Instant Gratification: How to increase Product engagement through User Behaviour and Psychology

Introduction:

In one of our product planning meetings, we want to address the most common problem faced by our product and the whole industry in general

1. Candidates complain — “We don’t get any response from the Employers
2. Employers complain the same — “We don’t get any response from the Candidates”

To give you a perspective, the “Applications to Interview Turn Up” ratio of candidates is less than 5%, and “Employers giving responses on Applications to Total No. of Applications” ratio is less than 20%. These are very dismal numbers, however, you look at it.

So, the qualitative feedback and our numbers, get us to think on a key question — “How can both Candidate and Employers have the same complaint of response?”

If both the parties want to communicate and are expecting a response, then why is there a such a huge disconnect between expectations and reality

To solve this, we turned to Human Behaviour and Psychology to get the answers. And after a lot of deliberations, experimentations and user research — We found the answer in “Instant Gratification”

Before explaining how we solved the problem, a little bit of background: I am a Senior Product Manager at OLX. I lead Employer Product Experience on Aasaanjobs, a blue-collar/entry-level recruitment platform in India. Our goal is to use technology to build a platform that connects billions of job seekers with their potential employers.

What is Instant Gratification and Why is it Important?

“Instant Gratification is the temptation or desire and resulting tendency to experience fulfillment or pleasure immediately without any deferment or delay. Even if the immediate result may be less rewarding than a future reward”

When a human gets what he desires immediately, the human brain experiences pleasure. Since Brain always prefers to experience pleasure, it ends up desiring such experiences.

Moreover, Millennials are becoming more and more impatient. A recent study states that 52% of millennials are more impatient now than they are 5 years ago. So, In this age, Instant Gratification is no more privilege but a norm and expectation of the users.

Millennials Expectations

All said Instant Gratification doesn’t always increase the perceived value of the Product

Read till the end to know the case where a small delayed reward make a user perceive more value than instant gratification

Problems we found:

Coming back to our problems at hand, we found that

1. Candidate Expectations: Unlike white-collar jobs, in the offline world, a blue-collar job candidate can get a job within a week. So, he has less patience to wait for employers to reply online. His need for instant gratification is very high
2. Employer Behaviour: They treat white-collar jobs and blue-collar jobs similar in the online World. They wait for multiple candidate applications, check and compare, shortlist, and wait for the candidate to turn up for the interview.
3. Difference: This time difference between the candidate expectation for reply and employer actual reply creates a negative experience for every stakeholder in the system, thereby significantly reducing the engagement and retention numbers

With our understanding of customer problems and the new knowledge of Instant Gratification, we have made a few changes in our Product to solve the issue at hand.

Some are subtle changes in existing features, while others are entirely new features:

Feature/Changes implemented in the Product

Call HR:

If the candidates are impatient to wait for employers to reply, what if we remove the barrier of waiting for a reply and enable the candidate to directly call the HR?

With this thought, on an experiment basis, we introduced “Call HR” feature

On the Eligible Job, candidates can see “Call HR” option, along with the traditional “Apply for Job” Button

Call HR Enabled/ Disabled View CTA on the Job description for Candidate

1. To have good experience for all stakeholders, the Employers were given an option to opt-in or opt-out to connect with them directly via “Call HR”

Opt-in Screen for Call HR

1. To prevent fraud and to have good experience for the candidates, we have strict eligibility rules for employers, who can enable “Call HR”
2. Also, for easy tracking of the jobs by both stakeholders, we create an Application whenever a candidate reaches to the employer via “Call HR”

The response has been tremendous, so far:

1. More than 10% of applications created on the platform are created through “Call HR”
2. We have an opt-in % of more than 75% by eligible Employers for “Call HR”

Direct Walk-In Interviews:

Unlike white-collar jobs, blue-collar jobs have very few screening requirements. In the offline world, direct walk-in Interviews and drive-ins are the major sources of recruitment.

“What If, we can provide an Interview for the candidate directly, what more can be more gratifying than it?”

Based on this hypothesis, we have focused on building and promoting walk-in jobs on our platform

1. We encourage and promote the Employers to Post the job as a walk-in job and provide the Interview dates and address while posting the job
2. We promote walk-in Jobs on the candidate product as well. We have a dedicated widget on the Candidate Home Page for candidates to select jobs by date

Special Widget for Walk-in Interviews — Candidates can apply for jobs based on their schedule

We even let the candidates book the slot, this optimizes the time of both the Employer and Candidate

Flexible Interview Date and Slot Booking for Candidate — Also helps in Optimizing the Interview Management for Employers

This has been a tremendous success as well:

1. Currently, more than 60% of jobs on our platform are walk-in Jobs
2. More than 50% of applications have Interviews booked against them

Bonus: Delayed confirmation after booking interview slot

While we always value instant gratification, there are few cases, where we expect and value a delayed response

A Common Example to explain this: Value Estimation of a Locksmith

You lost your house keys and asked for a locksmith to open it, he opens it in 5 min and charges 1000 rs. You are hesitant and feels he is overcharging since he finished his work very fast and you undervalue his work

In the same situation, another locksmith works on it for 1 hour and charges you 1500, you feel it was worth it and he did a good job.

This correlation between wait time and the appreciation of the value of work is subtle but very important to understand

Since we know how to use user psychology to boost value, We introduced a delay of 5 seconds when a candidate books the interview slot.

Although the booking of the slot is immediate, we make the user wait for 5 seconds and show a progress bar with the updates, to create an experience of checking real-time with the Employer

Delayed Success Message

This makes the user feel that the App has done a lot of work for him and that a Slot and Recruiter time has been booked for him. So, his chance of attending the interview increases, as he now values the time and effort of the company and the HR more.

We saw an improvement of 70% in candidates attending interview after introducing this subtle change in our Interview Booking process

Other Features in Pipeline:

1. To cover the remaining cases, which are not covered in the above scenarios, we have extended the instant gratifications ( a bit delayed though) through Notifications
2. Notifications to candidates when an employer Views his CV or Unlocks his contact details — make the candidate feel that the Application is valued and is being reviewed by the Employer and makes him wait for some more time for a shortlist or Interview call and also increases the trust in the Product

Overall, we could increase the Engagement of both Candidates and Employers by more than 70% and retention by 20% just by one simple principle “Instant Gratification”

This has been a huge learning for us and now we are expanding the usage of Human Behaviour and Psychology to positively impact the experience of Candidates and Employers

Reaching till the End shows your Interest in this Topic. I will be happy to connect with you on further discussions on the topic. Feel Free to share your feedback and thoughts on the same

You can reach to me on Linkedin or comment here for any of the following:

1. Want to understand more about instant gratification and how to use it in your Product?
2. Want to know more about our studies, user research, and experiences
3. Any discussion/queries/ advice related to Product Management

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