Smartphone app helped unemployed participants find jobs, national trial finds

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Smartphone app helped unemployed participants find jobs, national trial finds

The app combined self-guided mental health exercises with job-seeking strategies

• Nearly 70% of those receiving the six-week app intervention found work, versus 51% of those receiving standard job-search tips
• The intervention also improved mood and reduced depressive symptoms

CHICAGO - Losing a job can be a life-shattering experience. And when depression complicates a job search, unemployment can become a vicious cycle.

Now, a Northwestern University-led clinical trial suggests a new intervention may break that cycle: a phone app, named DRIVEN, that combines weekly self-guided mental health exercises (to reduce stress and increase motivation) with job-seeking strategies.

In a six-week trial of 126 unemployed individuals, nearly 70% of participants who received the smartphone intervention found work, compared with about half of those who received standard job-search advice.

With millions of unemployed U.S. adults facing a difficult job market, the study authors say their intervention may be needed now more than ever.

"With people using AI for their application materials and employers using AI to evaluate applications, it can be really demotivating and frustrating to look for a job," said study senior author Stewart Shankman, the Norman and Helen Asher Professor of psychiatry at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

"It takes an intervention like ours that systematically advises people on how to get back in the market -how to network, how to revise your resume, but also how to keep your mood up and how to keep your motivation going - to find work nowadays," Shankman added.

The study was published last month in The Journal of Medical Internet Research.

The app

The app, developed for the trial by Inspiration at Work, offered job-search tips and three video sessions with a job coach alongside six weeks of self-guided mental health exercises. (View b-roll of the app here.)

Shankman and his team built the exercises using strategies from behavioral activation, the idea that motivation often follows small actions and early successes create a sense of momentum for larger, more daunting tasks.

"When you do a jigsaw puzzle, you don't start with the middle pieces. You start with the corners," Shankman said. "So, we asked participants to try to identify 'the corner pieces' in their job-seeking strategies. Things that they can knock out in 15 minutes to have success experiences that can increase motivation and ultimately cascade into larger successes."

In the app, participants were encouraged to use flexible thinking by considering a wide range of jobs and identifying transferable skills that could open additional opportunities.

Shankman said because the intervention was framed around finding a job rather than improving depression, it may help reduce the stigma around seeking mental health treatment. "People might be reluctant to seek help for or even talk about their depression. So, DRIVEN might be more palatable as it's focused on helping people find a job," he said.

Results

The study included 126 unemployed adults from across the U.S. who had never earned more than $100,000 annually and were experiencing elevated depressive symptoms. The participants were randomly assigned to the DRIVEN intervention or to a control group that received weekly emails with curated links containing job advice and resources.

Compared with the control group, participants in the intervention spent more time preparing for and pursuing employment opportunities. They also reported greater improvements in mood and larger reductions in depressive symptoms.

Most notably, 68.3% of participants who received the intervention found work, compared with 50.8% of those in the control group.

Shankman and colleagues are now exploring ways to make the app available beyond the study, potentially through partnerships with state employment agencies and companies that provide job-search services to laid-off workers.

The study is titled "Job Coaching and Smartphone-Based Cognitive Behavioral Techniques for Returning to Work and Coping with Unemployment (DRIVEN): Randomized Controlled Trial." It was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (grants R42 MH127971 and UL1 TR001422)

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