American Express

Creating candidate Relationships

Agency: Digitas
Role: Senior Experience Designer
Team: Design Director, UX/UI Designers

• Digital experience strategy 

• Future vision concept

• Content strategy

• Rapid prototyping of digital touchpoint

Outcome

8+

Features envisioned

3

weeks from kickoff to prototype

—

The Goal

Redefine the digital experience.

American Express, a global financial payments company, wanted to explore ideas to improve their Careers experience. I was part of a team of designers that created a Northstar vision. With no shortage of applicants, we prioritized matching the right candidate to the right job, exploring tools and features that could streamline the job searching journey, and increase efficiency and usefulness for both recruiters and applicants.

Discovery

How could we develop a more useful and meaningful experience for potential candidates? We started by looking at the job market landscape and identifying what entry-level job-seeker’s desire. People have traditionally sought suitable jobs, a good salary and benefits, but do they still have the same considerations?

(For context, I was part of this project in 2019)

Meaningful Work

80% of employees would rather have a boss who cared about them finding meaning & success in work than receive a 20% pay increase.

Flexible Schedule

77% of employees consider flexible work arrangements a major consideration when evaluating future job opportunities.

Lifelong Learning

70% of employees say job-related training and development opportunities influenced their decision to stay at their job.

Reputable Brand

70% of working Americans believe it’s important that their friends and family recognize the name of the company they work for.

Sources: HBR, Zenefits, Association for Talent Development, CB!

American Express checks the boxes

We looked at unfiltered honest opinions on sites like Indeed and Glassdoor to find out what current and former employees liked about working at American Express. American Express offers what people are seeking, but these attributes were not prominent on the Careers website.

Source: Indeed

A 19-step Application

The application process had a lengthy 19-steps.

  • A progress bar existed, but without any clear units to indicate the number of steps.

  • Six ways to upload a resume, which is generous, but can also cause overwhelm and prevent people from taking action.

  • No option to save and return to the application later.

  • No option to review entries before submission, which could cause hesitation and lack of follow through.

Swipe right

Next, we looked at popular career sites to find out other ways that people look for jobs. We found a few apps functioning much like dating apps. An extension of Bumble’s dating app, Bumble Bizz, focuses on business networking to build professional relationships, not jobs. The Switch app functions similarly, with quick browsing, and if there’s a match, a direct connection is created between job-seekers and recruiters. It’s also easy for recruiters who can easily connect with people for roles now and for the future. An overarching purpose and outcome from these apps was that relationships were created.

Bumble Bizz + Switch

Design

78% of candidates say the overall candidate experience indicates how a company values its people

– Career Builder

We made recommendations based on our insights, like amplifying benefits and simplifying the application steps, however the biggest insight was building relationships. We focused on this connection and how to bring this value to the experience, which would hopefully increase chances of compatibility.

We ideated on three stages of the job-seeking journey:

1. Pre-Application: Getting acquainted

2. Application: Matching skills

3. Post-Application: Continued career support

1. Pre-Application: Getting Acquainted

Most companies give you a general idea of what they are like and what they value, but every office has a unique personality and culture. The Technology team in Phoenix, Arizona will not be the same as the team in Bangalore, India. What if we could get to know American Express on a more personal local level, beyond the global brand? This could be more relevant to a candidate, and ultimately help contribute to a better fit.

Original Homepage

First Impression: Homepage

We created straightforward messaging and explored ideas to generate more interest and company transparency by including:

  • Meaningful statistics like tenure and career growth to surface Amex’s investment in their employees

  • Significant benefits like career mentorship and adoption assistance alongside common benefits

  • A map to easily find and see Amex employment locations

  • Ratings from employment review sites like Glassdoor and Indeed

Diving deeper: Teams

Team (Department) pages would give a more nuanced look into American Express, with information specific to a department and location. Ideas we included:

  • Location-specific information. The default location would be determined by the user’s detected location, with the option to change it and update information.

  • A hero video showing a “day in the life of” of an office’s work environment

  • At-a-glance departmental facts

  • A glimpse into current or past project highlights to give an idea of the kind of work that gets actualized

  • Team instagram profiles per location to show personality and showcase company events

  • Favorite local spots of the team, helpful for people considering relocation

  • Employee networks for connecting with colleagues

  • Ratings linked to employment websites like Glassdoor and Indeed.

people

Featured profiles would spotlight a team member and their American Express career timeline with notable milestones, both personal and professional.

Linking directly to LinkedIn profiles would also be included here, on Job postings, and at the interview stage so that an applicant can learn about the people on the team and who they might be working with.

2. Application: Matching skills

Applicant tracking systems are already used as a first step in screening, detecting key words from resumes, why not use AI both ways to make matches more efficiently and help job-seekers narrow down open positions. Skills could be pulled from a job-seeker’s resume or LinkedIn profile, or a candidate could add them from a filter in the search. Search results would then be ranked and organized according to compatibility. This would hopefully increase relevancy and increase efficiency for both the job-seeker and recruiter.

We incorporated matching skills into:

Resume scan

  • Skills and contact info pulled from a resume or LinkedIn profile. This could help reduce the number of steps in the application and save time in the job search.

search by skill

Results would be filtered by job postings containing selected skills. Skill tags were incorporated into:

  • Job search filters

  • Job postings which would list skills in two categories: required and nice-to-have

  • A candidate’s account profile

  • The timeline of a featured team member, tied to their Amex career positions

3. Post-Application: career Support

Applications often feel like a black hole after applying. What if the experience was a continued relationship, whether or not a candidate advances to the next step in the application? The door doesn’t have to close. Providing options to receive notifications about career-related events and recommended job postings gives American Express the opportunity to create a roster of talent to reach out to when roles become available.

Account Dashboard

Application progress

• A way to schedule an interview and know who will be part of it

• Saved preferences for skills to filter jobs

• Advanced access to job postings before they are public

Career Development

• Set a goal for a specific job position and track the skills required to learn or expand on

• Opportunities to attend events and workshops

• Connect with a team member for advice and mentoring

Continued matches

Whether someone follows through with applying or not, as long as they have an account, they can receive benefits such as:

• Notifications when high-percentage job matches become available

• Notifications about other jobs that are related or require similar skills

• Links to articles by Amex team members on career development related to the saved skillset

Our work helped visualize the opportunity for better matching with job seekers.

I went beyond my responsibilities on a tight timeframe, jumping in to support the team when needed. I created a consistent narrative, ideating and optimizing every part of the job-seeker’s journey. Given a longer engagement, I would test the prototype with college graduates and entry-level employees to find out what they found useful, unnecessary, lacking, or difficult. I would research any time saved for Amex and site visitors. I would conduct interviews to find out if match rankings met expectations. And I would collaborate with stakeholders to define a MVP based on Amex goals and impact/effort of building.