Putting careers on the map

Overview

Working with the careers team and other internal teams at Sage, I designed the new careers section of Sage’s website.

‍

www.sage.com/en-gb/company/careers

‍

Sage is a SaaS product for HR and Accounting software, Sage has over 14,000 employees and they wanted to update the careers section of their site to reflect all the great work they do to make their employees feel supported. They wanted to give careers a clear brand and voice, and in turn see an increase job applications.

‍

Over the course of the 12-week project the careers section on the Sage site went from 5 pages to 15, with a dedicated navigation.

Skills used

-> Data benchmarking
-> Competitor research
-> Information architecture review
-> Wireframing
-> User interface design
-> Design to development handoff

Team size

I was the dedicated designer, plus developers, project managers, stakeholders, design stakeholders etc.

Project length

12 weeks

A mobile phone is on a table next to a coffee cup. On the phone is the home page for the Sage careers pages. The content reads: "Grow the future of tech with us. Search for your new role" Then there is an option to select location and department and a button to "See open roles".

Benchmarking and research phase

To kick off I gathered all the analytics data and usability data on the careers and related pages to benchmark against. I also used click data to determine which content was performing best and which areas of pages were being ignored.

I then launched an in-depth competitor review of both the types of pages available on competitor sites, navigation around them and the kind of content available. This allowed me to suggest a new navigation and page structure and create page skeletons with the type of information that could sit there and stock images, for the team to build upon from a content perspective.

Early wireframes of the Sage careers pages containing stock imagery and placeholder text. Shown is the Sage careers homepage; Working at Sage page; DE&I page and Graduate and interns page.

Search page

In order to boost applications, candidates needed to be able to discover available roles quickly and easily. The original job search page was not designed mobile first, but had a large percentage of mobile traffic. Additionally, a number of industry best practices were not being followed.

I conducted an audit of all the jobs available on the site to help with restructuring new designs so that available jobs and information were easier to find and filter through. This information was then used to help with a wider tidying up of data entry for the careers team.

I pitched a new design to the team which solved issues uncovered. I then worked together with a variety of stakeholders to get the designs approved for development. I worked with design teams to get the designs specced up and then worked with the development teams to get the designs into production.

Before and after for Sage's career's search. The new designs focus on more of a streamlined mobile experience.

Visual design phase

I put together some rough wireframes of the agreed-on pages using Sage’s UI kit so that the careers team could work on the content. I then spent some time with the team’s creative director looking at the visual treatment across all of the pages to give the careers section its own unique feel.

I collaborated with illustration and motion designers to ensure our plans were implementable. With the content completed, I then refined the designs and prepared them for implementation.

Pages from the live Sage site now available on: sage.com/en-gb/company/careers/. There is the overview page; Intern and graduates page; Sage Pathways page and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion page.

The result

At the end of the 12 weeks, I handed over all of the work to internal teams to continue implementation. All the work went live quickly and is now being rolled out globally.

The stakeholders were all very happy with the outcome.

‍

"Louise was wonderful to work with! The research phase was super thorough and well articulated. The project delivery was phenomenal, fast and accurate. Louise didn’t need much onboarding and was able to pick up the ins and outs of our UI kit, Design Language System and development needs extremely well. She was able to keep everything on track."

‍

Amanda Francour

Creative Director, Sage