Indeed: Employer Verification Center
Project Overview
I joined Indeed in 2021 and started the Anti-fraud UX team alongside our newly created engineering and business teams.
Fraudulent activity levels at Indeed skyrocketed to an all-time high. Our first primary anti-fraud measure was creating a ‘‘Fraud From Inception’ division responsible for stopping the creation of new fake company accounts or mirroring accounts of established companies on the Indeed platform.
Roles
Main: Team Lead UX Designer
Other hats: UX team management, UX product ownership, UX researcher, content strategist, product roadmap prioritization planner, and developer supporter.
I was responsible for the strategy, vision, and delivery of this brand-new Indeed experience. I designed and immediately launched multiple MVPs into production to counteract fraud. In addition, I set up numerous research studies, designed north star vision concepts, designed user testing plans, synthesized data, and presented recommendations to business partners resulting in roadmap prioritization and driving product backlogs for all upcoming work.
Customer Problem
Fraud is Rampant
Fraud is a very lucrative multi-billion dollar industry, mainly coming from Russia, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and China.
Types of Scams
There are various methods, such as fake check, romance, reshipping, and crypto scams.
Why Fraud Happens
One of these sites is real and one is a mirrored fake version, can you spot the difference?
Scammers are getting more sophisticated and target job seekers desperate for jobs and money, most of whom are unfamiliar with these scams and don’t know what does or doesn’t make sense. Often, the perpetrator begins by giving the victim money or goods and building trust rather than asking for things upfront.
Company Reputation and Indeed Brand
Both businesses as well as Indeed are hurt by job seeker fraud. Any companies that get mirrored can damage their reputation in irreversible ways. Also, fraud on the Indeed platform impairs the brand and sends customers to competitors.
Highlights
Reduced fraud activity in a major way
I designed and launched multiple major antifraud features on the Indeed platform used worldwide.
Outcome: reduced overall fraud activity levels by 78% with 52% of that coming from fraud exposures due to lack of verification or compromised accounts.
Began with MVPs of solo verification variants using only document upload or inbound calling.
Discovered the need for more flexibility in options through user testing feedback and hard data.
Delivered multiple launches to a/b test different solutions to offer the most flexibility while maintaining the quality of the verification.
Initiated the Anti-fraud UX team
I initiated the Trust and Safety Anti-fraud team in 2021 and I led its evolution to a six-person multidisciplinary UX team covering multiple product areas.
Developed and implemented numerous UX team processes.
Led the UX team in using HCD frameworks, ensuring all concepts were data-driven by user research and balanced with business needs.
STEP 1
Research
Research happens throughout the iterative design process and involves different methods and strategies. Some of those strategies were:
Qualitative Diary Studies and User Testing sessions get feedback from real employers on their pain points and experience with getting verified.
Competitor and comparative audits to see what’s in the wild
Internal studies and workshops to determine our security goals, business metrics, technical abilities, overall acceptance criteria, and UX requirements.
* Research details have been intentionally blurred
STEP 2
Wireframes
Leveraging Indeed’s robust design system’s components and patterns, I could quickly iterate sketches into medium/high fidelity wireframes.
My first designs were to try and immediately support our initiatives to slow down the ever-increasing fraud from happening on our site.
STEP 3
Present, Gather Feedback, & Iterate
I participated in daily agile stand-ups with my engineering and business partners to keep them updated on my progress and gather technical feedback about implementation.
I also facilitated multiple weekly design co-creation sessions with my UX team to receive critiques and then collaborate on ideas from the different perspectives of content, research, and design.
STEP 4
MVP Launch and Gather Data
Focus:
Quantitative data - Adoption rates, bailouts, errors
Qualitative data - Multiple user testing plans
Our MVP launch experiment initially consisted of only one type of method using a business document upload. We quickly added two more types of verification variants, inbound calling, and a government ID upload.
What we learned:
These added verification requirements were working against bad actors. However; our team urgently getting these three methods out in a fire-drill effort led to a very rough design and experience. We found that only offering individual options for verification was negatively affecting the good actors with nearly 40% unwilling/unable to complete.
In our research, we found that there wasn’t a single type of verification method that was usable for every type of employer. Often employers consisted of owners, employees, and internal and external recruiters, each of which has a different ability to use each type of method.
STEP 5
Iterate & Refine & User Test More!
Focus:
A new flexible multi-option verification version
A new inbound calling nudge version
Communication touchpoints - Added more ways to connect
Content strategy - Testing different value propositions
After the MVP launch of three different variants, we soon realized that we needed to be more flexible in our verification options. We also learned that content strategy was crucial and focused on testing multiple value propositions. In addition, we also added many new touchpoints and communications to drive adoption rates.
Outcome:
Created a single multi-option version that offered all three current methods to every user. Increased adoption to ~75%. Also, created a new test using the default strong nudge method to test against the multi-option.
STEP 6
Design to Developer Handoff
I worked with the development team daily so they have transparency and collaborate with the UX team throughout the lifecycle of an idea.
That being said, as the owner of the UX product, I make it a practice among my UX team that we provide certain deliverables to the developers, such as:
A11Y markups
information architecture diagrams
annotations, callouts, spacing
clickable prototypes
STEP 7
Quick Turnaround Company Updated Styling Guidelines
Update design to new Indeed styling and brand
Now with a refined version of verification in production it was also time to align to the newly updated Indeed design systems brand.
Step 8
Vision Work & Next Steps
Northstar visions:
Dedicated time for exploratory designs into what anti-fraud methods could look like in the 1-3 year future and ran multiple a/b in production experiments and user testings on the ideas to help guide product roadmaps.
Vision 1: Empower employers by offering more flexible options
Vision 2: Lead with a proven default
Vision 3: Localize to different cultures
Vision 4: Behavior Motivating Ideas to Increase Adoption