Mapping the existing flow

Before proposing any changes, I diagrammed the current step-by-step flow to see the whole picture at once. That made the core issue clear: the flow's structure was fine — five linear steps toward submission — but the content inside those steps, and the lack of any way to move between them non-linearly, was where the friction lived.

Redesigning against each issue

Each fix was scoped to solve one specific problem rather than a general "make it better" pass:

• Clickable sidebar navigation. Once a step is marked complete, the sidebar item itself becomes a link — not just a status indicator. A candidate can jump straight to any completed step instead of walking backward through the flow one screen at a time.

• Splitting Education out of Personal Information. Education became its own step, with its own icon in the sidebar. Personal Information is now just contact details and license info — a screen that's actually about one thing. The "Add college" progressive-disclosure pattern (only show college fields once someone says they attended one) carried over unchanged, since it was already working well.

• Redesigning Experience as a card list. Instead of an ever-growing form, completed employer entries now collapse into compact cards — employer name, position, dates, and a Current/Past status badge, with Edit and Delete actions. Adding a new employer reveals a focused entry form inline rather than permanently expanding the page. This keeps a candidate's full employment history scannable at a glance, no matter how many jobs they've held.