Bridging the World’s Skills Gap
Springboard is an EdTech company that provides students with technical skill-building, human support, and project-based learning to prepare them for the industry’s most in-demand careers. Based on 2022 data, 13,856 students have enrolled in Springboard Career Tracks since 2016. The ultimate goal? Transform a million lives by 2030.
Project Overview
Timeline & constraints
~2 weeks (October ‘23)
New Job Guarantee requirements were already in place - needed to add to existing UI
Time zones - EST and IST
Role & responsibilities
Collect existing research on why Job Guarantee requirements changed
Speak with Product Manager and Career Services for context and expectations
Design UI for students to input activities
Users
B2C students who are making a career change and qualify for the Job Guarantee
B2B students can also participate in logging activities, but it isn’t tracked or tied to job guarantee
Challenge
Help students stand out in a tight job market
Place feature in a relevant area
Problem Space
Land a job or your money back
Springboard offers a Job Guarantee to students who are eligible. Throughout the course and after completion, they have access to coaching and career services to help them land a job. If a student meets all of the requirements of the guarantee and are unable to secure employment within a set timeframe, they receive a full refund of their tuition.
A tight job market
Over the last couple of years, a shift in the job market and an increase in layoffs has made securing a job more difficult for students attempting to break into the tech industry. This causes frustration for students who have invested in their future with hopes of landing their dream job. Trust in the program is shaken, and Springboard is losing revenue — around $1,000,000 a quarter. How can students improve their chances of landing a job in this market? How can Springboard maintain trust with its students and ensure their success?
“Students can be doing all of the right things and still have trouble finding a job.”
Karen Woodin-Rodriguez, Career Coach
Research
What is the impact and why is this a problem?
Due to time constraints and lack of ability to meet with students, I met with the Product Manager overseeing this project and a Career Coach to gain context on the problem. What are we currently doing that isn’t working? What is our goal? How will we know that the solution we come up with is working? Through these conversations, I learned the following:
Job Guarantee refunds are too high, around $330,000 a month
The goal of this project is to bring refunds down by 25%
Career Services’ initial hypothesis of what it takes for students to secure a job is no longer valid
Career Services established a path forward, updating the Job Guarantee requirements
UI is needed for students to log the new requirements, effective for the upcoming cohort
Sources show that cultivating a personal brand helps you stand out
According to a senior project study from the California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, building and maintaining a personal brand is important for individuals to differentiate themselves from the competition. Utilizing best practices to showcase a professional self-image is helpful in order to achieve success. Using LinkedIn effectively is also important during the job search, given that 77% of recruiters find candidates through this platform.
What does this mean for Springboard students?
Based on these resources and insights from career coaches, students need to establish an online presence and continue to refine their skills as they job hunt. They will do this by completing a side project each month and doing at least one of the following:
Create a personal website/portfolio to house side project
Create a LinkedIn post summarizing their side project
Add side project to their resume
Add side project to website/portfolio
Once the activity is complete, students need a place to log this information to keep track of their progress. Career coaches need this information so the student is held accountable to the Job Guarantee requirements.
Design
Students are continually visiting the same area
What are students required to log? Where is this taking place? When is this action taking place? To answer these questions, I logged into a test account and went through the steps. On the student dashboard, there is an area where they log activities that are required weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly. I created a flow so I could visually see the steps taken to log this information.
Flow of a student logging job search activities.
Skill development tab
Since students frequently come back to this area to input data, it made sense to keep the new activity requirements in the same area. A new tab was added and named Skill Development because the new requirements focus on skill building and online presence. To satisfy requirements, students need to log:
When the project was completed
Relevant link to that activity
A brief description of activity completed
Log of activities
A submission history was also added so students could keep track of when they submitted activities, and also give them the control to edit or delete an entry. This UI pattern was used to stay consistent with the entry history for Jobs and Contacts.
New UI for the job search section of a student’s dashboard.
Outcomes and Lessons Learned
Job Guarantee refunds did not trend downward
As of February, Job Guarantee refunds did not reduce, but instead went over target by eight refunds. The effects of this change were anticipated to lag by a few months, so it may take time to determine the effectiveness of this project.
Was our approach accurate in solving this problem?
User testing should be completed on the skill development feature to determine its usefulness. Something could have been overlooked or missing from the feature that students find important.
If the refunds don’t reduce in the upcoming months, it could be a sign that the problem isn’t solved or the team focused on the wrong problem. Having design included in conversations early in the problem identification phase allows them to contribute their user centered perspective and input around methodologies for solutioning.