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2ND ADDRESS
Connecting Hosts & Guests for Extended Stays into Furnished Homes
2ND ADDRESS
Connecting Hosts & Guests for Extended Stays into Furnished Homes
ZENTLY
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Make voice - video calls and send SMS through any devices
Make voice - video calls and send SMS through any devices
Make voice - video calls and send SMS through any devices
Linkedin Opportunity Connect
Attracting Passive Candidates to NextMove Opportunities
LINKEDIN OPPORTUNITY CONNECT
Project Overview
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Create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce - Linkedin Vision
Connect the world's professionals to make them productive and successful - Linkedin Mission
‘Every open req is an opportunity to change someones life! Every new hire is a chance to change the company’s trajectory.
With the mission, vision and Northstar to change to impact people's life at scale it becomes imperative that we serve all global professionals and show up to them with new career opportunities where ever they are, whether they are actively looking or passively looking for their NextMove.
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This case study provides an overview of my design process from problem definition to a designed solution in creating an experience that attracts passive candidates to job opportunities in an interesting and engaging way, helping recruiters, hiring managers, leaders and organizations hire the best talent.
CLIENT
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SPECIALITIES
UX Research & Insights
Vision & Product Strategy
Concept Design,
UX Design
Interaction Design
UI Design, Visual Design
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YEAR
2019
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THE CHALLENGE/PROMPT
Attract passive candidates to their NextMove.
LinkedIn is a network of over 500 million professionals. We use the power of professional networking and profile data to connect individuals with relevant opportunities. Hiring managers and recruiters are frequently interested in people who are already employed or satisfied with their current positions.
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Design an experience that presents job opportunities to a passive candidate, who is not actively looking for a new position. Find creative solutions that gains the passive candidate's interest in a new position, and garners a response.
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People Problem Statement
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In the recruitment space, one constantly hears about active versus passive candidates and to complicate things further, passive candidates aren’t always totally passive. The fact of the matter is that there might be many underlying reasons for them being passive while they might be ready to take new opportunity which is best for their career growth and life and can create huge impact in new roles and organizations.
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On other side recruiters and hiring mangers are trying to find the best candidate, and that candidate may be unemployed, employed but looking, employed open to new opportunities but not looking, or employed and not open to a new opportunities. They won’t know until they find and speak with, them. They might miss high potential professionals who might be great matches.
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THE SOLUTION
Linkedin Opportunity Connect!
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Linkedin Opportunity Connect redefines how opportunities show up to candidates to their NextMove opportunities, meeting them where ever they are, guiding them to paths where they can thrive, have career growth, be productive and successful.
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It redefines how recruiters, hiring managers, companies and brands shows up to these candidates, enabling them to meet candidates wherever they are. They can pursue to hire both active and passive candidates and finally hire the individuals who can make the huge impact.
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Success of this project to be measured on Engagement Metrics:
Opportunity Requests Accepted, Opportunity Interest Sent by Candidates.
Conversion Metrics: Applications Clicks and Completed.
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Solution Overview
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Google Connect is a one stop place for making connections and getting guidance needed for startup and professional growth. It instantly matches users to mentors, investors, programs, accelerators, competitions based on the users profiles, preferences and browsing behavior over time.
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In return it gives mentors on the platform various opportunities, a peace of mind and a place to shine doing what they do best - giving back.
They get redeemed, rewarded and recognized at each step.
Experience
Match opportunities to candidates, Meet candidates where they are
New Recommendation Modules
Redesigned Job Pages
Redesigned Career Preferences
New Opportunity Tab/Page
New Module in Connections Tab
Process
DESIGN PROCESS
How did I get there?
I approached the problem with human-centered design process
DISCOVERY
Empathize with Users, Understand Business, Competition
DEFINE
Reframing the Problem,
Deep insights & Prioritize
IDEATE
Crazy 8's , Solutions Sketches.
App Architecture
PROTOTYPE
User Flows, Wireframes,
Prototype, Mocks
VALIDATE
Observe Users,
Get Feedback & Iterate
SET THE STAGE-FRAME THE PROBLEM
Understand task, goals, assumptions, success metrics
I started this design process by basic understanding to explore the topic of passiveness (in a job search) at a high level and to write down my early thoughts as well as do some basic desk research which can help me deep dive into understanding the problem from all possible angles.
