Reimagining Indeed's mobile application to create a more flexible and efficient job hunting experience

January 2019

Roles
Design Researcher, Designer

Collaborators
Zoe Wan

Tools Used
Sketch, Illustrator, Photoshop

A collaborative passion project that aims to reimagine and improve the job hunting experience through the perspective of the job seeker, taking the opportunity to learn from our on-going search for an internship.

The project spanned for a month, conducting both secondary and primary research, analyzing and synthesizing insights into actual products. I was the main researcher and a co-designer for this project, allowing me to be heavily involved throughout the whole design process.

01 |  SECONDARY RESEARCH

What does the current job hunting ecosystem look like?

I began the research phase by going through Indeed’s analytics report about job seekers in 2016. This gave us a clear understanding of the demographic that we are designing for. This includes the population composition, level of education, job searching habits and how they prioritize information in a job posting. 

MOBILE IS KING

Every age group does the majority of their job seeking through their mobile devices. In this case, 78% of millennials use their mobile devices for job seeking, followed by Generation X at 73%. Baby Boomers are the least likely to use mobile phones for their job search, sitting at 57.2%. This is a main determining factor for us to narrow our scope into only redesigning Indeed's mobile app.

AN EVEN SPLIT

Although millennials are the largest generation in the workforce (32.5%), there is almost an even split in their numbers with Gen Xers at 32.3% and Boomers at 32.4%.

02 | USER INTERVIEWS

Listen and empathize

Since we wanted to redesign the service from the job seekers' perspective, we conducted a series of interviews with active job seekers.

We wanted to learn about their job hunting experience using Indeed including where they think Indeed shone, and where it was lacking. We also wanted to understand the roadblocks that they have encountered during the process.

From these interviews, we came up with numerous insights that further served as the backbone for our redesign concept.

FROM DIFFERENT WALKS OF LIFE - UNMET NEED

Job seekers tend to have multiple versions of their resume tailored to the specific job position requirements and companies they are applying to.

The job seeker's current situation significantly affects how they approach the job search. Some job seekers will look for opportunities outside their field of work depending on their current needs. This could go from looking for part-time work at a cafe while searching for a job in their field, to full-time positions that fit their transferable skills– alluding to a possible shift in career focus.

COMPANY DETAILS - PRODUCT PAIN POINT

Having a company profile that provides adequate information can be a huge time saver for users.

Almost always, job seekers will do their own research on the company before applying to their job posting in order to get a general sense of whether they would be a fit for the company. This usually happens through a quick google search outside the app.

MAKE IT EASY TO READ THROUGH - PRODUCT PAIN POINT

Users have to sift through the page repeatedly to locate the information that they need, often resulting in cognitive overload. There is no fixed mental model for them to follow because every company has its own way of writing their job posting,

Having a consistent job posting layout can help minimize the cognitive overload for users. We believe that making job postings look consistent will create a more efficient experience for job seekers as they will know where to find information easily on every job posting.

JOB LOCATIONS - PRODUCT PAIN POINT

Before even considering sending an application, most users will often take the time to locate the workplace and judge whether it is an ideal place for them. This happens through a quick search outside the app.

Aside from the compensation being the most important information that job seekers look for, the location of the job also follows in importance. Indeed falls short in this area as they only show the city and province or state where the company is located. 

TIMING MATTERS - PRODUCT PAIN POINT

Having the application deadline specified within a job posting is a valuable piece of information that job seekers look for. Job seekers pay attention to when a job opportunity was posted, and get discouraged from applying if the job posting is past a certain age. 

Sponsored posts were a very common pain point in this area as they hide the posting age, and has no visual distinction from regular job postings. This also caused some negative views toward the company responsible for the post.

03 | PERSONAS

The human side of the numbers

In addition to our findings, we also crafted two main personas that emobdy a lot of the previous inisghts. These personas represent the confidence level, job-seeking experience, and experience in their field of work.

04 |  USER JOURNEY

Impact where it matters most

From the personas that we crafted, we decided to map out their journeys through the stages of job searching. I juxtaposed the touchpoints together with the persona’s pain points to help us identify areas that where the app can provide the most value.

This was an important step because it created a distinction between the natural feelings of uncertainty and anxiety that comes with the job hunting journey, and the pain points that can be adressed and relieved by Indeed's service.

05 |  DESIGN REQUIREMENTS

Identifying what needs to be done 

I established clear, tangible design objectives informed by insights uncovered through the research phase. These design objectives are further broken down into design requirements– labelled as data, quality, usability, and functional requirements.

06 |  REDESIGNED USER FLOW & INFO ARCHITECTURE

Putting the pieces together

With all things considered, the biggest change in the app's structure came from adding a feature that allows users to upload and use multiple versions of their resume.

Another decision we made was to add a more robust bottom navigation bar to allow quick and flexible access to frequently used features no matter which page the user currently is. 

07 |  FINAL DESIGNS

A seamless transition to the next chapter in your career

The redesign provides a seamless job hunting experience and opens up broader horizons on employment possibilities.

HOMEPAGE

• Providing users short job details, allowing them to make quicker decisions on which new recommended job posting to look at and apply.

JOBS LIST

• Improved visual hierarchy using the chunking principle– breaking down blocks of information to enable a smoother read-through experience.
• New format follows a consistent template across all postings to create a mental model that further simplifies the process of locating specific information.
• Providing a more detailed location and company information allows users to make quicker decisions whether to apply to a company or not.

MY RESUME

• Allowing the users to apply with tailored and targeted versions of their resume to take advantage of their transferrable skillsets and versatile expertise.

COMPANY DETAILS

• Allowing the users to apply with tailored and targeted versions of their resume to take advantage of their transferrable skillsets and versatile expertise.

08 |  REFLECTION

Narrowing down goals

This project was a great learning experience in understanding how to adjust the scope of a project in relation to the resources available. In the end, I felt that we could have gone deeper on a specific feature or aspect of the app to redesign– and it would have been more productive.

If I had more time to work on this redesign, I would have fleshed out the user flows and task flows of the "multiple resume" feature that we came up with.

Having a month to work on this project, and attempting a full app redesign made it feel like the solutions we came up with in the end were just barely getting through the surface– and I think that's a fair criticism.

With all things considered, coming out of this experience and being able to reflect on this aspect of my workflow makes it worth it. Our goal during this redesign was to make the most out of a stressful situation (finding an internship) by turning it into a chance to learn something new– and we did!