Revolutionizing the application process for entry level candidates

Charles River Laboratories

I designed and launched a revolutionary mobile-first application for entry-level candidates at a $12 billion life sciences company. This application significantly informed and shaped their hiring process and digital hiring strategy for years to come.

Role

UX Lead

End Users

Entry-Level Employees

Project Duration

1 Year +

Responsibilities

Research + Discovery
Usability Testing
Interaction + Design

Background

Charles River Laboratories is a global contract research organization that supports drug discovery and development across pharma, biotech, academia, and government. With 18,000+ employees and rapid growth ahead, CRL relies heavily on entry-level roles—yet it competes with employers like Amazon and Target, whose stronger brands and benefits attract the same talent. CRL needs to hire high-quality entry-level workers at scale, but its careers portal isn’t designed for these users and creates major barriers.


We created a mobile-first job search and job-matching app tailored to candidates unfamiliar with life-science roles. Built from user research, it helps applicants quickly understand CRL’s entry-level opportunities and find roles that match their interests and experience.

Approach

Discovery & Research


  • Conducted employee interviews across multiple roles and locations

  • Analyzed existing workflows to identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies

  • Performed heuristic reviews of legacy systems

  • Mapped the end-to-end employee journey to uncover gaps and pain points

As one Talent Acquistion recruiter described it:

“I have people from Jiffy Lube applying to technician roles because they're a technician.”

Recruiter Pain Points

  • High turnover and candidate drop-off due to mismatched job expectations

  • Strong competition from companies like Amazon and Target with faster, more appealing hiring processes

  • CRL’s hiring timeline can exceed two months, while competitors fill roles in under a week

Recent Hire Pain Points

  • Job descriptions were unclear and full of technical terms that didn’t translate to day-to-day duties

  • Application uploader frequently broke, forcing manual data entry and causing frustration and abandonment

  • Careers portal felt outdated, wasn’t mobile-friendly, and had broken features (including job search), creating a poor first impression of CRL as an employer

Ideation & Solution

  • Optimize for Mobile: Design a mobile-first experience since most users begin their job search on their phones through platforms like Indeed or Monster.

  • Introduce Job Matching: Provide a guided job-matching flow to help users — especially those without life-science backgrounds — discover roles that fit their skills and interests.

  • Improve Job Clarity: Rewrite job descriptions in clear, human language and highlight key details (pay, benefits, growth opportunities) to help users understand what the work actually involves.

Implementation


"Find your Fit” is a mobile optimized web application that provides an enhanced candidate experience to easily find and understand entry-level opportunities:


  • Aims to reduce the time to fill a job to save the recruiter time, improve the candidate experience, and place the candidates quicker

  • Expected to increase the pipeline of available and qualified talent who understand the requirements and aspects of the job

  • Designed to delight candidates for the best possible experience, which should lead to engaged new hires when they come through the door

  • You can view the application functionality at https://findyourfit.criver.com/

Impact

Several months after the Find Your Fit launch, leadership began exploring a refresh of the careers site, prompting a key decision about the app’s future. Following a prioritization workshop I led, the team agreed to sunset Find Your Fit and carry its learnings forward to inform the new careers site. Some of the key learnings include:

  • The careers site is just one key touchpoint in a series of several on the journey of finding a job at CRL.

  • Account Creation drops out 82% of our candidates. Candidates expect a frictionless application process.

  • Content Clarity - Job titles and descriptions are inconsistent and terminology is too verbose and complex for candidates to understand.

Next Steps

We used an online testing tool called Maze.com for unmoderated use cases, and we did informal user testing with students from Austin Community College. Some major themes include:

  • Branding and Trust
    Users are confused about who/ what is providing the job finding services.

  • Product Market Fit
    Order of CTA's on home page needs to be reordered, reprioritized.

  • Context & Clarity
    Job Matcher questions are unclear in content and unclear in results.