I also tried to understand the business objective of this and how solving for this ties into Linkedin's mission. I also wrote down on all the assumptions, constraints, initial ideas and success metrics.
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Key questions to align and build understanding on. 5 W's, Goals, Assumptions, Success Metrics,
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Who all are we solving for ? Who is experiencing the problem? Can this user be further specified (by demographic, persona, motivation, reason for being in the situation)?
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What is the problem? What are the struggles? What task needs to be accomplished? What pain point needs to be relieved?
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Where, when does it happen? What is the context in which the user experiences the problem? Is it in a physical or digital space? Who else is involved?
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Why does it matter? Why is this problem worth solving? What value does it bring to the user? What value does it bring to the business?
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I laid this out on a canvas to go back to each time for making decisions.
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USER RESEARCH
Empathize, Observe, Analyze-Synthesize
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Knowing my goals and objectives, I decided to dive deeper into understanding the problem from user perspective, I used the research techniques like-
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2. Desk Research/Quantitative & Qualitative Research - Referred to the various articles on understanding the passive candidates, the approach of recruiters and hiring managers towards pursuing them. I also tried to dig into quantitative data on how many members are there on Linkedin and possibly would have looked into how many InMail opportunities are sent by recruiters, accepted by candidates to have better understanding of user behavior.
https://news.linkedin.com/about-us#statistics
https://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/blog/2013/12/recruiting-active-vs-passive-candidates
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2. Survey - Based on my initial questions, I designed a 9-question online survey with, screeening question of have they ever used Linkedin so as to get only white-color professionally respond as that is the primary audience of Linkedin as compared to blue-color workers. I received a total of 184 responses out of which 60 seemed to have ever used Linkedin. Out of which 74.6% defined themselves to be not actively looking for jobs. These people fall nicely into the category of "passive candidates", and their responses provided me with some significant insights which helped me take many design decisions down the road. Below are the results of my survey.
Survey link: https://surveys.google.com/reporting/survey?hl=en&survey=v6esgwjyxbwv4sp6sgot27greu
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Survey Responses
184
Respondents
42 compleeted
60
Linkedin Users
Screening question- white collar professionals
74%
Passive Canditates
Screening question- white collar professionals
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3. Interviews
With these insights and data points, I conducted interviews with 5 passive job seekers to gain a deeper understanding of their motivations, pain points and experiences surrounding searching for a new job. I also interviewed 3 recruiters and asked them a couple of questions about how they approach passive candidates. The interviewees range from having never changed jobs to changing up to 8 times throughout their careers. They have some overlapping answers, which are strong signals that the information is significant. But each person also has his or her own unique concerns. Below are some highlights of what they said.
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SYNTHESIS OF USER RESEARCH
Deep User Insights & Ideas
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I synthesized the findings and data from my survey and interviews to create an affinity diagram where I was able to group common themes and ideas. I pointed out what causes passiveness, what would be motivators to explore new jobs and what are some pain points in a job search. Overall, while LinkedIn does a superior job with networking, there are several subjective, objective and platform/UX considerations that should be evaluated in thinking about a new experience for approaching a passive job search.
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1. Personalized matching of job opportunities in recommendations and Personalized reach outs, with detailed focus on salary, growth, benefits, locations, company rating, teams-people.
User Insights: Candidates don't know how this job opportunity is better to them in terms of salary, career growth, teams, locations and their interests.
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2. Engaging and Personalized Job Opportunity Recommended Matches and Reach-Outs being able to focus what story it might shape for their career future,
User Insights: Candidates get lost in which jobs to focus and why those jobs might be better than the current job. They need engaging and appropriate choices.
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2. Discoverable and Comprehensive Recommendations and Reach outs
User Insights: Candidates get lost in the news feed, notifications and messages to find opportunities hidden there and are seeking reasoning behind why that opportunity.
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4. Facilitate action: Easy ways to respond to or initiate Reach Outs for recommended Jobs.
