TheLadders Blog

A few weeks ago one of our talented Interactive Designers, Michelle Zassenhaus, suggested we pitch TheLadders executive team on a persona research project. We discussed the need and merit of this project for a while without reaching a clear consensus. Where I was getting stuck was the need for this exercise given how much face time we actually have with our customers. We run usability testing every week. We call customers on an ad hoc basis but it amounts to nearly weekly conversations. The company has an annual focus group initiative and our customer service teams are always vocal with prevalent customer issues. In short, we know our users. So why would we need to create personas?

I posed the question to several folks including Tristan Kromer. Tristan suggested that instead of trying to sell the organization on an expensive project where they weren’t sure what they would be getting for their money and we, the UX team, couldn’t cohesively articulate why we were even doing it, we should introduce the executive team to the concept of personas as a corporate alignment tool. The idea seemed not only viable but also valuable. At the end of that lunch-time chat, I promised Tristan I’d write a blog post recapping the activity and its results. And so, here we are.

I decided to pitch the organization on a proto-persona (aka ad-hoc persona) exercise where the executive team would articulate who they believed we were building products for and how our current and future offerings would meet their needs in the near-term future. My belief was that in each of their points of view, the executive team had a different target audience in mind. In addition, I believed that many of them were approaching corporate strategy from the inside out – in other words, from their particular discipline (e.g., marketing, products/features, services, customer support, etc) and not from a customer-centric point of view. The goal of the exercise was to get everybody’s points of view out on the table and then consolidated into a single, shared consensus about who we believe our customers are and what needs of theirs we should be solving in 2012 and beyond.

My timing could not have been any better. The team was going through the nascent stages of 2012 planning and, if I could have the exercise pulled together quickly, we could build it into their process. I built a quick proposal where I articulated a problem statement, the objectives and goals of the exercise and the specific methodology we would employ to achieve those goals. Michelle and I reviewed it a bit and off it went for executive approval. Luckily for us it was quickly approved and I was cleared to book the executive team for two, 3-hour meetings over the next two weeks.

(It’s worth mentioning that our target audience had broadly expanded in the month prior to these exercises. In October 2011, TheLadders expanded its market reach from the $100k+ salary range to include professionals of all levels. This opened our products and service to a whole new set of potential customers. )

Day 1 – persona creation

Pens, paper, ipads and pizza. What else would you need?

The first day consisted of pulling the team together from noon to 3pm (pizzas were brought in) and presenting them a short introduction. The presentation stressed that we were going to look at the company from the customer’s point of view. Our goal was to articulate who the customer was (or were) and what needs they have that we could choose to serve or not serve. Michelle and I introduced the executives to the concept of an ad-hoc persona by explaining that these were going to be “people” they believed were going to be our customers now and in the coming future. It was important for us to stress the difference between real personas and ad-hoc ones. These were not going to be research-proven customer archetypes. They were however going to be reference points which the team can use as filters in the 2012 planning and decision-making process. We closed the short pitch with examples of what they’d be creating.

The team was going to sketch quadrants for each persona. Here is an example of a finished persona:

Example of ad hoc persona

The top left quadrant was for a sketch of the individual, a name and some basic demographics.

The top right quadrant was for behaviors and beliefs of the persona.

The bottom left quadrant was for demographics.

The bottom right quadrant was for needs and goals.

The team was given 15 minutes to create as many personas as they could or felt were necessary.

Once complete, each executive presented their persona to the team. They read the persona out loud and posted up on a wall. The team would then provide some feedback on the realistic qualities (or not) of that persona and some real-time adjustments were made.

Marc Cenedella, CEO & Founder of TheLadders, presenting his personas

Next, the team was asked to place each persona on a set of 5 spectrums. The spectrums were: years of experience, education, ambition, risk tolerance and tech savviness. Each executive was given three Agile planning poker cards. The cards had the numbers 1, 3 or 5 on them and the team was asked to vote by raising the card they felt most appropriately mapped where each persona fell on each spectrum.

The team voting with planning poker cards

Much like Agile planning poker, if there was consensus there was minimal discussion. If , however, there were outliers or a broad distribution of opinion on where a particular persona lay on a particular spectrum, we encouraged the team to discuss and debate that. In many cases, the outliers managed to sway some votes. In other cases the majority won and in still other cases the team made real-time adjustments to their personas to more closely match their view of our target audience.

As each name was voted on the spectrum, their name was written on the whiteboard in the appropriate spot. Almost instantly, patterns began to form. There were clear clusters and clear outliers. At the end of the 3 hours exercise we had a board filled with personas and persona names mapped to spectrums.

Spectrums with names mapped on them

We ended the exercise by thanking the team and letting them go for the day. Michelle and I spent the next few days consolidating the 20+ personas that were created down into a manageable size based on their spectrum distributions. We wanted to get to 3-5. We ended up with 6.

Completed persona

Day 2 – Persona verification and design studio

Day two began with donuts. It was morning and it was early. Donuts help. A lot.

