Design a product for job seekers to create resumes and find the best matching jobs easily and quickly.

Before we start solving the problem at hand, I wanted to clarify a few ascpets of the the problem. 

1. I wanted to see if we know or would like this product to understand some key terms that you mentioned in problem statement 
   1. For job seekers, we can possibly have different categories of job seekers and thier needs can therefore vary. Ex
      • Students searching for Co-op / Intership oppurtunities
      • Fresh graduates. Yes
      • Experienced professionals. 
      • Executives
      • Members who are trying join the workforce after a break
   2. When we say best matching jobs 
      • Is the product also expected to host jobs and their provide a platform for recurtiment teams to post jobs or 
      • We would be feeding from an existing respository of job through an API or
      • We can assume we have the jobs either through either of the above options. Yes
   3. When we say easily 
      • Are there any special accesibility needs that would need to be taken care of ? No
      • Any specific platform i.e. Web, Mobile (iOS, Andirod), Devices (Windos, Mac, Ubuntu). Web (Windos, Mac, Ubuntu)
      • Are there any localization requirements w.r.t to language ? English
      • Is there any existing PF / product that exists that we would want to make the new process comparably easier ? No

Design a website product (Chromium and WebKit browsers) for fresh graduate job seekers to create resumes and find the best matching jobs from existing recruiter protal in English easily and quickly with no accebility requirements. 

Now that I have understood the problem, I will tackle this in a few parts:

1. Understand the users, their use cases and motivations for using the product
2. See how current products stack up and what are the gaps
3. How can we bring the gap

1. They are either fresh out of the college or 
2. Have some expereince through coops / interships
3. Univesities career centers
4. Expereined career advisors

Use cases:

1. Trying to create (modify, save / delete) a resume from the scratch.
2. Trying to get suggestions on existing resume.  (Going a head with this use case)
3. Trying to get suggestion on a resume / new old with respect to a particular job(s)
4. A repository for application packages

 

 

May I assume that we are creating this product for job seekers in US just because I am more familiar with US market?

Interviewer: Sure.

Me: Is this a brand new product or a feature enhancement?

Interviewer: Brand new product

Me: Is this product part of an existing product and if so which existing product?

Interviwer: Upto you

Me: This could be a product within an existing product such as FB, however, for the purposes of our case let's consider it to be a standalone product at an unknown company.

Interviewer: Ok

Me: I would like to think about this problem by thinking through 1) Business Objective 2) Who our users might be 3)User focus will help me think of what they currently do and co-related to it their frustrations 4) Then I would dive into defining some solutions and evaluating them for prioritization 5)Lastly I would think if some ways to measure success for my product.

Business Objective: Considering this is a new product, my goal should be user adoption. As I think of user adoption I will tend to think very much from user value perspective along with their user experience.

Me: Are we in alignment so far?

Interviewer: Sure.

Users: Job Seekers is quite borad. There are 5 different types of job seekers I can think of 1)Still a student seeking for internship 2)New Grads 3)Experienced Hires 4)Coming back to job industry 5)Career Switchers

I would like to focus on #2 since Experienced Hires typically have some network to depend on and have experience to make job seeking process easier for them. Students seekign internships are plenty, however, they generally have good amount of help from professors and university resources to help them out + they are seeking for any experience mostly vs specific areas. #4 and #5 are less # of users and if I want to gain user adoption as a new business, I am better off focusing on bigger market segment vs. niche semgment.

Interviewer: Sure

Me: I want to think about how New Grads look for jobs. 1)Create Resume and Cover Letter 2)Visit Linkedin, indeed.com, etc. and apply randomly without strategically thinking of their skills 3)Reaching out to people on LinkedIn asking for a job which many times doesn't work. Overall I think their key frustrations are:

1) where to apply

2) Making an impactful resume and cover letter

3) Building network that can help them

This is a product where I feel #1 and #2 pain points have to be addressed for it to be a marketable and a differentiator. #3 wouldn't be an MVP in my eyes since there's LinkedIn for now + for adoption we need to focus on #1 and #2 first.

