Presenting the final readout of a comprehensive research study to our team stakeholders, with insights from interviews, survey responses, and format rankings. After careful analysis, it became clear that the best decision was to shut down the project.
Role - UX Researcher & Consultant
Project Overview
I worked as a UX Researcher and Consultant on the Crowdsource Resume project, which aimed to offer a free alternative to professional resume review services by utilizing peer-to-peer feedback. The goal was to enable Indeed users to give feedback on other resumes in exchange for receiving feedback on their resumes through a "give and take" system.
Research
I conducted two research studies to evaluate the usefulness of Crowdsource Resume. In the first study, I conducted an unmoderated session through UserTesting.com to understand how job seekers were getting their resumes reviewed, pain points experienced during the review process, and the type of person they preferred to have reviewing their resumes. Based on the findings, we initiated three next steps: a goodwill experiment, a shareable link experiment, and a follow-up research study to compare different resume review formats.
In the second study was a multi-faceted research effort. I created a screener to identify users to recruit, conducted initial interviews with participants, and had them compare four different resume review formats. After each format, participants filled out a survey about their experience, and ranked each format against each other in several different areas. I then conducted a final interview with each participant to dive into their responses.
Findings
Based on my research and two product experiments, I recommended discontinuing the project. My findings revealed that while job seekers need resume reviews, they preferred professional reviewers over peers. Incentivizing peer reviews and ensuring feedback quality were also challenging. Furthermore, when comparing the participants' feedback on their experiences with each format and their rankings, we found that peer-to-peer feedback ranked too similarly to other formats such as Instant Resume Scan and Friends & Family, even when using weighted rankings.
Conclusion
Although there was some value to the project, it was not a big enough opportunity for our team to pursue and would be better suited for our Career Services team to handle. My research and analysis helped the team stakeholders make an informed decision to shut down the project, saving the company valuable resources and time that could be better allocated towards other initiatives.