Bringing authentic content to candidates to aid their decision-making
In January 2024, Welcome to the Jungle bought Otta. Their business is employer branding: companies paying to show candidates what it’s like to work there, mostly through video. Our team was asked to bring that into Otta as a new revenue stream. The catch was that Otta was built around fast, focused decisions, one job at a time, and a wall of company video could easily undo that.
- Company
- Otta
- Year
- 2024
- Role
- Senior Product Designer - covering end-to-end UX, UI, research and copy
- Team
- 2x Product Designers, Head of Product, Head of Engineering, 5x Full-Stack Engineers
- 0/10
target companies signed paid pilots on annual five-figure contracts
- 0%
of Pro and Advanced customers bought Employer Branding as an add-on
- £0k
average deal size, on top of existing contracts
Final design
The problem
WTTJ’s core business revolves around employer branding, with a strong emphasis on video content. As part of the acquisition, they were eager to bring this capability into the Otta product. However, their solution didn’t easily translate to Otta’s experience. Otta is built around a one-job-at-a-time model that supports fast, focused decision-making. Adding heavy video-driven employer content upfront risked disrupting that core experience.
Goals and constraints
We had 2 key goals, balancing product experience and commercial strategy:
- Enable employer branding content in a way that companies would value and pay for
- Help candidates make quicker, faster and easier decisions about jobs
Constraints:
- Short delivery window (Q1 2024) to get to a pilot version
- Preserve Otta’s one-job-at-a-time experience
Research insights
To understand what kind of employer branding content candidates actually wanted, and where it should show up, we ran extensive research:
- Moderated interviews (24 participants): We explored what information helps candidates decide to skip, save, or apply to a job. This included testing reactions to videos, team content, and different formats of role descriptions.
- Unmoderated tests (15 sessions, 1,800+ participants): We assessed the noticeability and perceived authenticity of different video types (e.g. portrait vs. landscape), tested content placement throughout the candidate journey, and validated expectations around company information on the job card vs. company profile.
- Quick A/B tests: Simultaneous to our research, we ran quick tests on the Otta site to validate assumptions. For example, we removed company information from the job card to see what impact it would have.
A/B testing confirmed these insights:
- Moving company info from the job card to a separate company profile increased company profile visits by ~10pp
- There was no drop in save/apply rates
Key findings:
- Candidates valued org charts, working location breakdowns, and hiring manager insight
- Portrait video was more noticeable and felt more authentic than landscape, but many still preferred text
- Most candidates expected rich company content to live in a dedicated profile, not on the job card
Testing as we designed
We developed and refined several new content components:
- Meet the Team: Org chart, working locations, hiring manager insight, and diversity snapshot. Candidates valued understanding the team structure and leadership voice.
- Updated job card: Moved company info to the company profile to free up space. No drop in key metrics and improved focus for candidates.
- Enhanced batch end card: After seeing 10 jobs per batch, we showed candidates an improved batch end card highlighting their saved jobs, which helped them decide whether to pause and apply.
- Video enhancements: Added titles to improve clarity and tested video vs. text for different types of content.
We continuously tested concepts with users and shared weekly product design updates with internal stakeholders, including WTTJ's CEO and CTO. Here are some of the things candidates told us about the 'Meet the team' content which gave us confidence about its usefulness:
“Knowing sort of what the hierarchy is as well as who would be below you. That's super interesting to me.”
“It was nice to see information about the hiring manager. It "humanises" the unknown figure that may talk to you soon.”
“These are the really cool interesting nuggets and things I can't discover myself… this feels like insider information…”
Managing scope
Our Customer Success team asked a question we hadn’t: who keeps all this up to date? An org chart that’s six months old is worse than none. So we went through each idea and asked how it could keep itself current:
- Org chart – We explored integrating with a company's HRIS to keep the org chart updated in real-time.
- Diversity breakdowns – We considered pulling this data from LinkedIn, which companies already use and trust. We also allowed companies to override this if needed.
- Team mission – Our original idea involved sharing the team’s current quarterly mission, but we removed the time-bound element to reduce the need for regular updates.
- Video – We integrated with Vimeo and embedded videos on-site, giving companies flexibility while avoiding the complexity of building a custom player.
The solution
The final V1 experience included:
- A redesigned ‘Meet the Team’ section on the job card with hiring manager text, org charts, and diversity breakdowns
- A richer company profile housing videos, photos, and structured team content
- A new batch end card experience to nudge candidates from saves to applies
- A redesigned homepage highlighting saved companies with EB content, nudging candidates to apply
