Improving the Experience of Job Search and Job Application Track

Linkedin is the go to platform for hiring talents and finding jobs. As of December 2023, LinkedIn had 330 million users, effectively bridging the gap between job seekers and recruiters.

However it has a lot of scope for making the user experience better for recruiters and job seekers. In this case study I will explain how I improved the linkedin job search and job application tracking experience.

The problem can be divided in 2 parts ‘Before applying for a job’ and ‘After applying for a job’.

A cluttered UI for the job description.

No information about the hiring process.

No information about the team with which candidate would be working with.

It will be fixed by making the changes in the recruiter’s user flow for posting a job.

Step 1 for the recruiter is adding the job description.

Limiting the characters for each input field and having different input field for different information would make it easy for the applicant to scan this information.

Step 2 for the recruiter is about adding the screening questions. I have not made any changes to that, so moving on to the next step.

Step 3 for the recruiter will be adding the information about salary range, team members and skills.

Step 4 for the recruiter would be adding the details about the interview rounds and recruiting team.

Recruiter can select the mode of interview depending on the interview round.

In the hiring process multiple people might be involved in the recruitment process. Therefore, I created an option for recruiters to add several team members from their team.

The recruiter can grant either edit or view access to others. Those with view access can only see the status of the applicants, while those with edit access can make changes to it.

I will discuss more about it later in the case study.

Now let us see how this will change the job description page for the applicant who is applying for the job.

Below that they can see rest of the information related to the job, which is shown in the current UI of Linkedin.

1. No way to know the status of their job application.

2. Lack of communication between the recruiter and applicant.

1. No way to keep track of applicant’s interview process.

2. No way to communicate internally between the recruiting team.

First let us see the solution for checking the job application status. Currently there are two ways in which a candidate can apply to a job through Linkedin

1. Easy apply

2. Through website  

For the applicant to check their status, recruiter should be able to update the applicant’s status.

Currently the recruiter can only see the details about candidate’s past experience and their resume.

In the new design recruiter can also see all the information about the interview rounds and keep a track of the stage of the applicant.

Let us take a closer look at the new design.

Rather than showing all the details I have put a ‘See more’ button, so that recruiter don’t have to scroll a lot to check other information about the applicant.

Another problem was lack of communication between the recruiter and the applicant.

So I added a section where recruiter can add any text or document related to the interview round.

The recruiter can change the status of the applicant while conducting the interview rounds. It will have 3 stages: Pending, Ongoing, Complete. 

While posting the job, recruiter had added the people who are involved in the recruitment process. Those who have the edit access can change the status of the interview rounds.

If the candidate has completed all the interview rounds and team has decided to hire him, than they will have an option to send an offer letter. Clicking on ‘Send offer letter’ will open the email.

Let us start with the ‘My Job’ page, the first change will be in the tabs.

It will have 2 new tabs, Easy Apply and Through Website. ‘Easy Apply’ will have jobs where they have applied through ‘Easy Apply’ and ‘Through Website’ will have the jobs where the applicants have applied directly from the company website.

On the job detail page the applicant can see the status of their interview rounds. They can see any information and document provided by recruiter for the interview round.

If the candidate is already selected for a different job they can opt out of the interview process so that recruiter can remove the applicant from their hiring process.

For this jobs it is not possible to keep a track on Linkedin but, depending on where they are in the interview process, candidate can change the status themselves and keep a track of different interview rounds.

For better user experience for the applicant, the recruiter will be informed when they don’t update status for more then 2 weeks.

If they want to reject the applicant they can reject them by providing the reason.

The applicant can see this in their job activity status.

Recruiters can communicate internally while hiring.

But being able to communicate separately about each candidate is important for making the recruitment process easy.

This can be done by having a chat feature where they discuss everything about that candidate.

So that was all about improving the job searching and job tracking process for applicants and recruiters on Linkedin.