The Job Hunting Process: An Experience Designer’s Perspective.
I have been looking for a job for almost a year, and it has been both a painful and rewarding experience. The thing that sticks out to me the most is that there is so much room for improvement on how companies interact with potential hires and how job sites interact with their users. As an experience designer, I can’t just sit by and let this opportunity to discuss this situation go by unchecked.
Overall, the experience as a job seeker leaves a lot to be desired. From premature rejection emails sent minutes after submitting an application; to the lack of response what-so-ever from companies that you apply to. These types of situations would be annoying for most people, but as an experience designer, or at least in my opinion, they feel like an opportunity to promote change and hopefully find a better of way of doing things that helps both the employer and the job seeker alike.
Let’s start from the application. This would be less important for locally hosted career pages and more applicable to general job boards. Zip-Recruiter and LinkedIn are both really good about saving application details that you generally have to re-enter on most applications and auto-fill the answers for you, allowing you to complete more applications in less time. Both of those sites also notify the job seeker when an employer views their application. Zip-Recruiter goes a step further and tells the user how many times each application was viewed and if the hiring manager gave you a thumbs up.
Having some sort of validation that your application wasn’t lost in a black hole, and that people are actually viewing it is a huge confidence booster that will keep the job seekers happy and won’t cause any more work for the hiring manager.
It’s no secret that many applications are screened by some form of AI/ML to eliminate some applicants that don’t seem to fit the job description. I’m sure that there are plenty of talented, qualified candidates that get eliminated by these systems. Nothing diminishes your sense of self-worth more than getting a rejection letter minutes after submitting an application; knowing that humans could not have possibly read your resume in detail that quickly to generate a decision. I will also add that some sort of feedback as to why they chose to reject you is always nice to have, but seldom delivered.
Not quite as bad as the instant rejection is the wall of silence. There are few things more frustrating than not knowing what the status of an application, or not having a human being to direct questions to. I would prefer a rejection letter to not getting any sort of communication at all. Even worse is when you are one or two interviews i and then never hear back from a company again. There needs to be some sort of general curtesy, that you treat perspective employees as human beings who have feelings, and not ignore them when you decide to reject their application.
Let’s review some of the Best practices that could be more widely observed.
Notify Job Seekers when their Application is viewed and inform them every time it is viewed.
Do not immediately send rejection letters. Give it at least a day after someone applies, and try to get a set of human eyes to look at it before making a decision.
Communicate openly with the job seeker. Don’t ignore them, and don’t forget to give them feedback on what they can do to improve. That is immensely helpful.
Check in weekly with job Seekers, even if there is no decision to give them. Don’t make them feel invisible or ignored.
Looking for a job is hard and emotionally demanding. Being nice goes a long way for a person who’s self-worth is already hurting by being rejected and ignored multiple times.
-Dan Greenblatt, Experience Designer