Search for candidates within add-on interface, credit: Indeed

Overview

Indeed is the #1 job site in the world with over 300M unique visitors every month. Indeed strives to put job seekers first, giving them free access to search for jobs, post resumes, and research companies.

I discovered an opportunity to encourage recruitment and hiring agents to use native Indeed features as an add-on in Outlook. It is a similar tool to the Indeed Recruiter Extension in Google Chrome but in a different space. Recruiter Assistant helps users transfer candidate data from Hosted Jobs, Indeed Hiring Platform, and Indeed Resume to an email they are about to send to hiring managers.

The research study was executed separately for two Outlook modules – Mail and Calendar, – and compared with MaxDiff survey results, initial in-depth interviews with employees that take part in hiring, and design workshop deliverables.

Our research was a strategic and innovative initiative in part of Indeed Lab. The main product is still under NDA because it’s not rolled out to all users yet.

Outcomes

Reduced time to evaluate and hire from selected candidates
Saved operation time with a reduction in manual tasks and the user workflow adjustment
Increased research credibility among stakeholders during collaborative workshops

Links

Hypothesis

We aimed to empower Recruiters and Hiring Managers at Indeed and worldwide by simplifying hiring workflows and integrating the Indeed experience seamlessly into their everyday tools.

How might we simplify hiring workflows by bringing Indeed to where you are and getting a deeper understanding of recruiters and hiring managers to develop an add-in that brings the Indeed experience to Outlook?

Get a deeper understanding of recruiters and hiring managers to develop an add-in that brings the Indeed experience to Outlook
Evaluate the relevancy and usability of MVP user flows while scheduling an event and communicating with their teammates
Understand when and how the Outlook integration with Indeed will be the most relevant in the hiring process

Participative Research process

Deliverables are still under NDA. Ask me to share details during our conversation about similar projects.

I conducted research and facilitated collaboration with the team for Outlook add-on discovery. The team included Indeed and AgileEngine experts – a UX Director, 2 Project Managers, a Front-End Developer, a Back-End Developer, a UX Designer, a UX Research Associate and myself, a UX Researcher.

To kick off the projects, we got started by exploring available documentation. Next, we launched in-depth interviews with Hiring Managers and Recruitment to understand their typical flows in communicating with selected candidates between roles involved in hiring processes.

The important part after collecting initial insights was facilitating research shareout during collaborative sessions. Participative action workshops were the main meeting approach also on the concept brainstorming, following research strategy to validate concept design, and insight sharing after the next research phases. Under the next research I mean several rounds of moderated usability testing for Outlook Mail and Calendar and MaxDiff, an advanced prioritization survey with the same recruitment criteria to triangulate qualitative insights.

Research deliverables were collected in presentation decks. like reports, and collaborative Miro boards for concept brainstorming and user flow evidence. We supported each other during the project – designers helped me with the prototype for the usability testing and I shared progressively research nuggets early after each research session conducted.

We got a deeper understanding of recruiters and hiring managers to develop an add-in that brings the Indeed experience to Outlook. Our target audience is using the working environment by Microsoft, but there could be other tools for communication with candidates. It was a surprise for the core Indeed team that Hiring Managers at companies below 5000 employees also would schedule an interview with a candidate. I provided recommendations on when and how the Outlook integration with Indeed would be the most relevant in the hiring process. For example, there is a need to integrate job posting and candidate base from 3rd-party platforms.

A research roadmap for discovering Indeed’s add-on in Outlook, credit: Indeed

Together with product managers, designers, and developers we ran prioritization, concept design, and validation workshops to understand which add-on solution is the most beneficial on a specific user journey step, credit: Indeed

Part for recruiter’s user flow to insert jobseeker details in an email body to share with a hiring manager the top candidates, credit: Indeed

Validated Design Solution

A new design for Outlook extension helps streamline the recruiting and hiring process and save from manual data entering targeted B2B customers. It‘s aimed to simplify hiring workflows, bring Indeed to where a user is, observe job position application analysis, explore candidate data from several ATSs with just a few clicks, and enhance reports to recruiting or hiring teams.

We aimed to create the interface in Outlook consistent with the Google Chrome experience but faced technical limitations. It’s impossible sometimes to reproduce the Google experience in Microsoft.

Overall, our new design of Indeed’s add-on in Outlook reduced interface errors and improved feature buy-in from users tested.

This is a video about the Recruiting Assistant in Chrome, it will be the similar experience in Outlook, credit: Indeed

Recruiters can see Hiring Insights directly in Outlook to get creation assistance on job descriptions and strategies and access to market salary information, credit: ICIMS

Users can explore jobs available in their Indeed accounts without ever leaving Outlook, credit: ICIMS

Matched candidates from Indeed's Resume appear directly in the add-on with a a recommended shortlist for each role for quick contact to start the hiring process, credit: ICIMS

Quick scheduling of virtual Indeed interviews with candidates directly in Google Calendar, we made similar in the Outlook environment, credit: ICIMS

This is a typical employer view on Indeed Hiring platform, but users can stay in messaging app and explore candidate profiles without switching to Indeed, credit: Indeed

Lessons Learned

Stakeholder Alignment on Participative Action:
Getting early buy-in from key stakeholders for user research and co-creation was difficult. Many were hesitant to actively participate in workshops or contribute to design discussions, delaying decision-making and alignment. So we experimented step by step on how to combine data and design sharing with getting people into co-design.
Adaptation to Technical Constraints:
Designing around controversial or limiting technologies required frequent revisions, which impacted timelines and led to compromises on some features, like advanced candidate matching algorithms or even the right place for the start add-on button.

Indeed

Reducing Manual Recruitment Tasks with Outlook Add-On