Addressing a major pain-point faced by job-seekers while using LinkedIn -Product Improvement Series-Post#1

Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

Over the last few years, LinkedIn has become an indispensable tool for millions of job-seekers around the world for finding suitable employment opportunities, more so in the present times of Covid-19. However, it lacks a key feature that can make the job search experience disappointing for many applicants. Millions of users depend on LinkedIn for seeking employment opportunities, and by the end of this write-up, I shall demonstrate that addressing this issue would not only provide a better user experience but will also add a positive impact on the platform’s engagement metrics. The write-up is structured in the following manner:

1. The Problem
2. How would it impact the job-seekers?
3. How would it impact the recruiters?
4. Recommended solutions to the problem
5. User Journey- before and after
6. What kind of data and metrics do we need to validate the problem?
7. Conclusion

The Problem

Say, you are looking for a particular type of job, e.g., “Data Analyst”. You log in to LinkedIn and type in “Data analyst jobs” on the search bar. After scrolling through the results, you click on the ones that interest you. Since it is the beginning of the week, you decide to “SAVE” the job post for checking back on weekends and applying for the same in the future after prepping up your resume and cover letter.

What next?

The weekend arrives that gives you much-needed time to go through the saved job posts. However, when you go back to LinkedIn to apply for the postings you added on the “Saved Jobs” list, you are left surprised with what you see:

The expiration of posts serves as a feature of the job postings package offered by LinkedIn that forms as a part of its business model. However, the problem lies somewhere else:

The user is not notified about the expiration/in-activeness of the job post. The user remains unaware of this change in job posting status till he browses the ‘SAVED ITEMS’.

It is certainly not a good experience a user would like to go through, because due to lack of information, he lost a prospective opportunity that could have turned out to be his new job .

How would the problem impact the job-seekers?

The sole workaround for this problem that is available with the user is to check the saved lists repeatedly, again and again. It causes dissatisfaction in the user, which could gradually lead to disengagement with the LinkedIn platform if he repeatedly misses the deadline of job posts without knowledge. (It is possible, that today you save 5 jobs, and tomorrow all those 5 jobs expire.)

How would the problem impact the recruiters?

Lesser exposure to qualifying candidates by losing out on those who couldn’t apply, which in turn, limits the size of the accessible talent pool. This could lead them to move to other competitor offerings.

When I discussed this problem with one of my peers, he mentioned that the same job posts are sometimes re-posted again fresh. But is the applicant notified to re-apply when the same job is ‘re-posted’? No, that doesn’t happen either.

Recommended Solutions

One or both of the following approaches can be considered:

1. LinkedIn sends an automated email and an app notification at-least a day or two before the job expiration date.
2. LinkedIn sends an automated email and an app notification to the applicant the moment the job posting gets expired.

The purpose of notifications for respective cases would be to:

1. Warn the applicant to hurry up before the posting expires by letting him know the deadline. LinkedIn does have a feature to mail a “reminder” to apply for a job saved but it doesn’t “communicate” the deadline of the posting. Both these call-to actions are very different and exert opposite levels of urgency.

Ok! I will check it later!

2. Encourage the applicant to keep searching for similar jobs if the posting has expired already.

User Journey for saving job posts– in the present scenario

User Journey for saving job posts– proposed solution

Validation of the problem

Users can experience many difficulties while using the product, but not every issue can be given the same priority for solving at the same time. Therefore, it is important to check how prevalent the problem is. In our case, it can be done by tracking m-o-m user engagement metrics and establishing up instrumentation strategy to collect the relevant data.

The user engagement metrics can be decided based upon the following user journey funnel (in a brief form):

1-login > 2-search > 3-view job > 4-save job > 5-apply for the job

[Note: There are many ways to arrive at the job post, for e.g., through news feed, message, social media post, etc. This post discusses the user journey through only search path.]

Not every login would result in submitting a job application, therefore, it is important to check the user journey funnel drop-off rate:

User Journey Funnel

Following metrics can be used to track User Engagement for job saving and application processes:

• # jobs applied without Saving
• # jobs applied after Saving
• # saved jobs viewed before submitting an application
• # saved jobs applied / # unsaved jobs applied

These metrics inherently, therefore, would be useful to track the impact or usefulness of the “Save” job feature for users of LinkedIn:

1. If # of saved jobs Viewed before submitting an application is very low, it might indicate that users are not visiting the saved lists, which ultimately defeats the purpose of saving/bookmarking. The lesser they visit the saved lists, lesser would be utilization of the “Save” feature.
2. If # jobs applied after saving / # jobs applied without saving is very low, it might indicate that the users are not saving the jobs at all which means lesser usage of the feature.

Metrics for tracking the Email/App Notification feature before job expiry

User Journey Funnel with Notification feature

The user journey after implementing the notification feature would be as follows (in brief form):

1-Login > 2-Search > 3- View Job > 4-Save Job > Receive Notification > Open Notification > Log –in back to LinkedIn > Apply for the job

The following metrics can be used to track the user engagement rate:

• #users opening the notification mail
• #users logging into LinkedIn from the notification mail

The following metric can be used to track the conversion rate from job-saving to job-application:

# users who applied for Saved jobs after notification

Vs

# users who applied for Saved jobs before notification

Conclusion

• Instrumenting a relevant strategy to increase the use of the “Save” feature would encourage the users to view more jobs and save more postings.
• Adding the notification feature would alert the users, which would, in turn, encourage them to use the app more.
• The more the users come to the app after a warning of job expiration, the more no. of applications they would be able to submit.
• The higher the no. of applications, the bigger would be the size of the accessible talent pool for the recruiters.