We began the exercise with the team by going over the consolidated set of personas. We’d sent the team the document in advance of the meeting so they would come in , in theory, prepared to discuss. We projected each persona and began a vigorous discussion around their validity not only as a “real” person but also as a customer that we wanted to support moving forward. This part of the exercise truly engaged the team. Strong opinions were presented and an excellent debate ensued around some of the newer customer types were now attracting to the site.

Reviewing the consolidated personas

Each persona was reviewed in detail and adjusted, in real-time, to provide a representation that the team could agree upon. This was probably the part of the two-day exercise where the most consensus was built. At the end, we still had 6 personas but they were now modified enough to where the team was comfortable with all of them as viable customers (Note: interestingly, one contentious persona had to get down to a vote and made it in as a customer by a vote of 5-4).

The second half of this exercise was a design studio. Many articles have been written about how to run these and we use them regularly with the staff at TheLadders. We modified this one for time and focus. The first 5 minute round of sketching consisted of a single 6-up template for each executive team member.

The design studio in progress

Each executive presented and got critique from the others. The team was then split into two groups based simply on where they were seated and asked to consolidate their sketches in to one big sticky note drawing. The drawings were all supposed to be of TheLadders.com home page articulating value propositions that were relevant to the 6 personas. Each critique session asked how the designs presented were valid for the various personas. The teams consolidated their visions into two big drawings that amazingly enough converged on similar themes.

Big sketchin’!

We dismissed the team, thanked them for their time and asked for any feedback (good or bad) on the exercise. We followed up with a summary email that recapped what we did and what the themes were that we found. In addition, we stressed again that these were our beliefs and that, now that we had them, we will be using them to drive recruiting for usability studies, compare them against other customer samples and will update and adjust them as we find characteristics of real customers that go against our initial beliefs.

The one final asset we created was a printed deck of persona cards so that these ideas could easily come to any executive meeting – especially the ones where we were not present.

Persona cards – front

Persona cards – back

Learnings

We had several goals when we set out to run this exercise with the executive team. The first was to introduce them to the concept of personas. We achieved this goal to the extent that the team now knows what this tool is and what components make it up. Given that these were ad-hoc personas, it is incumbent on us, the UX team, to continue to update the 6 personas we created as we learn more from actual user interactions. We must then update the executives with these new details.

The second goal was to get the executive team thinking from a customer-centric point of view. For the duration of the exercise we succeeded though it was a constant effort to keep the conversation focused this way. Each executive’s tendency was to fall back to their traditional points of view based on their responsibilities and, as moderators, it was our job to bring the focus back to the customers. One additional thing that I found particularly interesting was the team’s tendency to present their feedback and insights to me, the moderator, as opposed to their teammates. Our goal was to have the team debating each other and, while that happened at times, much of the conversation was happening with the moderator (Michelle or I) as the initial recipient who would then bounce the dialogue back to the team. Beyond the exercise, it’s too early to tell how successful we’ve been. Our hope is that the printed card deck will serve as a reminder for the team.

The third goal was align the executive team around a target audience and get them to debate and agree upon value propositions that serve the needs and goals of that audience. Again, within the constraints of the exercise I believe we were successful. We created over 20 ad-hoc personas and consolidated down to an agreed-upon set of six. We designed landing pages for those personas that spoke to the value of the products and services we’d offer them in 2012. There was consistency in the themes the team raised and a general acknowledgment of a shared understanding. Will this alignment last into future planning meetings? Again, it’s too early to tell but early indications point to only minor erosion of these initial ideas.

This article was first published at jeffgothelf.com

Jeff Gothelf is the Director of UX at TheLadders. He’s also the author of Lean UX: Getting Out of the Deliverables Business (O’Reilly, 2012), Agile practitioner, interaction designer, blogger, public speaker, author and design/product thinker.

Check out this inspiring t-shirt TheLadders UX team designed to promote our new tagline and brand promise. Our proud employees wear these eye-catching and inspiring t-shirts at our off-site events and even to work. It’s cool to see great design being worn around the office.

Todd Hoza is Creative Director of TheLadders. When he’s not busy helping build the brand from the inside out, he’s taking credit for all the great work his talented team creates.

TheLadders Director of User Experience Jeff Gothelf is no slouch — either at his work or at his desk.

Jeff, who oversees the look and feel of TheLadders online, likes to stay ahead of the latest innovations in how people interact with technology. That extends to the best way to occupy a workspace, as the Salt Lake City Tribune reported Friday.

Jeff recently responded to research into the health benefits of standing while working at your computer by raising his desk and spending his workdays at the helm. He told the Tribune he’s already noticed improvements: “I’m a lot more focused,” he told the paper. “I also do a lot more walking around, because it’s easier when you’re already standing to just walk over and talk to someone.”

While somebody has to be the trendsetter, Jeff wasn’t the only man standing for long in TheLadders office: Two of our colleagues have already adopted the vertical workstyle.

