Making UHG's careers website easier to navigate

The nav was organized for the org chart, not the visitor.

A navigation audit and moderated testing with 25 participants found a structure that worked against the people using it. Early Careers, Military & Veteran Programs, and Hiring Guidance felt randomly placed. Two buttons, Find your next career and My application history, led to the same destination. My Dashboard didn't say what was behind it. And the relationship between UnitedHealth Group, UnitedHealthcare, and Optum, three names visitors saw constantly, was never explained.

Research and testing, not a guess at better labels.

We ran task-based sessions with 25+ stakeholders. Prompts like "Where would you go to learn about internship programs?" and "Find programs available to military veterans." Watching where people actually looked, and listening to the follow-up conversation about why, surfaced the mental model the existing IA had been ignoring.

UX writing and information architecture, together.

• Group related content in clearly labeled sections instead of scattering it across pages that only made sense to someone who already knew where to look. Early Careers, Military, and Customer Service & Claims now live under a single Career areas grouping.
• Eliminate duplicate buttons that sent people to the same place under different names, which had been quietly eroding trust in the nav itself.
• Clarify brand connections and terminology. My Dashboard became Candidate dashboard, and What We Offer became the more literal Employee benefits.

Clearer words moved the numbers.