Personal Recruiter Onboarding

Personal Recruiter Onboarding

ZipRecruiter, 2022

ZipRecruiter, 2022

ZipRecruiter, 2022

Creating a personalized onboarding experience to better understand job seekers

Creating a personalized onboarding experience to better understand job seekers

Creating a personalized onboarding experience to better understand job seekers

About

The Personal Recruiter Onboarding project introduced a highly personalized experience to better capture the diverse preferences and needs of job seekers.

As the design lead, I guided the project from initial concept to successful implementation, focusing on a multi-touch journey that ensured users felt supported and understood from the start.

This approach resulted in a 1.45x increase in registrations and a 1.33x increase in job seekers with valid profiles, demonstrating the effectiveness of user-centric design in enhancing engagement and profile quality.

Role

UI/UX design

Visual design

User research

Prototyping

Timeline

May — July 2022

Challenge

In the early days of a job seeker’s journey, we have limited opportunities to understand their needs.

In the early days of a job seeker’s journey, we have limited opportunities to understand their needs.

ZipRecruiter Onboarding (2021)

ZipRecruiter Onboarding (2021)

Registration required without any value

Registration required without any value

40% of users dropped off from this step

40% of users dropped off from this step

Limited job search urgency options

Limited job search urgency options

Overwhelming profile creation

Overwhelming profile creation

We recognized the onboarding flow as a crucial opportunity to collect valuable information about job seekers while also building positive connections from the beginning. Thus, our goal became clear: to create an intuitive and personalized onboarding journey that understands each job seeker's unique needs and aspirations.

Identify unmet user needs

We met 32 job seekers across the U.S to uncover what made users feel confident or uncertain during their job search and identify areas where our onboarding was falling short.

We met 32 job seekers across the U.S to uncover what made users feel confident or uncertain during their job search and identify areas where our onboarding was falling short.

Collaborated with the UX researcher, conducting interviews with job seekers in the U.S. representing diverse segments

Collaborated with the UX researcher, conducting interviews with job seekers in the U.S. representing diverse segments

Through this research, two behavioral traits emerged as crucial indicators.

Specificity

How clearly users knew what kind of job they wanted

Familiarity

How comfortable they felt navigating the job search

Based on these two traits, we identified four user archetypes. One group in particular, Archetype 4, with low specificity and low familiarity stood out as the most underserved. These users often felt overwhelmed and unsure about how to move forward, and our existing onboarding flow didn’t offer the support they needed.

Together, this qualitative and quantitative insight helped us connect the dots.

✔️ A significant portion of our users were uncertain and exploratory.
✔️ Our current onboarding did little to guide or support them.

Goals

Design a personalized and supportive onboarding flow that drives more sign-ups, better profiles, and strong job matches

Design a personalized and supportive onboarding flow that drives more sign-ups, better profiles, and strong job matches

We aligned around a key user need: to feel guided and supported in moments of uncertainty.

Design highlights

I developed a multi-touch onboarding journey to engage job seekers, understand their preferences and motivations, and effectively convey ZipRecruiter’s value.

I developed a multi-touch onboarding journey to engage job seekers, understand their preferences and motivations, and effectively convey ZipRecruiter’s value.

Introduce ‘Phil,’ a virtual personal recruiter that provides a human touch and ongoing support throughout the job seeker’s journey.

Tailored to different job seekers’ needs, with specific job seekers answering quick questions about job title and location, while exploratory seekers share skills and interests for dynamic career suggestions.

Job seekers receive valuable insights into the job market such as available jobs, employers, and pay ranges, helping them understand the job market and appreciate ZipRecruiter’s value, fostering trust.

We ask job seekers for their minimum pay expectation and provide average pay data to help them set realistic salary goals.

Job seekers’ preferences are refined by presenting real job options based on their initial answers, ensuring a more tailored and accurate job search experience.

Results

The MVP launch of the Personal Recruiter Onboarding was our most successful user registration experiment to date:

The MVP launch of the Personal Recruiter Onboarding was our most successful user registration experiment to date:

+45%

+45%

increase in registrations

+72%

+72%

increase in valid profiles

+60%

+60%

increase in first 7-day activity

Following the MVP launch, the onboarding experience has been iterated, improved, and remains the primary registration source at ZipRecruiter, providing greater understanding of users from the early stages.