Building a high-performance career website for kununu in just 3 months

When kununu—the market leader for employer reviews—decides to relaunch its own career site, expectations are of course high. But in the real world, “perfect” quite often collides with “fast” and doesn´t really work together.

I was brought in to lead this project under a non-negotiable deadline: 3 months from kickoff to go-live. No extensions, a tight budget, and a small Employer Branding team that couldn’t afford a “time-eater” website. My goal was clear: Focus on what actually drives conversion and automate the rest.

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Time to go live: 3 month

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Reading time: 8 minutes

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Client: kununu

1. The heart of the site: Why we chose a Retail-Grade search engine for jobs

Let’s be honest: The job search is the most important part of any career site. If candidates can’t find a role, they leave. Instead of having the team build a basic search from scratch, we decided to integrate Algolia.

Algolia is a heavy hitter in the market—usually, you’ll see it powering product searches for giants like Decathlon or Lidl. But we saw it as the perfect tool for a high-performance job search. Here is why:

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Reliability and future-proofing

It was clear that kununu wouldn’t have a massive development budget for search-specific updates in the coming months. By choosing a market leader like Algolia, we gained access to a tool that is constantly updated by a huge team of developers. No bugs for us to fix, no manual maintenance.

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The AI advantage

Algolia is heavily venturing into AI methods, which is a game-changer for candidate experience. Candidates don’t always use the exact terminology found in a job title.

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Fuzzy search

Algolia ensures the search actually works, delivering 100% accurate results even with synonyms or typos.

” For the kununu hiring team, this meant a completely “hassle-free” search engine that performs on a world-class level without needing constant internal attention.

2. Automated Content: Giving candidates the right insights while eliminating manual work for the hiring team

I believe a job ad should be more than just a list of bullet points. It is the critical touchpoint where you either lose a candidate or convince them to hit the apply button. I wanted to show highly relevant content right where the decision happens. In my vision, an applicant shouldn’t just read about a role; they should hear from a future team member, explore their new workplace via a 3D office tour, or—especially for tech roles—get a deep dive into the tech stack and recent projects.

But here was the catch: The kununu team is small. Manually linking specific content pieces to every single job ad was simply not an option.

The solution we built

We developed a smart mapping system that automatically recognizes the title, job department, seniority, and location of every job posting. Based on these data points, the system dynamically pulls the matching content modules onto the page. If it’s a senior tech role in Vienna, the site automatically displays the Vienna office tour, a deep dive into the engineering culture, and an interview with a local lead developer. This resulted in a rich, immersive, and highly personalized candidate experience—all while requiring zero manual effort from the hiring team. It’s a setup that delivers maximum impact without adding a single task to the recruiter’s daily to-do list.

3. Smart minimalism: Three pages that matter

To keep the project lean and effective, I focused the structure on just three main pages that answer every candidate’s question:

The Home/Employer Brand Page: Who is kununu? What are the values? What are we building?

The Location Page: Addressing the “Where?” and “How?”. Since kununu has multiple European hubs, this page covers office vibes and the essential remote work/home office policies.

The Deep Dive Page: Authentic employee interviews, videos, and photos. This is where the brand comes to life through real stories. Together with the kununu brand team, we polished every line of copy to make sure the unique kununu voice shines through.

Frictionless Conversion: Mobile-first and flexible

To avoid “conversion killers,” I made sure we kept the application process as lean and straightforward as possible. In today’s talent market, the application journey is often where the most significant drop-offs occur, especially when users are forced to navigate clunky forms on their smartphones. By strictly following a Mobile-First approach, we ensured that the entire experience is optimized for speed and ease of use, regardless of the device.

To achieve this, we integrated a highly flexible application tool that allows the hiring team to tailor the process to the specific needs of each vacancy. Instead of a “one-size-fits-all” form, the team can now switch between different modes:

The Quick Path: A streamlined “one-click” application for high-volume roles or initial lead generation where speed is the top priority.
The Smart Flow: More detailed, interactive click-flows for specialized positions. This allows us to ask specific, hiring-critical questions upfront—filtering for essential qualifications without the friction of a traditional, tedious form.

4. My Learning: Speed is a feature, not a compromise on quality

This project proved to me that you can launch a top-tier career site in record time without cutting corners on quality. Often, people assume that a rapid turnaround means sacrificing depth or functionality. In this case, the opposite was true.

The tight deadline forced us to be radically honest about what actually creates value for both the candidate and the hiring team. By choosing to focus on high-impact features—like smart search, automated content mapping, and a frictionless mobile experience—we avoided the “feature creep” that often bloats long-term projects and dilutes the user experience.

In my view, a career site shouldn’t be a project that requires a full-time administrator. It should be an efficient tool that supports the hiring team in the background. We built a platform that is authentic to the kununu brand, performs on a world-class level, and most importantly, stays out of the team’s way.

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Sometimes, a tight deadline is exactly what you need to cut through the noise and build something that truly works.

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