→ Data Centers
→ Digital Marketing Team
→ Oct 2019 - Dec 2019
→ Project Manager: Ana Guilbert
→ Design Manager: Chris Bauer
→ UX Designer: Kyle Soriano
→ UI Designer: Phil Pang
The Equinix careers team needed a brand new careers page before the start of the hiring season. They reported that jobseekers navigating the site couldn’t easily access and apply to open roles, and they were viewing outdated hiring information that was several years old.
With poor conversions to the Equinix job site, outdated components and content on the Careers page, and a stakeholder desire to have a brand new page before the start of the hiring season, the Digital Marketing team at Equinix was tasked with redesigning the entire Equinix Careers user experience on the web for desktop.
Research
→ Previous Experience
→ Competitive / Comparative Analysis
→ Heatmaps
Define
→ Hypothesis
→ Business KPIs
→ Design Principles
Design
→ Story Wireframes
→ Lofi Wireframes
→ Hifi Mockups
→ Design Solutions
Test
→ Prototype
→ Results
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Users aren’t clicking on the job search CTA button because: They’re distracted by the Veterans Careers and University Relations links, that are designed to interact as tabs, but take the users to different Careers pages.“Begin Your Search”, the primary goal and CTA of the page, is contained in a hero banner carousel that frequently moves.
The Careers page has an outdated look and feel compared to the rest of the redesigned site, featuring old components, old text styles, and alignment issues.
Users can find the page hard to read through because the copy is very squished and close together. The page also has no narrative or reason for the order of copy.
QTS stands out in quality and engagement — well produced videos work well alongside effective copy. There is also a depth of content not found elsewhere, with dedicated pages for employee values and benefits.
Intriguing photos of real employeesare engaging imagery andeffective at communicating culture.
Nothing more than a couple of lines of copy and a link to job listings, CyrusOne wastes the opportunity to make an impact, engage, or integrate with the brand narrative.
Content is focused on creating a better working culture and environment for employees. Uses engaging narrative showcasing the impact of their work.
Adobe delivers a strong narrative focused on the passion and impact candidates can have at the company. They also showcase themselves as an equal opportunity employer.Bad: Unable to customize favorites
Although some of the content is relevant it is text-heavy and disengaging, it does not offer details or information about career opportunities.
Equinix users typically do not scroll far down the screen, a common pattern we see on most Equinix pages. The heatmap examples above show the careers pages in 2019.
The red, orange, and yellow represent where 100% - 75% of users scroll or click. The green, blue, and dark gray represent where less than 50% of users reach when they scroll or click.
Although the main CTA to the jobsite is in the hero section, users are mainly clicking on the job site CTA that's further down the page. However, close to 50% of users are even seeing this CTA.
Knowing this about our users, we wanted to ensure that the primary goal of the page is accessible at the very top without any distractions or other clickable links.
Based on our examination of the old Careers page, our competitive and comparative analyses, and what we know about about our users from previous pages, we created two hypotheses:
→ Using clear CTAs to the job site will allow jobseekers to find open roles faster.
→ Creating a logical and compelling story will give jobseekers the confidence that Equinix is a great place to work.
Since we’re unable to include Equinix job listings on the main careers page, our stakeholders emphasized that our design needed to increase clicks to the job site.
Because we know that Equinix users tend not to scroll down the page, our stakeholders also wanted to see an increase in scroll depth to prove redesign was compelling to scroll through.
Get jobseekers to open roles faster with effective CTA buttons to the job site.
Tell a story that applies to all job seekers starting from the top, and be niche at the bottom.
Showcase how Equinix values their employees through diversity, inclusion, and benefits.
Before starting on lofi wireframes, I created a story for the page that gave guardrails and order for how the page should be structured.
I chose to structure the story like a funnel, including content that applies to all jobseekers at the top, and content that doesn’t apply to all jobseekers towards the bottom.
This helped stakeholders understand how content should be placed on the page, and helped them visualize one of the biggest changes: moving University Relations & Veterans towards the bottom of the page.
As the UX designer, I was also in charge of the low-fidelity wireframes. I designed and went through many iterations, but three I’m showcasing here include: a long page, a short page, and one I’m titling “wishful thinking”. The main CTAs to the job site are placed strategically:
In the hero banner at the top: Allows for easy access right when the user enters the page, and there’s no other interactions or links users may be distracted to click on.
In the footer at the bottom: Allows for users who do scroll through the entire page to easily access the job site without having to scroll to the very top.
In the breadcrumb bar: This component is designed to stick to the top of the user’s browser as they scroll down the page. Having the CTA to the job site in the breadcrumb bar allows the user to access the job site no matter where they are on the page.
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Phil Pang, our lead UI designer, took my lofi wireframes, and designed the high-fidelity mockup. We went through many iterations and feedback sessions with our stakeholders, presenting to the main Careers team, the Veterans hiring team, and the University Relations hiring team.
Being that the Careers page is one of the top 3 most visited pages on Equinix.com, all of our stakeholders felt passionate and had a lot of say in the end product. As the design team, we were always open to feedback and suggestions, but we were also prepared to defend design decisions by educating and reminding our stakeholders of our research, business KPIs, and the agreed upon story wires.
We ensured that the CTA buttons to the job site were strategically placed in easily accessible areas of the careers page without any other links or interactions to distract the user: in the hero banner, footer, and breadcrumb bar components.
We ensured that all updated components and text styles were used in the redesign. We also included lots of Equinix imagery to emphasize the employee experience, and to help jobseekers imagine themselves working at Equinix.
We ensured the page had a story that made sense to the user, and designed the page to follow the story wires at the beginning of the project. Including ample spacing made the page much more enjoyable to read through.
We ensured the page had a story that made sense to the user, and designed the page to follow the story wires at the beginning of the project. Including ample spacing made the page much more enjoyable to read through.
The Careers team was incredibly happy with the redesign of the page. Typically, when our stakeholders have challenges with their pages, we hear from them pretty frequently. However, we didn’t hear from the Careers team for the whole year that the redesign was live -- which we took to mean they were satisfied.When we reported back to them a year later that the page saw an increase of almost 101% clicks to the job site, they were beyond ecstatic! Our team was very happy with the results, and we felt very proud of the Careers redesign.
Engineering challenges and constraints will happen, and different stakeholders have different needs. This required our team to adapt frequently in a short amount of time. Although we may have thought our best work was created in the beginning, it’s through collaboration with other teams that we produced our best work.
The competitive and comparative analyses, heat maps, and data we know about our Equinix users were all extremely important in defending our design decisions and educating our stakeholders that our design isn’t just to make things look pretty -- it’s all influenced by data and what will make the user accomplish the goal of the page.
Having many stakeholders to collaborate with meant listening to a lot of passionate opinions. It’s important to hear and value everyone’s viewpoints, and not disregard how people think. As designers, it’s also important to be able to lead the conversation to show what’s best for our users.
