Helping students launch their careers in the easiest, fastest, and smartest way.
Intern Guys
UI/UX Designer & Researcher
July - August 2021
Tools: Figma, Google Forms
July - August 2021
Tools: Figma, Google Forms
Intern Guys is a student led start up company whose goal is help students find job opportunities easily and efficiently. The UX team, Vivian Nguyen, Crystal Lai Ton Nu, and myself, was responsible for researching and designing a system to alleviate pain points students face finding and applying to jobs and internships.
Problem Statement
Finding an internship/job has become quite challenging for college students. Students can spend several months searching and applying for positions, and still end up not landing the position.
Why?
- The average amount of time to find a job is 24 weeks (Bureau of Labor Statistics, November 2020)
- It takes 100–200 job applications to get one job offer (TalentWorks, 2017)
Business Goals
Strategize
Advise
Clarify
Tell users the probability of them landing the roles they applied to
Identify the specific skills users should improve to land the jobs they want
Ensure that users are never unsure about the status of their application
Research
Survey
We surveyed 82 participants composed of students and graduates all in the job market.
Persona
Interviews
Goal: Understand the Application Process from the Recruiters Perspective
I Asked Questions About:
- Why are there often multiple page redirects and links to apply to a job (ex: LinkedIn → WorkDay → Company Portal)?
- How can the application process be made smoother for a recruiter?
Insights
❌
One frustration is when application are often recommended roles unrelated to their search and filters
↪️
Applicants are often redirected to companies site after already filling and submitting an application on job boards
📤
Applicants want to know the status of their application: "It's difficult to track where I am in the hiring process"
⏰
Applicants want to hear about job positions as fast as possible: "a frustration is being notified about job openings late"
📈
Recruiters want to reach as many potential applicants as possible and have a customized and centralized place to track the applications received
Ideate & Design
FINDING INTERNSHIPS
.svg)
From our research, the largest frustrations job searchers face are related to the jobs that are recommended to them. Therefore, we brainstormed this system that recommends positions only related to their profile/resume and sorted based on how well the users profile matches what the position is looking for. Intern Guys will provide data on how well a user matches with the job and shows exactly what qualifications the user has that makes them a strong match.
APPLYING TO INTERNSHIPS
Another frustration we wanted to alleviate is when job searchers have to create new accounts on an external site to officially apply to a role. To make the application process as simple as possible, users will be able to apply through Intern Guys, so they will not need to remember the login information for yet another site.
Design Guide
Visual System
COLORS
TYPOGRAPHY
Montserrat:
Semi Bold, Medium, Regular, & Light
Semi Bold, Medium, Regular, & Light
For headers, subhead, and body text
Outcome
Below is the final high fidelity prototype of the Intern Guys site.
https://www.figma.com/proto/ev4fZB01fZYOE1HZZaSbjo/Intern-Guys?node-id=2%3A8418&starting-point-node-id=2%3A8418
https://www.figma.com/proto/ev4fZB01fZYOE1HZZaSbjo/Intern-Guys?node-id=2%3A8418&starting-point-node-id=2%3A8418
Takeaways + Future Roadmap
This project was unique for me since it's a system that I would personally utilize. As a new UX designer and researcher, I'm in the process of finding job opportunities, so conducting research for this project was so insightful for me to learn more about what general applicants' thought processes were. It was honestly a little challenging because of this since I didn't want to make assumptions even though I was part of the end user demographic. Nonetheless, we were able to gain strong data from a vast number of participants, so I'm confident in our research analysis. However, having the opportunity to interview recruiters was probably the most insightful portion of this project since I truly had no knowledge of their background or work flow prior. I had never even heard of an applicant tracking system before, so those interviews were key to the recruiting side of Intern Guys.
Intern Guys is a growing student led start up company that's currently developing their site: www.internguys.com. I'm excited to see the features be built out and for the site to move through the phases the company hoped for. If we had more time, I would have liked to conduct usability tests or A/B tests to validate the design decisions we made from our research. Even though we didn't have time for that last key step, I'm proud of the work and research we put in as a group of student designers and developers.
