Recruitment Site Redesign
Intro
Having been actively seeking opportunities since I graduated college recently, I have been trawling over all the recruitment websites and job boards trying to find a job that will get my foot in the UX door. Anyone in my position will be well aware just how many such sites exist in the market, most offering the exact same tools and services. However the delivery of these is very mixed.
Some offer great tools - customisable User profiles, advanced search tools and email alerts as well as personalised recommendations. Some focus on great UI but let themselves down on UX, some offer decent UX but slide on the UI. One makes no effort whatsoever. Now the site in question may not be considered a true recruitment website as essentially it is a vertical search engine concerned only with aggregating ads from all the other services, however that can only excuse so much. Having finally had enough of its fugly presentation I decided one afternoon to set myself a quick design task: over 3 hours diagnose the site, develop a new wireframe, and develop some new 1st draft graphics as I might to present some early concepts to a client or design team for further discussion or early User testing.
And this is where I ended up!
Step 1:
So to begin I took a screenshot of the offending search page, printed it out and set to with sharpies and a pencil, letting rip with my initial impressions and the things that had most been irritating me for the last few weeks. As I worked on this I began to realise just how awkward a lot of the layout truly was. Hyperlinks and clickable text abound. The site looks like something from the early days of the net pre-tech bubble.
• It occurred to me how awkward this site would be had I a touch screen Windows device. Each search result packs a number of links, 5, into 6 lines of text. My sausage fingers would have problems adequately interacting via touch.
• The amount of empty screen real estate is odd. Massive yawning voids of white fill half the page at any time, even more so should you already have the search saved and active as an email alert. In this case the box on the left is now defunct and removed meaning more white space.
• Search tools are split between 2 different parts of the screen. The primary tools are on the top bar, refinement tools live on the left side bar. This leads to two step searches every time. Enter your main parameters, search, then refine the results.
• The User Profile tab is tiny, again another hyperlink, and shoved in the corner. Where is the personalisation and ease of access to my details and profile?
Step 2
Now I decided to recreate the wireframe of the interface as it existed, if nothing else it was a chance to practice a bit of wireframing, at the very least it offered some extra graphics to analyse and allowed for comparison between the current layout and the new one I would generate.
Step 3
Now I moved on to what I had been envisaging for this site for a while now.
I think most people, as Users, have ideas about how they would like a site to look and feel. As those Users become more experienced and more adept with the functionality those expectations and wants become more advanced, more refined and harder to deliver economically by the developers.
When sites are particularly poor or un-styled those ideas can become quite advanced without the User even knowing it. I think I already had a scheme in my head for this based on my experience with search and other apps such as Pinterest and things that employ the "River of Cards" format for surfacing results. I especially like it as it is really quite tactile (so far as could be said in regard to a digital interface), it allows for more methods of interaction with the item, in this case a job post, and allows for greater flexibility and added animation/reaction to touch interactions. It treats each result as a separate unit to be considered and makes each stand out to the User.
I made a number of modifications to the general layout of Search and User functions on the page. The left side bar now holds the site branding and the User Profile Avatar. This avatar will bring the User straight to their profile page. The saved searches and recent searches are also contained in this bar for easy of access on the fly. The email alert box has also been repositioned here to maximise the use of available space.
Search functionality is now all contained in a dock at the top of the screen. This dock can be minimised, with the handle persisting as you scroll down the screen. This allows Users to modify their search as they scroll down the page and display new results, removing the need to return to the top of the page. This also allows greater functionality for touch interfaces whereby the menu can just be dragged down when needed.
The sponsored posts no longer occupy half of your initial view. The first two cards are sponsored and can be removed by the User if they don't want to see them. By adding two or more rows of cards the use of screen space is now maximised and the User is not scrolling through lines and lines of text, and pages and pages of results.
The results, now displayed in card format, can be touched on to open, hit the X to be hidden, saved or applied to all on the card. The sponsored posts are clearly marked and can be removed from the results if you prefer. I'm sure there is a business argument against this but as a User I am entirely sick of seeing the same posts at the top of the list every time I look. If I didn't apply to it the first time I won't be applying to it the 10th time!
In essence that is the problem with this particular site. No matter how many times I return, have set up a full User Profile etc, it treats me as if I have never been there. This is epitomised by these next two images.
The ad (Junior Designer) appears in my usual search, I am logged in to my account, it knows it is me. It has presented me with this ad and has marked it new. I have already viewed this ad as can be seen. It is still being presented as being new...................
I am still logged into my account, it still knows I am me and I am there looking for a new position. It is offering me options to both find other people's CVs and post a job. If I had a job to post I would not be looking for a job. Sure there is an edge case there for people who may have positions and be browsing on behalf of their current employer for new hires, while also being on the look out for a new job themselves while they are at it, but just how many Users would fall into that category? Why am I seeing this? It is of zero relevance to me or baring on my needs as a User in search of a job. I have provided the company with all this data. They obviously don't care.
How to alienate a User 101, act like they never told you anything about themselves and don't pay any attention to how many times they have visited your site, tailor nothing to there own stated goals and uses of the site and offer them an interface as dated and joyless as a 1980's Yugo with 100,000 km on the clock.
The Prototype Interface
So here it is, the first prototype graphic for the new interface. As can be seen the new profile tab will now contain the User's avatar and access to a new User Profile page (I may get around to designing that some day soon). Saved searches and recent searches are housed on the left side bar, the search options are in the dock on the top and the cards stream out from below. This new design will allow for better responsiveness to screen size as more columns can be added or removed as screen size increases or decreases, allows for touch interface of drag and drop, drag scrolling, drag from top to reveal the search dock, tap to interact or pinch to zoom to have fewer larger cards or more smaller ones.
It needs refinement, it needs to be tested, it needs a lot more than the 3 hours of work I set out for this project, but I got it done pretty much in the time I had allotted myself.