Career Data and Information Architecture Redesign
Project Overview
Career outcomes data is one of the first things prospective students and recruiters look for when evaluating a business school. At Simon, that data existed — but it lived in PDFs, buried several levels deep within the program sections, and split across pages that were inconsistent in quality and structure. Neither the MBA nor the MS section had a stable, shareable URL the Benet Center team could confidently use in recruiter outreach or student-facing communications.
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This project addressed that directly. The goals were to give the Benet Career Management Center its own dedicated presence in the site navigation, consolidate and clean up duplicate content that had built up across the MBA and MS sections, and move all career highlights data off static PDFs and onto live web pages where it can be found through search, updated in a single CMS edit, and actually linked to.
My Role
UX Designer — Simon Business School Collaborators: Benet Career Management Center team, web development, admissions marketing
I led the UX strategy, information architecture, and content design for this project. That included auditing the existing career section structure across both the MBA and MS programs, defining the new IA, working with the Benet Center team to migrate career highlights content from PDFs into structured web pages, and building a GA4 measurement framework before launch to establish a clean 90-day pre-launch baseline for comparison going forward.
The Problem
The career section of the Simon website had accumulated structural problems over time that weren't obvious from any single page but became clear when looking at the section as a whole.
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Both the MBA and MS programs had their own version of a Benet Center page. The content was similar between them but inconsistent in quality, and the page titles didn't accurately reflect what was actually on the page. There was no top-level home for the Benet Center — no single URL the team could share with a recruiter or prospective student that would stay stable over time.
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The pages that were most prominent in the navigation were focused on the Benet Center's philosophy and approach. The actual outcomes data — employment rates, salary figures, hiring companies — was several clicks deeper under a section called "Top Career Destinations," which was easy to miss and not descriptively named for someone scanning the nav. And that outcomes data wasn't actually on the web pages at all. It lived in Career Highlights PDFs that users had to download, that search engines couldn't index, and that required a separate update process every year.
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The pre-launch GA4 data confirmed the pattern. The old MBA careers overview page had 255 file download events and 185 PDF events recorded over the 90-day baseline window. Users who did make it to the outcomes section were actively looking for downloadable files because the data wasn't available any other way. The MS Top Career Destinations pages, despite containing the most relevant outcomes information, were among the least-visited pages in the section, with only 140 sessions over the same period compared to 535 for the MS Finance career paths page and 374 for MS Business Analytics.
The old structure buried career outcomes data three to four levels deep within separate MBA and MS program sections, with no shared entry point for the Benet Center. The new structure consolidates the Benet Center into a single top-level page under "Why Simon" and creates a consistent hierarchy across both programs. The duplicate Career Center landing pages and standalone "Our Approach" pages were retired as part of this restructure.
Key Design Solutions
Created a single top-level Benet Center page
The most significant structural change was adding a dedicated Benet Center page to the top level of the site navigation. This page consolidates the overview and approach content that had previously existed in two separate, program-specific versions. The Benet Center team now has one permanent URL they can use consistently across recruiter outreach, partner communications, and email campaigns. Prior to this, there was no equivalent.
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Restructured the information architecture around outcomes, not approach
With the top-level Benet Center page handling the overview content, the program-level career sections were reorganized to lead with outcomes. The standalone "Our Approach" pages were retired. "Top Career Destinations" was renamed to "Careers and Outcomes" and became the primary landing page within each program's career section. The flow now moves logically from the top-level Benet Center page in the nav down into program-specific outcomes, with a consistent structure across both MBA and MS.
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Moved career data from PDFs to live web pages
Each career highlights page was rebuilt as a full web page in collaboration with the Benet Center team. The new pages include everything the PDFs contained: the three main areas of career focus for the program, employment rates, salary figures, internship outcomes, a faculty highlight, a hiring companies list, student life context, and an RFI form. Annual updates now require a single CMS edit rather than coordinating changes across both a web page and a separate PDF production and print process.
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Improved SEO and content discoverability
Moving career data from PDFs to HTML has a direct impact on how this content gets discovered through search. Employment stats, salary data, and hiring company information are now fully indexed. The site also went from having no canonical home for the Benet Center to having a clear top-level URL that can consolidate inbound links from external sources. Having two near-identical Benet Center pages competing with each other was also a risk for diluted search performance that the consolidation removes.
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Consolidated the Career Directors page
Career Directors for both MBA and MS are now on a single page with anchor links to each section. Previously this information was fragmented, which made it harder for students and recruiters to quickly find the right contact.
Information Architecture
The old structure had career content distributed unevenly across both program sections, with no clear hierarchy and no top-level entry point for the Benet Center itself. The new structure establishes a clear flow: the top-level Benet Center page serves as the hub, and the program-specific Careers and Outcomes pages sit within their respective MBA and MS sections. The old "Our Approach" pages are gone, the naming is consistent across both programs, and the outcomes data that users are actually looking for is now the primary destination within each section rather than something buried a few levels deeper.
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The MS career highlights pages for Accountancy, Finance, Business Analytics, and Marketing Analytics were completed in a prior phase and are part of this same overall effort. The MSAIB page is in progress pending program data.
Validation and Measurement Framework
The project launched on March 3, 2026. Before launch, a 90-day GA4 baseline was captured across all pages being retired or restructured, covering December 1, 2025 through February 26, 2026. The post-launch comparison window runs through approximately June 2026, after which a 6-month view will be used going forward.
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Pre-launch baseline — pages being replaced or restructured:
The old MBA careers overview page recorded 255 file download events and 185 PDF-specific events during this window, which establishes a clear baseline for PDF dependency. A sustained decline in those events on the new pages would be a direct confirmation that the migration is working as intended.
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What we're watching post-launch:
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Page views and sessions across the new Benet Center hub and individual program pages compared to the baseline above. Average engagement time on the new outcomes pages versus the old approach-focused pages — the expectation is that data-rich pages will hold users longer. PDF download events, which should decline as users find the information they need on the page itself rather than downloading a file. Bounce and exit rates to surface any content gaps or navigation issues that emerge after launch. Navigation flow from the Benet Center hub down into the program-specific outcomes pages. RFI form submissions from the career highlights pages, which now appear on every page in the section. And organic search visibility over the longer window as the new pages get indexed and ranked for terms the PDFs were never capturing.
The 90-day check-in is scheduled for approximately June 2026, with a 6-month view to follow.
Key Takeaways
This project is a good example of how content infrastructure problems can sit quietly in the background and affect user experience without being immediately obvious. The career highlights data existed — it just existed in a form that search engines couldn't find, that required a download to access, and that the Benet Center team couldn't reliably point people to. The design work here was less about visual redesign and more about fixing the underlying structure so the content could do its job.
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The other consistent theme in this project was reducing duplicate effort. Before this work, updating career data meant editing a web page and separately updating a PDF file, often involving outside printing resources. That's now a single CMS edit per page. The Benet Center team also went from having two inconsistent program-specific pages to one permanent, shareable URL they control.
Future Opportunities
Student testimonials are planned for each program page as assets become available from the Benet Center team. The MSAIB Career Highlights page is in progress. The 60 and 90-day analytics check-ins will determine whether any content gaps or structural issues need to be addressed in a follow-up phase. Organic search performance will be tracked over the longer window to measure the full impact of moving from PDF-based to HTML-based career data.