Case study · Employ · Jul–Aug 2026

Testing Product Market Fit with a New Audience

The company was building a new product for job seekers. The product included a free tier and a paid tier. The team needed to understand whether job seekers understood what was being offered at each tier, and whether they saw enough value to be willing to pay for it.

RoleProduct Researcher

TimelineJul–Aug 2026

MethodConcept test: 45-minute prototype walkthroughs

DeliverableReadout deck with competitive analysis

6people recently off the job market, with high-volume application experience

5prototype steps, from saving info to a verified profile

6competing products compared

Figure 1. The study at a glance.

At a glance

Problem. A new paid product for job seekers rested on an untested bet: that candidates would sign up, then pay to be verified.

What I did. Walked job seekers through a prototype of the full journey and tracked whether they understood what we were offering at each step, where they hesitated, and what they compared it to.

Outcome. Showed that the value we thought we were offering wasn't enough for job seekers, and that the team needed a more competitive angle.

Research question

Do job seekers understand the free and paid tiers, and do they value the features?

Free tier: are the free tier features enough to get someone to sign up?
Paid tier: are people comfortable verifying their identity, where do they hesitate, and do they think it is worth paying for?

Approach

Each 45-minute session started where the product would: right after the participant finished a job application. They then moved through the five steps of the prototype, thinking aloud.

1 · Save your info
after finishing an application

2 · Free dashboard
applications, job feed and filters

3 · Verification
identity, education, licences, experience

4 · Payment
one-time fee for the verified badge

5 · Verified dashboard
match scores and recruiter discoverability

Figure 2. The prototype journey participants walked through. Placeholder names and data.

Decisions that shaped the study

Frame the study around the business risk

The question that mattered was "will candidates sign up, then pay?", not "do they like it?". So I tracked understanding and hesitation at each step of the journey, where a real candidate would drop off.

Recruit fast, then weight the findings for it

Results were needed before design and vendor decisions, so I recruited recent hires at our own company who had just been through a high-volume job search. Internal participants tend to be more favourable, so I gave less weight to enthusiasm and more to what confused people or made them hesitate, and said so in the readout.

Compare against what job seekers already use

Participants kept comparing the prototype to tools they had used in their search. I turned those comparisons into a competitive analysis, so the team could see where the offer was already available for free.

What we learned

Job seeker wants to…	Feature	Reaction
Save time and apply early	Application pre-fill Free	Clearest value. Easy to say yes to.
Apply to the right jobs	Filters Free and match scores Paid	Useful, but scores must be transparent, and a competitor already gives them away free.
Be seen by recruiters	Verified profile Paid	Wanted, but trust and fairness concerns dominated.
Avoid fraud and stale postings	Job listings	If they pay, they expect employers to be verified too.

Figure 3. Four job-seeker pains, the feature meant to solve each, and how participants reacted.

Product	What participants said	Match scores	Verification	Cost to job seekers
JobRight	Closest to our matching; strong match %, weak title search	Yes	None	Free tier; paid about $30/month
LinkedIn Easy Apply	Applications feel unseen, but the benchmark for status updates	AI job matching	Free profile verification badge	Free; Premium optional
Greenhouse	Autofill better than LinkedIn's; the trusted-brand benchmark	Job alerts	ID check, if the employer turns it on	Free
Workday	Named the worst: no autofill, parsing errors	Recommendations	None	Free
ADP	Deep pre-fill saved about 15 minutes per application	None	None	Free
Teal	Strong resume tools, weak matching	Resume-to-job scorer	None	Free tier; paid about $29/month

Figure 4. What job seekers compared the prototype to. Match scores and a verification badge were already available free elsewhere.

Conclusion

The study tested the core bet before the team invested in higher-fidelity design and verification vendors. The free tier was worth building on, but the paid tier, as designed, wasn't a strong enough reason to pay, especially when competitors offered similar features for free. The team decided not to launch the verified network as designed, and went back to develop new ideas for a more competitive offer.

How confident to be

Internal participants.: They may be more favourable toward a company concept, and all of them were successful job seekers. That's why the findings lean on hesitation and comprehension, which hold up better than enthusiasm.
A prototype, not a product.: Nobody actually paid or uploaded an ID, so willingness to pay is stated, not observed.

What I'd do next

Validate externally at higher fidelity, with job seekers who don't work here and aren't already hired.
Test less invasive verification. If "verified" mainly means "not a bot", email or other lighter checks may be enough, and may remove the trust barrier.
Study sponsored listings. Find out whether paid placements change how much job seekers trust the platform, because leadership wanted to prioritize sponsored ads over organic matches.