#02. Probably the worst platform to apply for a job through.

No, it is not Workday.

In this issue of “The Accessibility Apprentice”, I will walk you through a terrible and painful experience of submitting a job application through an infamous platform, and share some learnings that will help you design better forms.

Workday, I am sorry.

Workday is often portrayed to be the worst platform to apply for a job through. It is slow, cluttered, unintuitive, and, according to some, it is

literally the worst system imaginable and I used better management systems in the 90s written in DOS.

A Reddit user.

Anyone who has ever applied for a position at a large company knows how painful the application process is. From the platform asking you to create a new account for every separate application (looks like it might have something to do with the regulatory requirements) to a notoriously flawed autofill system that only makes things worse.

Definitely not “making my application easier”.

In fact, people are so fed up with Workday, they choose to ignore any job application that requires a new Workday account. The user experience of Workday’s built–in ATS is quite bad, and there is very little anyone can (or is willing) to do about it.

How did you hear about us, on Facebook or on Facebook?

At the same time, Workday’s accessibility efforts are truly commendable. The team is doing all they possibly can to support all users and think every scenario through.

For instance, try switching all colours on the platform. Workday supports keyboard navigation very well, offers clearly visible focus states, and conveys information using more than just colour.

Look at those state-of-the-art error states

It’s far from being a perfect job application platform (not talking about Workday as HRIS!), but when it comes to accessibility, Workday is doing a good job.

Especially compared to our today’s guest.

Meet: Taleo.

Taleo is Oracle’s talent acquisition platform used by enterprise customers all over the world. Like Workday, Taleo offers a comprehensive suite of tools for hiring, managing, onboarding people, and very much like Workday, Taleo is hated by many.

Taleo gives me the most creepy feeling of anything since mouse pointer trackers, and I rarely call anything creepy. It seems Taleo intentionally designed the interface to be difficult and I would not be surprised if the service collects and hides very personal information.

A Reddit usert.

Unlike Workday that comes with ultimately recognisable styling, Taleo can be tailored to the customer’s UI, which, on paper, sounds like a great concept, but in reality, turns a bad experience into a nightmare, riddled with every flaw imaginable.

In this issue of “The Accessibility Apprentice”, we will tear Taleo down and see how something as simple and straightforward as a job application process can be turned into a walk of torment.

Onboarding.

On a gloomy weekday morning, I came across Nokia’s job posting on LinkedIn, and decided to learn more about the position. LinkedIn redirected me to Nokia’s job portal, and here, I made my first mistake. I used Firefox to access it.

No, some subtle UI differences were not the issue. Firefox users know that their browser renders fonts differently than Chrome (although some websites try hard enough to make sure these differences are not as apparent as they are here).

The issue was, I couldn’t create an account using Firefox. Taleo would throw all sorts of errors my way: from not being able to match passwords (generated and autofilled by my browser) to the password apparently being invalid because it didn’t follow all of their ridiculous demands.

“The password must respect the following rules”, says the platform, forgetting to respect the fundamental rule of UX. As a person with ADHD, reading a long technical text is always a challenge, but I bet even someone without attention deficit would not comprehend these instructions.

Presenting a laundry list of demands is never a good idea, but listing out a set of characters (!) allowed (!!) to be used in a password is plain ridiculous. In the age of password generators, 2FA, and magic links, rejecting a password because it contains a prohibited symbol doesn’t make any sense.

The issues didn’t stop there: Firefox refused to render the LinkedIn button (“Use your profile data to apply”). Not that I had any hopes for it to speed up my application process, but without it, I couldn’t proceed anyway.

I was stuck and had no other choice but to use Chrome: which means, download another browser, log into my LinkedIn account, and start from the beginning. By this time, my desire to work for Nokia has diminished completely. I was only driven by a need to complete this week’s newsletter.

Lesson #1:

• Check your products in various browsers (at the very least Chrome, Safari, and Firefox);

• Validate user’s passwords on the go and speak human:

Make sure your shade of red provides enough contrast with the background colour!

Uploading a resume.

