A Practical Guide to Job Application UX
The candidate experience from job listing to submitted application.
Priya Raghunathan
The key figures
- Abandonment
- long applications reduce completion
- Mobile
- many candidates apply from phones
- Accessibility
- application systems must be usable by disabled candidates
- Parsing
- resume parsing often produces errors candidates must fix
Why this is worth getting right
Long, broken application flows lose good candidates, especially on mobile.
Do this, not that
Do
- Keep applications short for first contact
- Support mobile application end to end
- Let candidates review parsed data
- Confirm receipt and set expectations
- Test with assistive technology
Don’t
- Account creation before applying
- Re-entering data already in a resume
- Applications that fail on phones
- Silence after submission
When to bring in help
Our advice Bring in help when application drop-off is high.
Where this comes from
- U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — Prohibited Employment Policies/Practices
- W3C Web Accessibility Initiative — Accessible forms
The figures and practices above come from the sources listed.
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