Bryant Mao

Indeed

Building matching service for Japan’s largest job platform

UX/UI, Desktop, B2B

Low application rate, winding hiring process, and worries of misfits. Japan's job market poses numerous barriers that hinder hiring. Yet both employers and job seekers are highly motivated to work and connect with one another. As the leading job platform in Japan, how can Indeed effectively turn desire into action in this unique two-sided market?

Challenge

Japan's hiring landscape is renowned for its challenges, with 89% of hiring managers struggling to fill positions, compared to the global average of 45% (source link). Tokyo, in particular, faces a job-to-job seeker ratio of 1.14, indicating high job demand but limited candidates. While companies like DODA and RikuNavi Next offer resume search features, about half of employers have discontinued their use due to time constraints and concerns about job seeker empowerment.

Being Japan's largest job platform, Indeed's mission is to bridge the gap between job seekers and employers, facilitating job attainment. Leveraging our extensive data from both parties, we aim to create an effective job-matching platform that increases application rates, resulting in more hires and delivering value to both sides of the job market.

My Role

I was leading the end-to-end design of the matching experience with a strong focus on UX vision and prototyping. I collaborated with researchers to gain user insights to inform strategic decisions alongside the project manager and senior stakeholders. I also worked closely with designers and developers across teams to ensure design consistency and impact across platforms.

Every year tons of new job seeker get into the japan job market, yet most employers get low or no applicant for their job post.

Process in a nutshell

Matching the policy, user and business interest

We start the project by gathering the requirements of different stakeholders and understanding how the matching product will influence and contribute to Indeed's goal in Japan of becoming a platform-first, HR tech company.

Working with product owners, we decided to leverage the existing Japan Application-Tracking-System (ATS) and match products that the US already built to maximize consistency and efficiency.

With previous research and market insights, we formulate our design assumptions, build prototypes and validate them through rigorous testing with japan users. The findings directly influenced our design decisions over the hiring journey from posting a job to getting hired.

Despite encountering various challenges to legal compliance and platformization, the close collaboration across internal and external teams helps us to explore alternative solutions to fulfilled regulations and requirements while preserving a positive user experience.

Kickoff

Aligning the product strategy

The goal of this project is twofold. Firstly, we aim to build a matching product to enhance engagement between employer and job seeker and ultimately lead to more hires. Secondly, we aim to leverage this project as a pilot to build the HR platform with our Japan partners.

Since the product will affect multiple core touchpoints across Indeed, including the ATS (Application-tracking-system) dashboard, we talked to several product owners across teams to align on the common vision and approach. Here are the key takeaway

To build on the existing ATS which is already working, so it won't disrupt the experience of Japanese users.

To reuse the US matching product as much as possible to keep consistency, and only introduce new components when needed.

To design with scalability and compatibility on day one, since the platform will need to integrate with other products from our third-party alliances.

Research

Defining our japan users

Next, we need to define our target users. From the desktop research, we know that 99.5% of companies in Japan are small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and approximately 95% of them are companies with 1-29 employees.

These small businesses are usually restrained on resources. People who are responsible for hiring often lack the necessary knowledge, tools, and time to find the right talent. These self-serve users are our primary focus as they comprise most of our user base.

On the other hand, many of our existing paid users are hiring agencies who use Indeed to help larger companies post jobs or source candidates. Therefore, we also need to consider how to integrate this workflow.

Research

Test our assumptions through research

The previous research and user archetype helped us formulate the initial design assumptions. Firstly, we discovered that despite the familiarity with sourcing products and services, Japanese employers often find them indifferent, the recommended jobs or candidates tend to be too generic and do not align with their experience or requirements. Secondly, we learned that Japanese job seekers are cautious and require more information before applying, suggesting the need for further explanation of the new services.

With the US product on hand, we quickly implemented changes based on these assumptions, built prototypes, and tested them with our target users—both employers and job seekers. The result reveals several interesting finding that impacts the design down the line:

Many employers are expecting a place for them to input specific criteria/requirements before seeing the match result.

Employers want to know more information from the matched candidates such as age, full work history, location, and even personality

Employer shows strong interest in customization, they think it's more personal and can help the message stand out.

Job seekers appreciate ‘passive’ ways to find jobs. And they expect a higher chance to get hired if approached by an employer

High relevancy of the job and proper email frequency will be key for job seekers to use the service

Many job seekerscan not tell the company’s atmosphere and are not sure if the job will fit their personality.

Legal

Legal alignment and tradeoffs

One major challenge we faced in launching our matching product in Japan was complying with legal requirements. In Japan, Indeed holds a license as an information provider. This means we must present information neutrally without favoring or hiding anything from the users. This poses a problem as matching is inherently selective service.

So we collaborated with the PM and legal teams to explore alternatives that would satisfy policy requirements. Firstly, we show recommended candidates while offering a general search so employers can freely access the entire resume pool on Indeed. Secondly, we prioritized top results and preserved the long tail through pagination. And finally, we set some basic criteria to use the serivce, so employers and job seekers will get more relevant recommendations.

Although it took months to resolve, the legal battle helped us prioritize essential experience while maintaining Indeed's legitimacy in the local market.

Design

Design sprint: from vision to mvp

With these insights in mind, it's time to assemble the matching product and candidate platform. To ensure we maximize the outcome and minimize the impact with other initiatives, we brought together key stakeholders, including PMs, designers, and developers from immediate, Indeed, and third-party teams. We host a four-day hybrid design sprint, discussing the product vision, identifying opportunity areas, risk, and feasibility to define the roadmap and MVP plan.

