We’ve just published our latest findings on job seeker sentiment: the 2022 Candidate Experience Report. Today’s hiring landscape has been incredibly challenging, with everything from the Great Resignation to record inflation making it difficult to keep up with churning headcounts. When professionals in the hiring space discuss the issues surrounding this difficult talent market, a key voice is often left out: one from candidates.
That’s why we set out to better understand how candidates feel about the current job market – focusing on their expectations, demands, and feelings around the hiring process. Our goal was to get a stronger sense of what drives today’s candidates in order to help you provide a top-notch candidate experience to win over talent.
To do this, we surveyed 1,967 job seekers from a wide range of backgrounds from around the world and while some of the findings were what we expected, there were plenty of insightful surprising results.
Here are 7 of the biggest takeaways from the 2022 report:
1. Flexibility is the #1 priority for job candidates.
Work-life balance took the number one spot for job seekers, beating out career advancement, culture, and even compensation. In fact, we found the 33% of candidates actually turned down opportunities that lacked flexibility or remote work.
2. More than half of candidates have abandoned a recruitment process because the salary didn’t meet expectations.
Pay transparency was another hot item for today’s job seekers. And while 54% have disengaged with a hiring process due to compensation issues, candidates have jumped ship for other reasons as well: 53% have abandoned because of poor communication from recruiters, and 32% moved on because the recruitment process took too long.
3. 67% of candidates are “very confident” that their next job will be satisfying.
Because of today’s hypercompetitive job market, candidates feel certain that they be choosier about the opportunities they want to take. They also feel they can command the pay they deserve, with 79% of candidates believing they will make enough in their next role.
4. 28% of candidates feel disadvantaged by the traditional hiring process.
The recruitment process has been in desperate need of an update for a while now. Job seekers want a level playing field and a chance to prove themselves, even if they lack traditional experience. 35% of candidates believe that their job experience is a hinderance to getting hired.
5. 94% of candidates say assessments demonstrate their potential well.
When it comes to highlighting their abilities, candidates are in favor of pre-employment assessments as a fair way to be evaluated. 74% agree that assessments help them demonstrate their potential beyond their past experience to prospective employers.
6. 51% of candidates prefer game-based assessments.
Game-based assessments are a simple way to evaluate candidates fairly, quickly, and enhance the candidate experience. Job seekers in the Technology and Retail industries were the most likely to prefer them, and Asian and Black candidates were more likely to prefer them compared to White candidates.
7. 52% of candidates feel that AI-based hiring can represent them accurately.
Job seekers were largely trusting of AI’s ability to evaluate them. Interestingly, this trust was inversely related to how educated the job seeker was: the more educated someone is, the less they trust AI.
Download your copy of the Candidate Experience Report to see all the data and gain insight into how to become an employer of choice.
