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GradLauncher

Making applying simple

Role
UX/UI Designer

Tools
Figma
Notion

Illustrator

Procreate

Methods
User Testing

Wireframing
User Research
Prototyping

Timeline
May2022 - Jan2023

Overview

Gradlaunch focuses on guiding graduates to obtaining jobs in their respected industry through workplace professionals. Whether students need help with resumes, portfolios, or building a community, GradLaunch aims to give graduates the best opportunity at improving their skills to land that 6-figure job.

Introduction

Research and Discovery

Define

Iterate

Final Product

The Job Applying Experience

We’ve all been there, put in over 100 job applications only to get an interview back from one, and the interview is being conducted by an AI Chatbot. Not fun. We can go on and on about some of the issues when applying to jobs, but the main problems we’ll be
tackling today is:

Hiring Process

How can users view the hiring process to see if they’ll be hired after their interview?

Building Community

How can we help users build a community within and outside work with other grads?

Accountability

How can we hold interviewers accountable and provide feedback on why they weren't hired?

The
Solution

To help users have more control when applying for jobs and have a community to lean on, I created a desktop application to ease the process of applying to jobs while helping users track their interview results and build a community with like-minded individuals.

RESEARCH AND DISCOVERY

RESEARCH AND
DISCOVERY

Defining the User

When researching who the audience was, it became clear that main category of users that’ll I’d end up designing and solving
this problem for were:

When researching who my audience is, it became clear that main category of users that’ll I’d end up designing and solving this problem for were:

Soon to be or recent graduates, those who may be either graduating from colleges, certifications, or trade schools

Age between 16-40yo, many of the complaints I’ve heard, seen, and researched have been the younger generations.

Those living in the United States of America, since this is the area I’m most familiar with.

Current Competitors

After building up a basic understanding of the job market and applying process, next step was to research and analyzed three different competitors doing things similar to my project, those three being College Recruiter, WayUp, and Handshake. When analyzing their sites, I wanted to keep in mind three things:

After building up a basic understanding of the job market and applying process, I researched and analyzed three different competitors doing things similar to my project, those three being College Recruiter, WayUp, and Handshake. When analyzing their sites, I wanted to keep in mind three things:

Likes

What do users like about them? Their features, looks, design, functionality etc...

Dislikes

What are users actively complaining about when applying for jobs and the hiring process?

Opportunity

What can we use from them that might help my own endeavors? Their information layout, design etc...

Once the questions were established and had a basic foundation, the next step was to gather data and research the competitors to see what information we can learn from them. Below are some snippets of the competitors site along with notes of user pain points and thoughts about each site.

Pain Points

Jobs are posted even though they aren’t available.

Lack of transparency and
legitimacy of employers.

Unrelated job postings
for users.

Thoughts

WayUp, has features such as offering users advice and guidance in the form of articles as well as having events that caught my attention. Kept in mind how they organized their jobs in a card format, but the job description section itself looks rushed, a wall of text as if your reading an article, something that needed to be avoided.

Pain
Points

Jobs are posted even though they aren’t available.

Lack of transparency and legitimacy of employer.

Unrelated job postings for users.

Pain Points

Specifically only for
university/college students.

Job legitimacy issues.

Less focus on Non-traditional jobs, caters towards corporate jobs.

Filters jobs by majors.

Thoughts

HandShake, a platform allowing those in college a more catered experience for job hunting, using your major as a means of finding jobs. In terms of design and layout, it again follows a card layout. The colors helped the site stand out, I feel it's something that can be implemented into the design.

Pain
Points

Specifically only for
university/college students.

Less focus on Non-traditional jobs, caters towards corporate jobs.

Filters jobs by majors.

Pain Points

Irrelevant job options.

Employers not responding

to users after.

Lack of customization for job preference and/or job alerts.

Lack of good quality jobs.

Thoughts

College Recruiter, offers podcasts, videos and articles to user for advice on landing a job and also subjects such as the job market and the skills needed to succeed. Found that they have some accessibility issues with the color and text overlapping it, along with image quality. Clicking "view more" on a job description takes you to a new page with the information which isn't ideal. Gives off a old feeling to it that should be avoided.

Pain
Points

Irrelevant job options.

Employers not responding

to users after.

Lack of customization for job preference and/or
job alerts.

Lack of good quality jobs.

After researching and understanding users perspectives and issues with job applications, three main issues were prevalent:

Communication

Lack of ways to communicate with employers, and not knowing how their application process is going.

Job Quality

Lack of quality job postings, some job applications being fake, unrelated to what the user is doing, or not available.

Customization

Lack of customization, being able to customize job recommendations or profile to get the jobs and alerts you want/need.

Tackling Interviews

Now that there's a solid idea and direction of what needs to happen, next step was curating questions and interviewing 5 users, 2 who are attending a university, 1 who dropped out, and 2 who are taking/did certifications instead of school. The general main idea of the questions asked was:

Their Goals

Whether it be applying, posting etc.

Their Frustrations

Applying, posting, navigating websites.

Time Spent

How often/long do they
job hunt for?

Suggestions?

What do they think would improve current problems?

