Helping diverse talent get “plugged-in” to the job search
UX design case study on user research, dashboard design, and prototyping with Axure
Project Description
Client: Plugged uses software to connect students, recruiters, and career service professionals to improve their on-campus diversity recruitment experience. They are currently working with Howard University and other HBCUs to create a platform to connect students with recruiters looking to hire diverse talent.
Context: Job-seeking is difficult in the digital age and minority applicants are at an even bigger disadvantage at times due to conscious and unconscious racial bias that is pervasive throughout the job-hiring process.
Objective: Create an intuitive job-seeking platform that helps diverse applicants find meaningful connections and jobs in their field. Give recruiters opportunities to find and make connections with diverse talent.
Research
My team began our research with a scanner survey to figure out the main challenges students and young professionals faced with the current hiring process and to identify potential users within our target demographic for one-on-one interviews. In total, we received 39 responses to the survey.
Following the scanner survey, we conducted 9 user interviews with individuals who were current university students, recent graduates, seasoned professionals either with significant experience job-hunting themselves or experience supporting other diverse candidates in their job search.
Recurring Themes from Research
- Personal connections were the most helpful in helping users learn about opportunities and land interviews
- Users wanted more resume writing support in order to feel confident in themselves
- A lot of frustration with the lack of communication from job applications
- Most recruiters/career advisors want to increase diversity in their industry but they are overwhelmed with work and have trouble finding candidates they are excited about.
Competitive and Feature Analyses
There are so many different websites that aim to help job seekers it was impossible to compare them all so we decided to narrow down the pool by focusing on those that support minorities or sites with attributes that we thought would be useful in a new platform: Girlboss, LinkedIn, and Jopwell.
Based on our user interviews, feature analysis, and perceived gaps in the market, we identified three main features to focus on for Plugged’s new platform:
- The Exchange. A resume feedback program that gives users the ability to give and receive meaningful feedback on resumes and cover letters from experienced professionals in their field.
- Matching with Recruiters. One of the main ideas the founders behind Plugged developed was for students to “swipe right” on jobs, like one would do on a dating app. We wanted to incorporate that into the platform but after our research, we decided it would be more meaningful to match students with recruiters, rather than jobs, because we wanted to give users a way to connect with a real person on the company side in order to have more transparency with the job application process.
- Ability to Connect with Others. Based on our research and interviews, personal connections were the most meaningful in helping people in the job hunting process so we knew we wanted to include this as a feature.
Card Sorting
We used OptimalSort to conduct remote card sorting by having users group keywords to help us decide how to categorize information on our dashboard page.
Design Process
Recommendations/ Next Steps
Ideally we would would want to interview and survey more people from our target demographic (HBCU students and alums) to determine whether their experiences match up with those of our other survey respondents. We also need more insight from the recruiter perspective to validate our Match feature, our job-seekers were excited by the idea but we don’t know how feasible it would be on the recruiting side. Once we polish the site and complete a hi-fidelity mockup, we would like to conduct more usability testing with our target audience. Ultimately, we hope to provide a platform that is effective at providing students and young professionals with a supportive community through which they can apply to jobs and make meaningful connections with recruiters.
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