Interviewer: I am ok with that. But how are these problems different than the ones your other user segments would face?

Me: Sure. There may surely be good sample of other user segments would face the same problems, however, they are a bit different. For example: An experienced hire likely had identified an industry interest and has gained some niche in it so it makes it easier to find jobs or has identified what works in a resume ,etc. Typically such a user needs less help. If I am interested in user adoption, it's much better for me to address needs of users who really need some hand holding since they are for lack of better words "clueless" so there is a lot I can do for them that other job seeking platforms don't provide.

Interviewer: Sure. Let's go ahead with designing a solution.

Me:

2a) Tool should dechiper resume templates from people who apply per type of job (Network Engineer, Product Manager, etc.) and recommend what resume template is typically used. What I imagine here is as a user I log on to the product and select an action for Create a Resume. I will then choose what type of job I want and if not listed type a job and I would be recommended a few categories that may match closely. This can be done by seeing what cagtegories were used by people who typed same words as I did. Then  I would be shown some resume templates that were used most. Maybe I would even see # of times it was used and # of upvotes on it.

2b) as I create resume, on the right hand navigation to tool will actively show me frequency of use of keywords on my resume based on keywords used for that category of job (Product Management). It will also show me typical Product resume uses this keyword x times.

2c) Tool will show me resumes of other Product Managers as well who elected to share their resume and only of those who actually got the job using that resume.

I will quickly jump on to solutions for #1 pain point before I prioritize. Is that ok? Also, are we in alignment on my approach so far?

1a) Tool would display companies where others with similar type of resume as mine got interviews from. Of course, this is very dependent on people reporting data.

1b) There would be articles / Knowledge Base on the site that can cater to authors / creators for small revenue. Catering to that user segment can actually generate good material for job seekers to adopt my platform.

1c) I would have analytics product within to display different measures: Company Size and Type where my resume passed ATS system / recruiter screen, Company Type and Size where I frequently applied, Company Type (industry) where my resume mostly aligns with (this is related to the 1st metric I talked about).

Instead of evaluating each one, in the interest of time, as an MVP I would implement 2c and 1a together. I would proceed with 2b afterwards. I believe those two are MVP because 2a talks about template and template is not as relevant as content and user value really comes from helping my new grad with the resumes that work. Just becasue 2b tells me how many times keywords are used most often doesn't mean I am writting a good resume. So if I can see examples of resumes that succeeded that's more valuable. Also, if as a new grad, I get direction on what type of company my resume is most likely to get attention from based on data from other job seekers who suceeded in getting interviews / jobs I am more likely to use the platform for myself. There are trade-offs these solutions some of which are algorithm needs to be reinforcement logic to it will be challenging to present value immediately to new users till we have ample consumers and data to go off of. Also, if our users don't get jobs or interviews that would degrade quality of our solution since it's dependent on user data. Also, users have to be willing to share their resume or data that they got the job or atleast an interview. Most users will likely not do so since they forget (this is natural for all of us).

To measure success, I would look at per quarter (since most new products monthly adoption is too short of a time period):

1) # of net new users acquired

2) # of users who got job offers / interviews (to me interviews are more imp than job offers since we are optimizing for job seeking vs platform to focus on successful interviewing).

While we consider acquisition we should also consider retention as a secondary metric since if we don't see a return of net new customers that will styme new user acquisition in turn.

All in all, as a new business I would be have a goal to acquirew new users to my business by focusing on biggest market segment which I think is New Grads and focusing on their pain points to help them with resume creation and directing them as to where they might find best success.

Any questions?

Interviewer: No. Thank you very much.

Step 1: Ask Clarifying questions to narrow down the scope of the product and question 

-Web based or mobile based product? (Mobile)

-Android or IoS (Both)

-Job seeking platform for resume or internship or for both? (Both)

-Specific to a particular loaction (Let's assume US)

 

Step 2: List down the user groups 

Now since this is a marketplace where there will be job seekers and job givers (companies, hiring managers, recruiters). 

