UX Design at Indeed.com
As an International UX Designer at Indeed, I focused on solving problems for job seekers across global markets. The following projects are examples of ways we worked to personalize profiles and improve the application process for job seekers around the world. I worked with user researchers, developers, market analysts, behavioral scientists, and product managers daily. I had a particular focus on developing my user research skills, planning and running user research studies to test concepts and designs.
Role
UX Designer
Researcher
Projects
Profile photos
Mapped location search
Resume customization platform
Profile photos
Job seekers on Indeed have requested the ability to include profile photos on their profiles and/or resumes for years. Employers will also find value in job seeker profile photos, with added personality, trust, and applicant verification being common themes in employer feedback. Indeed finally decided to introduce this feature, and I led the design and research for this project.
The profile photo would become a standard for job seeker representation across many touchpoints in Indeed’s products, so we needed to consider various entrypoints for job seeker experience of uploading and managing profile photos. I considered these entry points and collaborated with stakeholder teams, such as avatar appearances within the internal messaging tool, onboarding flows, and so on.
Profile photos across Indeed
Uploading photo
Selecting “Upload” will direct job seekers to the native mobile photo library where they can select which photo they would like to upload and use as their new profile photo. If a job seeker has not uploaded a photo yet, the avatar will feature their initials.
Adjust photo
Job seekers will then move on to a page where they can adjust their profile photo within the circular frame featured on the Hub page. Using a pinch and zoom interaction, job seekers can center their photo within the frame, zoom in or out, and then select “Continue.”
Terms & confirm
In order to continue the upload process, job seekers will have to select the terms confirmation. This will ensure that job seekers understand and agree with the profile photo terms, stating that employers (that they’ve interacted with or applied to) will be able to see their profile photo
Delete photo
The uploaded photo will appear in upper right corner of hub, filling the avatar.
Selecting the photo will open up the profile photo spoke page, where job seekers can delete or change their profile photo.
“I feel like employers like to see who they are considering offering a job to.”
“[Photos] make you a little bit more human; not just another job application or another resume."
Usability testing success
Three usability testing studies were conducted as we iterated on design and improved the profile photo upload process. The final round of results were overwhelmingly positive and encouraged us to begin implementation of the feature.
My goal was to ensure that profile photos will benefit both job seekers and employers. However, with so many touchpoints across Indeed, this project required a level of strategy and communication as I initiated conversations with 10-12 cross-functional stakeholder teams to introduce the project and achieve alignment, consistently communicating in order to encourage collaboration efforts.
Across the many teams, we strategized how to build for a future, including plans regarding understanding where job seekers were abandoning the photo upload process, how to ensure that they chose successful and professional photos for their profile, and more.
Sharing plans for profile photo implementation
Improve location search
Job seekers on Indeed use the “Where” search to input their desired job location. A few recurring problem areas in the Where search process result in broken experiences that might show a job seeker jobs that are not where they want to work.
Through initial mockups and user research, Indeed determined that a map visual would help to improve search transparency by:
Encouraging more engagement with location refinement options through prominent visual placement
Providing a map that clearly indicates search area
Commute time and location clearly visible and editable in the search bar on the search results page
Map and commute combined
Improved location relevance
Launching from the original concept designs, I aimed to help job seekers understand the boundaries of their “where” by displaying the search area being used (e.g. surface a map with the search area outlined), and then allowing job seekers to control the “where” search via user-controlled center of the search.
Visualizing search radius
Moving the radius to the search box increased filter usage by 20% and decreased complaints related to Location by 13%.
We also developed the radius overlay panel, which allows jobseekers to adjust the distance and coverage of their search. I worked with the location engineering team to identify limitations and technology considerations without compromising the user experience for jobseekers. This will help better align with how jobseekers think about commute, and more successfully exclude jobs that the jobseeker likely wouldn’t commute to or that are in the wrong location, increasing transparency and control for job seekers
Resume customization platform
Job seekers use a template to fill in and create their Indeed resume. The default (USA-centric) order of sections and fields in a resume and across other Profile surfaces are fixed, and requires code changes in order to update.
Different markets (Italy, France) and different segments (truck drivers, architects) require resumes with a unique combination of fields, certifications, licenses, and so on. With the goal of creating a configurable, drag-and-drop experience for market analysts to customize resumes for each segment and market, we set out to develop a platform that has a “What you see is what you get” internal frame (similar to Squarespace, Shopify, Canva).
Introducing these market-specific Profile features would leverage them to collect relevant job seeker information to improve their application outcomes.
Example of customized resumes
On the left, a nurse in the UK. His resume has been adjusted to feature Nursing Licenses and Internship/Residency experience at the top.
On the right, a Front-end Developer in Italy. Her resume features key programming language skills and an online portfolio at the top.
Future of configurable platform
The resume was the first product on Indeed that would be able to customized to market and job seeker segment. Eventually, the platform that is built in this regard will be used for all products on Indeed.