The business I came into
Indeed’s employer business was growing faster than its teams could coordinate. The SMB Accelerator was formed as a small cross-functional team to take on large, ambiguous problems and hand them back to product teams. The team behind employer matching existed to humanize algorithms across the job seeker and employer experience. It was a back-end team whose work people only saw through other teams’ screens.
The role I was hired for
I was hired as a Senior UX Researcher on the SMB Accelerator, the research voice on a new team with no playbook. I came into a largely undefined space and helped establish the team’s mission and vision. I reported to the manager of UX research for SMB. I had no direct reports at hire. By the end of 2023 I had eight, about half of them contractors, and I had worked through repeated reorganizations.
How my role changed
| Years | Title | What changed in scope |
|---|---|---|
| Spring 2021 to mid 2022 | Senior UX Researcher, SMB Accelerator | First research hire. Ran sourcing, jobs-to-be-done and configurable experience work across SMB, Enterprise and Job Seeker teams. |
| June 2022 | UX Research Manager, Match Recommendations Platform | Moved from individual contributor to manager, made a first hire, and kept ties to the Accelerator. |
| March to September 2023 | Also acting UX director for the matching platform | Covered the director's leave and worked as the direct counterpart to product and engineering leaders. |
| November 2023 | Manager, UX, leading employer research | Scope grew to Jobs, Sourcing, Qualifications and end-to-end strategy, plus four bridge teams. |
The initiatives, in order
2021
Instant Match and SMB sourcing research
Tested sourcing for hard-to-fill roles, which led to a second version of the Instant Match search.
- Participant research
- Concept prototyping and pilots
2021 – 2022
Configurable Experiences and the unified platform
One shared core experience for SMB and Enterprise, with 14 designers and researchers.
- Service ecosystem modeling
- Workshop design and facilitation
- Roadmaps and evolution plans
Read the case study
2021 – 2022
Jobs to be Done synthesis and Employer-Centered Matching
Synthesized 750+ outcome statements and showed employers judge fit in interviews less well than assumed.
- Participant research
- Journey and experience mapping
Read the case study
2021 – 2023
Accelerator operating model, values and rotation program
A repeatable way for a new team to take projects in and hand them off.
- Team design and leadership
- Coaching and capability building
2022 – 2023
Wellspring
From a leadership mandate to a funded product for hiring managers sourcing hard-to-fill roles.
- Service value proposition definition
- Concept prototyping and pilots
Read the case study
2023
Fix Broken Experiences
A cross-team inventory of broken experiences with senior leader feedback.
- Roadmaps and evolution plans
2023
End-to-end GenAI journey, AI developers journey and pre-deploy bias evaluator
One aligned body of work across three teams, for job seekers, employers and internal AI developers.
- Journey and experience mapping
- Service ecosystem modeling
- AI strategy
Read the case study
2022 – 2024
Three-year vision, quarterly UX portfolio practice and ML platform visioning
A shared source of truth for planning across UX disciplines and bridge teams.
- Roadmaps and evolution plans
- Workshop design and facilitation
What I carried forward
Three practices: facilitate toward decisions, not readouts; build the system that outlasts the project; and put the people who build AI in the same room as the people it affects.