Preparing students for the job hunt through career focused skill building

Discipline

UX Research, Web, Design

Skills

Figma, Teamwork

Timeline

4 months

Role

Consultant, Contract

Team

Aditya Mavalankar
Hamid Habibi
Michelle Deng
Chris Herrera

Jump to the solution

Background

Handshake is the leading college career network which helps students and recent grads find their next career opportunity. While already serving millions of college students in the job search, Handshake was curious what the next step was to help college students expand their skillset, and appear stronger as a prospective candidate.

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Problem Space

Handshake Skills

Beta Test Site

_______________________

An early stage extension site exploring skill building for college students. Handshake approached us with a new early stage product, and these background insights:

Misaligned priotities

University students are solid in their theoretical knowledge, but their technical skills are often not strong enough for recruiters.

Decision Fatigue

There are tons of online resources, but students don’t know how to find or choose between the various options.

Intimidation Factor

Students indicate that the career development process is intimidating - they don’t know which skills actually matter to recruiters.

HMW create a valuable, relevant, and centralized skill building platform that students and job seekers continually rely on throughout their careers?

Focus Area

For the initial launch of the site, we will focus on three key audience groups, relying on their behaviors and insights to guide our design decisions.

1

Driving students to the Handshake Skills experience

At what moment in a student's Handshake journey should they be shown learning opportunities?

How could these learning opportunities be presented within Handshake application to students?

2

The Handshake Skills for students website

How should these learning opportunities be curated in a way that feels relevant, personalized, and trusted by students?
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What info should we present that gets students motivated to engage in learning?

Research

We focused on uncovering the why and the how behind online learning

User Survey | 35 Participants

To better understand the needs and pain points of users, the screener focused on understanding the users learning journey.

Student Interviews | 9 Participants

The clients at Handshake provided us with research from student interviews that they had previously conducted and used to build their initial beta for Handshake Skills in July 2022.

Post online learning people reported...

72%

Reported Career Benefits

61%

Reported Educational Benefits

26%

Found a New Job

Started a Bussiness

We Explored the Competitive Landscape

We reviewed several skill building sites used by our research participant, to understand what makes each one uniquely successful.

Linkedin Learning

Emphasis on career-relevant learning, and certification credibility.

Coursera

Structured course progression, and partnerships with universities for credibility.

Udemy

Focus on affordability and diversity of course offerings.

Synthesis

Discovering key behaviors

We used affinity mapping to organize our research. We'll rely on these 4 behaviors and insights to guide later design decisions.

Motivation

Students are most motivated to engaged with courses when they understand the relevance of these skills to their desired career field.

Inspiration

For the initial launch of the site, we will focus on three key audience groups, relying on their behaviors and insights to guide our design decisions.

User Values

Students value time, cost, rating, and lesson format when choosing a course. Students like to know what exactly they get out of completing a course.

User Behavior

Students are more likely to engage with courses from a trusted friend or alumni member.

Key Insights

Our research insights were organized based on how they address our initial focus groups.

Focus Area 1

Students are most open to learning new skills in the beginning of their recruitment process.

Learning opportunities are most enticing when they are directly tied to a specific role the student is interested.

Focus Area 2

Users motivated by prospect of landing that "dream job"

Value a sense of community (more likely to take a course if a friend liked it)

Students feel most motivated to complete courses when they are reassured how and why skills are relevant to their field.

Concept Strategy

Prioritizing the student learning experience to maximize impact for all

Alignment with the existing brand

Since these concepts are for the products initial launch, the client wanted to prioritize a small number of features which integrated well with handshakes existing user experience. These are the categories we narrowed down to.

Must have

Nice to have

Save for later

Focus Areas 1.3 & 2.3

A well rounded resource

Insight

Students want a well rounded resource which can assist them in skill learning as well as career development.

Idea

A pathway building feature which allows students or industry professionals to compile learning resources from anywhere online. Universities and student groups can even build their own recommended pathways.

Side Bar

The hovering side bar serves as a hub for students to continually return to their uncompleted courses. The side bar showcases course progress, and you can even drag courses or important resources to pin for later use!

When entering search mode, the side bar transforms into a filter and sort feature with attributes like timeline and ratings. The filter bar includes, but is not limited to personalized career related attributes.

“I usually take multiple courses at once and check in with each one periodically. It can be difficult to keep track of them all ”

“I like the idea and personalization of being able to focus my search on career related courses, but I would prefer to have flexibility in filter options.”

Course Info Cards

There is a variety of information students need to easily access when picking and comparing courses. Students were most responsive to credible course providers, approval from peers/recruiters, and logistical information like difficulty.

“I don't want to waste time reading the description of each course before choosing. I need something quick and easy like window shopping.”

Introducing...

A central hub for more than skills

The Handshake skills landing page is easy to navigate and reduces decision fatigue by providing a collection of personalized course recommendations.

Discovery Page

Discover the right courses recommended for you specifically, based on your Handshake job interests.

Learning Pathways

Learning pathways give easy access to a variety of career development resources for an all inclusive learning package.

They might navigate you through breaking into a new field or learning a specialized skill.

Filter for what you need

The side bar allows you to customize your search across a variety of relevant filters, and accounts for the tumultuous nature of career development with course tags like "career switch" and "interview prep".

Choices made easy

The course listing page makes it easy to take your pick. We prioritize transparency in real course ratings, and real life applications.

Connecting to Handshake

There are several access points between Handshake and Handshake Skills which re-enforce the direct relation between skill building courses and students dream jobs.

Reflection

Tying handshake skills to handshake

By conducting further research on our transition points between Handshake and Handshake Skills, we could prioritize more intuitive interaction points.

Further Testing

Although we have found great reception in our current designs, we would love to understand more about how and why students would return to Handshake Skills throughout a course.