Once your account is ready, Taleo asks you to accept Terms and Conditions (again), and the application finally begins. At the top and at the bottom of each page, three identically styled buttons: “Save and Continue”, “Save as Draft”, and “Quit”, float carelessly.

Workday’s “Next” button is literally the embodiment of a perfect UX compared to these blokes. How long will it take you to figure out which button to tap?

Next up, the system asks if you would like it to pre-fill your application (I have already opted for using LinkedIn to submit the application!). Regardless of whether you do or do not wish to upload a resume, the upload button stays on the screen.

I said I don’t want to upload a resume!

At this point, I am literally panicking. Two buttons that say “Save…” and two radio buttons that end with “…upload a resume” stare at me from the screen, and all I can wish is for this torture to be over.

Lesson #2:

• Apply styles that send clear and distinct signals, avoid grouping together elements that perform opposite functions (“Save” and “Exit”);

• Use clear, short, and concise labels: “Next”, “Done”, “Send”, but don’t forget to add an aria–label for screen–reader users;

• Don’t ask the user to make a decision if you are going to ignore them anyway.

Personal information.

The worst, however, was still ahead. As it often happens with these systems, Taleo couldn’t extract the information from my plain text CV properly: I was left with a broken form where half of the fields were empty, and half were completely out of place.

Again, Taleo brings our discussion back to the topic of frustratingly long labels. “Main Contact Phone Number”, seriously?

Here are my numbers, call me, maybe.

A mandatory conflict of interest disclosure wouldn’t be interesting if it wasn’t for one particular field: the one marked with an asterisk, but framed as an “IF” statement. I still haven’t figured out what I should have typed there. “N/A”, “-”, “no”?

Is it mandatory because literally everyone has some potential conflict to disclose? I wrote “I don’t like conflicts” and moved on.

I have a conflict with this form.

At this point, I could swear the form was built as a legal torture device: as I was trying to submit it, an error message appeared, signalling that I have missed something out.

The thing was, I haven’t.

DON’T YOU YELL AT ME

The lack of consideration for styling and grouping left me with a group of fields, where one (“State”) was contingent upon the other (“Country”), but I somehow had to guess that it wasn’t just the country information that was required.

My blood was boiling, and my brain gave up. I have embraced the pain.

Lesson #3:

• Use short and clear labels: “Phone number” instead of “Main Contact Phone Number”;

• Make sure to match the input type with the information required;

• Don’t mark a field as mandatory if it may not apply to everyone, and make sure to make every mandatory field to avoid confusion;

• Group elements together if they belong together;

• Speak human, especially when communicating an error.

Work experience

Anything that could possibly go wrong with this form did in the “Work experience” section, but the thing that made me chuckle was the “Start date” field that offered me a huge range of years in the dropdown, going all the way to the year 2049.

I’ll apply from the future, where I have relevant 2 decades of relevant experience

Next up, Taleo asked my for my resume (again), this time not leaving me any choice, and requested to complete a short voluntary information survey. The “Not Specified” radio button in the “Gender” field was already selected, so I tried moving on, only for the form to stop me, demanding to know my gender.

It’s completely optional and mandatory

Lesson #4:

• Don’t provide your user with a list of options that doom them to fail (i.e. date of birth cannot be later than today, that should be sort of obvious);

• Do not use empty state as a radio button. Maintain an empty state (no radio buttons selected) or use a different input type (i.e. dropdown).

Aftertaste.

Designing an accessible platform is tough, and what makes it even more challenging is the need to maintain flexibility and give your clients the freedom to tailor it to their needs.

But accessibility is not something that can be excluded when designing the foundations of such platforms. Workday clearly demonstrates that although building accessible components requires some investment, making an enterprise product accessible doesn’t make it any less flexible.

“Accessibility” is not just contrasting colours or focus states (Taleo checks these boxes). It is ensuring smooth cross–platform, browser–agnostic experience. Providing the foundations for human–friendly communication, including relevant and understandable error messages. Considering how people consume and understand information. Preventing errors and maintaining consistency.

In Taleo’s case, it is ensuring that although the clients have the flexibility to tweak the UI and customise the form, the basic principles remain intact across every page, every section, every component.

Building accessible products means building products for everyone.