Hybrid Hiring Solutions is an online job board built to connect blue-collar workers in Northeast Pennsylvania with real employment opportunities. I worked on this project during a six-week UX externship alongside three other designers, under the supervision of UX lead Cari Jacobs.
While this was a collaborative project, my focus was primarily on UX research. I spent most of the externship synthesizing research, shaping personas, mapping user journeys, and translating insights into clear product recommendations. This case study represents my strongest real-world UX research experience and is one of the top three projects in my portfolio.
Early in the externship, we noticed that job seekers weren’t necessarily struggling to find jobs — they were struggling to trust the platforms hosting them.
Many participants described applying to roles and never hearing back, encountering listings that felt outdated or fake, or feeling unsure whether their applications were ever seen. Over time, this created frustration, skepticism, and emotional fatigue. For blue-collar workers especially, job boards felt overly automated and disconnected from real people.
The core challenge became clear:
How might Hybrid Hiring create a job search experience that feels transparent, human, and reliable — without adding unnecessary complexity?
We conducted a mix of qualitative and quantitative research to understand both behaviors and emotions behind the job search process.
I was responsible for consolidating insights across:
Beyond identifying surface-level usability issues, I focused on uncovering patterns of distrust, emotional friction, and unmet support needs that repeatedly surfaced across research.
One of the most surprising insights was that many job seekers weren’t actively unhappy in their current roles. Instead, they were open to switching jobs if a better opportunity appeared — one with higher pay, better benefits, or clearer growth pathways.
At the same time, the emotional experience of job searching was consistently negative. Users felt discouraged by ghosting, confused by vague job descriptions, and exhausted by repetitive application steps. While most participants were comfortable using technology, they strongly preferred simple interfaces that respected their time.
Several consistent needs emerged:
To ground these insights, I finalized two primary personas that reflected the most common motivations and pain points.
Dan, a 29-year-old gas production operator, represents job seekers looking for growth. He’s motivated and tech-comfortable but feels stuck because he doesn’t understand what his next career step should be. Dan wants guidance, detailed job expectations, and a sense that someone is invested in his success.
Jakarta Patrick, a 42-year-old industrial electrician, represents stability-focused workers. With a family to support, he prioritizes pay transparency, predictable schedules, and short applications. He’s especially frustrated by outdated listings and companies that never respond.
These personas helped me keep both career-driven and family-oriented users in mind throughout the research synthesis process.
Using interview data, I created user journey maps to visualize how trust is built — and broken — across the job search experience.
The most significant emotional drop occurred after applications were submitted. Users entered this stage cautiously optimistic, only to feel deflated when no confirmation or follow-up occurred. Over time, this led users to abandon platforms entirely and rely on word of mouth instead.
Mapping these emotional dips helped identify opportunities where even small UX changes — such as application status updates or human check-ins — could dramatically improve user trust.
Rather than designing flashy features, my research supported a product direction focused on credibility, clarity, and human connection.
Key recommendations included:
Together, these changes aimed to make Hybrid Hiring feel alive, transparent, and genuinely supportive, rather than automated and impersonal.
If this project continued, I would focus on usability testing — particularly on mobile — to validate whether these changes reduced friction and increased trust.
I would also measure success through metrics like employer response rates, application completion rates, and repeat user visits. Expanding the Resource Page into a centralized hub for career guidance, resume clarity, and job pathway education would be a natural next step.
This project reinforced that trust is often the most important — and fragile — part of the user experience. Small design decisions, especially around communication and transparency, can have an outsized emotional impact.
I also learned how critical research synthesis is in real-world projects. The value wasn’t just in collecting data, but in turning scattered insights into a clear, actionable narrative that stakeholders could understand and use.
Most importantly, this experience shaped how I approach UX research: by listening carefully, prioritizing empathy, and designing for people — not just systems.
