Job Today
Reshaping how Job Seekers and Employers Connect
When I joined Job Today, I recognized the need to redefine our user goals. The primary focus was on monetizing chat unlocks. However, we faced challenges in demonstrating the value to users, which hindered our ability to break into the US market. The primary issues I helped identify through an audit of the Job Today experience were:
1
Lack of trust
We were not building trust between job seekers and employers
2
Low Re-engagement
We were not re-engaging users once they left Job Today
3
Limited Connection Opportunities
We were not providing more opportunities for Job Seekers and employers to connect.
These challenges were just scratching the surface.
I wanted to hear from our users, so I created a system to gather regular user feedback that anyone at the company could leverage.
I got insights from employers like Ana,
and job seekers like D'wayne and brought them into the conversations we were having.
Both employers and job seekers shared a common goal.
Reaching the interview stage
For many small business employers targeted by Job Today and the job seekers we engaged with, it often only took a brief conversation to determine if the role was a good fit for them. However, the current version of the app fell short in effectively presenting job seekers to employers or employers to job seekers.
To address these challenges, we formulated a hypothesis:
Our hypothesis
We can quickly get users to the interview by building trust between job seekers and employers, and offering a wider array of ways for job seekers and employers to connect.
Our pivot towards a more realistic goal—connecting job seekers and employers in a trustworthy way for interviews—was a game-changer.
This shift prompted us to ask critical questions such as “What information would a job seeker need to secure an interview?” and “How could we facilitate different types of interviews beyond chat conversations?” These questions led to the creation of clear objectives for users entering Job Today.
With this foundation and a refined focus, I collaborated with leadership to implement experiments in re-engagement, trust-building, and connection opportunities across short, mid, and long-term timelines.
Short Term: Re-engage
I designed the notification center for reengaging both job seekers and employers. Additionally, it helped show that Job Today is an active marketplace. This increased weekly job seeker and employer returns by ~20%.
Mid-Term: Building Trust
Next I worked on the concept of skill clips. This was a “show, don’t tell” approach to building trust. Providing job seekers with a space to showcase job relevant skills. This concept was implemented in a paired down version as “about me” videos that were placed on user’s profiles.
Even in the first pass of this as “About me videos”, some users were starting to use it as an opportunity to show off their skills like this job seeker did:
Long-Term - More opportunities to connect
This is the most robust area of exploration and experimentation I did towards our effort to demonstrate our value proposition early on, and offer a wider array of ways for job seekers and employers to connect. Collaborating with leadership, we explored novel ways like instant interviews and help wanted signs, all aimed at facilitating that crucial first conversation between job seekers and employers. This led to us setting a vision to be a marketplace where you can make those crucial connections quickly.
Bring Your Own Candidates (BYOC)
BYOC was the most novel concept I worked on at Job Today. I designed and worked with marketing to print our own “Help Wanted” signs with a reverse side that said “Not Currently Hiring”. We worked with our field sales people to offer these signs to employers they were pitching and current clients they were checking in on. When an employer took a sign and hung it up, we activated the QR Code on the sign. Any candidates who left an application through that QR code were free for the employer to chat with. In two months we had 6 signs posted in New York.
Open Interviews - Pilot 1
I ran my first pilot for this concept with a coffee shop that was situated in a hotel. They were looking to hire a barista. The process was very manual, but of the 152 qualified job seekers I messaged the day before the open call, 7 showed up to interview and 1 was chosen to move forward. See full slide deck for pilot results.
“Scheduling the interview was pleasantly easy and stress free.”
— Job Seeker feedback, after Open Call pilot
Instant Interviews via voice and video
This was an update and rebranding of existing functionality. The idea was to surface the ability to conduct voice and video calls as a quick way to connect and have that first phone screen interview with candidates.
Arranged MVP
This was next on the backlog when I left Job Today. The idea was to add structured data around conversations that were already happening in chat by providing quick actions to select a date and time to invite job seekers to an interview. This would allow us to send reminders to job seekers, and hopefully increase chances of them showing for the interview.
Building a North Star
The target a team chooses to focus on deeply influences how they think about the work they are doing
In our quest to generate and test concepts that would connect job seekers and employers in a trustworthy way for interviews, our efforts started to get muddled, and, as a team, we were losing sight of the bigger picture. We needed to step back and prioritize to move forward.
To determine our priorities, a lead engineer, the CEO/Founder, the VP of Product, our head of design, and I met in New York. I put together a brainstorming session and mockups to facilitate our conversation. Over two days we worked together to create a simple North Star focused on connecting job seekers and employers to interview.
Our new roadmap from the workshop included all the work I had already done related to the different interview features - asynchronous, instant, arranged, and open calls, as well as, an updated flow to guid employers to the type of job posting they needed to use based on their urgency to fill their open role.
Test & Launch
Open Calls Pilot round 2 and MVP
After our alignment in New York, engineering worked to implement the changes to the Employer job posting flow and I led a second round of Open Calls pilots to validate this form of job seeker and employer connection. Collaborating with field sales, I ran 3 open call pilots in a very manual way, similar to the first pilot I ran. Job seekers showed up to interview at all 3 open calls, and 1 of the 3 double confirmed (both job seeker and hiring manager) a successful hire.
The top learnings were (see full deck):
A role can be “hard to fill” for different reasons
- Location of business is hard for job seekers to get to
- Role is specialized in some way so there is a lower number of people who are available to fill the role in general
- Employer is looking for something specific in a market of job seekers that already has a low supply
Our target should be low volume and high urgency
The employers in our pilots were urgently seeking a relatively low volume of candidates that are nearby for difficult to fill roles.
Current market solutions are focused on high volume hiring. Many don"t offer a talent pool to source from, and are simply software solutions for managing and promoting your event.
This service fit a sweet spot
Of all the different ways we were exploring to help employers and job seekers quickly connect in a human way, this one was the only one that fit the matrix of “hard to fill role” and “high urgency to hire”. This is because for these types of roles, often times showing up to the interview is the interview. Those who were willing to show up, were often the best fit for the job.
Scaling from pilot to MVP
I had just finished working with engineering to automate pieces of the job seeker invitation as I left Job Today. Automating these pieces would allow me to scale from these very manual pilots that were time consuming to something that was lighter weight, but still easy to run manually. There were two goals for the MVP to determine success:
- See if we could scale to one Open Call a week in the New York City area
- Target an average successful hire rate of 60%.
Re-Engaging: Company Discovery
The last thing I worked on that was implemented as I was leaving was Company Discovery. The idea for this particular feature was to have a continuous way to re-engage employers and job seekers on Job Today in the background. Even if these employers were not actively hiring, we would surface their company to job seekers in the job discovery feed for job seekers to follow. The feed could be accessed from the map view, job alerts email, job feed, and a notification center notification. If the employer posted a job, we would be able to re-engage job seekers, and by showing activity in the Job Today marketplace, we could re-engage employers.
Reflections & Learnings
The sum is more important than the parts
When I arrived at Job Today they were a well established chat app in the Spain and UK markets. As I transitioned away from Job Today, they were gaining their footing in the US market and transforming into the best place to go to quickly connect with employers and job seekers nearby for an interview.
I left behind a roadmap filled with trust-building features to quickly connect employers and job seekers for the interview. These features will hopefully lay the groundwork for Job Today's continued success in bridging job seekers and employers, ultimately transforming how people find and fill job opportunities.
