Clarification Questions

1. By jobs, do you mean finding a job in a company or organization rather than doing a one-time job as a freelancer? (Yes)

2. Can I focus on the desktop platform first in the US? (Yes)

 

Structure

I will start with the mission of Facebook and explain how such a product can promote FB’s mission. I’ll segment the users and will select a segment to focus on. I’ll list their pain points and decide to focus on one or a few, brainstorm solutions, prioritize them, pick one, and describe the initial version and its metrics.

 

Mission and product

Facebook’s mission is to make the world closer together and build tools for communities. People spend 30-60% of their time at work, so it is a meaningful portion of their lives. They have related interests, and some of their Facebook friends are from their workplaces. In addition, there are communities related to the workplace, and lately, it has become popular to refer friends to job opportunities. All of those promotes FB’s mission to make the world closer together around communities.

 

Users 

1. People that are looking for a job.

2. Companies that have openings and looking for candidates.

3. HR, Head-hunters, and Agents.

 

I would like to focus on the biggest group, the job seekers, and elaborate on the community’s capabilities to assist them.

 

Journeys and pain points

1. Find a company that you might be interested in and see if they have openings.

2. Find companies with specific openings (specific role).

3. Understand if the role matches my experience.

4. Understand if there is a fit with the company culture.

5. Apply with or without a referral.

6. Preparation for the interview.

7. Start working at a new place – preparations, having a few contacts or friends to make the first period easier.

 

Focus

I would like to focus on pain points #3 and #4;

#3 – Understand if the role matches my experience.

#4 – Understand if there is a fit with to company culture.

 

Once a user finds a role that she might be interested in, they would like to understand plenty of questions before applying to a position. I believe that communities could assist with this, and it is one of FB’s strengths.

 

Ideas

1. On company pages, have a dedicated section that allows sharing and asking questions related to the company’s culture.

2. On job pages, have a section to ask clarification questions about the specific role and allow the company employees to address them (not only the HR).

3. On the job page, mention the co-workers you will interact with on your day-to-day job, and allow reaching out.

 

Prioritization

1. Culture – Impact: Medium (not all people care about that) Effort: Medium

2. Clarification about the role – Impact: High Effort: Low

3. Future Colleagues – Impact: Medium Effort: Low

 

I would like to focus on #2 -> On the job page, have a section for asking clarification questions about the specific role, and allow the company employees to address them (not only the HR)

 

Initial Version

1. Jobs section for company pagesgroups.

2. Have a comments section on the job pages.

3. Have alerts for the company’s employees.

A future thought: Encourage employees to reply with some referral programs.

 

Metrics

Primary Metrics

• # of submissions

• # time to populate a position

• % of openings occupied through Facebook

 

Secondary Metrics

• # of comments by candidates

• # of comments by company employees

• # response rates (% of queries with respond | Average and Median respond time)

• # monthly jobs posted

 

Concerns

• Negative comments made by users.

• Accuracy of responses.

• The effort required by companies

 

Summary

We are going to focus on improving the experience of job seekers on Facebook.

 

We plan to leverage the fact that there are existing company pagesgroups where companies’ employees can answer questions raised by candidates. If this works, and we will measure it, more companies will publish openings on Facebook, and more users will use Facebook to explore job opportunities.

I’d like to start off by stating and clarifying the goals for this feature. Since this is a new feature, we can focus on engagement and building a useful products for our users. The two key goals can be defined as:

• Make it easier for job hunters to research and apply for jobs,
• Enable users and companies to connect with each other and establish a meaningful relationship.

With these high-level goals in mind, let’s jump into the framework and approach.

• User Segments:
  • Students / College Grads
  • Mid-Career Professionals
  • Currently Unemployed

Prioritization: If we look at the overall job market (say US) – we can estimate the number of job applicants in each segment as follows:

• • Students / College Grads: Assume ~40M people between the ages of 15-21, and 60% are searching for either a full-time or a part-time job: ~24M
  • Mid-Career Professionals: Assume ~200M working population b/w the ages of 24-64, and people on average switch jobs once every 3 years, so that puts us at ~67M
  • Currently Unemployed: Unemployment ratio is ~4% (~6M)

 I’d focus on mid-career professionals as my target customer segment since this the major chunk of the segment.

• Use-Cases:
  • Research for job opportunities by role and area
  • Research about the company (compensation, values, culture, …)
  • Find connections in other companies through your network (e.g., LinkedIn, …)
  • Shortlist and revisit opportunities (since job hunting process is usually a multi-week/month process)
  • Apply (Fill out and submit job application or with resume & cover letter)
  • Interview scheduling and interview,

