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CareerSG

1 February 2024

An improved job application portal for government

Screenshot of career SG portal

Problem Statement

Today all Government job postings are posted centrally on the Careers@Gov job portal, which contains 2.3k+ job listings across 116 Government agencies. A straw poll that we did with Recruiters from 10+ agencies during the Tech for Public Good bootcamp indicates that almost 90% of hires in Government today come from online applications, hence this is a critical channel that we need to get right.

Currently, It takes at least 20 minutes to submit an application on the government's main job application portal, Careers@Gov. There are multiple barriers to application where you have to create an account, do a 2FA authentication and fill in a minimum of 35 application fields to apply for 1 role.

Also, search results aren’t accurate which makes it difficult to navigate through the 2k+ roles posted. Improvements in search accuracy and overall user experience are needed to help increase its functionality and reduce job application times.

In short, the main hiring channel is not able to extract it's maximum yield due to barriers to apply.

Product Goals

We wanted to create an improved job application portal that focuses on the 3 key attributes:

  • Accuracy: To ensure that the search results & role identification is accurate

  • Transparency: To ensure that all important job information e.g salary is transparent to help candidate’s make an informed decision

  • Simplicity: The application experience is simple, with low barriers to application

Our Approach

We did research against top tech companies & their job application portals to identify what were important features to have & what a good user journey/experience would look like.

We also compared against companies who were famed for their customer experience e.g Singapore airlines and analysed their customer service form experience to identify important components of a good form filling experience

We also compared against samples sites that the backend applicant tracking system (ATS) shared and companies e.g Booking.com & OKX who were using Greenhouse as their Recruitment ATS systems to see what customisation options were possible.

User Testing

We tested with 7 users who fulfilled the following criteria: 

  • General working population aged 21 years & above

  • Looking for full time or part time roles 

  • Have work experience so that they could meaningfully comment on the application experience

The goal was to: 

  • Understand the mental model of how people would search for job openings

  • Validate the navigation and information architecture of landing page

  • Gather insights on overall interaction and get suggestions on what could be done to elevate the user experience

  • Find out more about both pleasant and unpleasant application experiences from job seekers

Feedback we gathered was incorporated into several iterations of our prototype i.e changing colour themes, search bar behaviour, information displayed, ‘apply button design’, placement of ‘agency & department’ categories before our final solution (below)

Our Final Solution

We’ve built a job portal for citizens to:

  • Quickly and accurately search for roles and view all job information transparently, significantly enhancing the applicant experience.

  • It takes you just two minutes and a single click on 'Apply with LinkedIn' to successfully apply for a role with a maximum of 5 application fields needed.

  • Role information is transparent & you can easily filter by department & agency types to find your desired role.

  • All this is linked to a Recruitment applicant tracking system (Greenhouse) on the backend which Recruiters will then use to process the candidates & take them through the hiring journey.
    Through removing barriers to application, we hope to hire more talents into Government & through these talents, make Singapore better.

Check out the prototype.

3 Key Features of our Job Portal

  • Accurate search results that shows number of open positions

  • Transparent Job information displayed: Role type, salary range and role open duration to help candidates make an informed decision

  •  Streamlined application experience: Only 5 essential fields needed, ‘one-click Apply with LinkedIn’ functionality

Check out the difference in a candidate’s application experience! 
Current Careers @ Gov job portal

Our CareerSG Prototype

User Feedback

Categorized feedback from users:

  • The new visual design & layout is clean and easy to read

  • Information displayed on the site is good, standard with what is seen across other job sites

  • Search function & dropdown select is more useful vs the current multi-select bar at C@G

  • Seems mobile optimised & good latency in load times

  • Much easier to apply for a job now, the one touch apply via LinkedIn easily extracts all information in my profile, reduces manual effort

  • As a Recruiter, because I'm familiar and know that its hosted on the Greenhouse platform, it feels good as I've used this ATS before

  • Job information is good & transparent but some concerns on listing salary information

Our Rollout Plan

We already have traction where post the Tech for Public Good (TFPG) bootcamp in 2023, we have approval from the Public Service Division (PSD) to trial a new applicant tracking system (Greenhouse) with a pilot group of 6 agencies (SNDGO, DOTC, IMDA, NLB, ESTL & PSD). This is already up and running and these agencies will be connecting their job postings on the ATS to the new front end job site.

From Demo day, 5 more agencies have expressed interest (MOF, PIC, SportSG, NCSS & GovTech) to join the pilot program.

For the next phase, we will be expanding the pilot to these 5 agencies + exploring onboarding MOE & MHA, who have legacy based Recruiting processes onto the new platform.

Future planned features of the website includes:

  • Filter by salary

  • Filter & sort by date posted

  • Filter by Job types (Full time/Part Time)

  • Job alerts of new roles that fit your search criteria

  • Sharing feature of roles to your social media

  • Ability to bookmark favorite jobs

  • Ability to track your application

The goal is to A/B pilot trial with these agencies to list their roles onto our new platform whilst keeping their current postings on Careers@Gov and to compare key metrics:
- Application rates
- Application conversion rates
- Application drop off rates
- Candidate application satisfaction
- Agency user satisfaction

Team

CareerSG was built by a multidisciplinary team of engineers, HR, designers & policy officers

Left to right: Yuanruo Liang, Chin Yao Gan, Richard Yak, Sarah Salim, Clifford Teo, Dawn Hu

Demo Day

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