In this anomalous midst of corona 19 pandemic, the entire world is inevitably encountering ambiguity in all the possible areas. The economy is shattering, and the conditions of industries, business, and companies are getting increasingly pessimistic day by day and recruiting is no different as the corona virus takes its toll on the economy which has altered this sector overnight. This drastic change has steered the distressed companies to radically transform their working techniques from manual to digitalization.
As we all know that this pandemic has reluctantly forced everyone to stay at home which affected the entire industries of the world either its manufacturing or travel or tourism & also made many significant startups into pushups to putatively sustain their entrepreneurial ventures & robust expansions to continuity plans that have equally been making massive layoffs and rampant unemployment till date.
According to the recent survey by United Nations, millions are sitting unemployed today and there is 10.7 percent employment drop (equivalent to 305 million jobs) from April to June 2020 due to COVID19 impact. Companies and industries are cost cutting and moving furtively to the digital medium to work remotely & maintaining workloads with the remaining employees in the lockdown. The tools like Zoom, Google Hangouts, and Skype etc are used for the effective communication to stay in touch and work officially from home. Many companies are learning and adapting the technique to keep their productivity from the social distancing.
Covid19 impact on the recruitment trends-
Some businesses are sticking doggedly to their hiring plans and even stepping up with successful recruitment plans in the corona outbreak. Sectors such as Health care providers & pharmacies are looking forward to proportionately increasing their staff members for the anticipated worst-case scenarios. E- Commerce businesses like Amazon are progressively increasing their productive workforce as they were already on an online medium and the consumers take their services on an e-platform in terms of shopping their products, so they just moved their employees to work from home and rest is all same. On the other side, the impact of unemployment due to the pandemic in IT sector is surprisingly low and infact many companies continue to hire vigorously in the midst of the lockdown too. The Massive IT Company like Google is still hiring and has subtly shifted their employees to WFH till June 30, 2021, the American IT company IBM is at present in a hiring mode & has anticipated to focus on Work from Home to their 75% of workforce. Essential retailers like groceries, delivery sectors are also increasing their headcounts, despite the disruptive outbreak.
The Next New Normal is Virtual Recruitment-
None is untouched with the fact of social distancing and that goes with the recruitment space too. The whole process is transformed from face to face interview meetings to job interviews on Google hangouts, Zoom, Skype via video conferencing to phone calls. The Companies are utilizing online tools to assess candidate expertise by testing the candidates on their technical skills, leadership skills, personality insights, gestures and other soft skills.
According to the 2020 Talent Technology Outlook surveyed ( Analyzed by research-backed innovative talent solution provider SCIKEY on 100-plus C-suite and human capital leaders ) across four continents, including in India through surveys, social media inputs, interviews and panel discussions before COVID that about 78% of companies admitted, hiring and retaining has become difficult compared to the previous year because of increasing drop-outs and attrition which has peaked beyond 22 percent which indicated that hiring has not just only become expensive and difficult but also finding right candidates are not easy which is somewhere impacting the business. So by doing this video conferencing and conducting online tests gives opportunity to the hiring managers and companies to understand and evaluate the candidate more closely sitting at their ease & this also gives recognition in the view of the candidate that the organizations are keeping all safety majors and understanding the employees first. These virtual recruitments are helping recruitment professionals a lot as there is no location constraint, time constraint & they get a chance to hire the potential candidate by this highly interactive sitting anywhere in the world. These online conferencing tools has kept the hiring pipeline moving in these difficult pandemic times.
According to the KPMG survey report, the companies which were unprepared with an adequate IT infrastructure to adapt the work from home declined or shut-off drastically due to this pandemic. The report also revealed that only 25% companies were ready with the adequate system & plan who are presently trying to cop up with super challenge.
On a pleasant note, we can also say that the pandemic came with an advantage for the recruitment sector as they got a chance to over think and go through their hiring strategy and plans to adapt this virtual recruitment which is the next new normal of the present and upcoming future.
The digitalization is the next future, and few businesses are also adopting Artificial intelligence & recruitment chatbots driven process to progressively improve their efficiency in this midst of corona virus. Companies are utilizing automation in the complete end to end recruitment value chain from demand generation, candidate sourcing, shortlisting, candidate experience, interview process, offer stage and onboarding.
To conclude this pandemic has already effected a lot. Businesses have to adapt to new hiring parameters so that the hiring pattern is not adversely impacted. Companies have to make a plan and strategy in hiring the candidates digitally who have the ability and potential to work & communicate with various level through digital channels.
