Increase successful applications

CASE STUDY

In our job application team we identified a critical drop-off point in the job application process. Users without a profile were significantly less likely to complete applications compared to users who had already created one. My role was to help design a mobile first experience that increased successful applications while keeping the process smooth, fast, and user-friendly.

Role: UX / UI Designer
Team: Designer, PM, 7 Developers, Tester
Timeline: 2 Months
Tools: Sketch, Figma, Userbrain, Miro, Jira, Confluence

The Challenge:

As karriere.at we want
1. A high number of talent profiles to connect to employers.
2. More successfully tracked applications through our portal.

In order to achieve both, we checked our Numbers and came to the following conclusion:
Users without a profile completed far fewer applications than users who had one.

However, simply forcing users to create a profile risked frustrating them or causing even higher drop-off.
The challenge was to design a solution that:

Encouraged profile creation
Reduced friction
Increased completed applications
Improved long-term user engagement

Competition analysis

Approach:

Competition analysis

As Austria’s largest job platform, we keep a close eye on competitor onboarding patterns. Introducing a login wall required balancing business goals with one of karriere.at’s long-standing USPs: allowing applications without signup.

To avoid discouraging users who valued this flexibility, we added a clear “Continue as guest” option. This allowed us to encourage profile creation without compromising the existing user experience.

2. Testing the Login Wall (A/B Test)

We introduced a soft and hard login wall for users applying without a profile and ran an A/B test to measure its impact. The results were significant:

Higher rate of profile creation
Notable increase in completed applications
No major negative impact on user behavior or satisfaction

This validated that guiding users into profile creation early improved the entire application flow.

3. Reducing Friction With an AI-Powered CV Extraction Tool

Even with the login wall, we wanted to make the experience as effortless as possible. Creating a profile meant entering a lot of personal information — a common point of friction.

To address this, we introduced an AI-based CV extraction tool that automatically pulls key data from the talent’s uploaded CV.
After clearing possible legal pitfalls, we designed a process that is responsive, accessible, has helpful microcopy and is intuitive to use.

Initial rollout: