Case Study: How a Job Search Portal Used Social Proof to Increase Conversions by 154%

When looking for a new job, a lot of questions are swirling around in your head. “Will I be a good co-worker?” “Will I fit in with the new team?” But, perhaps, the most burning question of all is: “Am I good enough to land this dream job?”

Recent graduates, the unemployed, and those seeking new job opportunities tend to look for work, or their next big career move, on job search websites. JobAngels is one such site, working on a commission-based model. Companies list their job openings on the JobAngels website and ideally people respond to them. But as you’ll soon find, that wasn’t always translating into “cha-ching!” moments for JobAngels.

Our job was to increase conversions and convince more people to send in their resumés.

Logically speaking, the more resumés an employer receives, the higher the chance of them hiring a JobAngels candidate, and the more likely the portal will earn a commission as a result.

As Matej Sucha, co-founder of behavioral economics consultancy MINDWORX, puts it: “The mission was very clear. Our job was to increase conversions and convince more people to send in their resumés.”

Armed with a whole arsenal of research on behavioral economics and the psychology of human behavior, MINDWORX endeavored to find the best solution to JobAngels’ conversion rate woes. But there was one small caveat. 

The MINDWORX team could suggest any changes to the portal’s user interface so long as they didn’t lay a finger on the job ad copy. A fairly reasonable condition, you might say, as it’s the companies who write and publish the job listings, not JobAngels. And with hundreds, or perhaps even thousands of job openings, changing them all would be utterly unfeasible (and costly).

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“We were given a huge playground to work with and lots of wiggle room. We could pretty much suggest anything we wanted. I mean, this just doesn’t happen that often with our clients, so we were pretty motivated,” Sucha admits.

Behind every successful design solution lies a whole corpus of fascinating behavioral economics research. And job recruitment was certainly no exception.

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How gender plays a role in job ad conversions

MINDWORX knew right from the get-go where to start looking for inspiration. They delved deep into some behavioral research which had already been done on recruitment and job hiring, and their consultants uncovered some rather compelling findings, particularly on how men and women react differently to job ads.

Women tend to screen themselves out of the conversation and end up applying to 20% fewer jobs than men.

This observation was confirmed in a Hewlett Packard internal report which, in short, concluded that, on average, it was enough for men to fulfill only 60% of the job requirements for them to want to apply for the job. Meanwhile, women felt they needed to fulfill 100% of the requirements. 

This interesting difference in how men and women perceive job requirements was later confirmed by LinkedIn internal research, which “analyzed billions of interactions between professionals, companies, and recruiters” and found that “women tend to screen themselves out of the conversation and end up applying to 20% fewer jobs than men. What’s more, women are more hesitant to ask for a referral from someone.”

So, any proposed solution must bear this caveat in mind. If companies had, let’s say, too many irrelevant, difficult-to-fulfill, or Catch 22 requirements in their job ads, they could discourage a lot of candidates from applying.

This finding prompted MINDWORX to build a solution that would address the fear of not fulfilling all the requirements.

We tried to convince people that they had nothing to lose and everything to gain just by sending in their resumé

So what was the solution, you ask? As people scrolled down to the candidate requirements and the website noticed the job seeker was about to leave the page, a pop-up window was triggered.

This pop-up window encouraged the person to submit their resumé, even though they didn’t meet all the requirements. “We tried to address it head-on and tell people, ‘hey, it doesn’t matter if you don’t fit the bill 100%.’ Basically, we tried to convince them that they had nothing to lose and everything to gain just by sending in their resumé,” explains Sucha.

The text of the pop-up window did two things. First, it addressed this uncertainty. Second, it tried to minimise the  “perceived effort” of submitting a resumé. 

As Matej Sucha explains “We call it perceived effort because a task that’s objectively difficult and lengthy might not feel that way when marketed properly. Conversely, an easy task might feel difficult and overwhelming when the exact opposite is true. The key to making people do something you want is to make them feel like it’s a piece of cake.” 

Thinking in terms of perceived effort rather than “real” effort gives you a whole plethora of new tools. You don’t have to simplify processes or remove any steps. All you need to do is describe them in a different way. For example, you can easily (see what I did there?) change the perceived effort by using minimizing language like “easy” or “simple.”

Social proof can work in unexpected ways

Another thing that MINDWORX tried was a well-known concept in the field of behavioral science: social proof. Social proof is our tendency to be influenced by what others do and how they think and behave. Especially when we’re uncertain what to do ourselves.

Sucha and his colleagues tried using social proof in several different ways. One such instance was when they cautioned job seekers under the call-to-action button about how many people had already seen the job ad in the previous 24 hours. The second instance was telling job seekers how many people had already submitted their resumés.

But wait just a minute! Why would you tell a job seeker that a whole crowd of people have already beaten them to the chase? Wouldn’t that scare them off and make them wonder why they should waste their time?

In a rational world, yes. But behavioral economics tells us otherwise. When we are placed in a situation of uncertainty, we’re very likely to turn to other people and copy their behavior. Monkey see, monkey do.

When we are placed in a situation of uncertainty, we're very likely to turn to other people and copy their behavior.

And so, MINDWORX tested it out, using a few combinations of pop-up windows and social proof announcements over the course of several weeks with hundreds of thousands of website visitors.

Now let’s see what the numbers showed.

A 154% increase in conversions

It turned out that MINDWORX’s most effective solution was its pop-up window with a gain-framed message (“Do you like the job offer but think you don’t fulfill all the requirements? Send your resumé anyway! It only takes a few clicks that’ll cost you nothing.”) combined with social proof (telling people how many job seekers had submitted their resumés so far). This increased the conversion rate by a whopping 154%!

The behavioral interventions applied by MINDWORX more than doubled the total number of resumés sent.

Even the standalone social proof solution without pop-up windows was a huge success, generating a 138% increase in conversions. All in all, the behavioral interventions applied by MINDWORX more than doubled the total number of resumés sent.

But what surprised JobAngels’ then-CEO, Andrej Winter, the most was MINDWORX’s heavily data-driven approach. “I was pleasantly surprised to see MINDWORX so data-driven, which we felt was a very important virtue to have. Their communication and hypothesis testing were very professional thanks to this alignment,” says Mr. Winter.

Why logical expectations can be far from reality

According to Sucha, there was one interesting thing to note. On the surface, the social proof solution doesn’t seem to make much logical sense. But why is that? Because if someone wants to apply for an opening and sees two job ads – one with a stampede of job seekers and the other with tumbleweeds and crickets chirping – in a rational world, they’d go for the second job because they’re more likely to snag an interview and get it!

“What we’ve discovered here is very counterintuitive. People reacted more to job ads where they had less chance of getting hired or even invited for an interview,” reveals Sucha. But it does make sense from a psychological perspective. 

People reacted more to job ads where they had less chance of getting hired or even invited for an interview

“Our minds tend to go berserk when faced with uncertainty. A series of pestering questions and unlikely scenarios will flash through our brains, keeping us up at night. Did I apply for a good job? Am I going to regret it? What if my co-workers hate me? Will my boss be a regular boss or a cool boss?” says Sucha.

“Social proof, such as applying for a job that’s hot on the market, can help remove this unnecessary stress caused by uncertainty because ‘everyone is doing it’” he continues.

Andrej Winters agrees, saying that “employing social proof resulted in a huge increase in conversions.”

So, to sum things up, behavioral insights can be a great starting point. But you’ve got to test your solutions. After all, you’re dealing with humans, not machines.