With over 500 Million users and revenue of $1.1 billion, LinkedIn is one of the widely used websites by every student, business and IT professional. According to the early 2018 statistics

40 million students and recent college graduates are on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn now has 3 million active job listings on the platform.

on the platform. 44% of Linked users earn more than $75,000 in a year.

Percentage of users that use Linkedin Daily: 40%

Yes, these are all big numbers and this is because of the global reach and its daily use. Right from Job listings and Company search to InMail messages , Introductions , References, Skill endorsements, the portal also provides Network suggestions, Lead builder (premium feature), Sales alerts (premium feature) and Reference search (premium feature).

Many of us, both students and employees are in a constant search for jobs. On an average, a person who is out in the market looking for a job applies to 30–40 jobs in a day. Linkedin provides a lot of features for job search and communication, but there are few things which it misses. Obviously, a single portal cannot do it all.

Some of the many things involved here and many apps which we use for Job Search are listed below:

Job Search : Linkedin/Indeed,

: Linkedin/Indeed, Application Tracking : Google Sheets, Notes,

: Google Sheets, Notes, Interviews & Alerts : Reminders/Alarms,

: Reminders/Alarms, Communication: Email/Phone and many more.

Because, these are such time-consuming tasks and it sometimes frustrates the user , I thought of conceptualizing an app and brainstormed with many students and employees who are using linkedin, the process to make the app better. I envision Linkedin to more as shown below :

To understand the process better, I will show and go through the workflow of the current Linkedin Jobs App and how users do things when they apply to jobs and track, list out what’s not user friendly about the elements present and then provide my version of the redesign to improve the app’s usability and suggest new features which might please the user. These feature suggestions might change the entire game of Recruiting process. Let’s dive in. ( at least that’s what I hope so..)

Process

User Research

So, the process started like this. Since most of us face this common problem I tried to take it to the social platform and was fascinated to see the number of comments and messages i received on the article about the design flaws of linkedin apps. I selected 18 out of all the users such that everyone is covered ( young , old , employees , students , male , female, local , international) . I have started off by creating a survey with 25 structured questions. Then this was followed by direct interaction with the potential users ( few of them whom I met and few other through video interviews ) . I tried to understand and listed out all the problems which they were facing and noted down the things which needed to be retained.

A few stats during the process of redesign

User Comments

Personas

Based on hearing to different stories and comments, I came up with 2 User Persona, one would be the employee/student whose ultimate goals are most likely the same when they use linkedin. The second persona would be the recruiter. I created the profiles, their mission statement, end goals and frustrations to better understand the user.

User Persona 1 — Applicant

User Persona 2 — Recruiter

Data Analysis & Workflow Diagram

I have received lots of opinions, comments, and suggestions and every participant in the study were facing some common issues but never complained. So, I grouped and sorted the entire data based on techniques like card sorting. It was much better to perform design on grouped data and it helped me to easily create the information architecture.

After going through the user comments, I tried to analyze as a user the current scenario in the case of applying for jobs and the post-application process and was found many cases in the workflow where a lot of time is being wasted and there can be a room for improvement. For better understanding, I made a workflow of the current scenario ( the image below) which gives you the flaws or time taking action ( the blocks in red ) in the application and interview process.

Workflow Diagrams

Since I have come up with the current usability flaws with the system I started to think of ideas to make the flow better. I have brainstormed and started sketching simultaneously at the same time to come up with some features which would delight the users a lot. Here is a list of features at a superficial view. I will dig deeper when I get to the actual screens. Also, you can see the sketches I had initially with different designs and how I came up with a final design.

Feature Prioritization

Dashboard Designs

Interviews designs

Wireframes

After several iterations of quick sketches, i proceeded further to create wireframes using Balsamiq Mockups to get a sample look and understand the flow between screens . Here are the screens created.