Chegg Careers
The Story
The Chegg careers team was focused on helping students after college and putting them on the path toward career success. One such product was a portal for discovering internships. As we were redesigning this portal, I noticed that we were approaching “internship season” (Winter/Early Spring) where employers would be looking for their summer interns and students would be looking for internships. Taking advantage of this time of high activity, I proposed to the team that we explore this journey of seeking internships in great depth. Through a longitudinal research project, we gathered insights, user needs, and pain points to help build next-generational tools for assisting students in landing internships.
Key Research Questions To Solve
Understand the student journey in discovering internships.
Generate foundational insights to inform the next-generation tools for Internships.
Discover pain points to differentiate Chegg Careers from competitors.
Methods Used
6 month Longitudinal Study via a diary study and interviews.
Poster displayed within our office showing where students are in their internship hunt. This helped keep stakeholders engaged in the process.
Every 6 weeks we’d check-in with students on how the search was going and discuss emerging topics. Here we asked a student to show us how she searched for internships using her college portal.
Standing out: Students feel they look like every other student and need help standing out. In this example, one of our students invested in a resume template from Etsy in hopes of making her resume stand out from the rest.
Why This Project Matters To Me
While I have conducted many foundational research projects using similar methods, this was the first time that I had ever conducted a longitudinal research project for such a long period of time (6 months). I couldn’t focus all my energy on this project, so I managed this project on the side while conducting other research within my role. Not only did I learn that this was “doable”, but I learned it was totally worth it! There were several critical insights about students that emerged which we could not have understood had we not observed their journey.
Want to learn more about this research and its impact? Let’s chat!