Reducing friction in location-based job search

01 · Snapshot

Recruiters at FindSGJobs' outdoor career booths had no easy way to match jobseekers with nearby opportunities. They had to switch between the job portal and Google Maps just to check the location of a single job.

The outcome

The feature was later adopted by Jobs Anywhere @ North West, a community employment initiative by North West CDC, powered by the FindSGJobs platform.

02 · The problem

Recruiters spent about 30 seconds checking the location of each job, copying the address into Google Maps, switching back to the portal, and repeating the process for every listing until they found a suitable match or exhausted the results.

The repeated back and forth slowed the conversation and reduced the time recruiters could spend helping jobseekers.

03 · What I did

Research

I audited three local job portals, FindJobs, FastJobs, and JobStreet, to understand how each supported location-based job search.

I then benchmarked Google Maps because recruiters were already relying on it at career booths. Rather than introducing a new interaction pattern, I wanted to build on an interface they already understood.

Key insights

Recruiters weren't struggling to use our search function, instead they were leaving our portal to complete their task in Google Maps. The real issue wasn't the quality of our filters. It was that recruiters had to rely on two separate tools to complete a single workflow. This shifted the design challenge from improving search to integrating location directly into the job discovery experience.

Ideation

Instead of redesigning the search filters, I focused on eliminating the need to switch between FindSGJobs and Google Maps. To make the experience intuitive, I applied Jakob's Law: users spend most of their time using other products and therefore expect familiar interaction patterns.

Design

Users could set their search location using GPS or by entering an address, then select a search radius between 1 km and 5 km. Jobs matching the criteria appeared directly on an interactive map, with markers showing the number of available roles and their approximate distance. The radius was capped at 5 km on purpose, to keep results genuinely close rather than overwhelming. The feature was also built mobile-responsive.

Validation

Due to project constraints, I did not conduct a formal usability study. Instead, I worked closely with the Project Director and developer to review the design during implementation. This surfaced two issues:

To improve performance, I redesigned the experience into a step-by-step flow where jobs are loaded only after a search radius is selected, rather than loading every job location upfront. During a later revamp of the FindSGJobs portal, we also introduced a Get Directions function, which opens Google Maps with the route prepared, removing the need to manually copy and paste job addresses.

04 · The result

As I didn't have access to post-launch analytics, I measured the feature's impact through workflow comparison and real-world adoption.

Faster workflow

Real-world adoption

Originally designed for FindSGJobs, Jobs Nearby was later adopted by Jobs Anywhere @ North West, a community employment initiative by North West CDC, powered by the FindSGJobs platform.

05 · Reflection

With more time and access to user data, I would want to validate whether the step-by-step search flow genuinely improved the experience, rather than simply confirming that it resolved the loading issue.

The biggest lesson from this project was recognizing that a technical problem was actually a design problem. Instead of asking how to make a slow-loading map faster, I questioned why the map needed to load every job in the first place. Reframing the problem led to a simpler solution that improved performance without compromising the experience.