The old Brown Job and Internship Board (JIB), much like Brown 25 Live (see Post #1), appeared to have been designed 20 years ago. The website was updated approximately two weeks ago. While its design is much more modern and aesthetically pleasing, some critical features were not added to the new site, making it more difficult to use. Arguably, the most important piece of information in a particular job posting is the application’s due date. For some reason, the new version of the site does not always include this valuable tidbit of information. When you try to sort the postings by deadline, it shows you multiple pages of postings with deadlines that have long passed. Why are the old posts still displayed? In preview mode, on the far right you can see the date that the application was posted to the site. Does anyone find this information useful? Wouldn’t everyone rather see the deadline in this spot? When you click on one of these postings, only after searching around a bit, scrolling down, and looking at the right side of the screen do you see that “This schedule has closed.” There is no other way to tell that the deadline for the application has already passed.
Oh - but wait! Only after scrolling through four pages of postings sorted by deadline do you come across a helpful bit of information. “Apply by tomorrow.” This is great. However, the site allows you to submit an application up until 11:59 pm on the due date, so you cannot actually tell which applications are still open and have the earliest deadline. While the old site was definitely outdated, at least it was easier to use and displayed key information clearly, rather than making you hunt around for it. Unfortunately, the learnability and efficiency of the site have decreased since it was updated.