Relaunch Job Search and Marketing Platform Careerplus

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Case summary

careerplus.ch is a business platform to acquire and convert job seekers and companies alike. It provides all tools to place people at a matching position.

Case description

Careerplus is one of Switzerland's leading job placement agencies. Its main asset is a vast up-to-date database of qualified candidates and jobs. The website's primary goal is to grow this database in order to find the perfect fit between job seekers and open positions. It is therefore the center of Careerplus’ digital strategy and landscape.

The new website was redesigned and rebuilt from the ground up on Drupal 8 (and replaces Drupal 7). It revolves around an intuitive, quick and clear job and candidate search engine (Drupal Search API) that attracts job-seekers and companies alike. The website integrates seamlessly with Careerplus’ main HR tool (via REST APIs).

Case goals and results

Goals:
1. Improve conversions for candidates and companies
2. Provide a quick and smooth update path
3. Integrate more seamlessly with the HR software, cross-posting tools and job boards
4. Update Drupal (7 to 8) and the UI

Solutions:
1. Introduce a faster, mobile-optimized UI with better conversion funnels: Job alerts, downloads with lead collecting overlays, easier job application, blog with newsletter signup, newsletter pattern for content-pages, more prominent contact options.
2. Move both Drupal 7 and 8 behind a proxy. Divide the project into small milestones. Release milestone by milestone and let the proxy redirect only the new URLs to Drupal 8.
3. Replace the file based data exchange with a REST API that directly connects the HR software with the website (which e.g. allows recruiters to preview new job postings in real time). Provide an abstract API which can be consumed by job boards and cross-posting tools in order to increase the reach of job vacancies listed with Careerplus.
4. Redesign and rewrite everything; restructure the navigation and every single page to provide more intuitive access to all tools to both companies and candidates.

Results:
1. More and higher quality conversions from job seekers and companies. This is crucial for Careerplus’ business success, as it directly depends on the amount of candidates and vacancies in their database.
2. Release of the first milestone after 6 months and of the whole project after 12 months (instead of an all-in-one release after 12 months).
4. More user interactions with the website.

Challenges

Careerplus is an extensive website (content pages, job search, candidate search, blog, salary calculator, API consumption, events, job alerts, teams etc.). In order to minimize time to market, we divided the project into 13 milestones and released it after we completed 6 out of those 13 milestones. Thereby, we cut the development phase into half (6 months instead of 12) and gathered user feedback early.

An Envoy proxy receives all requests and sends traffic based on URL patterns to the upstream Drupal 8 or Drupal 7 (which acts as the fallback) servers. Redirecting similar URLs on both Drupal instances (e.g. back office, assets) was not trouble-free; we solved it by prefixing the paths coming from Drupal 7 on delivery.

This approach allowed us to run multiple Drupal instances on one domain and to preserve the previous URL structure in order to provide the best user and SEO experience over the transition period.

Community contributions

SEO plays a crucial role for careerplus.ch. The learnings and experience we took away from the relaunch were published in two blog articles with a technical focus. Those articles target Drupal beginners and companies informing themselves about Drupal’s SEO capabilities:
https://joinbox.com/blog/seo-fuer-drupal-8-teil-1
https://joinbox.com/blog/seo-fuer-drupal-8-teil-2
Another blog article covers the transition from Drupal 7 to 8 for complex projects:
https://joinbox.com/blog/wie-wechsle-ich-von-drupal-7-zu-drupal-9

Hosting

Google Cloud Platform, Zurich (Load Balancing, Cloud DNS, Instance Groups, VM Instances, SQL, Container Registry, VPC Network, Firewall)

Why should this case win the splash awards?

For two reasons:
1. The project shows that Drupal is the perfect foundation for a business platform that enables a company’s success; in the case of Careerplus, Drupal powers a job and candidate search tool, a salary calculator, an event solution, a blog, automated job alerts and a marketing platform.
2. The project demonstrates that even when major Drupal updates are released, the upgrade path can be gradual and smooth.