Linkedin design exercise
The Project
Deliverables
End to end experience
Research
Flows
Sketches + Wireframes
Prototypes
Visual Designs
Mockups / Comps
My Role
Researcher
UX Designer
Interaction Designer
Visual Designer
Timeline
5 days
Task
Design an experience that presents job opportunities to a passive candidate, who is NOT actively looking for a new position. Find creative solutions that gain the passive candidate’s interest in a new position, and garner a response.
Problem
Passive candidates do not respond to job opportunities when they are not actively looking for a new role.
GOALS
Improve the current experience for recruiting passive candidates
Garner a response from passive candidates
What do we measure success?
Higher response rate from passive candidates
Research + Planning
What I need to know
Understand the process…
How do recruiters send out job opportunities to passive candidates currently?
How often do they get a response?
How do passive candidates receive opportunities currently?
What are the steps in that experience?
How do you evaluate which opportunities to respond to?
What do you look for first when you receive a new job opportunity via Linkedin?
Action Plan - How I plan to get there
I created an ideal action plan, because I knew I was limited on time, I would have to skip steps that are usually crucial to the success of a new experience.
Interviews + Surveys
Recruiters
Passive Candidates (Currently Employed)
Develop User Journeys
Recruiter Journey
Passive Candidate journey
Sketch ideas & Concepts
Sanity Check - Get feedback
Wireframe
Usability testing - Get feedback
Iterations
Prototype
Usability testing - Get feedback
Iterate
Final Visuals
Develop Presentation / Deck
Developed a Survey for insights
Survey Questions:
Currently, how do you learn about job opportunities? ( Please check all that apply)
When a recruiter sends you an unsolicited job opportunity, what is the first thing you do?
How do you decide to respond to a recruiter that sends you an unsolicited job opportunity?
Please list the steps you take to respond to a new job opportunity that is sent to you?
How often do you visit LinkedIn?
Research
Surveys
I ran a survey and received 27 responses. The survey had a combination of multiple choice and short answer questions that would give me an idea into what candidates do with unsolicited job opportunities. I took that information and put it in a google sheet to see if I can identify any patterns.
Interviews
I also conducted 4 interviews in person and over the phone. I was able to dig into their experience with passive job seeking and how they made decisions. I was also able to speak with a recruiter to learn the other side of the story. What are the steps a recruiter takes when sourcing candidates and what are common behaviors?
Interesting Insight:
Candidates look for Job title, company, and compensation first.
Some people just wont respond.
They want to know its better than the one they have.
Here are some of their responses:
“Delete the email/message. I sometimes check it or read further if it's a company name I recognize…” - Braden
“1. Determine authenticity 2. Decide if I am qualified 3. Send resume” - Teresa
“If it is in a position I see myself in, room for growth, location and salary” - Nick
“If they've included details about my profile showing a true interest of me” - Steph
“Research the company, research the team, understand the job role.” - Trina
“Pay rate, Location, Other compensation benefits,” - Richard
“If I’m interested in what they are offering and it doesn’t sound like they sent the same thing to 100 other people” - Natasha
“Job title, company (if it's reputable), location, salary are factors before responding.” - Paul
“1. Read the solicitation. 2. Compare solicitation to current job situation. 3. Decide to respond. 4. If decision is to respond, write or call back solicitor to learn more about the opportunity. 5. If decision is not to respond, discard solicitation.” - Dana
Key Insights
Passive Candidates told me…
Recruiters are not putting the right information front and center.
Recruiters are sending irrelevant jobs to passive candidates.
Recruiters are sending generic messages.
Recruiters told me…
Passive candidates do not have their resume easily available.
Receive ~20% response rate.
Get high responses during different times of the year.
How might we’s…
I wanted to create “ How might we…” statements that would help me pin point the problems. This is what I came up with:
How might we send candidates relevant job opportunties?
How might we show passive candidates “interesting” job opportunities?
How might we create a personalized response?
How might we improve candidate response rates?
How might we show candidates relevant information?
How might we incentives candidates to respond to job opportunties?
Develop a User Flow
Now that I know what I am solving for, I needed to understand what was happening on both sides of the interaction. What steps do recruiter take to reach out to a potential passive candidate and how do candidates receive and interact with unsolicited job opportunities. I mapped out the two different flows to see where the different touch points are and what was happening at each step in hopes of identifying an opportunity.
Recruiter Flow
Candidate Flow
What I discovered
The biggest area of opportunity was at the beginning when recruiters decide to message a passive candidate, recruiters are not showing the information candidates are looking for, so immediately they are not interested and ignore it.
Candidates want to know specific information, this will inform their level of interest helping them decide if this opportunity is better than their current position. If it is, they are more likely to respond.
Currently candidates can only read the subject line and a recruiters name, but cannot see any of the information at a glance. This adds one more step for a candidate, they must click into a message in order to see the extended message and hopefully the details they are looking for to make a decision.
Current Touch points
Current Candidate Experience
When the candidate receives a new message and reviews it in the message list. There is no efficient way to respond to an unsolicited opportunities. Candidates cant tell the different between personal messages and unsolicited job opportunties.
Current Recruiter Experience
When a recruiter is constructing and sending a message. The state of current messaging doesn’t help recruiters put the right information candidates need to make a decision.
Ideation
I took those “How Might We…” statements and started to think about the different ways to provide value for both users. I started with the recruiter experience and begin to sketch and write ideas on post-it notes. I then took two of the strongest ideas and started to sketch out potential solutions.
Sketching
get my ideas to paper
I took what I felt was the strongest concepts. I knew I needed to design for two users so I started with the very first touchpoint… when a recruiter is crafting a message to a passive candidate. I didn’t want to reinvent interaction patterns that users already knew, so I took the UI that currently existed as a starting point.
