Stella Jobs

Turning Job Seekers into Applicants

From mobile-only to web: how a simple platform change raised application completions by 12%.

Team: Designer (me), Head of product, Head of engineering, frontend and backend engineering team

Timeline: 2020

(My role: Lead designer, Researcher)

About Stella

Stella runs the first shared talent network for frontline workers — retail, hospitality, restaurants, customer service, and logistics. It connects job seekers directly with America’s largest employers.

stella_diagram_1

The Problems

Stella’s candidate app only existed on iOS and Android.
Job seekers received an email invitation, but many never installed the app to finish applying.

We mapped the full user journey to find where people dropped off.

candidate_webapp_funnel_snapshot
What We Found
  • Most users never installed the app after getting the invitation.
  • There was no web option — mobile-only was the single path to apply.
Our Hypothesis

  • A web-based application flow would remove this barrier and let more candidates apply.

Success Metric

  • Increase the number of invited users who go on to apply for a job.

Research

How Candidates Actually Use Their Devices

We surveyed 114 registered users to understand where they read their emails and where they browse jobs.

Key Findings
  • Users split into two groups: some move between mobile and desktop equally, others use desktop almost exclusively.
  • Most users open their job-invitation emails on a desktop computer.
Why This Mattered

The app being mobile-only was blocking exactly the moment candidates were most engaged; the email invite, usually read on desktop.

desktop_mobile_chart

Phase 1: MVP Web Flow

To validate the idea fast, we shipped a lightweight web experience first. It let users browse and start an application, then directed them to the mobile app to finish.

Candidate web MVP user flow

Wireframe and UX interactions

Candidate_web_MVP_wireframe
Candidate_web_mvp_search_interaction

High Fidelity Prototype

Candidate-web-app_MVP_desk

Result

The MVP proved demand for a web path — but the mobile handoff itself became the new drop-off point.

What We Found
  • Users still had to install the mobile app to complete their application, and many abandoned at that step.
Our Hypothesis
  • A complete, mobile-web application flow would remove this last barrier and lift conversions further.

Phase 2: Full Web Application Flow

We rebuilt the flow so candidates could apply fully on the web, no app install needed, adapting the mobile app’s data collection for desktop.

Wireframe and UI interactions

High Fidelity Prototype

Results

  • Active user rate: 15% → 19% of invited candidates
  • Application completion rate: 75% → 84%
  • 80% of web applications came from email invitations, confirming that desktop users needed a web-first path all along