Case Study: Plugged, a job-searching platform for HBCU students and alums focused on fostering meaningful connections
Plugged is a job searching app for companies with a commitment to increasing and retaining diversity in their workforce.
Why is diversity important for companies?
In 1970s, Chevy released a car named the Chevy Nova in Mexico and found that sales were doing terribly. Upon investigation, it was found that “No Va” means “Doesn’t go” in Spanish. In 2016, Snapchat released a Bob Marley filter that many perceived to be essentially blackface and received large amounts of backlash.
In each of these stories, the lack of representation from diverse viewpoints and perspectives led to financial and PR disasters.
In the words of one of my interviewees,
“If we believe in freedom, democracy, and justice, then all of us, no matter what job, career, or position we’re in, we owe it to break some of the chains of oppression of the past and the legacies that last with it” - Male, 50.
It’s uncomfortable to admit but the fact is, racist policies, stereotypes, and misunderstandings have been built into the fabric of society hundreds of years before you or I took our first breath in this world. While it’s impossible to change the past, what we can do is constantly reassess our assumptions about equity and opportunity and try our best to chip away at the old systems that have been put into place.
Most people do not actively discriminate but complacency can unknowingly reinforce and perpetuate harmful practices that can make it harder for certain demographics to have a place at the table.
While it may take a little extra effort to counterbalance the decades of policies and accepted norms in certain careers, it is certainly worth it for better products and services in the long run.
Client and Context
Plugged is a job-seeking app founded by two entrepreneurs in Washington D.C. Their mission is to connect diverse talent with companies.
Project
Timeline: 3 weeks
Brief: Plugged is a job-searching platform that wants to connect companies and recruiters with top talent at Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
Business goals: A simple, intuitive, and memorable career search experience for job seekers.
Objectives
- Conduct surveys and interview to identify problems in job seeking as well as trends for the most successful tools or behaviors for landing an interview.
- Analyze Plugged’s competitive value in the job-searching market
- Create proto-personas based on research
- Conduct usability tests on a low-fidelity prototype made on Axure
- Create a high to mid- fidelity prototype made collaboratively on Axure.
Methodology
- Survey and User Interviews: We started our project with an online survey and user interviews aimed at collecting data about successful job searching tools they had used in the past to identify trends.
- Competitive and Feature Analysis: Compared LinkedIn, Jopwell, Indeed, and GirlBoss to see what features were successful on their sites and what the market might be missing.
- Sketching, Wire framing: Sketching in journals and wireframing on Axure
- Prototype and Usability Test: We created an individual prototype on Axure and conducted usability tests on the sections we wanted to incorporate into the group prototype.
- Group Prototype and Mockup: We came together as a team to create one group prototype to hand off to the client. We also created high-fidelity mockups of our concept.
Survey and User Interviews
Survey: The survey was made in Google Forms and received 39 responses. The age range was 21- 55 with 25 females and 14 males.
24 of our respondents were White and only 6 responses were from people who identified as Black or Hispanic which was the demographic our client wanted to serve. Because of this, we were very careful when it came to synthesizing our data and making assumptions based on our surveys. We were still able to get meaningful data that helped us learn what people found helpful while job-searching though.
Based on our results, we identified two main trends:
1. Personal connections were the most helpful resource during the job-searching process.
2. Applying through the company website was the most successful in landing interviews.
Survey methodology reflection: After reflecting on what our group tried to do in order to get responses and what other groups in my cohort did, I made a quick-list of dos and don’ts for getting survey responses remotely:
What didn’t work:
- Emailing professors to share surveys with students. We sent roughly 38 emails to Business professors at Howard University and got no survey responses from it.
- Posting on Reddit (we posted on a few HBCU subreddits but didn’t get many responses).
What did work for us and other teams:
- Asking people in your network directly
- Posting on active Facebook groups and/or DMing admins to get access to private groups.
- DMing HBCU accounts on Instagram and asking for help
- Survey Exchange groups on Facebook and other social media
- Reddit (some teams found more active subreddits or messaged private group admins for help).
User Interviews
After our survey, we interviewed 9 people total. Three were from our initial screener survey and others were from our personal network of people who were either recent job-seekers, recruiters, or advocates for Diversity and Inclusion.
Questions:
- What is your job and can you explain what you do at work?
- What kind of jobs have you worked in the past?
- Please tell me how you got each of those jobs in as much detail as you can remember.
- How does job hunting in general make you feel and why?
- What are the biggest challenges when it comes to finding work?
- What do you need the most help with?
- How did personal connections help you with your job search?
- How did you meet or develop that relationship?
- What’s missing or what would you like to see from career services and online tools
- Why do you think hiring diverse talent is beneficial for companies?
