NHS Health Careers
Delivering a website focused on providing clear information about career progression in healthcare.
About NHS Health Careers.
NHS Health Careers is the go-to resource for finding information on more than 350 careers available in health. The digital platform aims to attract new people into the NHS by providing a single resource on healthcare careers. While current vacancies are not displayed on the platform, its purpose is to inform and advise potential applicants, including those looking to progress or pivot their careers.
Making it easier for healthcare professionals to find the right career.
NHS Health Careers was undergoing a top-to-bottom digital transformation. The organisation needed an online hub that catered to the diverse needs of its wide audience, from a doctor changing hospitals to a student picking their GCSEs and everything in between.
With five separate websites being amalgamated into one hub, this meant a digital platform that could handle an ever-growing range of careers and multiple user journeys. It also needed to be flexible enough to accommodate future growth.
We knew this could only be possible with a user-centered design approach. The first step? Asking users directly about their needs and the journeys they took when finding career advice.
Getting a clear picture of audiences and their needs.
We began with a deep dive that included a technical audit, user research, and content review.
This insight was used to create several personas that helped to clarify the specific needs and motivations the platform would need to address. The personas were also used to inform how we approached user testing at a later stage.
This work led us to introduce key features and content that would help healthcare workers find the right information:
- A calendar of careers fairs, events, and application deadlines
- Information on every role in healthcare tailored to different
- Specific advice relative to your current role and education
- Gamified routes to content discovery
With such a diverse audience it was important to find a way for people to avoid getting lost in all that content - so we created a gamified career planning tool.
The planner used a multistage form and role classification system to match users with careers that mirrored their interests and skills.
To encourage younger users to return to the site, we introduced a site login area – allowing users to review their interests as they progressed in their training toward a career.
An interactive planner to get people to the right career content.
With such a diverse audience it was important to find a way for people to avoid getting lost in all that content - so we created a gamified career planning tool.
The planner used a multistage form and role classification system to match users with careers that mirrored their interests and skills.
To encourage younger users to return to the site, we introduced a site login area – allowing users to review their interests as they progressed in their training toward a career.
From solid build delivery to strategic audience insights, the Reading Room team has gone above and beyond to help us improve our offering and put our users first.
Darren Aldrich Strategy and Communications Lead, NHS Health Careers
A personalised careers hub, catering to an ever-expanding audience of health workers.
Working together with NHS Health Careers, our specialists created a website that provides clear and direct information about how to progress or transition into a variety of careers in healthcare.
By developing a suite of tools, we helped users understand more about themselves, their career goals, and aptitude. One standout feature was the course finder, which lists over 1000 courses and offers a sophisticated search functionality based on filtering. The homepage can also be personalised based on interests, goals, and qualifications.
We continue to collaborate with NHS Health Careers to iterate and improve the website, leveraging user research and tracking data to guide design and feature optimisation.
In recent times we have conducted further research and workshops to explore how the NHS Health Careers brand is perceived by its audience and to inform its future strategy. This included specialist recruitment of stakeholders from the younger segments of their audience, to focus on younger people researching a career in healthcare.
As a valued digital partner, we are always looking for new ways to improve the user experience and effectiveness of the site. Our fresh ideas have included a revision of the site’s menus and career finder listing. Ongoing development, content planning, and improvement are vital as user expectations and information needs shift with the changing job market.
