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As part of the Parsons Studio Sprint, we took on the challenge of making the current hiring process transparent and equitable. While the initial version was completed within a couple of weeks, I wasn’t fully satisfied with the design and clarity. Determined to create more impactful features, I revisited the prototypes. This led to the development of features like LinkedIn Credence Badges, Workplace Insights, Applicant Feedback, and the Hiring Report Card.
Amongst the divided workload I took on secondary and primary research, user interviews, user personas, user journey, visual design, and prototyping.
Overview
My Role
Design Process
Understand Research Analyze Design User testing Presentation
HIGH FIDELITY PROTOTYPES
CREDIBILITY BADGES - new feature pop up
CREDIBILITY BADGES - expanded view
CREDIBILTY BADGES - ranking system
COMPANY FEEDBACK - for employees
POST-APPLICATION SURVEY 1
POST-APPLICATION SURVEY 2
POST-APPLICATION SURVEY 3
POST-APPLICATION SURVEY 4
COMPANY REPORT CARD- new feature pop up
COMPANY REPORT CARD - expanded view
POST-APPLICATION SURVEY - touchpoint 2
Thumbs Up slider
Thumbs Down slider
PROBLEM STATEMENT
The current hiring process on LinkedIn reveals a significant imbalance of power between employers and job seekers.
For job seekers
The experience is often a shot in the dark, with mass applications leading to little clarity on application status or actionable feedback.
For employers
Prolonged response times, lack of transparency, and minimal accountability for company culture create gaps in trust and fairness.
Solution Statement
These features collectively redefine hiring transparency, positioning LinkedIn as a leader in equitable hiring practices while driving user engagement and business growth.
Why/How:
Workplace Insights:
Allows current employees to provide quick, anonymous feedback about their workplace culture through a short questionnaire.
Empowers job seekers with authentic insights while fostering workplace transparency and accountability, strengthening LinkedIn’s reputation as the trusted hiring platform.
Why/How:
LinkedIn Credence Badges:
Uses insights from above to recognizes employers for their commitment to transparency, and inclusivity, building trust and enhancing employer branding by using Workplace Insights.
These badges incentivize best practices, increasing user engagement and adoption of LinkedIn’s premium hiring tools.
Why/How:
Applicant Feedback:
Enables job seekers to rate and review different parts of their hiring experience, providing valuable insights to future candidates and fostering accountability among employers as well as providing applicant feedback data to them.
Increases trust and engagement on the platform, while generating data that enhances LinkedIn’s and the employers’ hiring ecosystem.
Hiring Feedback:
Employers receive a score based on metrics like responsiveness, transparency, and fairness, helping them identify areas for improvement.
Why/How:
Encourages employers to optimize their hiring practices, hence getting an edge over competitors like Glassdoor and improving platform credibility of being a one-stop solution for authentic information and driving adoption of LinkedIn’s premium services.
IMPACT STATEMENT
Conducted prototype testing with 26 job seekers and 6 employers that included engineers, designers, business analysts, recruiters, and founders.
81%
of participants reported increased trust in the hiring process.
15%
Increase in LinkedIn Premium adoption, as SnB business owners seek Credence Badges to enhance brand credibility.
34%
user engagement boost is expected, as 21 out of 32 interviewees favored LinkedIn for its transparency efforts, driven by Workplace Insights and Applicant Feedback.
63%
of job seekers experienced an improvement in clarity regarding application status.
LEARNINGS
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Trust drives engagement – Job seekers feel more confident using LinkedIn when hiring is transparent, making features like Workplace Insights and Applicant Feedback valuable.
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Balancing business and user needs – Employers want efficiency, while job seekers want clarity. Finding the right balance between transparency and usability was key.
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Clear actions over complexity – Users respond best to concise, actionable feedback rather than overwhelming details. Friction kills adoption
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Designing within a design system – This project taught me how to work within the design guidelines and component library of a SaaS company, ensuring consistency, scalability, and seamless integration with LinkedIn’s existing ecosystem.
The hiring process is broken—job seekers apply blindly, unaware of their application status, while employers lack accountability for culture and transparency. This project aimed to bridge that gap by introducing features that empower both sides and position the platform as the go-to hiring solution.
LinkedIn has the opportunity to..
01 Increase transparency and equity in the hiring process.
02 Gain more subscribers for their premium services.
Value Proposition
Design and Implement Systems
01 For transparent recruitment information.
02 For providing feedback to applicants.
03 For making feedback from employees public information.
04 For creating an equitable tiered system of premium offerings.
Research
Secondary Research
01 Push and Pull - The motivating factors that job seekers are looking for.
02 Top hesitations/ reasons for quitting or not accepting job offers.
Secondary Research Insights
The majority of people who quit their jobs in the past two years are not returning to the INDUSTRY they left.
01 Workers Leaving Industries for Good
02 Employee Retention Insights
03 Expectation vs. Reality
04 Power Shift in the Workforce
There was a gap between what the workers wanted and what the leaders of the organizations thought would happen coming out of the pandemic.
