ALASKA AIRLINES CAREERS PAGE REDESIGN
Unifying an employer brand during one of America’s
largest airline integrations
ROLE & TEAM
Lead Designer
Employer Brand Manager / 2 Engineers / Project Manager / VP of People
SCOPE
16k+ monthly average users
TIMELINE
6 Weeks
(Jan 2025)
OUTCOMES AT A GLANCE
The redesign created a scalable foundation for Alaska Airlines’ evolving employer brand and recruiting strategy. It reinforced that great UX goes beyond interfaces by aligning user needs, business goals, and organizational change.
Led UX strategy across 7+ cross-functional teams.
Aligned stakeholders through multiple executive review cycles, culminating in VP of People approval.
Unified the careers experience across 3 airline brands.
33,000+ employees
Across Alaska Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, Horizon Air, and McGee Air Services following the acquisition.
~2,800+ monthly hires
To support continued growth and operations, reinforcing the importance of an effective recruiting experience.
43%+ lower cost per hire
Companies with stronger employer brands.
100+ hours saved
Recruiters reducing scheduling time.
Scalable globally
75% of job seekers evaluate an employer's brand before applying.
PROBLEMS
After Alaska Airlines acquired Hawaiian Airlines, candidates had to navigate separate career websites to find jobs across the different airline brands family
PROBLEM #1 —
Two career sites,
one confused candidate
A candidate interested in working for either airline had to take separate journeys on two different websites with different branding, and tone of voice.
PROBLEM #2 —
Inaccurate company
culture & brand stories
Separate careers sites created inconsistent messaging and weakened the unified employer brand.
RESEARCH PROCESS
1
Audit the existing experience
2
Conversations with talent acquisition leaders, employer brand teams, HR technology vendor, and employees from each brand
“What should candidates understand about us before they apply?”
“What makes working here different from working at another company?”
“Which talent segments will be most important over the next few years?”
“Where do we anticipate the greatest hiring challenges?”
“Which parts of each airline’s culture must remain visible?”
“What shared story can authentically connect our airline brands?”
“How should employees help tell our employer brand story?”
“What questions should the careers site answer for candidates?”
“Where are candidates currently getting confused or dropping off?”
“How should candidates explore opportunities across multiple airline brands?”
3
Competitive benchmarking
Looked at career pages of leading multi-brand
companies and employer brand leaders, including:
We learned that the strongest careers experiences:
1
Create one clear destination for exploring and applying to jobs.
2
Lead with a shared employer value proposition while preserving each brand’s identity.
3
Organize opportunities around candidate needs, such as role, location, and team, rather than internal company structures.
4
Make distinct cultures and employee stories visible without fragmenting the overall experience.
4
Mapping the candidate journey and pain points
THE SYNTHESIS
Two disconnected career pages left candidates confused and stakeholders misaligned on the story being told. We combined stakeholder interviews, experience audits, analytics, and competitive benchmarking to understand how leading companies organize multi-brand career experiences. The research helped us identify where the existing journey created confusion, duplicated work, and opportunities for a more unified approach.
How might we:
Create one clear destination for candidates to explore jobs across all airline brands?
Unify the employer brand story while preserving what makes each airline distinct?
Help candidates understand the relationship between Alaska Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, and Horizon Air?
Make it easier for candidates to discover the right opportunities across brands, roles, and locations?
Align internal teams around one consistent candidate experience and employer brand narrative?
Design a scalable careers experience that can evolve as the organization grows?
THE PROTOTYPE
Finding the right branded elements like color, copywriting, photography, and copywriting that speaks to our brands.
LOOKING BACK
What I'd do differently
Given the tight timeline and scale of the broader airline integration, we prioritized creating a unified experience that could support all job types. With more time, I would analyze the distribution of frontline and corporate job postings to better understand the primary candidate audience. If frontline roles represented the majority of openings, I would tailor the content, navigation, and job-discovery experience more directly to their needs.
Additionally we were constrained with the CMS provider we partnered with,
if we built the website in-house, we would have more leverage.