Find exciting, relevant jobs and apply in less than a minute with Untapped’s job discovery product
Entry-level job seekers come into the job search with very little knowledge of how to maximize their efforts. Untapped uses personalized recommendations and time-saving features to take the load off an already stressful experience.
Context
Talent is widely distributed, but opportunity isn’t—many qualified candidates are underserved due to bias and privilege. Untapped’s mission is to broaden access to transformative careers. By mid‑2022, the company shifted strategy to invest in the candidate experience to boost engagement, despite already supporting 600k+ candidates with 3–5k weekly signups.
Problem
The candidate side of the product had accumulated tech and UX debt after years of neglect. Because Untapped is a marketplace, low candidate engagement hurt recruiters (paying customers) and overall platform health.
Solution
We audited and redesigned the candidate experience in small, iterative improvements, prioritizing high-touch surfaces and core metrics that indicate marketplace health. Consistent feature launches improved engagement and balanced value across both sides of the marketplace.
Outcomes
🔎 2× applications per candidate — avg rose from 3 → 6
✅ 2× higher apply conversion — from job view to application
💌 +10% signup conversion — ATS-invited candidates up from 46% → 56%
🌈 71% of applications from candidates with underrepresented identities
📝 +30% profile completion
About the candidate (B2C) product
The candidate experience spanned nine product surfaces, covering the early stages of the job search—from discovery to application.
Untapped focused on early-in-career (EIC) candidates (<2 years of experience) seeking technical roles in engineering, product, design, or data. These surfaces drove the highest engagement across the platform.
Untapped sourced candidates through three primary channels, with strong seasonal spikes in Q1 and Q3:
Untapped focused on early-in-career (EIC) candidates (<2 years of experience) seeking technical roles in engineering, product, design, or data. These surfaces drove the highest engagement across the platform.
~70% via ATS Integrations
Auto-invites from customers’ applicant tracking systems.
CPA: $0
~20% via Organic Channels:
Word of mouth and SEO.
CPA: ~$3K/month
~10% via Customer Events:
Virtual events driving new signups.
CPA: $0
There were 4 clear product opportunities ahead of us.
Opportunity 1: Enhancing the SiGN Up > Onboarding Flow
The onboarding flow—especially for ATS-invited candidates—felt dated and confusing.
Many didn’t understand who Untapped was or why they were asked to create an account, leading to drop-offs. Since this was our highest-volume channel, improving it offered the biggest opportunity for conversion. (By contrast, organic signups already converted at 80%+.)
Design Strategy
Provide context
Clearly explain why candidates are joining Untapped and guide them with clear, actionable cues.
Reduce friction
Add resume parsing to auto-fill profile details and speed up signup.
Optimize length
Test onboarding length to balance completion rates and data collection.
Impact
🏆 +10% conversion among ATS-invited candidates — up from 46% to 56% after redesigning emails, adding reminders, and improving signup context.
🏆 +50% increase in self-reported demographic data — resume parsing reduced friction, giving candidates bandwidth to complete full onboarding.
Opportunity 2: A New Dashboard
There was a big opportunity to design a dashboard to orient candidates the moment they log in and guide them toward high-impact actions.
The ultimate goal was to drive more "quality" candidates. This was defined by:
Activity: 2+ job-related interactions (applied/saved)
Experience: <2 years, seeking first/second role or internship
Discipline: Technical fields (eng, product, design, data)
Representation: Self-identified as underrepresented
I led the team in defining this measurement and ensuring we had the appropriate dashboards to keep track of it over time.
Hypothesis: Encouraging profile completion and updates would improve segmentation and help surface top-quality talent.
Impact
🏆 +30% profile completion — 40% answered one question, 22% completed all three, and 21% took extra profile actions afterward.
🏆 2× engagement on featured jobs — Dashboard-promoted roles received double the views, applies, and saves vs. non-featured roles.
Opportunity 3: Improve job discovery to drive more applications
The legacy job search experience was clunky, outdated, and overwhelming—showing the most recent roles first rather than the most relevant ones.
We ran scrappy user testing (surveys) across both B2B and B2C user types to determine the right hierarchy of information.
Design Strategy
We iteratively improved performance and UI while testing impact after each release. The biggest change was introducing an ordering algorithm that ranked roles based on:
Relevance: "How likely am I a fit for this job?"
Candidate role type, YOE, and location preferences.
To enhance relevance, we partnered with recruiters to define structured data and built an auto-scraper to extract and tag job details.
Recency: "How likely will I hear back about my application?"
Freshness of postings (recently updated roles surfaced first).
Impact
🏆 +59% filter usage — Candidates found filters more practical and relevant.
🏆 +2× apply conversion — Click-to-apply rate rose from 21% → 45%.
🏆 ↓40% time to apply — Reduced from 1m52s → 1m08s as roles became easier to parse.
Post-MVP Release
Post-MVP, we continued research and testing to refine data hierarchy, fill content gaps, and create a more engaging, data-driven job discovery experience.
Opportunity 4: Let candidates apply to jobs faster
Both sides of the marketplace wanted to increase job application volume. Job seekers wanted speed. Recruiters wanted to measure ROI of Untapped.
A broken promise: 1-click apply
Despite Untapped’s promise of “1-click apply,” 78% of jobs required external applications, forcing candidates to re-enter information and breaking trust. 1-click apply was the #2 most valued feature in user surveys, yet most users couldn’t use it—creating frustration and drop-offs.
Unclear ROI: Why Untapped?
For companies, external apply jobs lacked ROI visibility, making it harder to prove Untapped’s impact during renewals.
Some customers—~20% of our base—can’t integrate their ATS due to legal or security constraints, yet they post a large share of jobs. Removing external apply wasn’t viable for revenue or onboarding.
We built a Chrome extension that lets candidates apply to external jobs using their Untapped profile with a single click.
Since 71% of users access Untapped via Chrome, this allowed us to extend the 1-click experience beyond our own platform.
After 3 quarters of iterative development…
🔎
2× avg applications
Total average rose from 3 → 6; and 71% of applications came from underrepresented candidates
✅
2× higher apply conversion
from job view to application
💌
+10% signup conversion
ATS-invited candidates up from 46% → 56%
📝
+30% profile completion
Boosting relevancy and response rates on the other side of the marketplace