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Job applications suck because bad UX
The most punishing part of being unemployed isn’t the lack of steady income, it’s navigating all the job applications.
It’s not a great time to be trying to break into the field of user experience according to article after article. Nevertheless, I and many other hopefuls, have been persisting. We have polished our resumes and CVs to a high shine, tackled projects to populate our portfolio sites with promise, collected certifications like holographic Pokemon cards. But that’s not the hard part.
The hard part is sloughing through job applications.
Even once we’ve found a job that doesn’t ask for 10+ years of experience, the application process is annoying at best, arduous at worst. Thanks to the inconsistent, error-ridden job applications, job applicants are unable to put their best foot forward. They are hampered by a poorly designed experience that makes applying to jobs even more discouraging than it already is.
Common problems with job applications
Samuel Harper covered this topic far more exhaustively than I will in this article. It’s disappointing to see that the problems he encountered in 2019 persist to this day. Namely:
1. Why do I have to create an account?
There’s something especially irksome about having to create an account on a site that you will, outside of this job application, never ever visit. Why ask users, the job applicants, to create an account? Sure, this can give them access to an account where they can see the status of their application… but the more common, and expected, experience is to be contacted through email. Today’s job seekers are not logging in to monitor just one application. We’re shot-gunning it with the power of Indeed, LinkedIn, and the like.
