In January 2020, the Administrative Advisory Council on campus sent the Staff and Admin Employment office the following request:
“The process to fill out an application to apply for a job on campus on Y-Jobs is extremely frustrating and not user friendly. My concern is that BYU is missing quality candidates for open positions because it is such a frustrating process to fill out a simple application.”
In interviewing the heads of student, staff, and faculty hiring, we discovered the common pain points for the application process with the main one being the redundancy in the questions. The types of jobs were scattered among several sites; consolidating the multiple Y-Jobs sites into one main job board would decrease searching and application frustration.
We asked users: “What do you look for the most when looking for a job?”
85%
respondents said pay was important when looking for a job
55%
reported shift flexibility
53%
job description
department (5%)
was the least important factor
1/3
of current filter column is taken by "Department" category
The least important factor for job searchers was department, with only 5% saying that it was important. Looking at the current search page for the website, this completely flips the current design on it’s head. Over ⅓ of the current filter column is taken up by “Filter by department” and that is vital real estate that could be used elsewhere.
The job board itself created a large bulk of difficulty for potential employees. Its layout was not user friendly. When updating the job board to match the look of BYU, I wanted to adjust the UI to match the user's needs.
A tricky aspect of the application process was that it was different depending on the type of job the user was applying to- a faculty job had immensely more legal and qualifying questions than a student job would. I had to collaborate between the heads of faculty, staff, and student hiring to find a solution to the application process that solved all the shareholder’s needs.
As for the application process, we broke down the common categories that each application used: A section for personal information, legal disclosures, and resume/job history. Using breadcrumbs to track the user’s process through the application, the user would know how much was left of their application and not feel frustrated with each new collection of questions they would receive- a common complaint we heard.
While the Y-Jobs design did not launch, to track success and impact, I would have monitored the following: