves decision making quality. As a scalable in house solution, it reduces reliance on external providers while supporting long term digital transformation.
Akbank Design Studio's Recruitment Platform exemplifies the sophisticated intersection of corporate identity systems and user-centered digital experience design, positioning itself within the contemporary tradition of responsive web applications that prioritize accessibility, clarity, and emotional engagement across multiple device contexts. The work demonstrates exceptional command of systematic design thinking, wherein every visual element—from the precisely calibrated red of the brand identity to the carefully weighted typographic hierarchy—operates in service of a coherent user journey that transforms the traditionally transactional experience of job seeking into something approaching genuine invitation and welcome. The technical achievement manifests most evidently in the seamless translation of complex informational architecture across three distinct viewport dimensions, maintaining not merely functional parity but experiential consistency that suggests deep consideration of how users actually engage with recruitment platforms in contemporary professional contexts. The chromatic strategy deploys the institution's signature red with remarkable restraint and strategic purpose, allowing expansive white space to breathe while concentrating chromatic energy at navigation points, call-to-action elements, and branded moments that guide without overwhelming. The integration of human portraiture throughout the interface—warm, professionally lit images of individuals who appear genuinely engaged with their work—serves the crucial function of humanizing what might otherwise feel like purely technological transaction, suggesting that behind the systematic interface lies an organization genuinely interested in the individuals who might join it. The careful attention to typographic scale, weight variation, and spatial relationship creates information hierarchies that allow users to scan efficiently while providing depth for those seeking detailed engagement, a balance that reflects sophisticated understanding of varied user needs and browsing behaviors. One might observe how the platform invites contemplation of how digital tools can serve fundamentally human purposes—the search for meaningful work, the hope for professional growth, the desire to contribute one's abilities to larger endeavors—suggesting that thoughtful design can elevate even functional applications into experiences worthy of aesthetic appreciation.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- Akbank Career is an end to end recruitment platform that combines candidate journeys and HR operations within a unified ecosystem. Beyond job listings, Explore and Blog sections transparently present company culture, working models, and development opportunities. Candidates can create personalized CVs for broader career use, track applications in real time, and message recruiters throughout the process. Recruiters and managers oversee all processes through a centralized, data informed dashboard.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- This enterprise recruitment platform unifies candidate journeys, HR operations, document management, and data driven reporting within a scalable digital ecosystem. Developed with an end to end experience approach and a design-system foundation, it runs on OpenShift based backend services with an Angular frontend architecture. The platform works adaptively across web, tablet, and mobile devices.
- Tags
- Career Website, Candidate Experience, User Experience, User Interface, Human Resources Technologies, Talent Management
- Production Technology
- The Akbank Career was developed through an iterative product development methodology grounded in user research. Adopting a user experience design approach, the experiences of candidates, recruiters, and hiring managers were addressed holistically, with prototypes and user testing conducted at every phase to validate design decisions. Built using an agile workflow, the platform is designed on a scalable and sustainable architecture integrated with internal systems.
- Design Challenge
- The core challenge was designing a large-scale career platform that could balance speed, technical constraints, and meaningful user experience. Within tight timelines and evolving technical boundaries, the team needed to translate research insights into practical, scalable design decisions. Coordinating multiple stakeholders across HR, IT, and business units required prioritization and alignment, while ensuring that usability, clarity, and candidate confidence were never compromised.
- Project Duration
- The project started in October 2023 in Istanbul and finished in March, 2026 in Istanbul and was exhibited in Istanbul, 2026.
- Operation Flow
- Candidates explore job opportunities at Akbank, review the company’s culture and benefits, and apply to the roles that best match them. They can easily create and download their resumes to use on other platforms. Applicants track their application status through their profile and stay informed throughout the process. HR teams and managers view all candidates and positions in a single dashboard, enabling fast and secure hiring decisions.
- Research
- This project included a mixed-method design research approach to redesign Akbank’s career website throughout the entire design cycle. The objective was to understand candidates’, employees’ and hiring managers’ expectations and remove friction in job discovery and application flows. We combined interviews, workshops, usability tests, surveys, tree tests and benchmarks with over 400 participants. Insights reshaped information architecture, content tone, filters and navigation, resulting in clearer job discovery, improved application experience and a more inclusive, transparent hiring journey.
- Inspiration
- The Akbank Career was shaped by the observed need for transparency, clarity, and visibility throughout the candidate journey, alongside opportunities to streamline and accelerate internal recruitment operations while eliminating dependency on external development partners.
- Image Credits
- Image #1: Illustrator, Akbank Design Studio, 2026.
Image #2: Illustrator, Akbank Design Studio, 2026.
Image #3: Illustrator, Akbank Design Studio, 2026.
Image #4: Illustrator, Akbank Design Studio, 2026.
Image #5: Illustrator, Akbank Design Studio, 2026.
