OneSpring Careers Page
Bringing transparency, inclusivity and empathy back to the job search, with an accessible, well-tailored and user-friendly application process.
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OVERVIEW
UX and visual design tools utilized throughout the project.
The Problem
OneSpring was finding it difficult to attract a diverse background of highly-specialized and gifted consultants. Many of their openings consistently receive an abundance of under qualified applicants – stemming directly from their weak “Careers” page, which falls short of the competition.
Although OneSpring is known locally as a top UX design firm that is active within the community, there are still many potential future (OneSpring) designers that are unaware of the consultancy’s presence in the Atlanta area.
The Solution
We redesigned OneSpring’s existing Careers page to cater to UX and design experts. Based on the needs of both the business and the customer (e.g. job seekers), we created a page that provides more transparency into OneSpring’s internal company culture, their community involvement, benefits available to employees and the hiring process.
Project Details
Client: OneSpring
Sector: Small business, consultancy, UX
My Role: UX Lead, Researcher, Visual Designer & Content Strategist
Timeline: 2-week sprint (Sept 2021)
Team Members: Lindsey Messenger, Tiago McGrath, Jordan Shackelford
To get a closer look at some of our research, the design process and usability testing results, continue reading below.
THE RESEARCH
OneSpring’s current offering:
OneSpring’s current Careers page consists of an “Open Positions” content block featuring individual postings that include job title, a short description and an “Apply Today” button (which links to a modal application pop-up hosted through Typeform).
Competitive Analysis
Research began with a competitive analysis comparing how OneSpring presents their company and career offerings against other local agencies and consultancies – comparing their features, company offerings and individual job posting pages.
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On the careers page...
All of the competition featured a section on their company values.
4 of the companies included a content section relating to the benefits employees receive.
And half of the companies included information relating to where they were located and why that could be seen as a benefit.
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On job posting page (not on OneSpring.net)…
All of the competitive companies included a required skills section and gave a detailed position overview.
5 of the 6 competitive companies included a blurb about the company and detailed responsibilities of the role.
And half of the companies featured required education and experience for the role.
Surveys & Interviews
To gain critical insight into the emotions and frustrations OneSpring’s users currently experience through every stage of the job searching and applying process, their likes and pain points, and what their ideal job search experience looks like, we conducted two surveys (an initial on Google Forms and a second via SurveyMonkey) and 10 user interviews – equally dividing the user interviews amongst ourselves in order to conduct the most effective moderated video interviews via Zoom.
Users stated:
100% of user do not know what is expected of them from job title alone
On average 60% of users read a job posting in its entirety
3/4 of users want to see more transparency from a company on their careers page
100% of users will visit a company’s website after finding an open job posting on Linkedin
Almost 70% of of users ideally want to spend 3-5 minutes applying for a job
The Persona
Insights gained from our surveys and user interviews informed our development of one main persona, and the ability to identify the characteristics of a second persona – guiding our design decisions for the remainder of the project.
“How Might We” Statements
To solve Lyric’s current job searching pain points, needs, wants and goals we thought to ourselves…
THE DESIGN PROCESS
Our survey and interview responses, the key trends pulled from our affinity map and our how might we statements were the building blocks of the 3 main paths we identified Lyric could take to find and apply for a job at OneSpring.
User Flows
The series of user flows were built to define Lyric’s journey and process – two fundamental tasks for our design for the Careers page.
The ideal application path Lyric is looking for: Navigating through the main/global navigation at the top of the home page to the careers page
The second path Lyric would take to find an apply for a job: Through content on the homepage – a path she is not used to, but would encounter while browsing
The third path Lyric could take – and the path she is most familiar with: Navigating to the careers page through footer navigation at the bottom of the website
1-Hour Design Studio
After mapping Lyric’s potential paths (user flows) to apply for a job at OneSpring we ideated as many solutions as we could (as quickly as we could) through a 1-hour Design Studio sketching session across three rounds. After refining the sketches from our first two rounds, the ideal flow starting from OneSpring’s homepage was identified and sketched (see below).
TESTING MID-FIDELITY WIREFRAMES
After identifying the ideal screens for OneSpring’s Careers page and job posting page stemming from the final sketches produced by the group in our Design Studio, it was my responsibility to create a UI library of components that aligned with OneSpring’s current style guide.
A series of mid-fidelity wireframes (created within Figma) were then built from the UI library based on the needs of our main persona.
A sample of the mid-fidelity wireframes, which are in black and white with image placeholders and representative text, are shown below.
The above mid-fidelity prototype was then tested (unmoderated) via Maze asking users to complete “missions” (tasks) to apply for both a UX Designer opening and Business Analyst opening. The goals of this initial usability test included:
Through A/B testing, determine whether users prefer OneSpring’s current modal pop-up application (hosted through Typeform) or an embedded version underneath the job posting
Determine if putting the link to the careers page in the primary navigation is the best location
And, learn what content is the most important for users on a careers page
And the people said…
The first usability test resulted in mixed outcomes. While users praised the overarching design and content blocks, they struggled to complete many of the task due to the following 5 main issues:
“I was confused was the responsiveness of the job positions table — it looked like just a table, no signifier to indicate clicking into the role is possible.”
“A little frustrating — I clicked on the wrong position initially (the table was a little hard to read, my eyes went straight to the location since it was right down the middle) and went through the application flow. The primary 'Apply Now' CTA was a little hard to find. There was a lot going on on the page."
“I wanted the job postings to be listed closer to the top. I had to do a lot of scrolling to find them.”
“I personally prefer the embedded form, as a popup can bit a little more jarring to me.”
“I would recommend a more intuitive approach. Applying for jobs is never as exciting as the flow was.”
TESTING THE HIGH-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
After applying user feedback from the first round of usability testing a second round of usability testing (moderated via Zoom & unmoderated via Maze) indicated the viability of the user-influenced modifications that were made, as well as allowing for a second high-fidelity A/B test (featuring additional UX Writing and UI components) on two different styles of embedded application forms.
Following this second usability test:
Almost 86% of users were able to successfully complete the tasks
92.3% of users were able to complete the entire flow
And about 75% of users were able to complete the tasks with ease
Over ⅔ of users ultimately preferred the embedded application form
FINAL PRODUCT AND HAND OFF
A final product review was conducted with the team at OneSpring, our team handed off the final Figma prototype files as well as the supporting research and usability test results from Maze.
OneSpring is in the process of developing the final product and implementing it on the careers page on their website.
If you would like to see and interact with the final prototype, please click the link below:
Final High-Fidelity Prototype
RETROSPECTIVE
Reflections
Designing for a user base that you as a designer also fit into is one of the hardest situations a designer will face when it comes to ignoring and pushing down your own personal bias and assumptions – but when you can successfully do that your design truly triumphs
A/B testing is a great way to interpret feedback from users and further design the best solution for all personas
When in the research phase it’s key to structure surveys in a way that they will pull quantitative data, and using interviews to back up that data with additional qualitative data
Next Steps
Taken into account many users expressed interest in companies being more transparent regarding the salaries on available job postings – I would have liked to dive into this aspect further with additional user research as to what part of the process (if any) they would like to see this information
Users also expressed interest in learning about what companies are doing to promote inclusivity and diversity – this would be a further conversation to have to with OneSpring in regards to UX content on the careers page, following additional surveys and/or interviews