Job Assist
Personal Project
2024.4 - 2024.6
Context
Given the tough job market and frequent layoffs, job seekers are facing significant challenges in finding employment or transitioning careers. There is widespread popularity of AI across various industries.
Observing the needs, I aim to delve into the job hunting issue and investigate how AI can help job hunters with securing positions that align with their skills and preferences.
ROLE
Product Designer
PROCESS
User interview, Brainstorming, Flow chart, Iterations, User testing, Tech exploration
TEAM
Solo
Challenges
How can AI can assist job seekers to find new opportunities?
User Research
Questionnaire: 5 people
Research: Google, LinkedIn
Competitor Analysis: ChatGPT, Resume Genius, LinkedIn, Talentprise, Job Scan, Google Gemini
Customer Painpoints
Below are the challenges of job seekers facing. I focus on the last 3 painpoints because it is what an app can assist.
Strong market competition
Don’t know when new roles will open
Hard to find matching jobs quickly
Applying for jobs is time-consuming
Lack of transparency/expectation
User Persona
Students and professionals age range 18 - 65, located in the United States who are actively job hunting.
Seeking help to get jobs easier.
Below is the user persona for one of the target users.
Assumptions
Users have access to the internet and know how to use smart phones.
Users have ready-to-use resumes to be used for job applications.
This product signed the contracts with a group of companies, so that users can apply directly through this platform without going to companies' individual career sites.
This product has a well-founded AI model training team and enough data to train the model.
Go Broad
After the brainstorming session, here are some potential solutions to the problem.
Auto fill application
Bulk apply
AI generate resume/cover letter
Expected HR reachout time
Indicate hiring status of the role
Total application number range
AI recommended jobs
New job notification
Auto apply (after certain time)
Soft job filter
Brainstorming Sketch
AI Exploration
From my companies, I did a thorough research on how designers can include AI in their current design. Here is the summary of the research outcome.
AI Exploration Result
Go Narrow
Based on the AI exploration result and the effectiveness, here are a short list of solutions to solve the customer painpoints.
Hard to find matching jobs quickly
Timely update - Phone pop-up
Personalized job board - AI recommendation (high accuracy)
Applying for jobs is time-consuming
Apply multiple jobs at once - Bulk apply
Shorten application time - AI Job description summary
Not sure about expectations
Information about the next steps - AI HR reach out time prediction
User Flow
Here is the user flow for how the app use other users' interview data to provide a personalized job searching experience for the current users.
User Flow
Design System
To ensure consistency in the app, I created a design system for this project. The primary color is blue because it helps people feel calm during the stressful job-hunting process. I chose SF Pro Text because it offers 8 variations to cover different use cases. Additionally, it is modern and easy to read, making it especially suitable for text-heavy job postings. All components have rounded edges, providing a comfortable user experience.
Design System
Key Priorities of Design
Job Page Screen
Include the estimated HR reach out time and job description summary.
Keep the information hierarchy clean due to amount of text.
Homepage
List the time and confidence differences between top picks and fit jobs.
Include the “apply to all” feature.
Enable the search feature.
Give people the freedom of only applying for jobs they are interested in.
Design Considerations
Consider application submission time as an important factor.
Focus on the job application, notification and bulk apply feature.
Iteration
Throughout the design process, I made quite a few iterations based on user feedback. Below are a few examples.
Edit User Profile
Initially, I designed the profile edit screen so that users could make all changes in one place without navigating to another screen. Realizing that there was too much happening on a single page, I splitted content updates that required typeahead into a separate page. However, during user interviews, the users noted that this screen was confusing. They pointed out that all text areas appeared clickable, but only the name and title could be clicked to change the content. In order to make the design consistent, after some consideration, I made text areas for "interested companies," "interested roles," and "interested location" also clickable, leading to individual screens for updating content.
Iteration 1
Pop-up Design Update
According to user feedback, when they saw the pop-up, they were unsure about what was being submitted to companies (resume or other materials). Therefore, as an iteration attempt, in the pop-up, I added more description explaining that their resumes would be submitted to several companies, so that users are fully aware of the action and can confirm with confidence.
Once I show the new design to other users, I received the reaction that the system notification pop-up makes them feel that they just did something wrong and it is not personalized. Therefore as the second iteration attempt, I converted the system notification to a more personalized pop-up and also include icons and buttons on it. Further on, I iterated on the color and content of the pop-up.
Iteration 2
Job Description Summary
This new feature was from user testing, when I noticed that users didn't want to read through the long job descriptions and prefer some shorter content. Therefore, I added a AI powered summary based on the job description. Users can save some time and get the gist of the job requirement efficiently.
Iteration 3
Final Experience
The final prototype can be found here.
Flow 1: The "Apply to all" feature to submit multiple job applications at once.
Flow 2: The "Search" feature to check for companies and jobs.
Flow 3: Real-time job notification feature, job description summary snippet, hr reachout time estimation, and check for applied jobs.
Flow 4: Profile page and preference changes.
