Designing a New and Improved Job Search Platform

Overview

As a recent graduate looking for a full time job, the search has been grueling and annoying. With accounts primarily on Indeed and LinkedIn, I found myself sitting and scrolling for hours, re-writing cover letters, re-entering the information on my resume, setting up interviews and trying to weed out falsely advertised job listings. I found I wasn’t the only one dealing with the stuggle. The user-experience for job seekers could use an upgrade- a combination of the best features of the several already popular platforms. Molly, and I got together and decided there has to be a way to eliminate the annoyances, while creating a more user-centric job searching platform that eases and de-stresses the job searching/hiring process.

As a part of creating a user journey map, we created two personas from different walks of like, looking for a career change or to begin a career fresh out of college.

Both users are looking for a one-stop-shop, transparent job searching platform where they can create an aesthetic profile, send it directly to hiring managers and complete interviews without having to create accounts on the various available video chat platforms that companies use.

The user journey map that you see below, outlines the experience a user would encounter using our new job platform interface, Path. The user experience is displayed as an upward trend, as job seekers create a profile, anticipate messages from hiring managers and complete their interviews all on one platform. The experience ends on a positive note, leaving the platform because the user has landed a job.

Profile Page

User Journey Map - Click here to view larger format

Integrating AI

User Research

The #1 job searching platform is Indeed with over 300 million unique visitors every month. Indeed is personally the platform I use most. We agreed that we enjoy the option to save job listings, uploading a current resume, being able to set parameters of what we are looking for and the ability to “easy apply.” Overall, Indeed has the most user-centric platform, in our opinion. LinkedIn has 310 million monthly active users and we appreciate the ability to make connections on the platform aside from the job search. Handshakeis a job search platform catered towards students with 18 million students among their users. Although we enjoyed the feature of setting up accounts through our school, neither of us used it much. The last platform we will mention is Glassdoor which currently sees 67 million monthly visitors, which neither of us really use.

User Journey Map

3 Key Components

We wanted to give users the ability create an aesthetic profile page, that was not only easy to set up but also provides hiring managers with key details about a job seeker, that would display important background information as well as personality information.

The goal is to upload already created PDF’s of both a resume and general cover letter (CV), allowing hiring managers/recruiters to download them and view as they please. We also wanted to provide the ability to showcase soft-skills, an area that could boost a candidate to hiring managers/recruiters.

Our goal is that these profile features would help employers find people that would mesh well in their job environment but also allow for more tailored conversations during the interview process.

Integrated Interview Platform

Zoom, Google Meets and Microsoft Teams are the prominent, widely used video chat platforms to conduct interviews. For job seekers, having to keep track of which interview is conducted on which platform is just a hassle.

The idea here is to eliminate having to log in and download the various applications/platforms used for video chatting, and have an integrated platform where interviews can be conducted. LinkedIn has a similar feature that is really never used. Our hope is that hiring managers or recruiters could message prospective employees using a messaging feature on Path and schedule interviews that would then appear on their calendar page, on Path. This allows job seekers to have a calendar organizing their interview dates, with the ease of it being directly on the platform.

Personal note: in one week I had 2 interviews on Zoom, 1 on Google Meets and 1 on Microsoft Teams - which led to this idea.

Lessons Learned

With artificial intelligence booming, it would be foolish not to implement it into Path. Discussions include integrating AI into the job search features so that each user has a more personalized searching experience. Other integrations include allowing users to create a supplementary and more direct cover letter tailored to the job they wish to apply to- utilizing their already uploaded CV in their profile, using AI. We also hope that AI could potentially help filter “fake” or “mis-informative” job listings. The current trap is listings for “Account Managers” or “Marketing Consultants” that end up being door to door sales positions for sketchy companies.

Conducting research beyond ourselves and our peers is pertinent to evolving Path. Constructive feedback is necessary to fix and avoid mistakes early, but also gain insight on other key features that can be implemented to create a more user-centric job searching experience.

We learned that ideas and designs might be possible to come up with alone, but working as a team inspires new ideas, various ideations and if you’re working with the right person — efficiency. Although working quickly is not the goal of designing in general, within the short time presented in this project, is was necessary.

We deepened our understanding of design, aesthetics, user accesibility, importance of user experience and realistically, how much more work and time will need to go into this project to potentially bring it to life.

Searching for Jobs

Our inspiration for this page comes from our likes and dislikes of other platforms. The idea is to implement multiple job title searches but also allowing to set “Definite No’s” so that jobs with those titles would filter out. The other key feature that would requires some further ideating, is employer transparency.

On other platforms, pay is often estimated because it isn’t required in the job post. Hiring manager information, projected start dates and benefits are often, also missing. These four components are important to job seekers. Realistically- why waste time prospecting an employee if your company’s start date, pay rate and benefits are out of their scope? On the flip side, why waste time going through the interview process, if you do not fit as a company’s ideal candidate? If a job seeker wants to submit an additional cover letter, why make them put “To Whom It May Concern” when it could be addressed directly to a hiring manager, showing that they genuinely have interest in the job?

There are a lot of differing opinions on whether employers should be more transparent in their job listings, but if both parties (job seeker & employer) are transparent about their needs, it saves time and energy for everyone… but thats a whole other argument.

Further Ideation

Wrap Up

Background

Personas - Olivier (left) & Jordan (right)

Tinder- but for jobs

It’s been tried before, but has been unsuccessful. Although it would take some reading and discussion to see where things previously went wrong, a platform like this for users would create a more light-hearted job searching experiences – something users can do instead of scrolling through Tik Tok in bed at night, perhaps.

Student Platform

Something I wish I did in high school, is shadow professionals in different occupations to help quicker understand what I enjoyed doing and what jobs I most definitely would not be interested. A sister platform that would cater to high school students would assist in connecting willing individuals in various job markets and hopeful students to several day shadowing opportunities.

Conclusion

People, technology and way of life is always evolving. Users are looking for easier and more efficient ways to do just about everything — from at home grocery shopping to convenient same day- two day shipping on almost anything you may need. The ease of job searching and transparency needs to evolve as well. With some further research and ideation, Path can become the one-stop-shop job searching platform, with the main focus being user-friendly accessibility for both job seekers and hiring managers/recruiters.