How to Fix Your Job Board’s Broken User Experience

Finding a new job is often a stressful experience. Candidates want to be able to find the right roles quickly and easily – and yet, many jobseekers struggle to find relevant search results when using job boards and other recruitment platforms. 

A report by recruitment software firm, Madgex, revealed that despite changes in jobseeker keyword search queries during the Covid-19 pandemic, many job boards aren't displaying results that are relevant enough to users’ search queries – and don't take keyword variance into account. 

Delivering the best search experience for your job board or recruitment platform means providing users with the most relevant job vacancies. With commute time a key factor when choosing a job, one way to improve search relevance is by ensuring that jobs suggested to candidates are ones that they can easily travel to.

To help you find new ways to improve the search user experience on your recruitment platform, we’ve collected three examples of how recruitment platforms are finding innovative ways to improve their search relevance and deliver a better user experience with travel time data.

‍1. Totaljobs: Let users search by time with a commute time filter

The pandemic has significantly shifted our attitudes to commuting. 

A survey by Totaljobs, one of the UK’s largest job boards, found that over half (54%) of UK workers would quit a job because of their commute. This rises to 76% among workers in London.

With commute time being a deal-breaker for many workers, Totaljobs has created a commute time filter, using the TravelTime API, that allows jobseekers to find the right job based on their commuting preferences:

Users can enter their home postcode or starting address, set their maximum commute time and choose how they prefer to travel to work (walking, cycling, driving or using public transport). 

The commute time filter then uses these details to find the most suitable jobs and provide an estimate of the commute:

How this improves the user experience:

With Totaljobs’ commute time filter, users can: 

1. Find relevant jobs within their desired commute time, without having to check third-party websites
2. Get suggestions for relevant jobs in locations they may not have otherwise considered – since the filter takes transport links into account
3. See the actual commute time for each job

• Learn more: How Totaljobs Increased Website Conversions by 10% with TravelTime Search

2. Side: Help jobseekers find flexible, temporary work nearby

Commutability is an important factor when it comes to temporary work. With businesses often looking to hire temporary staff at short notice, candidates must be able to easily get to a location.

While distance is traditionally used as a proxy to determine commutability, it’s not always an effective metric for determining how long a worker will spend commuting.

Side, France’s first temporary work platform, uses travel time data within its search algorithms to solve this challenge. Through its app, candidates can immediately see how long they will spend commuting to a job.

This is done by calculating travel times between a worker’s starting address and the job location and is possible using any mode of transport. Candidates are then filtered based on where they live and their transport preferences:

How this improves the user experience

By integrating travel time in its search algorithms, the Side platform can:

1. Give workers visibility as to how long their commute will be – and whether it makes sense for them to accept the role
2. Offer a standard measure of how easily commutable a job will be, regardless of transport mode and whether a candidate lives in a city or the countryside
3. Give the Side team an understanding of the risk before confirming the selection of a candidate for a job – as longer commutes often have a higher chance of no-shows

• Learn more: How Side Helps Jobseekers Find Jobs They Love with the TravelTime API

3. Zen Educate: Match candidates with short-term and permanent placements

Zen Educate is a technology platform that matches teachers looking for short-term or permanent roles with schools looking to hire.

In industries such as education, last-minute placements are a common occurrence. For this reason, it makes a huge difference as to whether a candidate is 10 minutes or one hour away from a potential job.

To address this challenge, Zen Educate’s algorithm uses travel time data to suggest roles to candidates based on their commute preferences.

For example, teachers can choose both their travel time and transport preferences. For teachers who are open to commuting by different transport modes, the platform’s sorting algorithm will display the transport option that offers the quickest travel time.

How travel time data improves the user experience

By leveraging travel time data in its platform, Zen Educate can:

1. Improve the relevance of jobs that teachers are offered. This is because they are only shown jobs that match their travel preferences
2. Ensure that candidates don’t have to filter the search themselves – the results they get is based on the opportunities being a sensible commute for them from the start
3. Ensure that teachers get roles that are much easier for them to travel to – and spend much less time commuting as a result

• Learn more: How Zen Educate is Reimagining Education Recruitment with the TravelTime API
  

Transform the job search experience with travel time data

Commute time is a key decision-making factor for jobseekers – and yet, many recruitment websites and apps don’t allow candidates to search by this criterion.

Adding travel time to your job board or recruitment app is an effective way to offer jobseekers the transparency they want whilst also providing more relevant results, tailored to their travel preferences.

The TravelTime API allows you to easily add commute time and transport data to your search algorithm, so you can offer your users an additional filter with which to refine their search.