Background Context

In 2022, The Student Hub decided to build a recruitment platform to help TVET students find entry-level jobs in South Africa. During the design process, we quickly realized that students needed to give their consent for us to assist them in finding employment and that the success of the platform relied on the students inputting their personal information. We determined that students would need to opt-in to receive job opportunities and create a basic Curriculum Vitae through our learning platform. The final output should be simple and attractive to recruiters, motivating them to engage with the students and hire them.

The professional Profile

The first step was to create awareness about this opportunity and to design a place where our students would opt-in seamlessly and update their professional profiles. We decided that the students were going to join the recruitment portal by simply activating a toggle in the professional profile and accepting therefor our terms and conditions.
In order to get them to the professional profile inside the learning platform we would direct them step by step with a few tooltips.
Here are a few screens representing my design solution for the tooltip flow.

Data Analysis

Thanks to the BI team, after one month from launching the new feature, we’ve noticed that the amount of students showing interest and activating the green toggle was growing, however the students weren’t completing their professional-profiles for some reasons.

As you can see in the table above, out of 84 students who opted-in, only 30% completed their 'about me' paragraphs and almost none of them completed the remaining sections of their professional profiles, so we decided to investigate further.

User Interviews

In order to better understand why our students were not completing their professional profiles, we decided to reach out and ask them a few questions about their experience with the platform. We selected five students who had not completed their profiles and prepared a set of questions for them, including:

• How do you feel about receiving placement opportunities through the learning platform? Why?
• In your opinion, what can you do to improve your chances of getting contacted by recruiters through the learning platform?
• We noticed that you haven't completed your professional profile yet. Why is that? What difficulties have you encountered while completing your profile?

I immediately noticed that there was a genuine excitement about this new feature: all these students responded and showed interest without needing an incentive, as we often do to get users' attention.

After conducting the interviews, we realized that there was a visibility issue, and students did not know how to access the professional profile after opting in. Additionally, some students believed that simply activating the toggle was enough to increase their chances of getting a job through the platform.

WE REALIZED THAT WE NEEDED TO BE MORE SPECIFIC ABOUT THE REQUIREMENTS FOR IMPROVING THEIR CHANCES OF GETTING HIRED.

Design Solution

Vusi and I organised a workshop were we brainstormed together some solutions to improve the visibility of the professional profile and to lead the users to complete all the input fields required.
We both had an idea of how we could solve the problem: Vusi wanted to design a guide/manual where we would teach and suggest users how to write a CV effectively; I thought about a concept that I named the Employability Score and that I will describe in the following paragraph.

Employability Score

The employability score is a method of providing students with visual feedback on their likelihood of being employed. The feedback consists of a progress bar that shows how many points they have earned based on how much of their professional profile they have completed. This score will determine their visibility on the employer's portal we have designed.

With a small tooltip we inform the students that:
A HIGHER EMPLOYABILITY SCORE WILL RANK THEM HIGHER IN THE RECRUITMENT PORTAL.

Here’s how students will be seen in the employer’s portal:

The student with the heights score will appear on top of the employers list.

The progress bar

The progress bar becomes visible in the student’s platform as soon as they activate the toggle for receiving job opportunities. Once the progress bar appears, it starts from red and gradually turns to orange and then to green as the user completes their professional profile and scores well.

How to get to 100 points Employability Score.

We have established that having an about me paragraph gives 25 points to the students. Adding work and volunteer experience gives 10 points, practical projects give 8 points, an academic transcript gives 13 points, a letter of recommendation gives 9 points, and so on.

Error message

In the professional profile, I have added an error status to the input fields that need to be completed in order to reach a total of 100 points. My intention was to draw the attention of our students to these incomplete fields as soon as they land on the professional profile page.

Professional Profile’s Guide

In order to help the students complete their professional profile and to help them create a competitive CV, we decided to create a url for a page where we explain them how to complete the professional profile and give them practical examples of how to create a successful profile.

Risks and Conclusion

In conclusion, both designs have been implemented and we have seen a slight increase in opt-ins and profile completions.

However, we need to be cautious about the employability score and how it may be perceived by our students. It is important to clarify that reaching 100 points does not guarantee immediate job placement.
Therefore, we may need to make it slightly more challenging to reach 100 points initially to manage expectations. This will allow us to work towards a future stage where all students who reach the highest score will have a greater chance of automatic job placement.