Rethinking the Student Summit Job Board
Transforming a fragmented, sponsor-first experience into a centralized, student-first job discovery platform - improving usability, transparency, and operational efficiency.
Role
Senior UX Designer & No-Code Developer
Employer
The Technical Association for the Pulp and Paper Association (TAPPI)
Platform
Cvent, Softr, Google Sheets, Google Forms
Skills
UX strategy, content design, IA, automation, system design
The Problem
The original job discovery experience prioritized sponsors over users:
Students navigated a grid of sponsor logos to find jobs
Clicking often led to empty or vague listings
No clear indication of who was actually hiring
User perception:
“I have to hunt for jobs and I’m not even sure they exist.”
Internally:
Staff manually duplicated job listings across sponsor pages
Updates were time-consuming and error-prone
No centralized system for managing opportunities
Key Insight
This wasn’t just a navigation issue, it was a trust and clarity problem.
Students weren’t struggling to find jobs because of volume, but because:
Jobs weren’t surfaced clearly
Information was inconsistent
The experience didn’t match their mental model
Users don’t want sponsors, they want opportunities.
What I Did
Shifted to a Student-First Content Model
Reversed the experience from:
Sponsor-first → Job-first
Surfaced job listings upfront
Made opportunities the primary entry point
Preserved sponsor visibility within listings (not as the entry)
Designed a Clear, Scannable Information Architecture
Introduced filtering by job type, major, and company
Structured listings to highlight key decision-making info
Wrote microcopy to guide users through filtering and next steps
Reduced cognitive load and decision friction
Built an Automated, Scalable System
Created a lightweight, no-code infrastructure:
Companies submit jobs via Google Form
Data feeds into a centralized Google Sheet
Softr dynamically renders listings in real-time
Embedded across multiple pages via iframe
Results
Sponsors reported increased visibility in post-event survey
Internal team requested expansion to year-round use
Impact
Case Studies