Brief
Breakroom are tackling rising inequality by building a community powered rating for every job in the world, and publishing it all online. They want to ensure everyone has access to great information to power the next step in their career, while also supporting employers to create good jobs along the way.
Goal
I have been tasked with redesigning the vacancy page, to create a more user-friendly design that allows for easy access to essential job information and helps job seekers make more informed decisions. The page is currently not representative of Breakroom’s mission - to help frontline workers find a better job.
The Challenge
The challenge was to make the information we have about employers more accessible to users on the Breakroom platform. Our job descriptions are imported from a partner job board, meaning we have little control over their structure or length. Additionally we have a wealth of information about what the job is really like, based on over half a million responses that we gathered from people who work there. The current vacancy page is visually unappealing and lacks hierarchy, causing users to feel overwhelmed by the amount of information or not having enough useful evidence to make a decision.
How does it relate to the success of Breakroom?
As a team at Breakroom, we firmly believe that every job has the potential to be a good job and that everyone deserves to have one. Unfortunately, many job descriptions lack the crucial information that candidates need to make informed decisions. With the help of our engaged community of over 500k employees rating their jobs, we are providing users with a powerful tool to help them choose the best role for them in retail, hospitality, and social care. By sharing information about what matters in a job, we're building trust and helping people make better-informed decisions.
This is good for business, as it helps employers connect with the right candidates. Candidates who understand the reality of a job are twice as likely to complete the hiring process and three times more likely to stay once they're hired. By empowering job seekers, we're creating a more meaningful job search experience and a more productive workforce.
Hypothesis
My goal was to ensure that our users have the best possible experience when using our job search tool.
With this in mind, I developed a hypothesis that users were deterred from using our platform to apply for jobs because they were redirected to a different website to complete the application process. This was causing frustration and was preventing them from coming back to look for more job opportunities.
Additionally, users were not engaging with the information on the vacancy page, as they found it disorganised and overwhelming.
Research
To test my hypothesis, I analysed tons of Hotjar recordings of our users navigating the Breakroom website and using the job search tool, ultimately ending up on the vacancy page.
I also looked at heatmaps to identify patterns in user behaviour and spoke to several users during our weekly research sessions about their experience.
Findings
Based on my research, I discovered that while being redirected to another website to apply is not the most desirable experience for our users, it is a very common and expected pattern, as most other job platforms do this as well. To address this issue, I recommended that we make it even more obvious by replacing the icon on the button with a clear CTA to manage users' expectations.
Another issue that I identified was that the current vacancy page starts with a list of contents that is misleading. Users click on the "pay" link and are redirected to pay findings, which doesn't actually provide specific pay information. To solve this problem, I recommended that we remove the redundant list of contents and surface the most important information right at the top of the page, adding job highlights. The goal was to make it easy to screen the vacancy ad at a glance reducing the user's cognitive load.
Competitor Analysis
I conducted a competitor analysis to better understand how other job platforms approached the job search experience, including the length of job descriptions. My focus was on surfacing the most important information in a clear and concise manner, while also understanding how we can differentiate ourselves through our unique features.
User Flow
Additionally, users that land directly on the vacancy page often come from Google Jobs and don't know much about Breakroom.
To help onboard them into the "Breakroom experience", I suggested that we make it easier for users to understand how our extra features, such as Breakroom quiz findings, employer rating, employee reviews, and pay data, can translate into an insider view of a workplace.
Breakroom insights
To make it clear which information is provided by the employer and which is based on data findings, I introduced a new "Breakroom insights" section.
Breakroom Rating
We also decided to shift the employer rating lower on the page so that it is not dominating other findings about the company. This change was made based on the belief that every job has the potential to be a good one, and people have different priorities and expectations.
Finally, to help users find jobs that could be a better fit, I introduced "sideways journeys", which show lists of jobs that are better rated and/or better paid. By implementing these changes, we are confident that we can help users get the most out of their job search experience on Breakroom, making it more likely that they will return to our platform to find their next job.
Sideways journeys
Success metrics
We have taken an iterative approach to improving the user experience on our website, with a focus on making smaller, faster changes while closely monitoring user behaviour. Based on our analysis, we have observed several positive outcomes.
Firstly, we have seen an increase in the amount of time users spend on the page, indicating that they are taking more time to scan through and read the information.
Additionally, there has been an increase in scrollability and a decrease in the bounce rate.
Most importantly, we have seen an increase in the number of users who have applied to more than one job on our site, indicating that our introduction of sideways journeys has successfully contributed to increasing user retention.
By providing users with a list of jobs that are better rated and/or better paid, we are helping them find jobs that are a better fit for them, which ultimately results in a more satisfied and engaged user base.
For confidentiality reasons I have omitted some of the details of this project.