User Insights: Candidates don't know if there are how this job opportunity is better to them in terms of salary, career growth, teams, locations and their interests.
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REDEFINE-REFRAME
Goals, Strategy, Principles & Success metrics
Once I had enough learnings from the research, all my opportunities mapped out, it was time to converge/focus. and define what is most critical for me to solve. Typically I would to this with all my cross-functional partners so that we prioritization.
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I created a quick Risk-Value Matrix, and organized all the opportunities based on the end value of each and the risk involved, which helped me prioritize what to work on.
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With that the redefined challenge was for me was to:
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Design an experience where passive candidates can easily discover and engage with personalized job opportunities based on salary, career growth, interests, location, teams-people and make reach outs.
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Design an experience where passive candidates can easily discover
reach-outs from recruiters which feel more personalized and see match potentiality of prospective opportunities and respond back easily.
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I also tried to identify and audit all the current LinkedIn experience, what all I could leverage from the existing platform, what would be all the technical constraints
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Before I could jump into designing, it was also important for me to define success for the UX I am designing for, which I typically do through Goal-Signal-Success Metrics Process
Passive Candidate Engagement: Success Metrics
- Candidates Reach Outs,
- Candidates show Interest
- Candidates Respond to Recruiters,
- Candidates click to Apply,
= Candidates Apply.
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IDEATE
+ How might we? + Sketching & Solutions Ideas
Once I knew where to focus and had evocative "How might we" statements, I started the brainstorming process creating as many ideas as possible and running "What if scenarios" trying to solve these problems in hand and reimagine a new experience. I generated ideas through Crazy 8 sketches, solution sketches storyboards and started converging on what ideas I want to go forward with.
Typically I like these to be very collaborative co-creative sessions and want all my cross-functional partners, stakeholders, users to help ideate. The initial ideation process was not to design flows but the foundational system that powers and fuels the product and user experience.
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DESIGN
User Flows & Information Architecture
Once I explored and converged on few solution ideas by creating a hypothesis, I started creating a user flow and Information Architecture of all potential changes within the app. This really helped me to create a unified and holistic solution within the current Linkedin app. I tried to focus on solutions which create more personalization, discoverability, engagement and see where all intent of users can be captured while where
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Detailed Experiences & Design Decisions
DESIGN: NEW PAGE
Opportunities Reach Out
Once I explored and converged on few solution ideas by creating a hypothesis, I started creating a user flow and Information Architecture of all potential changes within the app. This really helped me to create a unified and holistic solution within the current Linkedin app. I tried to focus on solutions which create more personalization, discoverability, engagement and see where all intent of users can be captured while where
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Redesigned Recommended Feed Module
Redesigned Recommended Feed Module
Redesigned Recommended Feed Module
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REDESIGN
Job Opportunity Pages:
Match Index.
New CTA
New Tabs to quickly access more about the opportunity
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Redesigned Recommended Feed Module
Redesigned Recommended Feed Module
Redesigned Recommended Feed Module
EXPLORE REQUESTS> CONNECT BACK>SHARE AVAILABILITY
Fuel to the Matching
New entry Points to make it more discoverable - on Notifications or New feeds
New factors for better matching.
Develop confidence in user that matching is personalized and real-time
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EXPLORE MATCHES> CONSIDER>CONNECT
New Modules
Once I explored and converged on few solution ideas by creating a hypothesis, I started creating a user flow and Information Architecture of all potential changes within the app. This really helped me to create a unified and holistic solution within the current Linkedin app. I tried to focus on solutions which create more personalization, discoverability, engagement and see where all intent of users can be captured while where
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Module in Connections Tab
Module In News Feed + Jobs Tab
Module In Notifications
EXPLORE MATCHES> CONSIDER>CONNECT
Swipe-able cards
Once I explored and converged on few solution ideas by creating a hypothesis, I started creating a user flow and Information Architecture of all potential changes within the app. This really helped me to create a unified and holistic solution within the current Linkedin app. I tried to focus on solutions which create more personalization, discoverability, engagement and see where all intent of users can be captured while where
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