Job seekers can be further divided into following categories

1) Recent/New grads looking for jobs and internships

2) Experienced grads looking for changing and shifting roles 

3) People trying to get back into workforce after a huge/long-term gap

 

Job Givers can be further divided into following categories. 

1) Recruiting agencies/Companies that are looking to hire candidates 

2) Individual Recruiters 

 

Step 3: Choose/Select one user group.

 

For the scope of this question since its mentioned we will be going with Job Seekers. In case of job-seekers we will be going with recent/new grads who are looking for new jobs and internships as these are the people who have less experience and might need help in resume building and job search. Also this is the largest segment who is facing this problem for all these reasons this is the user group that we'll be focussing on 

 

Step 4: List down the user pain-points 

For Recent/New Grads who are looking for new jobs and internships

1) They don't know how to create high quality resumes which may get them interview calls 

2) They aren't aware of the jobs that are open/companies that are hiring right now

3) They don't know whether they will be a good fit for these jobs that are open

4) Unaware of the kind of profiles that are getting hired for that particular role 

5) Searching and finding the jobs of their choice is a very time consuming process 

 

Step 5: Prioritising the user pain-points based on criterias like: Impact to end user, Impact to business value.

 

Pain Point #	Impact to end user	Impact to business value
1	H	H
2	M	H
3	H	H
4	M	M
5	H	H

 

Based on the above criterias we have prioritised pain-points 1,3 and 5.

 

Step 6: Listing down the solutions for these prioritised pain-points 

1. They don't know how to create high quality resumes which may get them interview calls

A: AI based resume builder that will build quality (latex) resume based on user input regarding education details, experiences, skill-set etc.

B: Articles and videos related to effective resume writing can help user to follow these tips to create an effective resume.

C: Standardised resume templates available for different job descriptions to cater to the needs and requirements of different kind of audience

D. ML based Resume scorer: It will score the resume keeping in mind the candidate pool that has applied for the job and thus show a Strong/Weak fit at the end.

 

3. They don't know whether they will be a good fit for these jobs that are open

A. AI based skillset/keyword-matcher which will score the candidate's resume based on the job opening/description that he/she is applying to 

 

5) Searching and finding the jobs of their choice is a very time consuming process 

A. Filters provided on the search bar, to make the searching process more fine-tuned and narrow to match the candidates liking/needs

B) Voice based searching feature: To making searching of desired jobs and internships faster without any typing.

C) Recommended Jobs feature- It will recommend candidate's new job openings based on their previous searches, experiences, skill-set etc

 

Step 7: Prioritising the solutions based on criterias like: Impact to end user, Implementation Cost, Implementation effort etc.

 

Solution #	Impact to end user	Implementation Effort	Implementation Cost
1 A	H	M	M
1 B	H	L/M	L
1 C	M	M	L/M
1 D	H	H	M
3 A	H	M	L/M
5 A	H	M	L
5 B	M	M/H	M
5 C	H	M	L

 

Based on the above criteria we have prioritised the following solutions 

 

1 B, 3A, 5A and 5C

 

Step 8: Listing down the metrics that we will track for these features:

Articles and videos related to effective resume writing can help user to follow these tips to create an effective resume.

Avg time spent per user on reading articles and vidoes before creating a resume

AI based skillset/keyword-matcher which will score the candidate's resume based on the job opening/description that he/she is applying to.

% of users who use this feature everytime they apply to a new job role 

Filters provided on the search bar, to make the searching process more fine-tuned and narrow to match the candidates liking/needs

# of users using this feature on a daily, weekly, monthly basis for speeding up their job-search process. 

% increase in customer satisfaction because of this feature

Recommended Jobs feature- It will recommend candidate's new job openings based on their previous searches, experiences, skill-set etc

Avg no of users who are using this feature even after 6 months

 

 

Step 9: Summarize your answer.

So for the MVP we will build a product for the job seeker such that they can build resumes and easily find and match with desired jobs quickly. 

The above mentioned 4 solutions will be the features that will be part of the MVP release for the later release we will again prioritise and consider the other features and also conduct user feedback and survey to see if any pain-point is there for which we aren't solving and that will be considered as well.