The productive session yielded vision alignment and end-to-end MVP flows. Additionally, we highlighted some key technical assumptions for all parties to explore further, such as the possibility of a common data format and APIs for building the matching and searching functions.

Testing

User testing: The full ATS experience

While we are building the matching service, a parallel team is also planning an initiative to facilitate engagement between employers and job seekers through lightweight connections such as messages or calls.

To ensure both projects will coexist well on the ATS platform, I worked with the lead designer to lay out the end-to-end applicant tracking journey and built a prototype to test with our Japanese employers.

The results show a positive sign: Employers appreciate seeing both matched and connected candidates on the ATS dashboard, allowing them to reach out when they need more applicants. However, many find it confusing to see the candidates together with those who already applied for the job. These insights, along with a few others, provide us with a clear direction on how to iterate the design to fulfill their day-to-day hiring tasks.

Implementation

Launch with a platform-first mindset

The move to being a platform-based product raises several questions and challenges in UX. For example, which protocols and design standards should we follow? What should be configurable and what should be tailor-made to fulfill unique local needs? How should we communicate the value of using this new feature beyond Indeed our UI and policies? The bottom line is that we can fulfill all use cases while remaining flexible to adapt and change the matching product over time.

As the lead designer, I spent most of my time working with internal and external teams to address these questions - walking through the user journey, highlighting risks, common patterns, policy gaps, and data formats such as APIs and matching algorithms. Through countless sessions, we are able to identify shared resources, priorities, and a roadmap to ensure we move forward with maximum alignment and compatibility.

“It’s really smooth and easy to understand with the message above and job ad below it. I get the impression it’s speedy and can be personalized.”

Japan Employer

Research participants

Outcome

Since Indeed launched Instant Match in Japan in 2023, the matching service, along with the new ATS experience, has significantly increased application rates and positive outcomes. With its platform-first approach, we expect our Recuirt alliances and partner companies to follow suit and utilize this service to enhance their experience and businesses.

Final Design

The end result delivered a streamlined matching experience in Japan. With features such as instant job and candidate recommendations, personalized filters and messages, prompt notifications, and one-stop candidate management. The product helped job seekers and employers take timely action to discover, connect, and eventually work together toward a successful hire. Additionally, the platform-based workflow laid the foundation for other strategic partners to further extend these features to their needs.

  • 01.Turn passive to proactive
  • 02.Quality over quantity
  • 03.Nudge to hire

01

Turn passive to proactive

Instant matches

Japan employer often struggle with nothing to do until someone applied. The platform solve this by generating matches instantly right after employer posted a job. So they can take immediate action to review and invite the candidate. No more waiting for days or weeks.

Tailor made invitation

Crafting a personal email with relevant information is key to enticing Japanese job seekers. However most SMB employer don’t have such time luxury due to their other obligation. Therefore we make the process easy by prefilling job summary with customizable templates so employer can craft effective invitation with ease.

Stay engage

Candidate is precious to Japan employers, but It is touch for them to keep track the job seeker with their busy schdule. Our platform sends email notifications for matches and candidate responses, ensuring employers don't miss critical events and can react promptly. This also entice them to keep coming back to engage with the platform along the hiring journey.

Cater to Agency

In Japan, many hiring activities heavily rely on agencies, particularly in early stages like job posting and recruiting. Our platform caters to such workflow by ensuring expose relevant infomation and actions based on administrative rights. This allow different parties to jump in any point of the hiring process without losing privacy and focus.

02

Quality over quantity

Rich candidate information

Japanese employers require detailed candidate information for evaluation. Our candidate cards present essential resume data such as past experience, education, credentials, and skills. Additionally, we provide reasons for recommendation, helping employers to understand and react to each match suggestion.

Specific filter and search

Japanese employers yearn for greater control over their matched candidates. We empower them by generating personalized filter and sorting options based on their job post, such as skills or years of experience. This ensures match results align with employer's preferences. Employers can also search candidate from the Indeed resume pool if recommendations fall short.

Preference control and learning

For Japan's cautious employer and job seeker, a high quality match is key to successful hiring. So for the employer, we ensure that all the recommended candidate pass minimal requirement. They can save or remove candidates to refine future matches. On the other hand, we limited job seeker to three best job matches to avoid overwhelming their inbox. They can control their job criteria or pause the function if needed.

03

Nudge to hire

Start lightweight

In Japan, job seekers and employers hesitate to take action without absolute certainty. To address this, we offer alternative ways for both parties to express interest. Job seekers can ask questions, engage in calls, or simply like a job before apply. Similarly, employers can do the same before extending formal invitations. This minimized missed opportunities, while build the relationship to increases hiring succesful rate in the future.

Commit progressively

Through lightweight interactions, employers and job seekers foster understanding and accumulate valuable history. We store all these data in one canddidate view, enabling employers to evaluate resumes, questions, and interviews to make informed decisions.

Prioritizing applicants

To optimized employer’s workflow. We prioritize applicants in the primary section on the ATS dashboard. Matched and contacted candidates, such as people who have send a message or have a call, are placed in a secondary area. This allow employers to focus on applicants first and only access to the candidate pool when its needed. By prioritizing important status and actions, we help employer to take timely action to candidate closer to hire.

Reflection

Spreadsheets are great tool for complex stakholders. Providing an overview of use cases, roadmaps, priorities for discussion.

Prototypes are powerful tools in navigating the gray areas of legal language, resolving debates, and establishing tangible boundaries.

Designing for platform means we need to consider scalability and compatibility with current and future use cases from all parties.

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