TheLadders Blog

This past Saturday, the first Agile User Experience (AgileUX) conference, sponsored by TheLadders, was held at the SVA Theater in Manhattan. The conference brought together leading voices from within the New York City design and technology community to discuss strategy and tactics for delivering world class software products.

The conference was organized by Jeff Gothelf, formerly the Director of User Experience at TheLadders, and myself, current head of UX at TheLadders. Todd Hoza, who is the Creative Director for TheLadders, provided creative leadership for the conference.

The speakers we chose came from a cross-section of disciplines including product, venture capital, customer research, and consulting. Speakers representing TheLadders included Eric Burd, VP of Product, who discussed organization change to align the entire business — from sales, marketing, finance and customer support — to an agile mindset.

Eric Burd - VP Product at TheLadders

Also representing TheLadders was Jennifer Gergen, Associate Creative Director, who discussed strategies for better integrating design into an Agile process. I spoke about the importance of continuous, rapid-cadence customer research and usability testing and delved into the details of how to conduct that research and feed it back into product delivery. Finally, Jeff Gothelf argued for demystifying design and the importance of transparency for greater team collaboration.

Will Evans, Manager, User Experience Design at TheLadders

The event drew close to 400 attendees, some from as far away as Japan, who gathered to learn and share ideas for designing greater product experiences faster. The general consensus was that it was a great learning experience exploring the most recent thinking in product design, and many people left energized and excited to bring those ideas back to their organizations. TheLadders was proud to sponsor such an event and continues to be an active member of the New York City Technology and Design community.

Will Evans is Manager, Experience Design for TheLadders in New York City with 15 years industry experience in interaction design, information architecture, and user experience strategy.

Wow! We have come a long way. This week, TheLadders surpassed five million members. That’s five million people that we are helping with their job search. We work to help these members find their next calling in life however we can, whether it’s through our job matching expertise, our personalized products and services or our world class career advice.

We’ve been working for nine years to learn the science of the job search and share that insight with our members. More importantly, we’re happy that we can deliver results for our customers. In 2010 alone, a Harris Interactive study* showed that over 500,000 $100K+ professionals credited TheLadders with helping them find a new job. Most recently, we launched our Signature program, which offers members personalized help navigating their job search and a guaranteed job offer within six months or their money back. That’s how strongly we believe in the program.

We certainly have come a long way as a company and have a lot to be proud of. When I started at TheLadders in 2004, we had just reached 9,000 members. Since then, not only have we grown our member base to 5 million, we’ve expanded to all professional level jobs and have grown our jobs onsite by 3x just in the last 6 months alone. We’ve attracted over 17,000 new recruiters to our site to connect with job seekers and launched countless products and features for users to take advantage of during their job search.

I’m proud to be part of a company committed to finding the right person for the right job – and helping so many members move their careers forward. Great job, team!

Leslie Semegran is Vice President of Marketing and Engagement and has been with TheLadders since 2004, in various capacities across Marketing and Sales. When she’s not endlessly searching for ways to engage and help members, she’s at home running around after her nine-month-old daughter.

When we think about Valentine’s Day, romantic images of chocolates, flowers, and candlelit dinners may come to mind. However, being happy in the workplace may just be our greatest gift. In fact, only 12% of Americans have found the right corporate chemistry and are “really happy with this job,” according to a new study we’ve conducted. Of the 255,000 job seekers surveyed, an astonishing 88% confirmed varying degrees of dissatisfaction with their workplace.

In the poll — which is illustrated by our awesome new infographic — 61.3% of job seekers who were asked to describe the way they feel about their current job admitted they are ‘actively looking for a next job.’ Another 19.0% claimed their ‘job isn’t awful, but not great,’ and 3.9% ‘don’t know how much more of this gig can be tolerated.’ The most unhappy? Unfortunately, 4.1% ‘want out of this job now.’ Talk about a bad romance.

Whether in your love life or in your work life, finding the right match is all about chemistry, and feeling motivated and appreciated in the workplace is paramount for being successful in your career and life. That’s why we suggest workplace satisfaction be determined by the following factors: corporate culture, opportunity for growth, sense of challenge, work-life balance, and compensation package.

That’s why we come to work every day: to help professionals find the right job matches, so their story can have a happy ending.

Read the press release.

Lisa Hagendorf is the Director of Public Relations for TheLadders where she is a huge ambassador of the brand in the office. At the gym. And on the street. She just can’t stop talking about TheLadders. Ever.

We’re excited to announce the launch of our new homepage for recruiters. The product, marketing and user experience teams here at TheLadders have been working hard to optimize our sites and services for professionals and recruiters alike. The new recruit.theladders.com is a big step toward putting the right professionals in the jobs that are right for them.

Not only does this new homepage ease the search process for employers and recruiters who are new to TheLadders, but it also makes it that much faster to match them with the right professionals for their jobs straight from the start. Our new design puts search first, allowing recruiters to dive right into Passport—our free recruitment solution—while providing them with a comprehensive chart of our other solutions and full suite of products. Staffing and HR pros can view product videos and even request a one-on-one demo with one of our account executives to see all the ways we can help them fill their open seats.

Our aim is to make it quick and easy for employers and recruiters to promote their jobs, advertise their brands and send updates to interested professionals. This makes it quick and easy for our job-seeking community to start connecting with the right recruiters and applying to the right jobs. Hear that sound? I think it might be the black hole shrinking.

Dan Logan is a Product Marketing Manager at TheLadders. As a frequent host of company meetings, he’s used to answering questions and keeping up with industry trends. He also lives in Brooklyn… and loves it.

At TheLadders, we’ve always believed strongly in the providing you with the right piece of career advice. After all, writing the perfect cover letter or asking the right questions in an interview can make all the difference in your job search.

You’ve always had access to our original and exclusive career advice on TheLadders.com, but in 2011, we decided to bring our advice right to you.

That meant Twitter, and @TheLadders.

It’s not just working, it’s crushing. We put a superstar copywriter, Kate Addicott, in charge, and @TheLadders now has over 20,000 followers! Not only have we been able to help our customers, but the relationships we’ve developed with job seekers, recruiters, employers and industry experts have been invaluable to us, too.

We hope you’re enjoying @TheLadders and all of our original career advice and job search content. You can check it out on our Twylah page.

Great work, Kate!

And if you’re not already, you should follow us on Twitter here.

Bill Beard is the Associate Creative Director of Copy for TheLadders. He (obviously) loves to travel, always has ESPN.com open, and always takes the cheese option when it’s offered.