Roth Staffing’s
Job Board
The job seekers of today have many job opportunities available to them. They may scan a job post for a couple of seconds and move on to the next. It is then of utmost importance to connect the right people with the right job as effortlessly as possible. By doing this, we will be providing the best user experience for both the job seeker and hiring managers.
Per the request of Roth Staffing Companies L.P I omitted some parts of our findings/information.
My Role
Entire product design from research to conception.
Challenge
Decrease the time it takes to onboard a potential hire & redesign the onboarding experience while employing HCI best practices.
Users
Potential hires in the job market.
Project Time
7 Months.
THE MODERN JOB BOARD
Staffing industries specialize in job sectors each with their individual focus on a particular type of job. These jobs can range from manufacturing, production, IT, legal, and scientific. Job boards play a key role in the hiring of staffing firms, for this reason, it’s critical to design unique web apps that cater to their respective audience across all devices.
Many job board sites don’t quickly provide the critical pieces of information that job seekers are looking for. They must click one or two more times in order to find what they are looking for, we seek to understand exactly what the job seekers of today and tomorrow want before they themselves even know.
THE CHALLENGE
DESIGN ACROSS DEVICES
The goal for the redesign of Roth’s business lines is to aid the job seeker in their job search by providing them with the pieces of information needed when deciding if they would like to apply for a job.
Our high-level goals are:
Deeply understand our user’s needs by conducting extensive user research to uncover the key driving factors behind the decision to apply for a job.
Design a modern responsive job board layout that allows for a smooth transition across multiple devices like desktop, tablet, and mobile.
THE PROCESS
THE MODERN JOB SEEKER
I set out to understand what are the key driving factors behind the click of the button “Apply”. Why would a job seeker click apply? Is it because they meet all the qualifications for the job post? or because they know just enough they think they’ll make a good fit?
The job market has changed with the advent of “quick apply”, “one quick apply” or “easy apply” shortcuts that submit pre-curated profiles for a recruiter to look at.
With the help of our recruiters, I was able to send surveys out to our recent job hires to ask them about their recent job-searching experience. A total of 71 recent hires responded.
INTERVIEW INSIGHT #1
Job seekers have certain criteria they are looking for while job hunting
Job seekers were asked in the survey what where the key factors behind clicking "Apply" on the job listing were. To our surprise the driving factors were; location, pay range, job type, remote option, and description.INTERVIEW INSIGHT #2
Jakob’s Law
Major job board sites like Indeed, Linkedin, and Glassdoor all have similar one-click functions that allow a job seeker to quickly and effortlessly apply for a job. Not only job boards but e-commerce stores and other websites have "1 click" functions. Users will transfer expectations they have built around one familiar product to another that appears similar, and by leveraging existing mental models we can deliver a superior user experience.INTERVIEW INSIGHT #3
Post pandemic world
The covid pandemic of 2020 accelerated the push towards remote work. The job market of 2020 and onward look drastically different than what was previously expected. The majority of jobs that can be done remotely but are looking to hire in-house are having a harder time filling that role. Remote work is expected if it can be done.THE PROCESS
BUILDING EMPATHY
It’s a job-seeker market now. With a huge number of people leaving work for better opportunities or the recent grads that come out of university each year, I set out to make matching personas that would accurately represent the job seekers of today. Andy (Software Engineer, 24), Danny (Legal Assitant, 33), and Katy (Project Manager, 24) to better empathize with my main user groups and prioritize goals according to their needs.
THE PROCESS
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
I set out to define a sitemap for all of Roth Staffing’s business lines, however since they all have the same structure and the only thing that changes is the job cards displayed only one is necessary.
The site map helped me understand the build of the website and what pages would be necessary for the final design.
The high-level goals of the information architecture are:
Get a solid understanding of the layout for the final designs.
Display only what will aid the job seeker in their mission to find a job.
THE PROCESS
BENCHMARKING THE COMPETITION
I don’t want to reinvent the wheel but instead, I want to customize the wheel for our specific needs. Understanding what your competition is doing is a crucial step to making a product that can meet your user’s expectations and aid in delivering an overall great user experience.
I conducted a competitive analysis of the top job board sites in the market at the moment and took note of what they were doing right, wrong, and differently.
The end goals of the competitive analysis are:
Understand the good and bad features of the competitor.
Look for commonalities across all job boards.
Identify market gaps.
Get a well-rounded understanding of the user journey.
Insight #1
Job boards display allows users to browse different jobs while viewing a still job description.
Insight #2
There is a straightforward and streamlined approach when applying for a job.
Insight #3
Anyone can go and post a job listing on a website. There is a need for in-house posting only that’s highly customizable.
Insight #4
Only first-time users have a different pathway. Second-time, third-time, and subsequent users all follow a similar path.
THE PROCESS
VISUAL DESIGN
The visual design was developed by taking inspiration from the existing color of all the Roth Staffing Company’s business lines which led to designing the UI kit.
THE PROCESS
WIREFRAMING, PROTOTYPING & USABILITY-TESTING
Low-fidelity Wireframing
Low-fidelity wireframing was used to get a base understanding of what our current onboarding app might look like for desktop, tablet, and mobile devices.
While working on the wireframes I kept in mind the thought process that a job seeker might have. My end goal was to have a frictionless experience while looking for jobs as well as to have vital pieces of information displayed.
Desktop | Tablet | Mobile
High-fidelity Wireframing
The high-fidelity wireframe took into account the new insights that were discovered through the interviews and survey results alike. They also helped in conversations with the marketing department as they had some input in the design homepage and aesthetics as well.
Home Screen
Filters | Forms | Job Description | Application Confirmation
Prototyping
After some adjustments to the wireframes were made, a high-fidelity clickable prototype was created using Figma. Two groups of user tests were performed to test out any cracks in the design, and the vulnerabilities that were found helped lead to further improvements in the app.
Interactive Prototypes
THE PROCESS
BEFORE & AFTER
THE PROCESS
DATA-DRIVEN DECISIONS AND VALIDATION
Data-driven decision champion results. In the early stages of the product, meetings were set with upper management to discuss their end-to-end vision. Extensive user research led to some insights that would greatly increase the user experience of our product, below are some of those decisions we found to be most impactful.
THE IMPACT
POSITIVE RESULTS
Not only have we helped job seekers in their mission to find a job without much hassle but at the same time we have increased the amount of traffic by 16% that Roth Staffing Companies receives daily across all the business lines.
Feedback has been positive, especially from our in-house recruiters that pass along the comments that their candidates are incredibly pleased with the new rollout.
In retrospect, the changes that were a driving factor in the increased usability of the business lines are:
Extensive research was done at the start of the project to truly understand the frustrations of the job seekers of today.
Putting the prototypes in front of ACTUAL job seekers.
Working closely with developers and job seekers to reiterate the interactive prototypes.