Job Seekers in India Demand Exceptional Performance from Employer Apps

The way people look for and apply for jobs today is unrecognizable from when I started out in my career. The days of scouring job ads in print are long gone. I’m really showing my age here! Job hunting is now an almost exclusively digital activity - even the interview process has moved online within many organizations, with people joining companies without ever stepping foot into an office or meeting their manager and colleagues face-to-face.

Global research by Cisco AppDynamics finds that 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 US and nine in India. The most heavily used services are jobs sites, social media platforms, employer websites, and employer review sites.

Significantly, whether people are already in a job or they’re looking for a new position, they are using these services daily. In fact, 75% are using jobs-related applications several times a week, reflecting on the wider behavioral trend that has emerged over recent years: the switch to digital-led recruitment, where people are far more open and faced with new job opportunities on an ongoing basis. This new workforce dynamic might be best reflected by the Great Resignation, where a significant number of people left their job after the pandemic. Our research, conducted in March and April 2023, shows that this trend might continue throughout this year, with 81% of employees in India are stating they are likely to look for a new job in the next 12 months. Employees are far more open to exploring and pursuing new opportunities, even when we’re relatively happy and motivated in our current job.

 Anger and anxiety when job-related applications don’t work

 Interestingly, as people have become entirely reliant on applications and digital services to research and apply for jobs, their expectations of how these services should perform have soared. 99% state that it is important the applications they use to find and apply for jobs provide a fast and seamless experience, without any delays or disruption.

 Looking for a job can be stressful, and it can also be very time-consuming, identifying relevant opportunities, researching companies, and then completing application forms. And then, when applications don’t work properly, it can be deeply frustrating. We found that almost three-quarters of people feel anxious and angry if the applications they use to find and apply for a new job don’t perform properly. 

 Perhaps most strikingly, 75% of people state that if they encounter disruption or downtime when using an employer’s job-related digital services - such as careers pages on a website or email and messaging tools to support the application process - it puts them off working for the organization in question. Digital experience has become a determining factor in how people select a new employer.

 What does this mean for employers?

As organizations in all industries desperately look to attract new talent and address chronic skills shortages, it’s vital they understand these new behaviors and expectations among job seekers. People now have zero tolerance for any organization who cannot deliver seamless digital experiences throughout the recruitment process - in fact, most people readily admit that they will only give potential employers one shot to impress them with their applications and digital services.

 People are now demanding the same level of digital experience when they’re looking for a new job as they get when they’re shopping online, streaming content, or booking travel. They’re not willing to accept second-rate digital experiences just because an application is related to work or a job. And therefore, employers can’t afford any disruption or downtime to their recruitment-related applications - otherwise, they risk alienating a significant proportion of their prospective talent pool.

 Business leaders need to start putting digital experience at the center of their recruitment efforts, recognizing the vital role it now plays in attracting and engaging new talent. But to do so, they need to ensure their IT departments have the tools and insights they need to consistently/constantly manage and optimize applications.

 Currently, many organizations are jeopardizing their ability to deliver seamless digital experiences because technologists are unable to cope with soaring complexity within the IT department. The shift to multi-cloud and hybrid environments has left IT teams trying to manage an increasingly fragmented and dynamic IT estate, without unified visibility into applications running across on-premises and cloud-native technologies. The result is that technologists are unable to identify and understand the root causes of issues quickly and the risk of such an issue impacting end-user experience is heightened.

 Business leaders, therefore, need to equip their IT teams with a unified observability solution which spans across both cloud native and on-premises environments and monitors the health of key business transactions distributed across their entire technology landscape. With real-time insights from the business transaction’s telemetry data, IT teams can quickly pinpoint the root cause of issues and expedite resolution, so that applications (and job-related applications specifically) are operating at peak performance at all times.

 For employers that are able to do this, the benefits are potentially game-changing when it comes to hitting their recruitment objectives. 87% of people report that they would want to work for an employer who provides brilliant, seamless digital experiences throughout the recruitment process. This represents a huge win at a time when the commercial success of so many organizations hinge on their ability to fix skills gaps and bring new talent into the workforce.

The article has been written by James Harvey, CTO Advisor EMEA, Cisco AppDynamics