Xjyuk

If I use isearch to search for the word "accommodating" in my document, I have to type acc before the cursor jumps to the word. When I press enter the cursor is on the the second "c" as in acCommodating. This strikes me as rather unintuitive because I have to go back two characters to begin editing the word. In Vim, search puts the cursor at the start of the word. Can I replicate this behaviour in Emacs?

As Drew pointed in his answer you can also end the search with another key such as M-b or M-f, which for words boundaries works good, but my solution is kind of more general: define a key to put the cursor at the beginning (or end) of the pattern I'm searching:

(use-package isearch
 :bind (:map isearch-mode-map
 ("C-<return>" . isearch-done-opposite))
 :init (defun isearch-done-opposite (&optional nopush edit)
 "End current search in the opposite side of the match."
 (interactive)
 (funcall #'isearch-done nopush edit)
 (when isearch-other-end (goto-char isearch-other-end))))

Basically, map C-Ret to another function isearch-done-opposite which checks the variable isearch-other-end which is defined in isearch.el as:

(defvar isearch-other-end nil) ; Start (end) of match if forward (backward).

This will work with forward and backward searches.

There's really nothing to replicate, I think. You somehow have to tell Isearch that you're done typing text for the search string - you have to hit some key to tell it that. So at a minimum you have C-s acc <SOME KEY>.

You can end Isearch with any key that is not already bound to something in isearch-mode-map. (And even then, you can rebind any keys that are already bound.) And the key that ends Isearch can do whatever you like, including move back to a word beginning.

So you can end it with M-b (that key isn't bound for Isearch, by default), which goes back to the beginning of the current word:

C-s acc M-b

That's not so hard. Whether you find it "intuitive" probably has to do with what you're already used to. There are a zillion use cases for Isearch, only one of which is wanting to move to the beginning of a matching word.

C-h k M-b tells you:

M-b runs the command backward-word (found in global-map), which is an
interactive compiled Lisp function in simple.el.

It is bound to M-b, ESC left.

(backward-word &optional ARG)

Move backward until encountering the beginning of a word.

With argument ARG, do this that many times.
If ARG is omitted or nil, move point backward one word.

The word boundaries are normally determined by the buffer’s
syntax table and character script (according to
char-script-table), but find-word-boundary-function-table,
such as set up by subword-mode, can change that. If a Lisp
program needs to move by words determined strictly by the syntax
table, it should use backward-word-strictly instead. See Info
node (elisp) Word Motion for details.