Amadeus

The original brief: a metaverse MVP

When I joined Amadeus’ Global Employee Experience & Diversity team, leadership handed us a trendy corporate brief: define, design, and build a minimum viable product in the metaverse to boost brand recognition and attract young software engineering talent.

Instead of jumping straight into building virtual 3D avatars, we paused to evaluate whether this actually solved a talent problem. We conducted an initial discovery sprint reviewing the existing application journey, Secondary IT recruitment data, and internal onboarding sentiment.

The findings were immediate: candidates were not rejecting Amadeus because the brand lacked immersive 3D technology. They simply didn't know what Amadeus did. Despite powering global travel infrastructure with 16,000 employees, junior engineers perceived it as an opaque corporate back-office or mistook it for an airline. Dropping them into a metaverse world would add technological friction to an already disconnected recruitment funnel.

We took these early signals to leadership and made a strategic pivot: shift the focus from a metaverse novelty to a comprehensive candidate discovery framework across our primary international engineering hubs.

As-Is candidate journey mapping identifying drop-off anxiety and lack of authentic touchpoints.

Global focus groups and candidate personas

To understand what junior tech talent actually values, we structured remote and on-site research sessions with recruiters and candidates across India, Turkey, the UK, Bulgaria, and France:

• 5 International tech hubs investigated (India, UK, France, Turkey, Bulgaria)

• 6 Multi-disciplinary ideation sessions facilitated

• 1 C-Suite presentation to the CEO Office (COF)

I facilitated several two-hour remote focus group workshops, moderating discussions and timekeeping while team members captured notes on digital whiteboards. Through these sessions, we validated three core candidate personas:

• The Striker: Ambitious, fast-track profiles looking for steep career growth and high-impact enterprise projects. They were put off by ambiguous job descriptions and slow, bureaucratic hiring steps.

• The Learner: Junior developers motivated by cutting-edge engineering stacks, structured mentoring, and continuous training. They cared far more about day-to-day tech tools than corporate perks[cite: 240].

• The Balanced: Mid-level talent prioritizing psychological safety, work-life flexibility, and a supportive team culture.

Validated candidate personas synthesized from focus groups across 5 international tech hubs.

We synthesized these findings into a strategic SWOT matrix that made our organizational blind spots undeniable: a complete absence of authentic employee touchpoints, overly formal corporate communication, and high uncertainty during the application process.

Facilitating ideation: from Crazy 8s to feasibility matrices

With the discovery evidence clear, I co-facilitated two structured ideation sprints with cross-functional talent acquisition leads to move from raw problems to actionable initiatives.

In the first sprint, we used divergent techniques including Crazy 8s and reverse brainstorming to challenge conventional corporate hiring habits. We clustered dozens of concepts into thematic pillars: authentic employee-generated content, localized tech challenges, and transparent communication touchpoints.

In the second sprint, we ran a difficulty-versus-impact matrix to evaluate feasibility. We mapped each concept along the candidate journey, from initial discovery to contract offer, stress-testing them against budget and implementation constraints:

• Authentic tech touchpoints: Replaced generic corporate posts with peer-to-peer technical content on developer channels (GitHub, Discord, tech blogs) where engineers actually hang out.

• AI-assisted conversational support: Conceptualized a lightweight assistant to give candidates transparency on process stages, typical interview expectations, and team culture, reducing drop-off anxiety.

• Challenge-based discovery: Designed open-source hackathons and coding challenges so candidates could interact with Amadeus engineers on real problems before formally applying.

Co-facilitating cross-functional ideation sprints and prioritizing initiatives by feasibility.

Outcomes and executive presentation

We presented our strategic discovery and proposed roadmap directly to the CEO Office (COF).

The presentation was widely praised by executive leadership. Instead of investing resources into an expensive, short-lived metaverse gimmick, our research redirected the company's employer branding budget toward authentic recruitment channels, candid employee storytelling, and clear candidate communication guidelines.

Executive proposal presented to the CEO Office, pivoting budget from the metaverse to developer channels.