Our Team
2 Product designers
My role
UX researcher & UI designer
Tools
Figma, FigJam
Project Timeline
5 weeks
It began with a single quote that kept coming up: “I apply and never hear anything back.”
We wanted to know if this was rare or widespread. What we found was a clear pattern: people were not frustrated by rejection, but by the lack of response, clarity, or progress.
We reviewed over 100 public posts from real LinkedIn users. The frustration wasn’t loud, it was quiet and steady. People weren’t asking for radical new tools. They wanted the platform to meet expectations it had already set.
Things like accurate filters, meaningful alerts, and a sense that their actions—like applying—had weight. But instead, they felt misaligned with the system that was supposed to guide them.
Everyone we interviewed knew how to use the platform. That was never the issue. What wore them down was the silence. The time spent applying with care, only to feel like nothing landed. The tools were functional, but the experience left them drained.
Two different stories kept coming up. One group was actively applying. The other was quietly testing the waters. But they were using the same tools, with no way to adjust for their intent or privacy. Both felt unseen in their own way.
The moment of friction was not the search. It was what followed. No confirmation. No timeline. No feedback. And when effort leads to silence, people stop putting in the effort.
We compared LinkedIn to other platforms like Indeed, StepStone, and Glassdoor. While LinkedIn led in visibility and volume, it fell short on user control. Competitors offered features like clearer application status, smarter filters, and more tailored alerts. These may seem small, but to a job seeker, they create a sense of progress and clarity. It became clear that LinkedIn’s opportunity wasn’t in doing more—it was in doing the right things better.
We narrowed our focus to the ideas that addressed the emotional gaps. These were not about reinventing the platform. They were about regaining the user's confidence at key moments, after they apply, when they wait, when they want to stay private, and when they need smarter suggestions. Our goal wasn’t to add complexity, but to remove uncertainty.
Every feature we designed aimed to make job seekers feel more supported.
To prove our design does more than look good, we imagined how LinkedIn could measure real change.
After discussing our design solutions with 6 participants, we gathered some valuable feedback, identified strengths, and refined some of our design ideas to improve the user experience.
After
Our research showed how job seekers judge the market based on their own experience, while hiring managers struggle to fill roles despite open positions. This disconnect is not about a lack of jobs or talent, it is about tools that no longer match how both sides work today.
By focusing on the seeker’s journey, our solution addresses one part of this broken link and hints at how the entire market could be redefined to bring both sides closer.
This project reminded us that people don’t disengage because the process is broken. They disengage because it feels like no one is listening. By listening closely and solving for trust—not just function—we saw how small, intentional changes could bring clarity to an emotionally heavy experience. That’s where good UX lives. Not in clever ideas, but in quiet confidence.