Me: I would like to repeat the problem statement to make sure I understood correctly. We are trying to create a product for job seekers to create resumes and find best matching jobs easily and quickly.

Interviewer: Yes

Me; Before talking about solutions, i would like to ask a few clarifying questions to understand the problem better.

Interviewer: go ahead

Me: Through this product, is the goal to onboard new job seekers through user activation or provide better service to existing users by increasing user retention?

Interviewer: To provide better service

Me: Is there any preferred platform that we are trying to look at? like web or mobile or other ways?

Interviewer: No, you can go ahead with your preference

Me: Ok. Is there any preference for location ?

Interviewer: No

Me: In that case, I will assume that we are trying to increase user retention for US for the sake of this conversation. I will also assume that there is no problem with scalability or resources or deadlines

Interviewer: Sounds good

Me: When you say job seekers, there are several personas that come to my mind. I would like to take a few seconds to brainstorm the different types of users.

• Aggressive job seekers - who are ready to start new job as soon as possible
• Active job seekers - who are looking for jobs but are not ready to start jobs rightaway
• Passive job seekers - who would consider a new job if the job is better than existing job

• Logs into job search portals everyday and looks if there are new job postings
• Applies to jobs that are posted less than 24 hrs ago
• Hasn't heard back on any of the jobs he applied even though he changed resume for each job
• Looking for ways other than online job portals to be able to apply to jobs easily
•  

Pain points:

• AI web based solution that paraphrases candidate experience to meet job description
• Based on company hiring, look into recent resume templates and automatically generate template in that format.
• AI solution that look into job posting  and highlight words that the most hired candidates for the position from the companies have on their resume
• Chat bot or virtual conversation that can parse through candidate's linkedin profile and autogenerate resume based on skills and endorsements. Send this to recruiter as resume
• provide text boxes to candidate to answer about specific skill that is most required. Candidate's answer is like short resume.

Clarification of task

• We are creating a brand new product for job seekers it has nothing to do with Facebook —> It will be a standalone job offering
• What geography are we focused on? —> This is for the US
• Is this for a specific type of job seekers based on career stage (new graduates, early career, mid-career, execs and so) or function (sales, finance, engineering and so on)? —> This for for all types of job seekers
• Are we creating a platform for job seeker and employers or are we focused purely on job seekers without building other side of the marketplace?  —> Marketplace for seekers and employers. 

 

Goal 

• Build features focused on job seekers. I am not going to focus on employers during my response.
• Assumption is that employers are already on our platform and we are purely looking to add tools to ensure job seekers are able to match with the right employers, seamlessly
• We are focusing (as per the prompt) on resume creation and matching in this process from the users POV

 

 

Users

• Type of job seekers
  • Early career - Brand new to the job search process, never prepared resumes. Have a limited or non-existent professional network, primarily rely on their alumni network / job fairs
  • Mid-career - Experienced job search process, have been through job hunts a few time. Have a reasonable professional network but limited to geography or their industry
  • Senior/Execs - Have been through the job search process, will likely be hired through head hunters or by leveraging their professional networks. Have strong professional networks. 
• From the above, I am going to prioritize on the Early / Mid career job seekers and leave out execs as most of their job searches are done through offline networks

 

Use Cases 

• Resume Builder: 
  • Jobs to be done
  • 1) I want support in building my resume 
  • 2) I want my resume to be relevant / customized to the job I am applying for
• Search Companies 
  • Jobs to be done
  • 1) I want to search for companies that are hiring
  • 2) I want to be notified about companies whose openings are a good fit with my experience / skills
• Apply for Jobs
  • Jobs to be done
  • 1) I want to apply for the job seamlessly without filling out custom applications on each site
  • 2) I want to know the status of my application (received / reviewed / rejected / in process) 
• Reviews
  • Jobs to be done
  • 1) I want to know about the company from other job seekers / their experience around the interview process
  • 2) I want to prepare for the interview and get the right tips

 

