Products: Talent Profile & Job Search (iOS)

Talent comprise the biggest group of users on the platform. They are actors, performers, singers, dancers, models, voiceover artists, crew/staff workers, content creators, and more. Some are professionals who use our platform to make a living, others are just starting out and trying to break into the industry, and yet others have full-time jobs who use Backstage to find side gigs, or just as a hobby. This vast spectrum means a lot of different user stories, needs, and problems to solve for.

↑ A typical talent workflow looks something like this.

Getting feedback from performers is quite easy, especially compared to employers. They’re always willing to partake in research and are constantly reaching out with problems, requests, and often appreciation. We have a ton of collective data for them, and here are some of the key takeaways that have informed product decisions over the years:

• A majority of talent search for jobs away from home, and mostly on their phones.
• They want better tools for filtering job results and receiving job alerts.
• Many users don't actually search and apply to jobs at the same time, but often save jobs they're' interested in and apply to them later.
• Submitting applications should be quick and simple — let the talent profile do most of the talking.
• Media is a super important factor in the hiring process, so those assets really need to be front and center for employers and easily customizable for performers.
• Schedules are hectic so communication with employers around things like auditions, interviews, and asset requests must be clear and easy to access.
• Individual identity and expression is very important for performers, regardless of whether or not it actually helps get them hired.

There are so many important tools for talent along their journey—from account creation to accepting their first job offer. It would be impossible to show every step, so I just want to highlight a few parts of the bulk of that journey, which largely consists of creating/maintaining a profile, and searching for roles to apply to. Many of our users on the talent side are also younger and/or new to the industry, so guidance and encouragement are an integral part of the user experience.

Profiles that reflect specific attributes & abilities

After a performer signs up for Backstage, often the first thing they’ll do is create their talent profile. They can actually create up to three: acting/performer, and voiceover, crew. Many of our users work in multiple disciplines, each with a specific set of skills, experience, visuals and media, or other relevant details that an employer might look for.

↑ Easily toggle between profile editors, set which one will open by default, and whether or not each one will be public and viewable by employers in the Backstage Talent Database.

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A major complaint we frequently get from employers is around poor headshot quality. Headshots are super important, and for some acting and modeling roles specifically, sometimes the only thing employers will look at before deciding to pass on someone, or move them to the next round. Performers who upload poor headshots do a disservice to themselves by making their application less appealing, but many are new new to the industry and don't yet know about best practices. Adding some clear, point-of-action education has helped remedy the issue.

↑ Adding this educational step for new users has helped to improve headshot quality.

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A performer's skills are important for all kinds of jobs, but especially those related to voiceover or post-production positions. For those types of jobs, employers will often filter applicants based on an exact skill, and how proficient the person is. Talent can have dozens of skills, and are frequently adding new ones, so it was important for them to easily be able to access and customize that list through their profile editor.

↑ Talent can add and remove existing skills, create new ones, assign proficiency levels, and change the order they appear on their public profile.

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As I've mentioned, voiceover artists are a rapidly growing talent group on Backstage. Many are just starting and don't have much experience or recorded material to use for an audio reel, so we built a way for them to be able to showcase their abilities even with no professional experience under their belt. Like headshots for actors, many employers just want to see (or in this case, hear) the goods to know if they're interested in hiring someone.

↑ An example of one of the voice sample directions artists can record, which then become searchable by employers in our Talent Database.

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Many other casting platforms are pretty old-school and binary in the way they approach gender options. Inclusivity is so important to us and our user base, so we really wanted to lead the way in this area. We consulted with a firm that specializes in gender equity in tech. The solution may seem simple, but there was great care taken to ensure flexibility and proper verbiage.

↑ Users can choose all the gender options they identify with, as well as add ones not listed. In employer talent searches, any non-binary profiles appear in both female and male searches so as to not exclude them.

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One last little feature related to talent profiles that I wanted to call out here is our profile score widget that is displayed at the top of profile editor. Similar to getting talent to have better headshots, we also want them to have better, more completed profiles in general. It serves them better because it makes their profiles more discoverable by employers, and that in turn serves our business by showing employers we have a high caliber of talent on our platform.

↑ The profile strength score reveals suggestions for improvement, and has proven to be an effective tool in increasing profile quality.

Finding the right jobs with ease

The primary workflow for a performer revolves around finding and applying to jobs, and this is probably the single most important workflow for us as a business, since these users have to pay for a subscription in order to apply (this pay-to-apply model is the industry standard, not just a Backstage thing).

The job search is such an important product to our bottom line that we're constantly talking to these users and learning about their day-to-day lives, how/when/where they use Backstage to find and apply to jobs, and pain points in the process.

These search tools are what performers use to find jobs that fit them based on things like gender, age range, location, compensation, skills, etc. There are dozens of potential filter options, and subscribers are able to save unlimited searches to get job results sent to them as frequently as they'd like.

↑ A glimpse at some of the job search filter options, which can also be saved to receive job alerts.

The entire job search UI was recently revamped, but some of the new features worth highlighting are the ability to save jobs (heart icon) as well as hide them from your search (eye icon), a persistent sticky button at the bottom to filter your search (instead of having to scroll back to the top like before), and a persistent "Apply Now" button with a more intuitive role selection UI. In the old UI, the roles and apply action were buried further down in the project details, causing confusion with some users around how to apply.

↑ 1. Land on the job search screen, 2. Find a job, 3. Tap to view the project details, 4. Select a role to apply to

Another issue we wanted to try and address with this redesign was that of talent applying before actually reading the specific requirements for a role, often resulting in them applying to roles they weren't particularly suited for. Applicant mismatch is a real issue for employers, so below is one example of "soft" friction we've introduced as a remedy.

↑ This is a one-time modal the user sees the first time they apply—enough to create awareness without being annoying.

Understanding device usage

The Backstage iOS app for talent was first launched back in 2017. It would only be a slight exaggeration to say our users were begging for it, and those requests certainly jibed with the mobile-first, on-the-go lifestyle so many of them described in interviews. Plus, the quantitative data told the same story: ~70% of our users were searching for and applying to jobs on their phones.

We have a relatively small engineering team on the iOS side, so parity with our web tools is not something that always happens in tandem. Often not until several weeks later will the iOS feature get built to match what exists on the web, so communication and seamless app/web cohesion are super important here. If a new feature has been shipped for web first, users have to be made aware of it and be able to easily access it on the mobile web from the iOS app.

A panic ensued when we first launched the first iteration of our new casting search UI several years back and immediately saw application submission numbers plunge. We iterated on the IA, testing the arrangement of various components on the production detail page, changing some of the copy, and adding more visible CTAs. They were all pretty trivial changes, but application numbers quickly bounced back to previous levels, eventually surpassing them. By the end of the first month after launching application submissions were up 40%. We all knew this new UI was so much more intuitive, but it was a good lesson to never forget some of the most basic yet important product design and user psychology principles around things like eye-tracking, CTA placement, and copywriting best practices.

Unlike some of our products, we have some pretty definitive numbers around applications and the effectiveness of the new product. The first full-month after the release of our revamped job search product, applications saw a near double increase in application submissions. That number remained fairly constant, with a slight increase every month, until the launch of the iOS app.

When the iOS app launched in the app store there was an initial 20% increase in application submissions the first full month it was available – and that was without a public announcement of its release. Today the iOS app accounts for just under half of all application submissions. For me, the best validation is that in the 7 years since release it has accumulated thousands of reviews and never dropped below a 4.7 average. That rating has always been a real point of pride for me and my team.