Exploring the potential for a Stepstone premium offering
Project scope
Team: Product director, 2 product managers, 2 product designers, 1 user researcher (me)
Timeline: 6 weeks
Company: Stepstone
Methods: Surveys, competitive analysis, workshops, concept testing
The process
I led the research, starting with gaining initial insights into the potential target group and the competitive landscape. With just six weeks, we accelerated the process through an in-person workshop. That left me two weeks beforehand to plan, run initial research, and design and facilitate the workshop. Afterward, we tested concepts with users and explored their mental models around purchasing.
1
Initial discovery & planning
Goal: Identify the core paying target group and get an understanding of the competitive landscape.
Methods:
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Desk research
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Competitor analysis
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Survey
This helped us...
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Understand whether there’s a real market for paid job-seeking services
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Identify who is most likely to pay
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Learn which types of services users are willing to pay for (and which they aren’t)
2
Workshop
Goal(s): Get an aligned understanding of the whole monetization landscape and identify monetizable premium features.
Methods:
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User journey + pain point mapping
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Empathy and value mapping
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Ideation sessions (crazy 4s)
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Storyboarding
This helped us...
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Accelerate decision-making in a short timeframe
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Align the team around a shared understanding of the opportunity
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Explore a wide range of ideas and narrow in on the most promising concepts
3
Evaluative research
Goal(s): Evaluate the concepts and understand job seekers' mental processes when purchasing.
Methods:
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Combined concept testing and interviews
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Priorization survey
This helped us...
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Understand Stepstone’s differentiators in the market
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Refine how we position value in the premium offering
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Prioritize the features
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Uncover key barriers and motivators in users’ willingness to pay
1. Initial discovery & planning
Given the tight timeline, I prioritized fast, "low-hanging fruit" research in the first phase, which would give us enough of a strong foundation to work with.
Because of that, I decided on desk research and competitor research, and divided it among the team. I explored Stepstone’s research repository and broader monetization trends, while PMs analyzed competitors.
Since we had no clear audience for a premium offering, I designed and launched a survey targeting job seekers, focusing on those who had previously paid for career services to ask about their past behavior and experiences with those services.
This phase gave us enough direction to move into deeper research and concept development.
We now knew....
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... there is a market for job-seeking services, because a significant share of respondents have invested in premium services, showing a clear willingness to pay.
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.... what the top services are, that job seekers have paid for, and what services are not that enticing, which helped us start prioritizing the concept space.
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... that higher seniority professionals (the target audience) were more likely to pay for, though at this point, we were still missing insights on their motivation and potential barriers to purchase.
2. Workshop
Our team came together for a two-day, in-person workshop. The first day was to understand the landscape. We reviewed relevant research & data to ground our decisions, built a shared perspective on the competitive space, and fostered empathy for the target audience, despite limited qualitative insights at this stage.
The second day focused on developing the concepts. We ideated on premium offerings, explored feature ideas grounded in user needs and business potential, and selected two concepts to test.
The workshop set the foundation for clear, data-driven concept testing, ensuring that our ideas were not just innovative, but rooted in real user needs.
We used structured exercises to map opportunities, generate ideas, and refine concepts for testing, for example:
1. Jobs-To-Be-Done Competitor Mapping
📍 Objective: Identify market gaps by mapping competitors against job seekers’ Jobs-To-Be-Done (JTBD).
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This was done online to allow remote stakeholders to participate.
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The JTBD of jobseekers was an already existing research piece, which we used as a foundation to understand candidate needs across the entire job search journey.
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We evaluated market saturation per JTBD and identified gaps where Stepstone could offer unique value.
2. Crazy 4s: Rapid Ideation & Concept Selection
📍 Objective: Generate, refine, and vote on high-potential premium feature concepts.
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We ran multiple rounds of Crazy 4s to push for divergent thinking.
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Participants pitched their strongest ideas, followed by dot voting on the most promising concepts.
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The top 4 ideas were further iterated on and sketched.
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The Product Director made the final call on the two core concepts for testing.
By the end of the workshop, we had two concepts that directly tackled high-impact user pain points, setting the stage for our next phase of concept testing.
Concept 1: The insights dashboard
A tool to track applications, recruiter engagement, and feedback in one place.
Concept 2: The digital agent
An AI-powered assistant to help personalize applications, recommend tailored jobs, and simplify the application process.
3. Evaluation
After refining the two concepts, I conducted moderated concept testing with N = 10 participants.
We targeted high-income professionals in senior roles (our most likely premium users), a mix of users who had previously paid for career services to understand their decision-making process, and users who considered paying but didn't to uncover key blockers.
The order of concepts was varied in the testing to avoid sequence bias.
To complement qualitative insights and get representative data, I also conducted a feature prioritization survey to understand which aspects of the Insights Dashboard and Digital Agent were most valued in a premium offering.
We learned that...
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... a lot of factors are influencing the decision to purchase that we can address in the value proposition, such as convenience, personalisation, lack of success in the job search, etc.
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... the core paying audience is more selective. They're not just looking for any job, but the right one. This means our job recommendations need to feel highly relevant and well-matched.
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... Stepstone is perceived as a trusted and expert brand with in-depth knowledge on HR, that we can hone in on and leverage as a differentiator in our positioning.
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... the features that resonate most are the ones addressing the most painful points in their job search journey, such as profile-to-job-match and CV/cover letter tools.
The outcome
The research directly informed several roadmap decisions. Based on what we learned, the teams launched:
A new, unified, and AI-powered version of Stepstone’s CV and cover letter generator.
A new CV-to-job-match indicator to help job seekers quickly assess how well their CV aligns with a role.
Reflections and learnings
Ethical decision-making matters
In our workshop discussions, we prioritized ethics alongside business goals. We excluded features like exclusive listings or profile boosting because they could create unfair advantages. We chose trust over short-term gain.
Pushing for more time when needed
Looking back, I wish I had pushed for an extra week to refine the final priorization survey. I would've loved to conduct a structured Kano analysis that would strengthen our prioritization even further. Lesson learned: Good research means protecting the space to do it well.
Great work comes from great teams
Beyond the interesting problem space, this project was a joy because of the team. From Day 1, we were aligned, PMs, designers, and I all supported each other. Whether it was slides, copy, or translations, we had each other’s backs. That kind of collaboration is what makes a project like this impactful and enjoyable.