Employer Reputation: Hiring best practices Dashboard on Indeed
Indeed | 2021 - 2022
Research backed concept to build a more job-seeker friendly Indeed by guiding employers to adopt best practices recommended by Indeed.
MY ROLE
Developed the concept and vision, socialized and influenced senior leadership to get buy-in.
MY TEAM
1 Senior UX Designer
1 Senior UX Developer
1 Senior Product Manager
0.5 Senior UX Researcher
0.5 Senior Product Scientist
5 Software Engineers
1 Content Strategist
Due to a Non-Disclosure Agreement, information on this project is limited.
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Due to a Non-Disclosure Agreement, information on this project is limited. 〰️
OBJECTIVE
Build a more job seeker friendly Indeed by guiding employers to adopt best practices recommended by Indeed.
KNOWN BARRIERS TO A JOBSEEKER FRIENDLY INDEED
Jobseeker blackhole
Jobseekers frequently never hear back from an employer, leaving them unsure where they are in the hiring process.
Confidence of Indeed
Jobseekers don’t trust that they’ll be strongly considered for a role if they apply through Indeed vs on the company’s website
Trust in employers & jobs
Job seekers are often unclear whether a job is legitimate (not a scam), is the right fit for them, or if the posting has been filled
Drive High Quality Behaviors on the Platform
Everyone benefits when employers behave better. Employers are more likely to see better outcomes, and job seekers are more likely to have a better experience.
Ultimately the result is more hires, more quickly and with less friction overall.
Competitive & Comparative analysis
I wanted to understand what existing programs existed for rewarding and highlighting the “best users” on various platforms. This analysis was not limited to HR Tech but explored other platforms such as Airbnb, eBay, Amazon and many more. This was crucial for me to understand the baseline requirements for the program.
Brainstorm
Facilitated multiple workshops with cross-functional team members to brainstorm ideas around the UI, layout, implementation, and strategy. As this was a cross-organizational concept it was crucial to involve stakeholders early and often to get buy-in.
The program critieria
A number of factors were considered when defining these criteria from what jobseekers want, what will help employers and what were our business objectives. In theory, it was a win-win-win for all. 😄
Engaged
90% of applications receive a response through Indeed’s messaging platform within 72 hours.
01
Transparent
90% of jobs contain information necessary for job seekers (i.e. high quality salary).
Reported at least one hire on Indeed in the last 6 months
02
Legitimate
Employers are verified
Employers have 2FA enabled
03
Max-Diff Survey to determine incentives
Partnered with the UX Strategy Research team to conduct a Max-Diff (“Maximum-Differential”) Survey, a method used in survey research to prioritize a usually long list of features, benefits, or other attributes.
The results showed that employers care about minimizing the costs of the steps in the hiring process, in time, effort, and dollars on candidate selection. But mostly effort.
Ultimately we determined employers are only incentivized by items that help them higher faster or get more qualified candidates.
Design evolution of the dashboard
Multiple rounds of usability testing were conducted on the dashboard to evolve the design to its most intuitive state. This usability testing informed me of the best pattern to showcase the information. Initially, some of the details were tucked within drawers and employers were not expanding them, so I knew we had to cut down the content and expose all of the information on the card. Employers also preferred to visualize their progress in data visualization versus viewing the percentages. Lastly, if they weren’t meeting the criteria, red was too harsh of color but grey didn’t encourage action - we focused on highlighting the positive in green.
Helping employers stand out to jobseekers
In my role at Indeed, I work on the employer side of things, but this initiative required me to cross over into jobseeker territory. I was focused on the following:
Improving the experience for jobseekers
Helping employers hire faster
To do this, I had to understand jobseekers perceptions of employers and how to stand out in search results. I conducted user interviews and usability testing to test badge concepts showcasing high-quality employer behaviors. My key findings on the job seeker side:
Most jobseekers noticed the badges on their own
Most jobseekers would prioritize job postings with this information
The responsive employer was the most important badge to a jobseeker
Diary study
In partnership with UX Research, we ran a (simulated) pilot of the experience with an accompanying month-long diary study to get direct feedback from participating employers.
At the highest level, participants supported the concept of hiring best practices. But purely intrinsic motivation did not seem to compel participants to change their behavior to follow them.
The main takeaway was most said the most significant barrier to meeting the criteria was responding to the large number of applications they weren’t interested in. They don’t have the time or see how the value is worth the effort.
This led me to investigate how might we leverage or surface existing features to help employers automate their responses.
OUTCOMES
After investigating responsiveness, we discovered unexpected dependencies that would hinder our timeline. Due to this discovery, 8 months after starting this project, leadership decided to reprioritize this effort. Naturally, this was disappointing, but this project’s timing was not right; we needed other teams to fix core problems before proceeding.
This feature solved problems for both employers and jobseekers while meeting business objectives. In the scenario that we completed implementation, we could’ve established best practices and educated employers on how to use Indeed, which would instill more confidence and trust for jobseekers utilizing the platform.
However, the hard work and research did not go to waste. These learnings are still referenced and the idea of this concept has been repurposed nearly a year later, we will see if the timing for the new idea is right this time…
KEY LEARNINGS
Through this entire experience of socializing, an idea that I had to senior leadership and gaining buy-in. I learned my power of storytelling and my love for strategizing.
I poured much of my creative energy into exploring this concept, but ultimately leadership decided to reprioritize and restructure the team to focus on more immediate impactful experiments. This highlighted my adaptability to pivot gracefully. I moved forward to the next project and continued to reference learnings and research in future experiments and concepts.
My biggest takeaway: the main incentive we can give to employers is to help them hire faster or get more qualified candidates and that knowledge is still used daily at Indeed.
WHAT I WOULD DO DIFFERENT
If I could return, I may reassess our strategy of incrementally releasing criteria to employers. This was due to the effort it took engineering to surface the data, but it also may have given a lackluster experience for employers. We could’ve approached our MVP strategy differently or worked with teams who owned the data to help surface it.
However, due to this project’s scale across teams and organizations, it did not always align with other team’s objectives, but excitement and need remained. I would’ve started socializing the concept with other organizational leaders earlier to help galvanize buy-in across organizations.
WHAT MY COLLEAGUE SAYS ABOUT ME:
Grant Heimbach, Senior Product Manager