Potential candidates don't understand the value of signing up for Vettery.
Our targeted acquisition team discovered that the potential candidates were much more likely to sign up when they were told some of the employers that are hiring on the platform. But candidates who come to Vettery organically don't have access to that information.
Existing candidates decline interview requests because they don't know enough about the company.
Product data told us that candidates on the platform would decline interview requests if they couldn't find enough information about the employer. By providing the employer profile alongside the interview request, we hoped to improve the rate of accepted interviews.
I worked closely with my product manager through the discovery process and we started by outlining the key questions we needed to answer. This included questions like:
What information do candidates seek about employers?
What information does Vettery have access to?
I interviewed members of our client team, candidate experience managers, and actual candidates to answer the key questions. I learned that our existing data was out of date (eek!) and that while most candidates are looking for general overview information about an employer and its benefits, technical candidates have a unique interest in knowing the tech stack an employer is using.
In addition to the qualitative data I gathered through interviews, I found several useful surveys that had been conducted by companies like Glassdoor. According to the survey results, the type of info that job candidates sought aligned with the findings from user interviews.
I explored other examples of employer profiles and compared the type of content that each displayed. It seemed like the majority of examples displayed a similar set of information to what I'd seen in the survey findings and from our interviews.
I listed the most common content categories and then ranked them on three different sets of criteria based on what we learned during our user research (SEO priority, User engagement, and Difficulty to get data). The total of these three rankings, combined with our goals and constraints, helped define a prioritized list of needs. The structure also provided a framework for getting user feedback.
After writing a design brief that summarized our process and findings, I organized a pre-mortem with all the stakeholders to anticipate post-launch risks. An example risk we sought to mitigate was the possibility that Vettery engineers might end up updating employer info manually anytime a change was requested. A a result of this meeting, we ended up refining some of our requirements.
The group also helped narrow down the data set for our initial iteration. The engineering team recommended removing "open roles" because our current integration does not gather this data and it changes frequently. We also agreed that initially photos would add unnecessary complexity for the benefits they add.
I structured the page to follow the user engagement priority and explored a few different layouts. I focused on the scalability of each section and the overall page layout, since I knew the content could vary significantly company to company.
An additional challenge when designing the interface was that I was still in the early stages of building out Vettery's component library. In fact, only the text, button, icon, and asset components would be available in time to use, and the rest would have to be designed from scratch.
Utilizing the available design system components allowed me to move swiftly from initial UX explorations to a high fidelity design for user testing with candidates. From our initial research, I knew the page needed to be scannable for key details, and prioritize key data points like location, company size, and industry type. To maximize scannability, I utilized subtle icons from our library, and separated the content into high level buckets like "locations", "perks", and "tech stacks"--which had been prioritized from our research.
We walked 10 candidates through the designs, seeking information about adequacy of information, the likelihood to register (if a potential candidate), and likelihood to seek additional information on a competitive site.
An important learning from the user test was the optimal placement for the registration banner. Prior to research, we had anticipated a methodical, linear approach to consuming content on this page, so our instinct was to put the CTA at the bottom of the page. A user behavior we recognized from an initial wireframe test was that in reality, users tended to skip around the page for information, regardless of order or placement. It seemed as though users "finished" reading the page close to the top. That informed our decision to place the registration CTA just above the company description.
To further vet this design approach we talked to several companies and created a mockup of their employer page. As expected, employers wanted to share very different amounts of information but the design adapted to fit each gracefully.
The Employer UI was half the lift. We also needed to define the process our client team used to contact employers, get their permission, create their profiles, and get them published.
We started by adding a way to edit all of the fields to the admin portal that the client team is already using. While this product isn't ready for the new components we tried to make it user friendly by including instructive copy and using the same consistent form elements.
For the initial rollout, we were only targeting ~50 companies, so we created a shared document with relevant client managers to track the status of each request, and help them follow up. By working closely with client managers, we were able to quickly test a few variations on the process.
While the initial rollout is still ongoing, we've started creating documentation and preparing the broader client team to do this as well. We created a document that outlines how the process works, and provides email templates and instructions about how to handle specific requests.
Status and feedback
The early qualitative feedback from companies has been positive. Most are eager to share the unique qualities of working at their company, and like the way the page represents them. We are already getting requests for more content areas.
Some client managers have expressed that the creation of the pages takes more time and communication than expected, so there may be opportunities for more automation in V2.
What's next
It's too early to measure the impact of these pages on candidate acquisition and interview acceptance, but we are watching the companies who have profiles closely.
We are actively brainstorming ways to streamline the profile creation process and plan to work on some of those this year. More updates to come!
