The candidates are not alright.

Jobvite has released its annual 12th-annual Jobseeker Nation report, and they found some troubling trends that will impact how recruiters approach them and convert them into hires.

According to the report:

Forty-two percent would reject a job offer if the company lacked diversity or clear goals for improving diversity in hiring, and 58% would decline a job opportunity if the employer did not have clear COVID-19 protocols in place. 

More than half of surveyed workers (53%) have or plan to have a second source of income outside of their current job, compared to 36% surveyed in February 2020, with the main reason being a need for additional income. Alarmingly, 30% of respondents said they, or someone in their immediate family, has gone without food for 24 hours in the past month due to a lack of food or money, an increase of 11% since this time last year.

State of Job Seekers Today

• 41% report that they, or someone in their immediate family, is afraid of losing a job – a 13% increase compared to 2020
• 36% could not participate in a video interview due to a lack of adequate access to technology or Wi-Fi
• 40% say catching COVID-19 is the biggest stressor in the job seeking process, followed by mental health struggles (38%) and long work hours (34%)
• Mental health benefits usage has risen 20%, while the number of employers offering the benefit has risen by 15%

Remote Work

• 35% have declined or would decline a job offer that required them to work full time on location, in an office, or at a worksite
• 74% said remote work figures prominently in their decision to reject or accept a job offer
• Despite the rise in remote work, 86% say company culture is somewhat important or very important to them, up from 37% in 2019

COVID-19 in the Workplace

• 60% have inquired about current or prospective employer's COVID-19 safety measures
• 49% think employers should require employees to get the vaccine, while 36% disagree
• 25% have taken advantage of their employer's mental health benefits more since the onset of the pandemic
• 42% report working more hours since the onset of the pandemic

RNN Analysis

Pandemics change things. The Athenian Plague, the Black Death, and the 1918 Flu all transformed health care, economics, religion, the way we socialize, and the way we work. "Things are never the same after a pandemic as they were before," said Dr. Liam Fox, a former U.K. defense secretary and MP who's studied these outbreaks. "The current outbreak will be no exception."

According to Dr. Tsedal Neeley, Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, businesses and their workers went through a sea-change when it came to the view of remote work. Employees were equally - if not more - productive working remotely as they had been in the office, enabled by technology to maintain focus while also gaining flexibility to handle personal affairs as needed.

Employers saw the savings in terms of office space, and are beginning to react - major startups in Silicon Valley are shuttering their offices entirely and seeing huge savings in rent and other related costs. Companies from Dropbox to Twitter to Shopify are now permanently remote. Additional major employers (Amazon, Salesforce, Microsoft to name a few) are offering everything from full-remote, to hybrid, to full-office to their employees.

“I don’t think remote work will be permanent at the scale we saw in March, but I have no doubt that remote work will increase,” said Neeley, whose new book is: “Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere.” “We’re definitely going to see a much bigger population working remotely.”

Employers - and their recruiting teams - need to adapt to this shift. Not offering a remote option means you will be seeing a 35% rejection rate (on average) on your job offers. If there isn't a remote option, the approach needs to either be to pre-qualify at the application stage, or adapt the company to offer remote.

In addition, to address lack of connectivity, we may well see a return akin to the approach pioneered by GreenJobInterview (since acquired by what is now called Modern Hire), where they mailed web cams to candidates who did not have one of their own. Shipping out cheap wifi hubs, pre-loaded with some credits, which connect to local cel networks, for example. The industry will need to get creative to address multiple needs from their markets.

Diversity is critical: 42% of job seekers will turn down your offer if your organization lacks diversity or has no clear goals for improving diversity. Some of this is driven by the rise of millennials and Gen Z in the workforce. 49% have inquired about a companies diversity goals during their interviews. “This is a generational shift in the belief that these values are really important and foundational to their experiences as workers,” said Alvin B. Tillery Jr., director of the Center for Diversity and Democracy at Northwestern University. “You can say there’s no systemic racism, but millennials and Gen Z don’t believe that. If you’re under 35, you expect these conversations, and if you don’t offer them, you’ll have trouble recruiting.”

Interestingly: your culture matters more than ever. While most respondents (66%) prefer either full-remote or some form of hybrid, the vast majority - 86% - list it as important to very-important when making their decision on company. Demonstrating that culture is important.

Our global society is in the process of re-knitting itself. The only certainty to the pattern thus far is this: we will not look the same as we did. Everything changes.

Access the full report here.

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