“They just sort of sprouted up like mushrooms,” Jeff told the Tribune.

Matthew Rothenberg is Editor-in-Chief of TheLadders and still writes from the comfort of a chair … at least for now!

“I LOVE the thrill of the hunt!” That sentiment might lead you to believe I’m a member of our Sales Team … FALSE! I am actually a Talent Specialist on our FitFinder team who truly enjoys applying my Boolean search skills to help the recruiters I work with discover what will hopefully be their next hire!

I personally work with 45 recruiters who’ve signed up with TheLadders and act as an extension of their recruiting activities as they look for job seekers like you. Here’s how it works: A recruiter is assigned a $100K+ position to fill, we have a quick call to review the job description and discuss any additional hiring needs I should know about, and then I set to work scouring our database for the best possible matches. Here’s how it works best: The more information recruiters provide with me about a job’s needs, the more honed my results can be.

Patty Garabedian is the Director of Talent Acquisition at Euro-Pro, one of my recruiters. This is what she had to say about one of my hunts …

“All [these candidates] look like good possibilities! I forwarded to [my] hiring manager, and we are actually bringing in two of the candidates that you presented – thank you!”

- Patty Garabedian, Euro-Pro

There are 34 other Talent Specialists just like me, who love the thrill of the hunt. With over 700 hunting expeditions on our agenda this week alone, we look forward to sharing more of our Wins in the future!

We often talk about landmarks here at TheLadders, and with good reason. Successes should be shared and celebrated when all the hard work pays off. The 18th April 2011 was another such landmark for us over this side of the Atlantic, and was the day that we moved in to our brand new shiny office.

I am one of a select group who can remember what it was like to squeeze into our windowless shared office in Camden back in 2008 and have seen the company grow to the point it is now.

Hard work and effort has finally got us the office I think we deserve.

Now that we have had almost a month to settle in and make the place feel like home, we wanted to share a feel of it with you. We look forward to having as many of you visit as possible to see it in all its glory!

Managing Director Derek Pilcher holding court (and yes, that is a pool table in the background).

Shyam and Selena at just a small section of the “Product Wall.”

Lola, Jack, Ben and Adam busy responding to our job seekers.

Looks like Katy, one of our CV analysts, has found something amusing on a CV.

Luke, closing a big one perhaps?

Tamsyn, one of our new corporate sales team members, hitting the phones.

Matt, crunching the numbers!

Look at all that space!

Even after a hard day at work, some are now reluctant to leave!

Philip Cottrell is the Online Editor at TheLadders.co.uk. A history graduate, he has worked his way up through the company to his current position. He’s a stalwart of TheLadders UK office who remembers what it was like at the beginning of the journey

Most companies look at customer service in a silo. Service personnel are expected to regurgitate talking points, call scripts and marketing spin over the phone, email, chat, or in person to ticket numbers. The unfortunate result: Customer service is perceived as a cost center whose sole purpose is to keep customers quiet.

At TheLadders, we wholeheartedly reject this notion of customer service. The purpose of our customer-service team is to help people find the right job as quickly and painlessly as possible. We believe this so strongly that we’ve even named our customer-service department the Job Search Support Center.
This philosophy has led us to do things that would cause the leaders of many customer-service departments to shudder in horrified disbelief.

Every Premium member is assigned to a Job Search Advisor. Your Job Search Advisor is a real human being who works out of our Lower Manhattan office and helps you succeed in your job search.

Job Search Advisors participate in ongoing training – close to 1,000 hours of classroom training last year alone! The job search as it exists today is frustrating and confusing, and accepted best practices are in continuous flux. Our calling at TheLadders is to learn the right way to search for a job and pass that knowledge on to you. Rather than go with our gut and guess, we have a research department that’s tasked with building data-based best practices. The Job Search Support Center training team takes the output of those research studies and develops trainings to pass that knowledge on to your Job Search Advisor, so he or she can pass it on to you. In addition, we have 50+ certified career expects on staff and 35 percent of Job Search Advisors are Certified Professional Career Coaches (CPCC), and that percentage is continuously growing.

Job Search Advisors’ primary goal is to make you successful. Most customer-service departments try to decrease the amount of time they spend speaking with customers. We do the exact opposite. Your Job Search Advisor is encouraged to spend as much time as is necessary to learn about your goals and help you find the right job.

Every job is hand-screened before being placed on the Web site. In an effort to help you find the right job as quickly and painlessly as possible, we have a team of Job Analysts whose goal is to ensure the quality of the jobs you see. Since most companies aren’t willing to divulge specific salary information, we’ve developed strict criteria based on factors such as job function, required education and experience, and industry. We’re proud of the criteria we’ve developed because they’ve enabled us to achieve 99 percent accuracy while continuing to post tens of thousands of jobs every month.

Although we don’t come to work every day in an effort to win awards, it’s always a good feeling to have your hard work recognized. For the fourth consecutive year,TheLadders Job Search Support Center is a finalist for the American Business Award’s Customer Service Department of the Year!