Case Study File #003 — Exhibit C
The Walt.
An HRM dashboard that changed recruiting — built so a raw ATS export becomes a decision.
01 — The problem
Every ATS exports data. None of them explain it.
Recruiting teams sit on more hiring data than they can read. It leaves the applicant tracking system as a spreadsheet — accurate, complete, and useless in a meeting.
So the work falls to the recruiter: rebuild the export by hand, chart it, and hope the interpretation holds up when someone senior asks why time-to-hire moved.
The report was never the deliverable. The decision was.
TheWalt's scope was set at the distance between an export and an answer — and at making that distance one upload long.
02 — Ingest
Bring your ATS, or bring a spreadsheet.
The product had to accept data from every major applicant tracking system without asking the recruiter to clean it first — and still work for the teams who keep their pipeline in a spreadsheet. Import is the first screen a new user meets, so it carries the onboarding rather than a tour.
03 — Dashboard
The state of hiring, without a query.
The dashboard is deliberately the least clever screen in the product. It shows what's happening now, what changed, and what needs attention — and it has a real first-run state, because a reporting tool is at its emptiest on the day someone is deciding whether to keep it.
04 — Reports
A generated report that reads like a written one.
Every upload produces a full report automatically — charted, annotated and benchmarked against a market standard rather than floating on its own. The AI layer's job is to say what a number means, not to add another number, so insights are attached to the chart that prompted them.
05 — Comparison
Two reports, one question: is it better?
A single report describes a moment. Recruiting decisions are about direction, so comparison is a first-class surface rather than a filter: pick two or more reports, and the product answers the only question anyone actually asks of hiring data.
One report is a number. Two is a trend.
06 — Disposition
Figures on record.
6
Major ATS platforms supported at import
6
Product surfaces designed end to end
3
Pricing tiers, from free to team
Figures describe the shipped product's scope, taken from thewalt.io. Commercial performance is the subject's to report, not ours.
07 — Takeaways
What the file establishes.
Import is the onboarding
For a data product, the first upload is the moment of truth. Make that screen carry the explanation and you don't need a product tour behind it.
Benchmark, or it's just a number
A metric with nothing beside it can't be judged. Every figure in TheWalt is shown against a market standard or a prior report, because that's the only form a recruiter can act on.
Design the empty state first
A reporting tool is emptiest on day one — exactly when the customer decides whether to keep it. The first-run dashboard got the same attention as the full one.
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