How can IBMers have a smart and assistive experience discovering their next (internal) job opportunity and envisioning their career?
Role: UX Researcher and Designer
Advisors :
Team:
"There were many people who just gave a one liner saying the person does not have the
required skills."
"...You cannot automate networking..."
"...IBM complicates things, there's got to be a better way"
Secondary Research (Search Questions)
Primary Research – User Interviews
Contextual Enquiry
with sponsor users comprising of IBM employees, external employees, hiring managers and talent acquisition partners, managers, accessibility partners.
Cognitive Walk-thorough
to understand the awareness, navigation and visibility of the yourCareers portal
Key Insight
If employees believe their current organization is failing to recognize their value, make career paths more visible to them, and make sure employees feel you are investing in them, they’ll stay.
We want internally job seeking (WHO) IBMers to
be surfaced with relevant job opportunities (WHAT)
to make moving within IBM easier than moving out (WOW)
About
4 Years @ IBM
Software Developer
Values
Compensation
Company Reputation
Career Development
Flexibility
Francine is ready to explore new opportunities. They feel unengaged in their current roles. They start looking for opportunities internally within IBM before looking outside.
Francine has begun their internal job search leveraging tools like GOM and Your Career at IBM. However, they are met with many technical difficulties and clunky experiences.
Francine also receives job recommendations via email, and finds them exciting but most are not representative of her current job role needs - especially around location and skill level. She feels like the algorithm is restrictive - and doesn't provide much flexibility.
After a long struggle, Francine was able to find a couple of jobs to apply to, however, there were no updates and feedback on the status of their application.
After a while, Francine finally receives an update on their applications. They were rejected from each job and not given any useful information on why they was turned down. Francine is now 2x more likely to leave IBM.
Francine turned to the external job marketplace and within a few weeks they received and accepted a job offer.
Francine needs a way to have opportunities surfaced to them so that they can find the best job for them internally.
Francine needs a way to be able to link their interests and skills so that they can evaluate and be matched with the next position
From the Watson Recruitment research we now understand that the current recommendation is based on role and location. These four categories are same role-same location, same role-similar location, similar role-same location, and desired role-similar location.
31% of IBMers identified as being satisfied with the current job recommendation emails from IBM. (n=16)
"I can only go through 7-8 applications
and most aren't relevant."
-Sponsor User 3
"I don't know if the job posting
is outdated or not"
-Sponsor User 6
IBM's research on 'Social Listening' explains using user's interests and focus areas by understanding any initiatives they take on online platforms. For IBMer's internal use it’s IBM's YourLearning and YourCareers pages. We could utilise the data we can get from these pages. Skills from the Expertise Section, Strength in skills by the courses they take, and so on. We also took the best examples from other platforms like LinkedIn's 'Search Personalisation'.
One of the main concerns with job recommendation is the lack of skill match. It is not just an information the IBMers need. It’s a parameter that other companies LinkedIn and Google use to match relevance of a job postings. Not just that but, thousands of IBmers are upskilling themselves on YourLearning. They need their upskilling effort to reflect in the growth opportunities they receive.
"Unfortunately,
the vast, vast majority of recommendations I get
do not even match my skill set."
-Sponsor User 2
"My upskilling effort is not reflected in the job opportunities I receive." -Sponsor User 7
"How do I find opportunities outside of my existing job ladder?"
-Sponsor User 8
From asking IBMers to card sort parameters they look for and prioritise during job search, we found out, that ‘new opportunities’, ‘roles’ and ‘responsibilities’ are what IBMers seek when looking for a growth opportunity.
When searching for new job opportunities, IBMers are prioritizing for new challenges and growth potential for their careers.
IBMers rank skills as one of the top 3 information they would like to see in a job posting
IBMers view career growth as getting promotions, increasing scope of work, and the ability to apply their skills to new domains.
Our Users Can..
Cupcake Journey
Birthday Cake Journey
Wedding Cake Journey
Job Preferences Overview
Francine would be able to enter Your Career as an entry point in the dropdown menu and be able to click into the explore page. When she lands on the explore page, she would be greeted with the job recommendations tab and be able to navigate to a tab called job preferences to set filters that would impact the algorithm to present her recommended jobs that are relevant to her goals and values.
Step 1 – Entry point
Your Career at IBM
Step 2
Explore page
Step 3
Job preferences tab
UI Overview
When Francine clicks on the job preferences tab she would be able to turn on email preferences, get a high level overview of her filters set. Their filter would be organized in categories by cards and they would have an option to clear and save their editted filters. Upon doing important actions, they would be given feedback through modals and notification toasts.
Card Filtering
When Francine looks at their card filters, they would be able to see the card description which details the category information. They can see their filters sorted by colour to help them differentiate between the filters.
When Francine wants to add filters, they can choose to search and add filters through a multi-select modal or choose to be recommended filters.
Adding Filters
After getting a quick overview of the site, Francine can now go in and begin setting their filters. By setting filters, they will have more flexibility and control over the job recommendations they receive by searching and adding their desired filters. They now receive more relevant recommendations that aligns with their goals and values.
Checking recommended
They can also be assisted by checking the recommended filters the system has for her based on her profile in Your Career.
Turning on emails
In addition, Francine can choose to opt into receiving job recommendation updates daily, weekly or monthly by switching her email updates toggle on. A notification toast will pop up to provide her feedback if the emails are successfully turned on or not.