- Why do you think there is a hiring gap? What contributes to this problem?
- From your perspective what are the unique challenges that minority people, especially young people face when they’re looking for jobs and internships?
I personally interviewed 4 people in my circle who were either recent job-seekers or advocates of Diversity and Inclusion. I thought this would help me develop an understanding of both the candidates and recruiters who would be using this app and I was also very interested to hear about their job histories and what kinds of methods were most effective for them landing opportunities.
Here is some brief information about my interviewees:
- M.W./ Black Male/ 50 years old/ Howard University alum/ Professional Soccer player/ HS Social Studies Teacher
- M.S./ Black- Puerto Rican Male/ 30 years old/ Naval Academy/ Coffee roastery founder/ UX Designer
- D.P./ Haitian Woman/ 50 years old/ NYU Law/ HS English Teacher
- K.C./ Chinese Male/ 27 years old/ University of Maryland/ Data Scientist
All my interviewees agreed that job-hunting was emotionally taxing and a generally miserable experience. One woman described traditional job-hunting as,
“Opening a window, throwing a resume and letter out of it, and hoping that it lands in someone’s face. It’s like a black hole” — Woman, 50
In the experiences on my interviewees, the vast majority of applications they sent through job searching portals were never seen again. In addition, they received no updates on the status of the posting or their place in the application process.
If cold-applying ended up in an interview or an actual job, it was actually quite rare. The best way to guarantee that your application would really be seen and considered is to know at least one person(who maybe knows someone else) inside the organization you want to work for.
One woman I interviewed got an internship at a law firm by being introduced to the hiring manager by a BLSA (Black Law Students Association) acquaintance. This acquaintance didn’t know my interviewee very well, but knew her well enough to think she would be a good fit at her organization.
The other two interns also had personal connections that helped put them in a position to be interviewed and considered for their positions. One’s father was an attorney and the other’s father was friends with a managing partner.
This confirmed the insights we had seen in our survey results and informed our decisions to incorporate features that would help foster meaningful connections between users later in our process.
Key Takeaways
- Personal connections were again, the most powerful tool in helping people land jobs. People they knew either told them about opportunities, connected them with people who were hiring, or gave them insider knowledge on how to succeed in an interview.
- Increasing diversity in the workplace had to be intentional. One of my interviewees, M.W. is the head of one of the most diverse Social Studies departments in his County and he builds connections with teacher training organizations in the area so he can learn about candidates before he even has positions open.
- It’s not enough to simply increase the numbers, organizations need to put effort into retaining diverse talent and make them feel welcome. While our particular prototype might not be enough to solve this problem, I felt it was important to address it and focus on even more community-building in the future.
Sketching, Prototyping, and Testing
Based on this, we found it very important to include opportunities for users of Plugged to make meaningful connections and relationships that could get them in the know.
I sketched out some ideas for a swipe-matching feature found on many dating apps. The client had something like this in mind and wanted us to explore this option if possible so we came up with Recruiter Match.
Users would get matched with 3 recruiters or hiring managers a day and have a chance to message them and get to know them. Even if there wasn’t a perfect position for that candidate at that very moment, developing a relationship with a recruiter could be mutually beneficial later on when positions open up.
The next feature was called the Exchange. With this tool, users could leave comments on other people’s resumes and cover letters and get feedback in exchange. If users were happy with their feedback, they could connect with the other individual and swap documents with them anytime.
During testing, users commented that they really enjoyed the fact that this feature limited the number of responses a user could add to a document. This made the feedback less overwhelming and ensured that users did not lose too much time on any one request.
The tests also revealed a major flaw with the editing feature, users did not realize that the arrows could move the feedback and point it to specific moments in the document. One user suggested that the boxes should be translucent so that it didn’t block any text which I thought was a necessary change.
Afterwards, we added together different components to put together a more comprehensive flow of the MVPs.
Demo of the initial prototype on Axure
Demo of the group prototype on Axure
High-Fidelity Mock Up
We created mid/high-fi mockups to supplement our prototypes. I made the Dashboard page and my group mates made the Landing page, profile page, and job-searching pages.
Next Steps
- More user interviews and user testing with the target audience of users (HBCU students and alums as well as recruiters and hiring managers who value diversity)
- Building out more of the website in Axure
- Building out features for the recruiters side of the platform
Want to learn more?
If you’d like to become an expert in UX Design, Design Thinking, UI Design, or another related design topic, then consider to take an online UX course from the Interaction Design Foundation. For example, Design Thinking, Become a UX Designer from Scratch, Conducting Usability Testing or User Research — Methods and Best Practices. Good luck on your learning journey!
