Candidates are looking for employers who share their values and lifestyle

Special Report: Leger Jobboom survey // Part 4 of 5

Whether driven by high-level trends or simply seeking a rare gem of a job, three out of four jobseekers who responded to a Leger survey said that they are looking for an employer who shares not only their professional aspirations, but their personal beliefs as well.

The Léger survey conducted for Jobboom found that 75 percent of respondents who are actively seeking a job say they would like to work for an employer that shares their personal values. The survey also revealed that an employer’s brand plays a crucial role in attracting potential candidates to the company, and influences what employees, potential employees and the public at large think about the organization.

Additionally, 68 percent of respondents said that they would like to have tools or resources available to them to help them find a job that truly matches with their profile, and to help them determine if an organization’s culture is something they would like to be a part of.

Candidates want to know more about employers

Above and beyond reading a simple job description, 73 percent of respondents said that they would be more likely to apply for a job if the employer had provided details about the benefits of the position in the description. This figure jumped to 81 percent among passive candidates, people who are currently employed but still keep an eye on the job market. This indicates that candidates want to be able to evaluate the benefits of a job as a whole, rather than only looking at the annual salary.

Contrary to what we might expect, what candidates consider to be a job’s benefits extends far beyond the group insurance plan or the pension to include everything that has an impact on employees’ well-being: access to a gym, child care facilities onsite, cafeteria, activities and a social club, for example.

In another interesting finding, 44 percent of respondents said they would be more likely to apply for a job that provides a description of current projects underway at the company. This was particularly true for university graduates, professionals with more than 10 years of experience in their field, and candidates in the engineering, biopharmaceutical, science, marketing, communication and digital media sectors.

A quarter (25 percent) of respondents said they would be more likely to apply for a job if the posting description contained a description of the company’s departments, a figure that increased to 40 percent for candidates in the health care field.

Among other factors that inspire survey respondents to apply to one job posting over another:

• A posting that provides a “virtual tour” of the employer’s offices (23 percent)
• A posting that includes a visual map of the office location (22 percent)
• A posting that includes photos of the business (21 percent)
• A posting that includes videos about the company (21 percent)

Recruitment websites have the edge

Nearly 86 percent of survey respondents said that, while looking for a job during the past year, they consulted a recruitment website to see what kinds of positions were available. More than 40 percent said that they consult recruitment websites more than any other source when searching for employment.

Job seekers stated that recruitment websites are far and away the best tools and sources of information available to gain a comprehensive view of all the jobs available in their field. They also noted that they appreciate the speed and efficiency of finding jobs using recruitment websites. Whether or not candidates were actively looking for a job, a vast majority of respondents said that they had signed up to receive job alerts from recruitment websites, for example Job Alerts provided by Jobboom.

Beyond recruitment websites like Jobboom, candidates use several other tools when looking for jobs, but survey results indicate that web-based resources are the most popular among job seekers. A quarter (25 percent) of respondents said that their first step in a job search is to consult the websites of companies they are interested in to search for opportunities, while another quarter (25 percent) say they primarily use search engines. One in five (20 percent) consult with headhunters before embarking on a job search on their own.

 

*The Léger survey was conducted Dec. 12-20, 2016 and generated responses from 500 people aged 18 to 54, all of whom had consulted one or more job postings online in the previous 12 months.