Interview Findings

From the interviews, the results showed that:

92%

Of user encountered fake jobs and ended up falling for them.

100%

Find the applying process tedious and tiring to deal with.

80%

Of users ended up job hunting for more than 3 months after graduating.

100%

Find it annoying when no one reaches out after an interview with updates.

100%

Dislike the lack of communication and customization to get recommended jobs.

Comments from users that stood out mentioned:

"…because at one point a company responded back after a whole month has passed and by that time I already had a job that hired me, it's so dumb…"

"A lot of the time when looking at jobs, I always look at what others complaints are working there because I've been in toxic workplaces before and I'm not trying to do that again…"

"…because truly once you get out of college, at least for me, it's like everyone disappeared off the face of the earth. Having a community would've made the job search much more tolerable…"

When users were asked what they would want/do to make their experience better when applying, multiple participants
mentioned the same three things:

Track Progress

Wanting to be able to see where recruiters are in the hiring process.

Descriptive Tags

Some way to tag different jobs with descriptions so other users are aware of what to expect.

Communication

Ways to easily talk to industry professionals about help with resumes or mockup interviews.

DEFINE

Personas

Once we established and better understood our users and their pain points, personas was the next thing to focus on to really narrow down and understand the audience’s needs. With one persona focusing on the social and legitimacy aspect and the other the hiring process.

How Might We...

Once a solid foundation of user pain points and issues for many users was established, I began to iterate ideas and concepts on focusing on what problems to solve and how to tackle them.

Encourage users to customize their profile?

Help users find the right community for them?

Create a system that updates users of current standing in the application process?

Cater jobs to users needs?

Incorporate descriptive tags on jobs to inform users?

Keep track and organize multiple different jobs for easy access?

Incorporate multiple different job disciplines in terms of the education process?

Ensure easy set up and communication between user and recruiter?

Inform users of potential delays and time it'll take in the hiring process?

Encourage the use of building communities?

Provide guidance and tips for users when monitoring their application process?

User Flow

After settling on some ideas and concepts to build around, I started focusing on creating a user flow that wouldn’t waste users time while also ensuring personalization related to their goals.

ITERATE

Content Definition

Now that the bases of a user flow and how the ways they’d be able to navigate was created, I focused on establishing

the content that would be within each screen from buttons pressed to different sections and what information

and images they’d have.

Now that the bases of a user flow and how the ways they’d be able to navigate was created, I focused on establishing the content that would be within each screen from buttons pressed to different sections and what information and images they’d have.

Wireframes

When sketching the wireframes, the focus shifted to designing a flow that ensures users can easily see and

know what to interact with and that promotes users to explore the features available to them.

When sketching the wireframes, the focus shifted to designing a flow that ensures users can easily see and

know what to interact with and that promotes users to explore the features available to them.

The Sign Up Process

Allows users to input their college degrees, certifications and personal info like hobbies,
and communities they'd want to be in to best customize their experience.

Tracking Your Application

Designed to make users not waste their time waiting for a email back, users can now track where employers are in the hiring process so users can make informed decisions on
next steps.

Community

A design that allowed users to filter out communities they wanted and be able to join any community. Community involved descriptions and rules beforehand so users know what they're getting into.

Graduate Aid

A educational space for users to learn
of upcoming jobs or careers as well
as giving users help from industry professionals to aid them in landing a job.

A educational space for users to learn of upcoming jobs or careers as well as giving users help from industry professionals to aid them in landing a job.

The Solution

The Solution

Final Outcome: GradLaunch

Lets do a quick recap of how we got here:

01. The Goal

Improve users experience when applying for jobs and help build a community.

02. Pain Points

Users hated the lack of transparency, communication
and community.

03. Solution

A platform that encourages communication between employers and the interviewee, promote community with like-minded individuals, and giving users more power in the jobs they choose.

Allows users to choose their ideal job and major beforehand to narrow down potential jobs while also giving users the chance to input their own personal interests to set up their account.

Application Tracker

Allows users to track the jobs they've applied to as well as showing how long its been since the user applied. A tracker shows what stage the employer is at throughout the process and gives the user the option of adding descriptors of the job for others to reference.

Community Flow

Features filtering options to find a community that fits the user and description of the community itself, including the rules, leaders of the community, and what to expect before joining.

Graduate Aid

Offers an array of resources to users to learn and better their own skills through the use of videos, articles, and workshops. Also allows users to set up mock interviews to practice with industry professionals.

Reflections and Next Steps

This project is one of my first projects and case study I created when I began learning about UX design and I'm over joyed at how this came out! Being able to create a project based off of people’s complaints and having those same people test and like it wishing it was a real thing is a nice feeling, knowing that what I do can potentially impact people when I get on projects that’ll have an real life affect on people.

Though I’m truly happy how this turned out, I already see multiple aspects that can be worked on, and will tackle

in the coming days, such as:  

Though I’m truly happy how this turned out, I already see multiple aspects that can be worked on, and will tackle in the coming days, such as:  

Tweaking the color scheme to convey professionalism but excitement.

Creating more interactions for the user rather than it being more of a proof of concept.

Organizing information in a way that's interesting and functional for the user.

Check out my Other Works!

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