What I learned
Government-adjacent recruitment is one of the harder design problems out there — you’re trying to make a job posting feel like opportunity rather than paperwork. The lesson here: gamification doesn’t mean cartoonish. It means giving the candidate something to do on the page so they’re an active participant in the recruitment funnel instead of passively scrolling a list of openings.
What I did
- Designed and built a custom WordPress application sized to TXDOT’s recruitment needs.
- Implemented a gamification framework with challenges and progression mechanics.
- Designed a responsive interface that worked across the wide range of devices field candidates would actually use.
- Layered in security hardening appropriate to a government-adjacent property.
What I shipped
A live gamified recruitment microsite for the Texas Department of Transportation — turning what would have been a static jobs page into an interactive experience that materially improved candidate engagement.
— Credit: ShakeWell Creative Agency