Last updated on June 8th, 2023 at 03:40 pm
Across a wide range of sectors, organizations are increasingly being held back by an inability to access the talent they need. Skills shortages have become so problematic that significant numbers of businesses are now having to delay or abandon strategic plans because they simply don’t have access to the required skills and their talent acquisition is stalled.
As a result, business leaders are focusing heavily on initiatives to attract new talent into their organizations and stand out in an employee-driven labor market. They’re rolling out extensive programs to position themselves as choice employers, demonstrating to prospective hires the type of employee experience available within the organization. From benefits to well-being through flexible working, training and career development, employers are doing everything they can to create a compelling employer brand.
However, one element of talent acquisition that is sometimes overlooked is the technology, and in particular, the applications people now use when looking for jobs. Similarly, global research by Cisco AppDynamics reveals the average person now uses a total of six applications or digital services when looking for or applying for a new job.
Applications have become the foundation of how people now find work. From job sites and social media platforms to employer websites and employer review sites, job seekers are using a range of digital services every day when searching for employment. And when these services don’t perform as they should, it has a profoundly negative impact on how people feel about a potential employer.
Therefore, it’s essential business leaders put digital experience at the center of their recruitment strategies, ensuring their applications – whether that’s careers pages on their websites or email and messaging services for candidates – are always performing optimally. Otherwise, they risk putting off the talent that they so desperately need.
Jobseekers are walking away from employers who deliver bad digital experiences
People now expect the same level of seamless and user-friendly experience when using job-related applications as they do when streaming movies and music, ordering groceries, or connecting with friends online. They want the application to be intuitive and easy to use and do not want to settle for a subpar experience. In fact, 97 percent of jobseekers state that the applications they use to find and apply for jobs must provide a fast and intuitive experience, without any delays or disruption. And significantly, 64 percent warn that if these applications fail to perform, it puts them off working for the employer in question.
This statistic alone should make business leaders sit up and pay attention. If their organization’s applications and digital services aren’t performing as they should – whether that is slow run times, service disruption or downtime – then they essentially risk seeing nearly two-thirds of potential new hires disappearing out of view and their talent acquisition will falter.
Across the board, people are simply unwilling to tolerate second-rate digital experiences and their reactions when they encounter poorly performing applications are now incredibly strong. 73 per cent of people admit they would feel anxious and angry if the applications they were using to find and apply for a new job didn’t perform properly, and more than half claim that employers have only one shot to impress them with their digital services. The moment they have a bad digital experience, jobseekers walk away, possibly never to return. There are no second chances for employers who slip up.
Performance Can Give Employers the Upper Hand in the War for Talent Acquisition
Evidently, organizations need to do all they can to ensure they are providing potential hires with fast and faultless experiences at every stage of the recruitment process.
However, optimizing application availability and performance has become a massive challenge for many IT departments. With the shift to multi-cloud and hybrid environments, technologists don’t have the tools and insights they need to manage an increasingly fragmented and highly dynamic IT estate. Most don’t have unified visibility and a clear line of sight on applications running across on-premises and cloud native environments and this makes it very hard for them to identify and troubleshoot issues before they impact end users – in this case, potential new recruits.
To address this challenge, IT teams need an observability solution which spans across hybrid environments (bringing together on-premises and cloud native technologies) and enables them to monitor the health of key business transactions distributed across their entire technology landscape. With real-time insights from the business transaction’s telemetry data, technologists can easily pinpoint the root cause of issues and expedite resolution, so that applications are always performing at the highest level.
According to the research, more than three-quarters of job seekers state they want to work for an employer who provides brilliant, seamless digital experiences throughout the recruitment process. Organizations that are able to provide this experience in their job-related applications have a clear advantage in attracting new talent to their workforce and boosting their talent acquisition. Business leaders must therefore put applications and digital services at the heart of all their recruitment efforts.
