Dive Brief:
- According to an audit by applicant tracking system Jobvite, 85% of Fortune 500 companies leave much to be desired regarding job-seeker-friendly applications. The talent acquisition platform audited Fortune 500 companies’ websites to determine what might be “creating barriers to entry for candidates” in the application process.
- Jobvite identified that 83.3% of the Fortune 500 companies are requiring candidates to register on their career site before they are even able to apply to an open role.
- Likewise, Jobvite found that 5% of Fortune 500 career sites are not optimized for mobile and around 11% of the Fortune 500 are using chatbots on their career sites.
Dive Insight:
The Jobvite report also weighs the pros and cons of different job applications options, such as event and talent network registrations, and applying through social media profiles like Facebook and Instagram. One key takeaway includes the lack of cloud apply options among Fortune 500 openings. The talent acquisition report underscores the utility of being able to populate application fields with existing files on Dropbox or Google Drive; in turn, Jobvite’s audit found that 66.9% of Fortune 500 companies do not allow candidates to leverage cloud apply.
Another missed opportunity is text apply. In a different 2021 study, Jobvite surveyed 1,500 people about their experience on the job hunt. Of the respondents who received recruiter contact over text, there was a 98% read rate and 69% of respondents said they prefer text communication over email or phone calls. (Meanwhile, only 5% of Fortune 500 companies offer text-to-apply options for candidates, the audit found.)
Conversations about job application optimization are salient as employees and employers continue to play tug-of-war amid the Great Resignation. “Every organization I speak with is having a hard time attracting talent given the current labor market dynamics,” said Jobvite President Peter Clare in a press release.
And yet, according to Jobvite data, candidate experiences have become increasingly negative since 2020. Compared with 42% in 2020, 48% of respondents said they had experienced a lack of response from employers and recruiters. Compared to 24% previously, 25% of job seekers surveyed said they were running into complicated job applications on their hunt.
In both 2020 and 2021, about 1 in 4 respondents also bemoaned long hiring processes or too many interviews in their job search. Notably, just behind excellent communication, 45% of respondents said an easy job application process was of utmost importance.