Prioritization

Using the RICE (Reach (scale of 10), Impact (scale of 3), Confidence (scale of 3), Effort(scale of 3)) framework to whittle down the prioritizes

• Resume Builder
  • A) Build my Resume. (R:9 ,I:2 ,C:3 E:2 ) —> 27
  • B) Customize my resume for the job I am applying for (R:8 ,I:3 ,C:3 E:3 ) —> 24
• Search Companies
  • A) User driven search (R:10,I:2,C:2 E:2 ) —> 20
  • B) User notified search (R:8 ,I:3 ,C:3 E:3 ) —> 24
• Apply for Jobs
  • A) Seamless applications (R:10,I:3 ,C:2 E:3) —> 20
  • B) Application status (R:7 ,I:2 ,C:2 E:3) —> 9
• Reviews
  • A) Interview Experiences for said company (R:7 ,I:2 ,C:2 E:2) —> 14
  • B) Interview Prep for said company (R:8 ,I:2 ,C:2 E:2) —> 16

 

Based on the above prioritization I am going to focus on building the resume builder feature first following by the others as we gain traction. We are not working on the matching feature at the moment

 

 

Solutions / Implementation options

• The following are the three approaches we could take to build this feature
  • Building blocks: For each job type (entry level, mid level, senior level) and function, create a set of primitives (building blocks) that we can use to build out the resume. Users can check on these blocks to notify what their skill are and where they have worked and when. They can also provide specific examples qualitative / quantitative which would serve as inputs into the resume build process. Profile Builder: Create a profile page for users to fill out. We can use this as an input into our resume builder tool to generate their resume.
  • Compatibility Score: Instead of building a resume (which is custom for each individual) we do away with the resume in its conventional form and focus on creating a match score for each candidate and company. We will evaluate the job listing with the candidate skills / experiences and send an application to the company to show he candidate matches high with the job. This will change the onus of preparing the resume upfront and move it to later in the process when the two have spoken
• For all of the above features we will build a different resume for each specific job by combining the user experience / skills in different ways. That way we ensure that we have a resume most relevant to the job description and use the right terminology to make it past the initial screen (human or automated)
• I would choose the building blocks Idea. It strikes a balance between user effort and also is closer to  convention. Profile builder is too similar to what other professional networking sites offer and not having a resume might be too iconoclastic for certain companies. 

 

 

Metrics to track success 

• Aquisition
  • People singing up for the service
• Activation 
  • Number of resumes built
  • Number of profiles updated
• Retention
  • Number of applications made
  • Number of jobs filled
  •  

Clarifying questions: 

Is it going to be a part of Facebook site?

What is the objective of the service? To provide another avenue for users to stay in FB?

I am going with the assumption that this is a 2 party service. Companies need to post jobs and seekers will be matched with the inventory

Current status - Assume there is no tool like that.

Users of the platform 

Individuals searching for jobs

Companies posting positions

Let me focus on individuals seeking for jobs

If I break down further on types of seekers

• Student seeking internships
• Soon to graduate searching for jobs
• Individuals looking to pivot from one field to another
• Higher years of experience

There are a bunch of more segments/user groups but limiting to these 4 and picking first 2 users

• Student seeking internships
• Soon to graduate searching for jobs

 

Reasons for picking these 2 segments

• Young population, tendency to spend more time in FB and get hooked on
• Needs support/guidance/help
• Have lesser of a network at this point in time in their careers

Use cases

• Generic requirements: Building a seeker recommendation engine
  • Ask a series of questions about the seeker and build a profile to build the seeker recommendation engine.
    • Educational qualifications
    • Projects in school
    • Internships
    • Certifications
    • Side projects
    • Extra curricular activities
  • The Algorithm will then take out the text and build a deep learning contextual engine from the information, summarizing different points
  • At any point in time data can be fed in and the algorithm will keep adding to its database of the user profile
  • Ability to create multiple profiles under the same user based on interests
  • Needs a bunch of templates to choose from based on interests, positions etc.
  • Auto generated templates
• Seeker doesn’t have a resume and doesn’t have a particular job under consideration
  • Once a template is chosen, an algorithm will take the information from the profile and fill up the resume
• Seeker doesn’t have a resume but has a particular job in mind
  • Based on the job requirements, the tool will suggest the following
    • Resume templates
    • Appropriate changes in the wording to match the requirement
    • If no relevant match, the algorithm will perform the closest match based on its database of users info
• Seeker has a resume and has a job in mind
  • Similar to earlier use case only difference being
    • Resume format if its different than the one in file
• Standard use cases like
  • Ability to create notifications when a job posting matching your profile is posted
  • Auto Apply feature
  • Statistics on the applicants etc.

