The Challenge
The IRS needed to hire large numbers of seasonal employees to process tax returns. Many applicants missed job offer deadlines because they didn’t see emails in time. Tentative job offers required a response within 3 days; missed emails meant lost hires.
To solve this, we designed a new SMS text alerts feature that would notify applicants about urgent hiring steps, starting with job offers and eventually to include onboarding tasks.
Project Context
My role: Lead designer for the applicant–facing side of the feature
Team: USAJOBS product team, applicant tracking system team selected for the pilot, IRS stakeholders, content strategist, BA, user researcher
Constraints: SMS short-code compliance, messy/legacy phone data, and coordination across multiple applicant-tracking systems.
The Approach
I got to do my favorite thing: leading workshops.
I worked closely with the pilot applicant tracking system team and other stakeholders to align our workflows and ensure the end-to-end experience was seamless for job seekers.
I led in person and remote workshops with developers, content strategists, CX specialists, and leadership to make design decisions together.
I partnered with a BA to ensure all designs met SMS compliance.
A researcher helped me craft a usability study.
I conducted three rounds of usability testing with new IRS hires and recent job seekers, including users with disabilities.
The testing approach, including sending participants live text messages to capture authentic reactions, was designed by our user researcher. I implemented her plan, creating prototypes, running sessions, and synthesizing results.
Between rounds, I refined prototypes and led workshops to review findings and co-create solutions with the team.
These were the key findings:
Users needed clear language about what texts they’d get (“job offers and tasks”). They were worried about being spammed with marketing texts.
Trust in messages increased when they were personalized and referenced USAJOBS directly. User sometimes get phishing texts from fake recruiters.
Improving the onboarding flow and user profile could make the opt-in prompt more noticeable.
The Design Work
I designed the opt-in flow for applicants.
Employers could opt in to sending text alerts in the applicant tracking system. I had to design a way to encourage applicants to opt in to getting text alerts. I ended up putting prompts in the new user onboarding flow and the user profile. For existing users, I designed prompts to encourage them to opt in. We avoided adding opt-in to the application form because employer adoption of SMS varied; placing prompts in onboarding/profile kept expectations accurate.
I improved message trust and clarity.
Our content strategist created the text message content to meet compliance requirements. I gathered usability testing feedback on the text content, suggesting small but impactful changes:
Adding personalization (“Congratulations, Emily!”) made the texts seem more trustworthy.
Adding line breaks made the texts easier to read for users with dyslexia.
I solved data quality issues.
The USAJOBS phone number field had long been unstructured, collecting messy data. With each text alert costing money, we had to make sure we weren’t sending texts to invalid numbers.
I designed a new phone number field with a country code picker, input mask, and validation messages. Then I created flows that prompted users to fix invalid numbers without deleting existing data.
I designed overall improvements to the onboarding flow and profile.
In testing the opt in flow, I identified usability issues with the overall onboarding flow and user profile. In my design workshops, the stakeholders and I came up with ways to fix these issues. I prototyped these changes and presented them to USAJOBS leadership as future improvements for the site that shouldn’t hold back the feature launch, but could enhance the visibility of the texting feature later on:
Different navigation structure for the user profile
Simplified onboarding flow for users who are coming from a job posting
New notifications page to consolidate all email and texting opt-in prompts
A Twist in the Project
Towards the end of the project, external factors slowed the path to launch. The federal government entered a hiring freeze, with a big impact to the IRS. This meant the feature would need new partners before going live.
At the same time, we faced long approval timelines for the SMS short code required to send texts. Despite these delays, I delivered a complete, tested, and documented design that was ready for launch and adaptable for any hiring system that integrates with USAJOBS.
The Outcome
I delivered a complete, tested, and documented MVP design ready for development handoff. The feature is now fully built and awaiting final SMS short code approval before launch. In addition, I organized design improvements to the overall onboarding flow and user profile that are being worked into the roadmap as needed.
The design is ready for adoption by additional applicant tracking systems and agencies in the future so they can start using a new, secure communication channel for federal hiring.