Hired 2023

Optimizing the self-serve trial experience for prospective employers

As the design lead for the New Business team, I redesigned Hired’s first-time employer trial experience to give new users to the platform immediate access to candidate discovery while limiting abuse from unvetted accounts. By introducing a capped profile-view model with clear system feedback, we helped employers experience Hired’s value in their first session and increased early engagement.

Hired was a two-sided talent marketplace that allowed companies to connect with and hire pre-vetted tech professionals. As of June 2024 Hired is part of LHH Recruitment solutions.

Solution

We created a temporary “Limited Trial Experience” that gave new users full functional access to the platform while their account was under review, with one key constraint - a cap of 10 candidate profile views. This allowed employers to explore, understand the product, and take action, while reducing exposure if an account was later disqualified.

On the backend, the dev team implemented additional protections to prevent bad actors from accessing the platform and scraping candidate data - such as blocking suspicious sign up emails and setting number of result pages that could be viewed before triggering the limit.

On the front end, I created a design prioritized transparency over restriction, making limits visible, understandable, and clearly temporary.

I designed a persistent view counter in the global navigation that showed how many profile views remained, setting clear expectations without interrupting flow. We decided to keep the design subtle since ideally sales would be quickly approving accounts that came in during business hours. Each profile visit reduced the count, reinforcing a simple mental model for the system. There was also a way to reach out for support directly from the view counter if needed.

Once a candidate profile was opened, the profile view limit was emphasized through a banner which also allowed the employer to contact Hired sales directly if they had questions about their access. 

Once the limit was reached, a modal explained the review status and guided users toward a productive next step - completing their employer profile, framing the restriction as an opportunity to complete an important task rather than a blocker. For the approval team, a complete profile also showed higher employer intent which was valuable information for the sales flow.

Once a new employer’s account was approved, in addition to receiving an email they now saw a success modal that informed them of the approval. The modal directed them to either while still in their first session with the software or when they next logged in after approval.

Impact

After launch, 64% of trials viewed at least one candidate during their two week trial, a meaningful increase over the 37% prior baseline. More employers engaged with candidate discovery early in the trial without increasing platform risk, creating a more scalable foundation for growth. Since our volume of new sign ups was very low during Q3-4 of 2023 due to an overall reduction in hiring in the tech market, the team wasn’t able to identify an impact on conversions from the change.