Employers should understand the motivating and de-motivating factors that keep people in jobs.
There are possibilities to find better ways to earn a living and employees realized that they have the bargaining power.
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User Interviews
Conducted 32 user interviews (job seekers & recruiters) to understand pain points.
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''looking for a job is a job in itself''
''Flexibility to decide when and where I wanna work''
''grass is always greener on the other side''
''conversations about salary more transparent''
''hesitation in reaching out for such conversation''
Insights Analysis of interviews and surveys
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Lack of Communication, employees want to be heard
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Feeling unable to make a change
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Unappreciated
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Unable to grow/expand roles/knowledge
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Flexibility with regard to work is significant.
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Transparency within the company to talk about non-work related topics like salary, best practices,
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Presence of supportive leadership, diversity, talent, vastness of opportunity, etc. is key
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Feeling worthy, valueable in the company, rewarded and recognised to keep them motivated
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Many people interviewed mentioned a need "'to look before they leap"
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Economic pressures may be contributing to this
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Allusions to feeling unsteady of the future
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A common theme among interviewees was that they wanted to feel like they were contributing to something larger than themselves
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They want to feel like what they do is valuable/matters
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Desire to feel connected to their work, even with lower pay
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What does this mean for LinkedIn?
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User Personas
User Journey
ALTRUISTIC ANNNA
Altruistic Anna just finished nursing school.
She understands that pursuing a career in care may lead to lower-earning outcomes but is okay with this because she enjoys and finds fulfillment in her work.
This is her journey from application to a possible shift in her career.
Key Takeaways
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Anna experiences high enthusiasm at the start but faces uncertainty and overwhelm during applications and interviews.
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Starting work presents onboarding challenges, while long-term, she struggles with growth and stagnation.
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Opportunities exist to streamline job applications, enhance onboarding, and improve career progression to ensure long-term engagement.
Click on the image for an expanded view.
Ideation
BRAINSTORMING METHOD - 635
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LOW-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
MID-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE/ WIREFRAMES
Find out inights about your next company & add insights about your previous one.
Fill the post-application survey to help us score the company on its transparency efforts.
Find out more about the companies' transparency and equity efforts.
Service Ideation
Navigation tool with filtering options
Creating an organized and user-friendly interface for the Criterion team to store and input all the ‘Standards of Practice’ into the system for the asset managers and financers to access. The standards would be arranged in the form of categories of the social-reforms and aims/goals of the standards.
This will help the Criterion team by making it easier for them to input new data without consuming time as all the information is divided into categories and there is organized in a methodical way.
It will help the asset owners in identifying the standards of practice faster without getting overwhelmed by the amount of information available.
How Might We Statement
How might we define and demonstrate the user experience of the interaction to make it more exploratory & intuitive in nature?
Assumptions
01 Investors are willingly looking for field-leveling standards to introduce in their companies.
02 Stories related to social impact outcomes would encourages to engage with the standards.
03 Bifurcation of steps needed to achieve that social impact will increase the ease and intuitiveness of the flow.
Visual Prototype
Impact Narratives: Pathways for Investment Transformation
"I wouldn’t pay for it alone but I would expect it to be a part of a subscription that includes other things."
"This is a great idea. The convoluted hand waviness of all the job hiring processes is a load of shit and grime."
"Eases my professional life!"
"That’s an awesome feature. Paying for it alone kinda sucks but I absolutely would."
"That is bogus. I think I would pay $15/month when I had it. $30 is ridiculous."
"A win-win situation."
"I feel like a lot of this info is stuff that companies actively try to make as opaque as possible "
User Testing
QUOTES
Business Strategies
NEW PRICING MODEL
Explorer - $9.99/Month
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Report Card
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5 InMails
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LinkedIn Learning
Career - $26.99/Month
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Report Card
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10 InMails
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LinkedIn Learning
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Show Hiring Manager
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Show who viewed your profile
Business - $44/Month
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All crrent premium offerings
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All future tools
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20 InMails
3 New Tiers
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Breaking the existing premium architecture into three tiers.
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This will allow more users to access the premium features they desire.
Go-To
Market Strategy
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Release features monthly
Offer discounts for students and first time users
Integrate a notification system alerting users to new features
Ad campaign introducing new tiers and features
Offerings grow with users
Positioning Statement
We are integrating feedback to level the playing field.
We will do this by creating an equitable hiring process
that is transparent, efficient, and co-designed.
Conclusion
Our vision
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Envisioning a future for LinkedIn with thorough enough profile building were you can apply to a job with one-click and still be a serious contender for that opportunity.
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We see Linkedin as a platform for companies to find the top talent, and for the top talent to find the best match for them.
03
We would seek to push a tiered structure for companies as well. Designing and implementing features for small to large businesses.
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Improve the platform so that is worth maintaining membership for an extend time.