Career Coaching Platform

Career coaching platform for stay-at-home parents

UX research ▪ Volunteer ▪ Tech Fleet Company

Challenge

How might we help stay-at-home parents return to the workforce conveniently?

Role

UX research apprentice

Stakeholders

  • Client (1)
  • Product strategy team (6)
  • UX full-cycle team (6)

Tools

  • Figma
  • UserBit
  • Google suite
  • Zoom

Deliverables

  • Qualitative research insights
  • Quantitative research insights
  • Competitive assessment
  • Product roadmap

Timeline

July 2023

This is an ongoing project and only one phase (discovery phase) has been completed so far.

Career coaching platform for parents

Defining the scope

Stakeholders interview

Our client was a stay-at-home parent who had faced a lot of struggles while returning back to the workforce. Her struggles were so intense that she wanted to build a solution to help other parents who are in the same position as her.

Her initial idea was to build a career coaching platform for stay-at-home parents returning to the workforce. Our job was to do the Phase 0 of this project meaning to validate if this is a major pain point and if the market needs a product like this.

Baseline assumptions

After interviewing her, we came up with a list of assumptions and our job was to testing the validity of these assumptions.

  • Parents challenges are outdated skills, lack of confidence, gaps in the resume, and lack of professional network.
  • Stay-at-home parents prefer not to hire a coach because of the expense and unreliable results.
  • There’s a big need for a cheap and accessible solution in today’s market.

Problem statement

Many parents, especially moms, decide to quit their job and stay at home when their children are born. When they decide to go back, they face a lot of problems like resume gap, lack of confidence, lack of professional network, etc. These problems make the returning journey to the workforce super hard.

The goal of this phase of the project is to get a better understanding of the journey that stay-at-home parents go through while returning to the workforce.

Qualitative research

User interview

Who were the interview participants?

Our primary target group were stay-at-home parents based in the US who have plans to return or had already returned to the workforce.

We interviewed 7 college-educated stay-at-home moms based in the US. Five candidates were planning to return to the workforce and two of them had already returned.

How did we conduct the interviews?

Script: We went over all the questions that we wanted to ask during the interview and made sure there are no bias, no hidden assumptions, etc.

Interviews: We conducted each interview with one interviewer and one note-taker. I participated in 3 interviews as both interviewer and note-taker.

Quantitative research

Survey

Survey

We designed a comprehensive survey to validate the findings of the qualitative research. It comprised of the following sections:

  • Screening questions
  • Demographic questions
  • General questions
  • Job search journey
  • Challenges
  • Solutions

Gender distribution of the survey respondents

Synthetize and Analyze

Research findings

UserBit for the user interviews

We transferred all the 7 user interview transcripts to the UserBit for further assessment. Through the tagging system of the UserBit, we categorized the interviewees’ quotes and analyzed the charts that were provided.

Google form charts for the survey

We started analyzing the google form charts by finding the most important insights and the correlation between different categories. 

Affinity mapping of the findings

We put all of our findings together to find frequent patterns. The main categories were:

  • Motivations
  • Challenges
  • Needs
  • Attitudes/ emotions
  • Job search strategies
  • Solutions

Affinity map

Main research findings

Frequent patterns

Challenges of returning to the workforce

Family/Work balance

7/7 interviewees required some form of flexibility in their new job to be able to balance their work and home life.

72% of survey respondents said that “Family Obligations” will be a challenge when they return to the workforce.

Confidence

5/7 of Interviewees felt uncertain about abilities since they have been away from workforce for a long time.

80% of survey respondents reported little to no sense of confidence in their technical skills and qualifications. 

Motivations for returning to the workforce

Personal fulfillment

 7/7 Interviewees found enjoyment and purpose in doing work outside of their parenting work.

56% of survey respondents needed personal fulfillment outside of caregiving responsibilities by working.

Financial considerations

 6/7 Interviewees cited financial reasons like the high cost of childcare and medical benefits for returning to work.

62.2% of survey respondents decided to return to the workforce to have additional income.

Current solutions that parents use to overcome the challenges

Networking

7/7 interviewees mentioned networking as one of their main approaches of landing a job.

60% of survey respondents have found networking particularly helpful during their job-hunting process.

Professional online communities

4/7 User interview participants mentioned joining communities as a solution.

30% of survey respondents have found communities particularly useful in terms of volunteer work and networking.

Persona

Experience journey map

Key research insights

Jobs-to-be-done statements

Final insights: JTBD statements

Each apprentice from the UX team paired up with one apprentice from the product strategy team to put the final insights together. Product strategy team was working on the competitive analysis and finding market opportunities.

We wanted to match each research insight with the findings of them to see if there’s a market opportunity for a product backed by research results.

Prioritizing the JTBD statements

Each team member voted on the importance of each JTBD statement and marked them as top, middle, or low level of importance considering these factors:

  • Value/effort ratio of building the solution
  • Frequency between the users
  • Viable market opportunity

Top priority JTBD statements

Family/work balance

I want to find a job with flexible working hours or remote options when returning to the workforce so that I can provide for my family financially and still be a present parent without sacrificing job or familial responsibilities.

What I can do is looking for a job on Moms project, LinkedIn or other job boards, but job listings have limited flexible options and/or very competitive job market, especially for people with job gaps like parents.

Confidence

I want to feel confident when applying for jobs so that I feel that I can trust my skills to do the job without having an imposter syndrome.

What I can do is seeking mentorship/ review resumes, mock interviews, but there are limited quality resources tailored to the time and need of stay-at-home parents.

 

Financial considerations

I want to have additional household income when returning to the workforce so that I can keep up with the cost of living without the pressure being on the single income of my partner.

What I can do is looking for a job on Moms project, LinkedIn or other job boards, but job listings that may be friendly to returning parents are scattered across the different job boards– they are hard to find.

Networking

I want to find leverage in the pools of candidates when applying for jobs so that I can stand out among other candidates and land a job easier without having to apply for many job applications without hearing from them.

What I can do is connecting with people on LinkedIn or joining professional communities, but my current network is limited and the success rate of cold outreach is low.

Product Roadmap

Vision for the next phase

Key features

  • MVP1 – Career coaching, upskilling courses
  • MVP2- Professional online community

User research

  • Pain points and needs in career coaching
  • Collect needs in up-skilling

UX design

  • Initial designs for MVP1
  • Refine and iterate based on test results

Development

  • Platform identification and preparation
  • Initial framework layout

Final validation of the product strategy team:

Based on the research findings, the initial idea of the product is valid and there’s a market opportunity for it.

Final thoughts

Next steps

Recommendations for next steps

 
  • Look into different user segments and industry difference
  • Conduct research on users’ motivation for staying on the platform
  • Explore users’ perception on different forms of support 
  • Research the dynamics between the “supply” and “demand” sides 

What I’ve learned

Working in an agile environment under a tight timeline while mastering new tools has taught me a lot. How to work through lots of data, how to collaborate with a team, etc. 

It was a great learning experience and I hope to update this case study by working on the next phases of this project.

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