According to Hays UK and Ireland in its What Workers Want Report 2018, over 70 per cent of job applicants would abandon their online application for work if it took more than 15 minutes to complete.  Alternatively, 49 per cent would instantly show interest in applying if the procedure was simple.

Simon Winfield - Managing Director of Hays UK and Ireland - said:

“Today’s candidates are more digitally fluent than ever before. They have become accustomed to doing everything online; from communicating with friends and catching up on news to managing their finances and booking their holidays.  As a result they have come to expect a very slick and intuitive user experience regardless of service or function. Not unreasonably, they expect the same ease of use when applying for a new role." 

He added:

“Too many employers have been very slow to recognise the applicant’s user experience as a key tenet of their recruitment strategy, and by extension the potential it has to paint either a very positive or negative first impression of the company. In neglecting to invest in the applicant’s user experience many employers may be undermining their ability to compete for the best talent.”

The survey - in which 14,600 employers and employees took part - showed that the majority of employers are failing to make online application processes part of their talent attraction strategies, despite 41 per cent of employers being aware that they offer a bad online experience.  Fifty per cent of applicants gave poor ratings for their experience when applying online using the employer’s website, with 72 per cent of those citing a lengthy process as the chief reason.

However, despite applicants placing importance on a simple online process, the report found that they still valued personal communication - with over 69 per cent of applicants saying that it is essential that they should be in contact with a person who can provide information on the progress of their individual application.   

Deborah O'Sullivan - Operations Director at recruitment experts Ten2Two - remarked that it was a mistake for employers to ignore their online application’s user functionality. 

She said:

“It creates an overall impression of a brand and a first impression of what it might be like to work for that business. If the user experience and recruitment process is unresponsive, prolonged or difficult, it doesn’t tell a great story and could lose great talent from the outset.”

The Managing Director of an online recruitment and job site emphasised that, whilst user functionality is important, employers also need to take care not to lose the human touch altogether when using online application processes. For instance, responses need to be sent, even if these are automated and all candidates should be kept up to date, even if their application hasn’t been successful.

Previous research - a survey published by Indeed in collaboration with Censuswide - revealed that online reputations were increasingly becoming necessary for attracting top talent.  Seventy per cent of jobseekers would not apply for a position until they had carried out research into the potential employer’s online reputation - and 57 per cent reported that they would distrust and not apply to a company with no digital identity.