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Fairygodboss Job Search
12 months after the launch of the new job search we saw an 80% increase in the number of apply clicks . This is how we did that
THE PROBLEM
The product team had been solely working on the community product of the site so the Fairygodboss jobs platform had been ignored due to lack of resources.
Our hypothesis was that a redesign and better search technology would help drive more apply clicks and more single job page views.
ROLE
Product designer and UX researcher
TIMELINE
June 2021 - December 2021
What we started with
The job search page:
Single job page:
The Process
I think this project is an example of how building a product isn’t a linear process.
We started on smaller parts of the product at first and then tested. Built out the larger experience and then tested. Learned more about the users each step of the way.
1. RESEARCH
Learning about our user and the job employer
2. PRIORITIZATION
Figuring out what to work on first
3. PROTOTYPE
Testing out the full job search experience
Research
Research goal
Understand how we can improve the job seekers experience with technology.
Study types
User interviews
Competitive analysis
Existing research
Industry research
Hotjar survey
Survey
Participants
User interview - 5
Survey participants - 474
Insights
‘
Job seekers were getting irrelevant results
Job pages were
difficult to scan
Remote jobs were
hard to find
Job search experience is
demoralizing and they felt unnoticed
A new search technology could help people find more relevant roles.
We could redesign these pages to find
important
information quickly.
We could move the remote filter to somewhere more prominent
There is a confidence gap that women are more likely to avoid jobs that weren’t a 100% fit. We had to keep this in mind.
Personas
I affinity mapped the survey data, distilling insights into 4 personas based on experience levels. One persona, representing the largest Fairygodboss group, emerged:
Jennifer is a
seasoned professional not currently in leadership. She has been impacted by pandemic layoffs and toxic work environments, has 7-10 years of administrative job experience.
Prioritization
Next step was breaking down how we were going to work on this big feature
The Job Search Page
The job search experience definitely needed improvements:
When a user clicked on a job it would open a new page, this isn’t great for a couple reasons, it increases clutter, it can cause disorientation on mobile, and has accessibility concerns
There was valuable left hand space that wasn’t being used
The UI needed a facelift while still working under existing brand guidelines. There were inaccessible components that needed updating, which prompted me to start a design system
The Single Job Page
In order to break up the work, revamping the single job page view was our first step.
The actual job page layout had these “convincers” that were added to convince women to apply. This was our differentiator from other job boards. These were duplicated along with long job descriptions which made the pages very long
We knew that the job page could be improved by making it less overwhelming, but still have more relevant information.
Redesigned Single Job Page:
I revamped single job page with updated iconography for convincers, highlighted perks and benefits, and pulled out ratings/reviews.
Implemented a truncated job description for users to choose to expand information.
Introduced a company overview and a link to the company page.
Notably, this was the first page built with the new design system.
Testing
Research goal
Understand if the new single job page was more usable than the current single job page
Study type
Unmoderated user testing
showing the current design and the new design.
Participants
10 participants
Tool
Usertesting
Insights
Participants thought the current design was overwhelming due to the long page full of text
40% of participants mentioned the duplication of convincers in the current design were confusing
2 mentioned having an overall rating at the top of the new design would be helpful
The existing design had a 4.2 out of 5 for information provided and the had a 4 out of 5 for clean and simple layout.
The new page performed slightly better at 4.9/5 for both information and for layout.
Implementation & A/B Testing
Apply clicks actually decreased from the original page
For companies with bad reviews, they had less applications
Companies, that women wouldn’t usually work, performed much better
We decided to move forward with the design, I found that the apply/save buttons were cut off in the mobile implementation and we were able to do some quick fixes post release
Prototyping
New Search Experience
We tackled the larger search experience and how this job page would fit into it
We decided to go with a 2 panel desktop view for increasing single job page views.
We wanted to make the filters easier to find, we wanted to expand filtering in the next quarter to include more filters, so I gave them a space where they could add more
Lastly, we were using our new design system to give the product a more modern feel. This design system was built in tandem so a lot of these components were our starter components for the system
Testing
Research goal
Gather sentiment about the larger
job search holistic experience
Study type
Moderated usability testing
Participants
6 participants total:
3 participants sourced from UserInterviews tool
3 being Fairygodboss users
Tools
Userinterviews for recruiting
Insights
Desktop is important - all preferred desktop for searching and applying
Convincers need to be well-written to have a big impact 4/6 preferred the new job search experience 5/6 participants saved before applying
Job Seeker Journey
A key usability testing insight was recognizing the job seeker journey, which we leveraged to benefit our employer customers.
Notably, women tended to save before applying, prompting us to hypothesize that optimizing for saving could boost apply clicks, akin to an e-commerce experience.
This breakthrough led to a published blog post sharing findings with employer partners.
GOING FORWARD
Project Monitoring
My position was cut from Fairygodboss before the product released, but I was able to gather metrics from my former PM2 weeks post launch, the new page increased the number of times people were clicking and viewing pages. 41% more people were applying.
12 months after the launch of the new job search we saw an 80% increase in the number of apply clicks from search which was a substantial increase for our customers.
Learnings & Reflections
Building out a new product while developing the new design system was a challengeWish we did more research on the current job seeker journey to impact the roadmap at the beginning versus at the end of the project
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