Recruiter Flow Concept
The concept was to create a template that recruiters could use that would place the right information, where passive candidates would want to see it. It encourages the recruiter to prioritize the information candidates care about.
Candidate Flow concept
I wanted to bring the UI that Linked currently has, earlier in the experience. Don’t force candidates to click into a job opportunity, if you show them the information they need to see on the message list page, they’re more likely to respond.
Other Concepts
I came up with a few other solutions that needed a little more thought. While I did like the ideas and would want to concept test them, there were too many holes and unknowns in these solutions that made them a lot more challenging.
Matching Candidate based on Interest
Use the data collected from people interest to show recruiters the level of interest in a job based on things that intrigue them and what they follow.
Showing Candidate Response Rates
If recruiters see a candidates response rate they send opportunties to the candidates likely to respond.
At this point…. Sanity Check
Usually, at this point I would do an internal review to get feedback from other designers and team members to ensure I am solving the right problem, placing interactions in the right order, and putting the right elements on the page.
Wire-framing
I used my sketches and started to build out wireframes, I considered all the elements and interactions that currently exist on the page, and then I start to play with how my new concept will interact with the current experience. I want to leverage the resources I have and build off what currently works.
Wire-frame Testing
I was able to get basic usability feedback from a couple people around me but due to a lack of time and current global situation I was not able to get the level of testing completed that I was hoping for, but I was able to get eyes on it other than mine.
Recruiter Flow
Candidate Flow
Sanity Checkin…
I always want to include all teams in the process, so I would want to do a review with stakeholders from different parts of the organization to ensure the concept solves the right problem, it ‘s technically feasible, it’s scope and timeline, and how it may be marketed. I want all teams to have a voice to make sure the feature or product is successful.
Prototypes
Prototyping is a key step to validating interactions and the overall usability of a potential UI. I wanted to create a quick click through prototype that would allow me to run basic usability tests to uncover what works and where I am missing expectations. I decide to use two different prototyping tools that gave me different levels interactions.
Recruiter Prototype : Axure 8
Axure allows more control over interaction but is limited when it comes to responsiveness and flexibility. It allows for more detailed interaction.
Candidate Prototype : Principle
This is my first time using Principle and it has proven to have some great features. Its quick to do fast click through prototypes but I struggled to master transition control. With more time I would refine prototype and clean up the transitions.
Share-out to Stakeholders
Sharing out at this stage will help bring all stakeholders along for the ride and collect their feedback before testing the prototype. This allows me to share insights and design decisions, as well as get feedback from other teams so everyone has a voice when developing concepts.
Prototype Testing
Testing the interactions is crucial, it gives me a glimpse into how users interact with my concepts, do they make sense, and does it relieve user pain points. I was able to running quick usability study with two participants, and gave them a task to complete.
I setup a brief scenario to get the participant in the right mindset:
“You decide to open LinkedIn on your mobile device to see whats going on in your professional network. You open the app and notice you have notifications in your messages. What do you do next?”
Task: Respond to a job opportunity.
What I learned
I learned very a small amount of information from prototype testing because I was only able to get one participant. This was not ideal, but it allowed me to get another set of eyes on it and clean up areas of the design that did not make sense.
Iterate
I tried to get as much feedback as possible as I was developing visual treatments for some of the UI. I started simple, expanded to more eye catching designs, but got some feedback that it would be too much if you were to receive lots of opportunities, so I decided the simple less intrusive design was the better approach. If I were to test different treatments I would want to learn about discoverability, accessibility, and expectations.
Designing a visual treatment
Once I get buy in from stakeholders, it’s time to bring the designs to life. This is an example of the evolution of designing the message list pages.
I started to add more vibrant colors to the UI to increase discoverability, but it became over whelming when you had more than one vibrant UI element on the page. I started to look at a simple approach that was easier on the eyes and didn’t stray too far from what users are used to interacting with. I didn’t want to surprise users by introducing elements that would make the experience jarring, so I took interactions that I already knew existed and came up with ways to incorporate those elements.
Final Designs
The SOlution:
The solution I came up with needed to solve problems on two different sides of the experience. The first user was the recruiter that is sending unsolicited job opportunties. The second user is the passive candidate that receives the job opportunity.
What I knew…
The recruiter is expecting a response from a passive candidate
The passive candidate is expecting to see specific information in unsolicited job opportunities.
Recruiter Solution
Format messages to put the desired information at the top.
Help recruiters put the information passive candidates are expecting to see up front.
Candidate Solution
Show passive candidates the information they need to respond to a recruiter earlier in the experience.
Give candidates a quick way to respond to an unsolicited job opportunity.
Encourage candidate to respond through tips.
Recruiter Messaging Experience
Interaction Mock
I tried my hand at the prototyping tool Principle which I now realize had some limitations, but I was able to get general interaction and flow of the experience. The interactions are not in an ideal state and with more time I would refine the interactions so that elements would move precisely around screen as intended, to mimic the micro interactions that users would interact with during the real experience.
Passive Candidate Response Experience
Retrospective
Since the project was only 5 days it was a challenge to go through my typical design process. It was difficult to make decisions that were not directly tied to user feedback or research. I would have done more foundational research to understand the motivations of different types of job seekers and what makes them tick. Not having in depth research made it difficult to validate the direction I was heading. Given more time, I would have also done more usability studies to better refine the interaction and messaging before I ever got into visual design. Validating my ideas early ensures we build the right things without wasting resources.
Getting buy-in from the rest of an organization ensures everyone has a voice when building features and products. At the end of each design stage and usability testing, I would want to share out findings and my decision-making process to bring stakeholders along and create a culture of collaboration. Overall this was a unique project that tested my design process and time management skills, and at the end I am happy with where I ended… but there is always room for improvement.