Overview
USAJOBS is the federal government’s job board with over six million active job seekers and 28,000 jobs posted on an average day. The search experience was overwhelming for many users, especially those unfamiliar with federal jargon and hiring processes.
As a product designer helping to lead this effort, I collaborated with another designer, a cross-functional team, and stakeholders from across the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to redesign the job search experience. Our goal was to help users get more relevant results while navigating policy constraints and leadership changes.
The new search fields have interactions that are more mobile friendly.
The new search results page has simplified filters.
The problem
Users were struggling to find relevant jobs.
Surveys and analytics confirmed what users often said:
Results felt irrelevant.
Filters were confusing.
Job descriptions were hard to understand.
The effort didn’t feel worth it.
Most of the time there only one or two results that are relevant and then pages upon pages of things that do not match my search or filtered criteria.
-Survey participant
A research team analyzed survey responses and web analytics and synthesized their findings into three high-level design principles:
Inspire confidence through relevance.
Make results feel manageable.
Make the search experience feel worth the time.
I tagged along as our design manager led a workshop with ~30 stakeholders across policy, engineering, HR, and multiple products to brainstorm feasible improvements and gather constraints early on.
The discovery workshop with multi-disciplinary stakeholders
Our approach
With this discovery work, I partnered with another product designer to turn research into action. We:
Mapped all findings and ideas in Miro.
Prioritized based on feasibility, user impact, and policy constraints.
Conducted two rounds of usability testing: first on desktop, then mobile.
Incorporated feedback from real users and internal stakeholders.
Due to the constraints of HR policies and how our site is required to work with external systems, we kept the scope focused on frontend changes. We realized we could make a significant impact this way while avoiding major delays and unwanted attention.
An early iteration sketch
The usability testing guide and notes
Design decisions & solutions
Helping users input better search terms
I redesigned the keyword autocomplete panel by studying other major search tools. The new autocomplete design helps users overcome the “blank page” paralysis that we found in user research because it:
Appears as soon as a user taps the search field (vs. requiring user to type).
Suggests popular or recent searches before they start typing.
Has a more descriptive field label.
Making filters more visible and intuitive
I also fully redesigned the filters to help users who were often overwhelmed and confused by the existing filters:
Changed filters to pill-shaped buttons at the top of results pages (vs. hidden accordions).
Replaced dropdowns with bottom sheets on mobile.
Updated filter labels and interactions for clarity and plain language.
Added contextual help to each filter.
Made job alert feature a clear, visible button.
Making search preferences easier to set
Previously, users had to navigate several profile subpages to save preferences.
I simplified it to a single “Save default filters” button directly on the search page.
Search preferences went from the most difficult task to 100% completion in usability testing after making this change.
Clarifying confusing content
The job overview section was full of fields that had federal jargon in the labels.
I worked with the content team to test alternative terminology.
We successfully updated labels without requiring HR partners to change their systems or policies.
Non-fed users were confused by terms like “Bargaining unit status” so we change them to more clear labels (Represented by a union).
Navigating new leadership priorities
This project took place during a presidential transition which introduced some changes.
All projects had to be approved by new agency leadership following the transition. Despite intense scrutiny from stakeholders like DOGE and the new director’s office, this project got the green light to be developed.
The new administration changed the federal government’s remote work policy to move to in person work in almost all cases. The new design was originally centered around making it easier to find remote and hybrid jobs due to user demand. I made minor adjustments so that we didn’t appear to be promoting remote work, but we still met the expectations of users who didn’t know about this policy change.
The new remote and hybrid filters: Added counts and disabled filters with 0 results to show users up front they only offer on-site jobs.
Securing buy-in from stakeholders
We secured buy-in from:
HR policy team (via early participation in discovery workshop and a working group run by the content team)
USAJOBS leadership (by showing alignment with user needs and admin goals)
Cross-functional teammates (via async Miro reviews and open feedback sessions)
An async activity I set up to get input from cross-functional team members on usability findings.
A slide from the presentation that my design collaborator and I gave to USAJOBS leadership and team.
Results & impact
Two rounds of usability testing showed significant improvements in task completion.
Second round of testing saw 100% success rate for saving filters and improved comprehension of job content.
Designs are currently prioritized on USAJOBS’ roadmap.
I created documentation and testing plans to support continued rollout after I left the agency.
From the documentation that I created for the product and engineering teams.
Reflection
This project sharpened my skills in:
Designing in organizations with policy constraints.
Advocating for users while aligning with leadership priorities.
Designing user flows that help people navigate unfamiliar systems, especially those where making a good input makes all the difference.