Recent research from Cisco AppDynamics reveals the importance that job seekers and employees are attaching to digital experiences as the search for talent is intensifying in many industries.
97% of people state it is important that the applications they use to find and apply for jobs provide a fast and seamless experience, without any delays or disruption. And 64% claim that if these applications fail to perform, it puts them off working for the employer in question.
Job seekers are relying on applications to find their next role
The average person now uses a total of six applications or digital services when looking for or applying for a new job – and this increases to eight in the U.S and nine in India.
The most heavily used digital services are job sites, social media platforms, employer websites and employer review sites. And most people looking for a job use at least one of these services daily.
Expectations for digital experiences have soared over the past few years as people across the world have increasingly relied on the convenience and flexibility that applications and digital services provide in almost every aspect of their lives. At the same time, reactions when people encounter issues with these applications have strengthened.
73% of people admit that if the applications they were using to find and apply for a new job didn’t perform properly, it would leave them feeling anxious and angry. Job seekers have zero tolerance for poorly performing applications and digital services – in fact, as many as 51% state that potential employers have only one shot to impress them with their digital services.
In an intensely competitive labor market, there are no second chances for employers – the first sign of a problem when using an application or digital services and many job seekers will immediately walk away.
Digital experience is now the foundation for a strong employer brand
The research, conducted among more than 12,000 consumers in 12 countries, highlights how digital experience has become a key consideration for people when they’re investigating new job opportunities. 78% of people report they want to work for an employer that provides seamless digital experiences throughout the recruitment process.
Significantly, the research reveals huge upsides for employers that can deliver high performing applications and digital services to both existing and potential employees. 51% of people claim they’re more likely to choose an employer who provides great and seamless digital experiences, 33% report they’re more likely to talk positively about the employer and 31% state they’re more likely to stay with that employer.
Evidently, employers need to ensure that they are providing prospective employees with a fast and seamless experience when they are engaging with their brand through all digital channels – whether that is a recruitment section on their websites or through email and messaging tools that follow the process. This is now a fundamental aspect of building an attractive employer brand.
Employers need unified observability solutions to drive digital experience and get ahead in the search for talent
Currently, however, many organizations are struggling to optimize application availability and performance, largely due to soaring complexity in the IT department. The shift to multi-cloud and hybrid environments has left technologists trying to manage an increasingly dynamic and fragmented IT estate, without unified visibility into applications running across on-premises and cloud native environments.
The consequences of this are severe, with constant firefighting in the IT department as technologists find themselves on the back foot trying to understand and resolve issues before they impact end users. Ultimately, this lack of visibility and insight is leading to an increased risk of disruption and downtime, and potential damage to customer experience, reputation and revenue.
IT teams therefore need an observability solution which provides flexibility to span across both cloud native and on-premises environments – with telemetry data from cloud native environments and agent-based entities within legacy applications being ingested into the same platform.
In addition, IT teams need 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 swiftly pinpoint the root cause of issues and expedite resolution, so that applications are always operating at peak performance.
With talent issues continuing to present a huge strategic challenge for business leaders in all sectors, employers must not overlook the critical importance of getting digital experience right across the employee lifecycle. By ensuring their IT teams have the tools and insights to keep applications and digital services performing at optimal level at all times, employers can provide prospective employees with the brilliant digital experiences they now value so highly.
James Harvey is CTO Advisor EMEA, Cisco Observability. He is responsible for setting the AppDynamics regional product strategy. His overarching role is to advise and help organizations better understand their business needs and realize the value and benefits of full-stack observability with business context. He joined AppDynamics in 2018.
James has more than 20 years of experience in the tech field, having held senior IT leadership positions at various companies in different sectors like banking (Royal Bank of Scotland and ABN AMRO Bank), retail (New Look) and oil (BP).