Aim High

Reimagining how potential recruits match with recruiters

OVERVIEW

Matching recruits with Air Force careers

The US Air Force Aim High App (325k registered users) is a recruiting tool that connects potential recruits with careers through content, photos, events, and news.

For this 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.

Goals

  • Match potential recruits

  • Improve drop off rate

  • Boost conversion

Outcomes

  • 30k Leads

  • 40k Monthly Visitors

  • 9.9k Referrals

Key Design Elements

  • Location-based search

  • Filtering

  • Recruiter profile

Current design observations and user feedback

UNDERSTAND

To start the redesign, I first conducted an audit of the existing design 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 pain points with the current structure. 

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.

findings

Key Takeaways

  • Use familiar language

  • Clearly communicate qualifications and types of recruitment

DEFINE

More communication upfront = higher matchability probability

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

User journey

Key Takeaways

  • Location should be top priority

  • Focus on discovery; rather than filtering (as users might not have a lot of knowledge of all the types)

  • Add more detail to recruiter profile for easy contact information

SKETCH

Initial feature refresh to enhance matching

Taking my user journey map and audit 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

Adding more focus on location and filter options

ITERATION

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

More focus on location at this first step (remove interest)

More prominent filter on recruiter results

Updated description to give more details on career

VALIDATION

A more direct, communicative experience for recruit matching

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.

Small changes can have a large impact on product usability & satisfaction

CONCLUSION

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 their recruiting, so that was a large challenge when getting started.

Overall, this redesign taught me how to small collective changes can help build engagement and user retention.