Poor Hiring Processes Cause 75% of Gen Z to Abandon Promising Job Applications

Slow, unresponsive processes more likely to cause application abandonment than salary or benefits concerns, reveals new survey

Three-quarters of Gen Z candidates have dropped out of a job application they were interested in because of poor hiring processes, according to a new survey from Bullhorn, the cloud computing company that helps staffing and recruiting organizations transform their businesses.

With employers struggling to fill soaring job vacancies, and Gen Z employees forecast to comprise 27 percent of the global labor force by 2025, the findings are both timely and significant.

The most common reason cited for giving up on a potential job application was receiving a better opportunity while waiting for the other hiring process to finish (31 percent). This was followed by a general lack of communication from the recruiter (17 percent), along with the process simply taking too long (14 percent) or being too complicated (13 percent). Notably, fewer Gen Z applicants (12 percent) gave concerns over salary and benefits as a reason.

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Overall, the majority (85 percent) concur that the entire job search and placement process is outdated, resulting in two out of five abandoning an opportunity between application and interview, and one in three giving up before even submitting an application.

While 95 percent agree that working with recruitment firms will help them to land a better job, two out of five feel their school, college, or university has not adequately prepared them for their job search.

The survey also suggests that Gen Z candidates are aware of their marketability and expect to move from job to job in their early careers. Two-thirds (67 percent) plan to stay with their first employer for under three years, while just 12 percent will stick around for more than five years.

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Andre Mileti, Product Evangelist, Talent Experience at Bullhorn, commented: “Work has become commoditized for younger generations, and enjoying a consumer-grade experience throughout the entire hiring journey has become just as important as the work itself. Talent are abandoning job applications and interviews at the same rate they abandon online shopping carts in search of a better deal, or faster shipping. They apply to numerous jobs in the time it took earlier generations to find and apply to one.

“As a result, if you don’t invest in a mix of modern digital marketing, recruitment, and user experience best practices, you’ll have a hard time attracting, engaging, and retaining digitally native talent. If the job application process is not as easy as scrolling through Instagram, you will lose. Simply taking antiquated methods of hiring and placing talent and bringing them online will not suffice. New business processes and technologies focused on talent experience and automation – such as Bullhorn’s Connected Recruiting strategy – must be forged.”

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