In today’s market, where the candidate has all the power, company perks are offered as a way to draw talents in and bring them on board. Employers are using these perks to shape their brand and position themselves as innovative, forward thinking and flexible. But what are companies offering and what do candidates actually want?

What are the most common perks offered?

Common perks include casual dress code, flex time, team events and company parties, ping pong and foosball tables.

Other perks that are commonly negotiated include vacation days, gym memberships, dry cleaning costs, child care, transportation expenses, education expense reimbursements and parking spots.

What are some noteworthy perks the big players are offering?

  • Facebook: outdoor movies, bank, artist in residence, woodworking studio, free train passes and a shuttle to take employees to work, paying female employees to freeze their eggs (also offered by Apple)
  • Google: bikes to ride between buildings, electric cars for checkout, laundromat, allow pets, has a climbing wall, offers gardening
  • Yahoo: yoga, kickboxing and golf classes in the office
  • GoDaddy: go-kart track
  • Fab: weekly raffles with the possibility of winning $500 cash
  • Evernote: pays employees $1000 to use their vacation days

But how important are perks anyway, and what do candidates want?

In a recent survey done by TechnologyAdvice Research, it was found that 56.4% respondents believe perks are very or moderately important when evaluating a job. 56% also answered that they were willing to trade a salary increase for certain perks.

Unsurprisingly, the most desired perk is a flexible schedule or possibility of remote work (31.8%), followed by a gym membership or reimbursement (24.1%) and free food/catered lunch (19.4%).

So you don’t actually need all these extravagant and expensive perks to attract candidates. Considering that it doesn’t cost your company anything extra, if it’s feasible, it would be wise to offer your employees a flexible working schedule. Which makes sense, seeing as a healthy work/life balance is what is important to most employees. They want to have a job that works around their life, not the other way around.

You can use your recruiting process to show your candidates straight away how flexible you are. How? Simply switching to video interviewing as your preselection method provides your candidates with a time and location flexible way to present themselves to you, while positioning yourself as an innovative and accommodating employer. Read here to discover why you shouldn’t miss out on video interviewing.