 

Prioritization list

 

Will be a part of FB site on the left bottom

 

Metrics to track

 

• Number of jobs posted 
• Increase in number of jobs posted - time period of 15 days
• Number of new users signing up for the service
• Number of resumes created - Monthly tracking
• Number of successful matches and accepted by the user
• Number of users filling the information required

 

And

• Time spent in the service
• Repeat visitors

 

From my understanding, this product design question asks us to create a product for job seekers to make resumes and leverage those resumes to match with jobs that match their backgrounds.  While we could focus on a number of geographies to tackle this question, I’m going to narrow the focus to the US market because that is where I live and it’s the market I have the deepest knowledge of.  Is that alright with you?

 

OK great.  The first thing I want to do is clarify who my target user is, as ‘job seekers’ is very broad. While there are a number of different dimensions we could segment on (e.g., by industry), three initial categories come to my mind:

1. Students (e.g., college seniors, grad students, etc)
2. Experienced Hires 
3. People transitioning back to work (e.g., new mothers)

 

Each group has unique painpoints and needs.  Given the product is supposed to focus on helping jobseekers create resumes and get matched to jobs, I would focus on group #3 because I believe the product would deliver the most value to them.  Many experienced hires already have resumes and frequently receive inbound requests from headhunters.  Students have significant support from college campuses around both resume writing and job seeking.  Thus, I think from a competitive perspective, group #3 makes the most sense to pursue.

 

Now, let’s dig into the painpoints experienced by group #3.

1. It’s hard to know which roles to apply for after many years away from the workforce.
2. It’s hard to find a role with flexible hours or location flexibility (e.g., work from home certain days a week).
3. I don’t know how to explain the gap in my resume.

 

Among these painpoints, I am going to focus on #2 because I think this will have the largest impact on helping new mothers find roles.

 

Now we should think about features that will resolve the painpoint described.  Some ideas that come to mind:

• Screen out any jobs that do not offer flexible hours / office set ups
• Flag which job opportunities offer flexible hours / office set ups vs which ones don’t

 

Among these choices, I would recommend just flagging which opportunities are flexible vs not, as some users may not care about this.

 

When it comes to implementing this feature, we must also think about what the broader product will look like - should it be a mobile or web application or a physical service?  I would recommend a web application to start with for a couple of reasons - 1) it’s the easiest to implement; 2) creating a resume is not a casual activity you do while you’re on the go.  I think most users will want to sit down and appreciate the larger screen size on their  laptops / computers.

 

Now let’s think about a rough user flow within the application:

• User signs up for offering
• User creates profile, detailing information needed for resume (e.g., education, work history, skills) and job preferences (industry, function, special requirements - e.g., flexible hours, office set ups)
• Application generates "tags" for user profile based on information provided
• Application takes provided information and generates into a resume format for the user to review
• User can view resume, update/edit it and save it down
• User can create multiple versions
• Application compares profile "tags" against jobs in database, seraching for matches
• Application returns jobs that match, flagging which meet user preferences around flexbility
• User applies to job with resume

 

 

To summarize, I would build a web application that is targeted at helping new mothers find jobs as they return to the workforce.  The application will help new mothers create resumes, and, upon reviewing the content in the resumes, match them to jobs that meet their backgrounds / skillsets.  The product would particularly focus on flagging to the users which jobs have flexible hours / office set-ups, as we know this is an important indicator re: whether the user will apply and want to pursue the job.