Improving candidate confidence in recruiters and their job ads

Sourcr, a company acquired by SEEK, offers recruiters tools to promote themselves (e.g., ratings, reviews). As part of the integration process within the SEEK ecosystem, Sourcr is being incorporated into various touch points of the job seeking experience.

This case study details adding Sourcr as a widget into the Job Details View (JDV). The aim was to improve transparency and confidence levels for candidates when assessing jobs posted by recruiters.

Candidates tend to shy away from job ads posted by recruiters due to lack of trust, a known pain point we've highlighted in SEEK's Candidate Mental Model. Informed by previous experiments, we hypothesised that adding a Sourcr widget in the JDV would lead to better transparency, removing barriers for candidates to apply for jobs.

We started the process by conducting a comprehensive assessment of Sourcr, checking existing expectations of stakeholders, and by doing a thorough analysis of candidate needs. We used these insights to inform a pilot, where we would test adding the Sourcr widget to the JDV.

The pilot was used to test the effectiveness of the solution, collecting both analytics and attitudinal data from candidates. This mixed-methods design helped us assess the impact from multiple lenses.

During solution exploration, we’ve aligned with stakeholders on a widget format for Sourcr in the JDV. We made this decision given it was a proven format, tested by other teams, and hence had a lower risk of failure.

After we landed on a solution, we ran an A/B test that yielded positive results all-around. Particularly, we learned from our attitudinal questions that more than 50% of candidates valued being able to contact recruiters directly. This aligned well with our historical understanding of their needs.

Building on these insights, we explored several concepts, like the Request Callback. This concept would work by allowing candidates to request recruiters to call them, shifting the responsibility of calling to the recruiters, reducing friction, and further streamlining communication.

Despite the success of our approach, we were constrained in terms of complexity and effort of the solutions we could propose. However, we kept a forward-looking perspective, showing stakeholders options that pushed the solution beyond its immediate scope. This allowed us to articulate a vision of Sourcr's potential value for users.

An essential aspect involved using attitudinal insights we collected during the pilot to inform these forward-looking concepts. Not only where they useful to inform design decisions, it was also a powerful tool to communicate our rationale to stakeholders.