Aim High

Redesigning the find a recruiter feature to help potential recruits match with recruiters

Connecting Recruits with Air Force Careers

The United States Air Force Aim High App connects recruits with career opportunities, news and events. The app is an intuitive recruiting tool that helps the Air Force find Airmen, as well as guides recruits to discover their passions through interactive means.

For this particular project, my task was to reimagine the “find a recruiter” feature to ensure interested candidates could easily find and connect with a recruiter in the area. This redesign stemmed from learning we had a high drop off rate of users searching for recruiters and user feedback stating the feature was confusing.

Goals

  • Effectively match recruits to recruiters

  • Ensure most efficient route to recruitment

  • Improve drop off rate

Outcomes

  • Design prototype delivered

  • Success criteria defined

  • User value confirmed

  • Client approved direction

Key Design Elements

  • Location Proximity

  • Map Display

  • Filtering

  • Recruiter profile

Current Design Observations

To start the redesign, I first conducted an audit of the existing flow for finding a recruiter to highlight areas of improvement. During this process, I was able to connect with current users and recruiters as well to understand their pain points with the current layout. 

AUDIT

  • The candidate may not be familiar with what each component is or what the acronyms are for each

    Differentiating between the different recruiters by their component is difficult

    The Special Operations portion seems disconnected

    Once the form fields are filled out and you arrive on the map, the globe icon action in the top right is a bit confusing

  • There are multiple recruiter types and these aren’t clearly being communicated as of now:

    • Enlisted Accessions - Recruits are often in High School, no college degree

    • Officer Accessions - Recruits must have a 4 year degree (or close to grad) to join the Air Force as an officer

    • Healthcare - Recruits must be attending college for healthcare or have a degree in healthcare

  • Recruitment is a very competitive space. Recruiters want leads and they want those leads to convert into airmen. They have weekly / monthly / annual numbers to meet and have multiple awards and competitions they engage in constantly.

    If the candidate proceeds with contacting a recruiter and they do not qualify for that recruiter’s specialty, sometimes they simply get dropped instead of referred.

    Special Warfare is a portion of the Air Force with high physical qualifications that often goes unmentioned. Special Warfare recruiters would like more visibility.

USER INSIGHTS

Reimagining the New Journey

Now that I had a better understanding of the current process and its pain points, I loosely mapped out the user journey for the redesigned flow with details on changes as well as items that would stay the same. 

User journey

Initial Refresh of Find a Recruiter

Taking my user journey map and audit foundation as a guideline, I sketched out new screen variations for the find recruiter flow.

Added details on areas of interest to educate users

New description on recruiter profile reiterates type of recruiter as well as who they assist

Removed Special Ops > instead will be listed within recruiter details

If user wants to connect, they can submit contact form or message directly in app

New descriptions for career categories & their corresponding recruiters

Label replaces prior letter components for Active Duty, National Guard, etc. to better communicate to users which component they are in

Gathering Feedback to Improve Design

At this point, I showcased my initial sketches to the team and there were a few changes we wanted to implement. Here are the highlights:

More focus on location at this first step

More prominent filter on recruiter results

Updated description on category page to give more details on career

Testing Out New Design

Once we were aligned in changes, I created a prototype to bring the redesign to life and test out the interaction elements. For this redesign, we relied on an informal usability test process where we solicited feedback from our main stakeholders to ensure the redesign met expectations and could be moved to the implementation phase.

PROTOTYPE

Redesign Reflection

This was an exciting project to work on as I’ve always been interested in how technology can be utilized to match people with careers. There was a bit of learning curve understanding how the Air Force organizes and conducts their recruiting, so that was a large challenge when getting started.

Overall, this redesign taught me how to small collective changes can really improve a product usability. Over time, these small improvement changes can help build engagement and user retention.