Video Credits: Videographer, Akbank Design Studio, 2026. - Patents
- Copyrights belong to Akbank T.A.Ş, 2026.
Colors of Akbank Career Recruitment Platform
Grand Interview about Akbank Career Recruitment Platform
What we are most proud of is transforming a complex recruitment journey into a more connected and transparent experience across multiple user groups. Rather than bringing everything into a single platform, the project was designed as a parallel ecosystem where candidates, recruiters, and hiring managers each interact through their own dedicated interfaces while remaining connected through the same hiring flow.The turning point came through research. We realized that although these workflows already existed, the connections between them were often fragmented and difficult to follow. This shaped our vision: not to rebuild recruitment from scratch, but to strengthen the relationship between these parallel experiences and make the overall process more understandable, consistent, and human-centered.
Transparency emerged as one of the strongest themes throughout our research process. Candidates consistently emphasized the importance of clearly understanding where they were in the application journey, what the next step would be, and what to expect along the way.While many of these steps already existed in the recruitment process, the experience itself was not always easy to follow. To address this, we redesigned the communication and tracking flow to be more intuitive, informative, and user-friendly. By improving content clarity, progress visibility, and guidance at each stage, we made the process feel more transparent and easier to navigate.
The scale of our research fundamentally changed how we approached the platform. Rather than starting with assumptions, we conducted interviews, workshops, usability tests, surveys, tree tests, and benchmarking studies involving more than 400 participants.One of the most important findings was that different user groups entered the platform with very different goals. Students, recent graduates, and experienced professionals were looking for different opportunities, content, and levels of guidance. This led us to restructure the information architecture around user needs rather than internal organizational structures.Research also showed that candidates needed clearer access to relevant content, recruitment programs, and job opportunities. In response, we redesigned the navigation with more focused entry points, simplified content hierarchies, and clearer pathways between sections. These decisions helped create a more intuitive and guided experience, something that would have been difficult to achieve through a conventional, assumption-based design process.
The most defining decision was treating recruitment not as a transactional system, but as a holistic experience. Instead of designing only for job applications, we designed for the emotional and operational journey of everyone involved.This meant creating transparency for candidates, efficiency for recruiters, and clarity for hiring managers within the same ecosystem. That shift in perspective shaped every design decision and allowed the platform to move beyond functionality into a more human-centered and scalable experience.
One of the most challenging moments was balancing the expectations of multiple stakeholders while protecting the simplicity of the user experience. Different teams had different priorities, and many of them were equally valid.The defining shift was learning to use research as a common language. Instead of relying on opinions, we grounded decisions in user insights and testing results. This not only reduced conflict but also strengthened trust in the design process across teams.
One significant moment came during our testing of the application flow. Initially, we believed a more compact and flexible structure would make the process faster. However, user testing showed that candidates needed clearer guidance and stronger visibility into what was expected at each step.This insight led us to redesign the experience into a step by step guided flow with clearer progress tracking and contextual support. It was a strong reminder that efficiency does not always mean simplicity; sometimes clarity matters more.
The platform was designed as a long-term internal asset, not just a project. By bringing recruitment operations in-house and reducing dependency on external providers, it established a more sustainable, controllable, and adaptable recruitment ecosystem for Akbank.Looking ahead, we see strong potential for deeper AI integration, more personalized candidate journeys, and smarter recruiter tools. Because the architecture is modular and scalable, the system can continue evolving with organizational needs while preserving its consistency and user-centered foundation.
For many people, especially those at the beginning of their careers, recruitment can feel uncertain and intimidating. We wanted to shift that feeling into something more guided, transparent, and supportive.By combining clear communication, personalized CV tools, application tracking, and direct recruiter messaging, the platform creates a more human and connected experience. The CV builder not only supports applications within Akbank but also helps candidates prepare themselves for their broader career journey. This way, the platform becomes not just a recruitment tool, but a companion in the early stages of professional life.
The Explore and Blog sections were designed to extend the platform beyond recruitment into cultural storytelling. Through our research, we learned that candidates wanted to understand not only the job itself but also the people, values, and working environment behind it.This situation shaped both the editorial tone and the visual direction. Before logging in, the platform places more emphasis on real photos from the Akbank environment to meet real Akbank employees and create a relatable first impression. Once on the platform, illustration-focused components become more visible, guiding users practically and gradually introducing them to Akbank's internal visual language without disrupting the onboarding flow.
This was one of the most complex aspects of the project. Candidates and recruiters have fundamentally different goals, frequencies of use, and expectations.We approached this by designing distinct but connected experiences. Candidate interfaces focused on clarity, guidance, and emotional reassurance, while recruiter interfaces prioritized efficiency, data visibility, and operational speed. The challenge was maintaining consistency across both experiences while allowing each to feel purpose-built. This balance became one of the platform’s strongest design principles.