Improving customer satisfaction through a better applicant experience.
In 2018, when unemployment was seeing record lows, and applicant volume was often hard to come by, extensive user research and a strategic approach proved that an enhanced and seamless applicant experience can improve conversion rates and provide lasting results for any economy.
I led the UX discovery and design for this effort on a full-stack team. I was not only heavily involved in the overall research, strategy and design, but I was also baked into the agile development process. I was crucial in helping the team scope our overall vision into valuable, yet tangible versions.
By focusing the lens on the applicant's experience, I helped create solutions to real problems for our customers and their applicants. By providing customers with better tools, and their applicants' with an easier application process, conversion increased by 19%, approx. 60,000 new applicant's per month.
In 2018, Hireology's customers were experiencing a world in which there were more jobs than applicants, 'low applicant volume' was one of the top complaints and churn reasons, and our main source of applicants made major changes that negatively affected our applicant flow. With so much out of our control, what could be done?
Partnering closely with my Product Manager, Tech Lead, and UX Researcher, we got to work. Piggy backing off of an ongoing effort by our researcher to better understand the needs of our applicant persona, we set out to answer many questions, including: What is an applicant dealing with when applying to a job? What does their environment look like? What are their motivations and stress level? What are their expectations and feelings about the application process?
As the applicant research was under way, we also looked at customer needs and pain points with the current feature offerings. In addition, we did a deep-dive with our tech lead to understand the potential land mines ahead when dealing with the outdated, legacy code of applications. A strategic approach to updating the applicant experience proved necessary on all fronts.
Our research revealed that applicants are looking for an easy and reliable application process. They are increasingly applying from a mobile device. And they want to feel informed and in control during the process. We also learned that our customers care about their applicant's experience and generally expect this from their hiring tool, but would benefit from more guidance when setting up applications and job descriptions to ensure maximum applicant flow. In addition, we uncovered many technical and UI issues within the application form that were negatively affecting conversions.
We determined that solving the applicant's problems first would ultimately be good for our customers too, and hypothesized that with the right approach, we could increase applicant volume. Since we found that the number one problem was a long, difficult, or ineffective application process, we decided to start there. Equipped with a better understanding of applicants' expectations, we were able to pinpoint many issues in the process including a difficult multi-step application form, usability issues on mobile, accessibility standards not being met, and generally long applications and bad job descriptions from customers.
Through several iterations and testing I designed an improved, mobile-first user experience for a 'job page' that now included the application form. In addition, I eliminated the multi-step approach in lieu of a streamlined, one-page application. The form itself included mobile-optimized, accessible, and better organized form fields. And for our customers, I designed a simplified application setup process that added focus and guidance on the number of questions being added to the application.
Sometimes it's the less obvious changes that make the most impact. By telling the story to the business of why the applicants' problems are also our customers' problems, I was able to help address some long-forgotten (or swept under the rug) issues within our job application process. 6 months after release, the application form conversion increased by 19%. That's approximately 60,000 applicants per month. We have also seen a consistent decrease in application-related support calls and bugs. Making a good impression from the beginning is important when hiring, and I'm proud to have improved the applicant experience on behalf of our customers.