UX analysis: Otta.com, a job platform

Otta is a job platform promising to help candidates find & apply to the hottest tech companies. They recently made a bunch of noise with their $20mn Series A — which was expected, if you ask me, because it doesn’t take long to see that the product has been carefully crafted to ensure the job search & candidate experience is as painless as possible. In fact, some may even call the product experience enjoyable and exciting, so really, kudos to them for turning a “soul crushing” experience on its head.

Recently, I poked around the app and attempted to put together an application. Here’s a quick analysis of 4 aspects of the product, with recommendations that could potentially improve the UX.

1. Application experience

Why it matters: Being a job platform, everything ultimately boils down to the quality + quantity of applications a candidate sends out. Anything that helps the candidate do so would be of high priority.

The guide

Current: The guide to writing a good application is an incredible resource but it’s embedded on the application page itself. This makes it potentially easy to miss until applicants are about the hit the “send application” button. They may go through the guide after writing answers and then have to alter their responses, which may be an inefficient use of time.

Proposed: The first time a user hits the “Apply” button, consider showing them a pop up directing to the guide so that they can go through it before starting their application to ensure that applicants don’t miss out on these. A possible downside is that users may get annoyed by the pop-up and reflexively cancel out of it.

Alternative: Have tips in context — i.e: for each question, add tips that can be seen opened up upon hover / click, so that candidates can get relevant tips at each step of the way

Alternative #2: Make the tips even more accessible by having them in plain sight. Talent.io does a similar thing in their onboarding experience, with contextual tips, so you can see them exactly when it’ll help most.

The form

Current: Each form field in the Otta application has a different character limit that is not explicitly stated anywhere. This may cause confusion and frustration, leading to abandoned applications.

For example: user writes a long, well thought out answer → clicks save → gets an error message that the character count has been exceeded → shortens the answer → still gets the error since there’s no real time feedback on whether the count has been reached → uses an external tool to check the character count and alter the response

Proposed: Have a live character count displayed at the end of each form so that users know what to expect and can get real time feedback on when they are reaching the limit

2. Twitter link

Why it matters: Twitter could be a great channel to build as part of Otta’s user acquisition strategy and to help cut through the competition. The synergy between avid Twitter users and Otta candidates could be very high since there’s a huge population of tech lovers on Twitter.

Current: When companies share a link to their job post that’s live on Otta.com, it looks like a job listing for Otta, which may be a confusion or misleading experience for potential candidates.

Proposed: Clarify that it is a job listing for another company, that is hosted on otta.com

• Thumbnail image could be the company logo to give a more branded feel
• Accompanying text could be the job title + a short description on the company itself, rather than information on Otta

3. Social proof

Why it matters: Social proof is an extremely powerful motivator for user behaviour. There are many places where social proof is included regarding the company profiles listed by Otta, but Otta’s homepage could lure users into the product with stronger social proof.

Current: on the home page, I noticed that the quote source of the testimonials sounded quite generic: “Lucas joined Paddle,” “Teddy joined Pento.” I reverse google searched some of the names to double check that these were indeed real people. Some of this skepticism could be avoided through some simple fixes that would make them seem more like real people/ real companies.

Proposed:

• Images of the person + company logo to make the testimonial feel more real and trustworthy. Plus, ability to click on the pictures to see more information. For example — clicking on the person’s picture could open their Linkedin profile. In the future, perhaps this could lead to a person’s “Otta profile” instead of redirecting traffic to a competitor’s website.
• Add some additional data like joining date, time to hire — or any other metrics that a potential user might find compelling

Alternative: A quick Twitter search of “otta.com” shows all these tweets that could be shared for additional social proof. Nothing is as powerful as when users rave about the product of their own volition!

Alternative: Another cool example I’ve seen is from Gumroad (from their old website), which uses powerful (and regularly updated) data to show that users are deriving benefit from the platform. A similar thing could be done for Otta “Since 2019, applicants have secured 15,345 jobs through Otta. [Just last week, 546 applications were submitted via Otta]”

4. 404 page

Why it matters: Small things like a 404 page can add a lot of character to a product, and add delight in unexpected places. A typically frustrating experience can be turned on its head into something better.

Current: The 404 page is a dead end, leaving users without much guidance on what to do next

Proposed: The 404 page could be beefed up like this, with

• A call-to-action (explore jobs) and information to motivate users to click on it (#x jobs that are open at #x companies)
• Reminder of the value proposition of the platform — in this case, access to jobs at top companies

This could also be an opportunity to insert humour. Here’s one of my favourite blog posts on UX writing: https://vanschneider.com/blog/ux-writing/best-products-joke/

Example of a funny 404 experience in the wild (from Homerun):

Check out otta.com to experience the fun yourself.