Improving 1% (or more) each day 

New Features

We’ve got some very specific ideas about what a true community should look like and we’re working to get there.  One of the things we learned during Cool Hand Nuke’s development was that sometimes it’s okay to hold off on a new feature until you’re really happy with the ones you already have.  So we’ve been focusing our efforts for the past 60 days on improving the job board, but please don’t think that is all that we’re about and all that we have to offer.  It isn’t.

In fact, there are a number of things that we have planned site wise, some job board related, some not; that we hope will truly make Cool Hand Nuke the online gathering place for nuclear professionals as well as a great destination for those that are interested in and support them.

Top to bottom we are rethinking what we think an online community should be and what an industry hub should offer.  We’ll be right some, we’ll be wrong some, but we’ll be better when you tell us what you think and it’s not only praise that we are seeking.  

Improving by Listening

In fact some of the best feedback we can get is sometimes the hardest to hear, but that makes it no less true.  To that end we’ve begun using the GetSatisfaction.com tools to help facilitate our gathering of feedback and to encourage a dialogue about what works and what doesn’t on Cool Hand Nuke. 

You may have noticed the Red Feedback tab on the left hand side of the page that appeared in the last couple of days.  That’s it.  If you haven’t noticed that’s understandable.  It’s not a major change to site design or use but it is one that we expect to help improve your experience.

That’s not to say that we haven’t been instituting changes based on user experience and feedback from the get-go because we have.  I’ll give you a couple of real life examples, Dorene Facteau of BechTel Corporation, and Jon, a nuclear professional seeking a new opportunity.

2 Strikes, are we out?

Dorene originally attempted to register as an employer early on and got a fatal server error.   Cool Hand Nuke – Strike 1.  Not a good way to start a relationship with anyone.

So when we discovered the attempted registration and error in our logs; I reached out to Dorene in order to help facilitate her initial use of our site.  She agreed to post some of her many jobs with us and let us know how we’re doing.  (Hint: if you’re looking for a job in nuclear check out Bechtel they’re doing some serious hiring)

Strike 2.   Dorene is East Coast & we’re Central.  I get a voice mail and email from Dorene one morning as I am on my way into the office and she’s not happy. 

She’d spent a number of hours on Sunday posting jobs on our site.  This particular morning she had logged in to check on their status and post another couple of positions that had since opened. (Did I mention that Bechtel is hiring?  Also, Dorene = dedicated.  I think she works 7 days a week on a slow week…seriously.) 

Problem is the user interface (control panel) once logged in was not descriptive enough for most people to understand easily and exactly what link meant what.  If it’s not easy and intuitive then we’re stumbling out of the gates.  The designation is use made sense to us, but we’d designed the system and have been looking at it since day one. 

She was a new user and was very frustrated because our ‘easy to use’ site was anything but easy to use.  Also, the viewing stats for her jobs were incredibly low.  So much so that significant improvement would need to be made to justify her continued use of the site, free or not.

So what did we do?

We changed the Control Panel slightly to be more intuitive and included a ‘get out jail’ link that can be found in the green sub header for all logged in community members.  It simply says “Control Panel” and will return you to what we currently have designated as the central point of your Cool Hand Nuke experience.  Note: there could be a bit of foreshadowing in the prior sentence.

We also talked to Dorene about our plans for getting her jobs more visibility.  These were things that we already had on the board, but because of our interactions with Dorene, her feedback and her concerns, we fast tracked them.  We’ll talk about what we did to address her concerns about job views, applicants and traffic along with the results of our efforts next time.  And Jon the jobseeker, I’ll tell you about what he wanted and then got on Cool Hand Nuke just by talking to us.

Until next time, Stay Cool!

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