• Pain-Points (Unmet needs):
  • Lack of aggregated job listings across multiple providers,
  • Lack of interaction between companies & job applicants,
  • Lack of information about skill-sets and educational background for candidates who have occupied that role,
  • For Companies: Hard to identify and reach-out to potential (active or passive) candidates
• Strengths, Weaknesses, Competition:
  • Glassdoor, LinkedIn: Allow you to search for jobs, read employee reviews and ratings, find connections
  • LinkedIn: Does a decent job of surfacing 1st or 2nd/3rd degree connections
  • Facebook’s strengths:
    • Companies have profile pages
    • Users can like/follow/receive updates
    • Messenger
• Use-case prioritization:
  • Given the pain-points and looking at FB’s strengths and competition, I would prioritize “lack of interaction between companies and job applicants” as the top use-case to go after.
• Solutions:
  • Tailor Company Pages to add a ‘Jobs’ section that people can interact with (search by role, area, …),
  • Add an ‘Interested’ button so that users can save or express interest in shortlisted jobs,
  • Build a Q&A community between the company, designated employees (“experts”), and other interested candidates,
  • Build a 1:1 messaging functionality (with pre-selected dropdown topics) between an applicant and a company,
  • Informational video scheduling,
  • Upload Resume once, standardize background checks, and one-click apply,
• Prioritizing solutions:
  • Interested button – Low Cost, High Value – Can also be the basis of unlocking other deeper interactions,
  • Q&A community – Medium Cost, High Value – People can contribute and ask questions /recommendations,
  • For filtered candidates, offer virtual tours or video sessions with “experts” or HR to allow for deeper connection.

Here’s my take on this Facebook product design PM interview question.

Clarify / Comprehend

• What type of jobs are we looking at – Part time, Hourly, Full time? —> Anything that makes sense
• Which market are we focused on —> USA
• Are we going to be working with recruiters or only job seekers?  —> Working within the existing Facebook Network
• Our main goal in this early phase is to build the right set of features to make Facebook aa feasible channel to search for Jobs for a certain type of job seekers; We are not focused on monetization or business considerations at this early stage and are looking to build on the Facebook community and network effects to stand us this offering.
• Also, I am going to focus primarily on job seekers and not going to look at job posters / companies listing jobs as a part of this exercise —> Sounds good

 

 

Users based on jobs

We have the following type of job seekers based on the jobs customization and the level of investment it takes from the company (time and cost) to fulfill the opening.

 

1. Full-time – Conventional full time employment. High information needs and vetting from seeker and hirer as it is a big decision
2. Part-time – Part-time with more flexibility. Moderate information needs and vetting from seeker and hirer
3. Project-based – People looking for project based work such as artists, designers, writers. Moderate information needs and vetting, decision is reversible
4. Hourly work – People looking for flex work i.e. on demand based on their needs and schedule such as gardeners, landscaping, house cleaning, Handymen (with such as carpentry, plumbers, electricians). Lowest information needs, commoditized job, vetting needed on experience / ability to deliver by the job seeker, no vetting needed for hirer apart from willingness / ability to pay

I am going to focus on Hourly work. Two reasons for doing so

• The job opportunities for these type of roles are likely to come from the Facebook users. Most of the needs of this type of work would arise from the current Facebook network whereas full-time, part-time and to some extent project-based work would require buy in from the recruiting companies and is a much more complex process involving several parties
• There are other companies in the job seeking space for full-time and part time jobs. Directly taking them head on at the outset may not make the most sense due to the network effects these companies have built.

 

Users Needs

Job Seekers

1. DEMONSTRATE Show case my work, experience and referrals and past jobs
2. SEARCH: Search and apply for jobs
3. ALERTS: Signup for job alerts based on availability, skills / preferences / geography
4. PRICING: Set pricing rate / specify payment methods
5. REVIEWS: Leave feedback on the job creator and get feedback for my jobs
6. PAYMENT: Get paid on time

 

We also have job posters but for the purposes of this exercise we are going to ignore their needs. For job seekers I am going to prioritize the users needs based on what is most applicable to the broader set of users and what we currently dont have a feature for. Using the mental model I am going to focus on Search, Alerts and Reviews first as those are key to building a viable model of job seeking and reviews. This will allow our users to see the available jobs and apply to them a key point to drive success of the program. Some of the other use cases are solved through existing Facebook features such as  FB pages and can be worked on later.

 

 

Solutions

• Search
  • First, we will need to build the capability for Facebook users to post jobs specifying the type of job, location, and solicit requests from users. (Assuming this is done) we can then start categorizing our search approaches.
  • Universal search: From all Facebook users within a stipulated geographic area for job type. Widest number of job listing available
  • Network limited search: Limited to users within your Facebook Network or 1 degree detached. Perhaps this might be easier to build trust or seek referrals through your network as we are getting things of the ground. Potential to limit the number of jobs one can see and prematurely kill interest in our product
  • Search based on specified job filters such as type, price, duration
• Alerts
  • Alert setup: Setup alerts to receive job availability at a set cadence
• Reviews
  • Request: Request reviews and ratings from job listers after completion. Email or notifications sent to job poster with reminders and ratings on the job completed

 

 

For search – I would start focusing on universal search and provide several other filters the job seekers and shortlist jobs on.

For alerts – I would create a framework for which seekers can setup custom alerts and receive them at a set cadence

For reviews – I would create a ranking (scale 1 through 5) and a review system and make it available to the profiles for the job seekers for future references. This feature is important to build trust and establish credibility of the job seekers

 

 

Metrics

To measure the success of this feature the key metrics I would use would be

1. Number of jobs completed through Facebook Network

 

Other metrics which are important to track are

• Jobs posted per geographic region
• Jobs posted per skill set
• Avg Job search result per query
• Avg Reviews posted for completed jobs by hirers

 

 

Summary

To summarize, I would focus the product on job seekers who are looking for on demand work / flex work as this allows us to tap into Facebook network’s in the most seamless manner. It delivers value for job seekers and also delivers value for job posters (FB users). Focusing on this user groups eliminates the heavy overhead of vetting job seekers and hirers that happens in other roles which are more of a semi-permanent nature.