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Similar Profiles

When recruiters exhaust the main candidate search experience they can view candidates with similar qualifications that might be a good fit for their open position.

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PROBLEM STATEMENT

Every Monday is the start of a new batch of candidates for Recruiters to evaluate and send an interview request to. The main search experience has be optimized to surface the profiles that are not only likely to respond but also match the filters the set for their position search. Once they exhaust all the candidates they feel are a match, they exit the platform until they receive a response or until the following Monday for a new batch of candidates to review. 

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During some data analysis, we also realized that the same ~10% candidates were receiving almost all of the interview requests, while the remaining on the platform were receiving little to none. It's not that these candidates didn't have the qualifications, but because of the nature of the search experience they were being filtered out and would be qualified otherwise. 

SOLUTION

The Similar Candidates POC experience surfaces the candidates who receive less interview requests and are otherwise qualified for the recruiter's open position. They might not meet all of the search filters, but according to user interviews I conducted there were a handful of attributes Recruiters consider when thinking about similar candidates:

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  1. Technical skills – these are non-negotiable and required in order to do the job required. Also less flexible with Hiring Managers

  2. Location – the nature of their business and culture have restrictions on where employees could work

  3. Compensation – budgets are tight and often set from the beginning of a position search, however they were willing to see candidates slightly below but not above their compensation target

  4. Role type & years of experience – candidates can input these two data points when creating a profile. When a recruiter views this and compensation together it tells them a lot about the candidate and if they are worth evaluating further.

  5. Work experience – recruiters always want to know the candidate's current experience to inform them of their position but also industry and company size. 

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  1. Each candidate profile comes with 5 recommended similar candidates based on the attributes listed above. When clicking on a Candidate's name, their profile opens up in a new tab. We found that this is a common task recruiters do on competitive sites such as LinkedIn. 
     

  2. While observing users on FullStory, they typically would scroll down to the sections Experience & Roles and Work Experience. We found that this was the optimal spot to surface these recommendations. This also instilled some extra trust in the recommendations because they saw that the attributes of the recommended candidate matched the current profile.
     

  3. One of the challenges with this POC was to build trust with recruiters and to optimize the experience for clicks. Highlighting the matched skills, compensation, and location at the top created the trust that these candidates match all of these non-negotiable qualifications. which led to more profile views. surfacing the matched skills, compensation, and location 
     

  4. I conducted usability testing with 3 different designs (all of which had the same data). The highlighted qualifications stood out the most, as this was an existing pattern they became used to seeing on Hired. They also liked seeing the compensation, role type, and years of experience & work experience to entice them to click in for more information.

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