Almost the whole world is at a Pandemic State. With the top countries being under Lock down and quarantine, business are not able to perform at their optimum levels leading to a halt or slowdown in hiring. coronavirus also known as Covid-19 continues to spread globally and throughout China, Italy , U.S.A , India and many more Countries .
More and more companies are moving their workforce remotely and may have opted for the Work from Home Option. With some companies completely halting their operations completely as a major precaution. The future of the world economy and the after-effects of this virus has created a major shift in the Economic Progress world-wide. If you’re actively searching for a new job, the coronavirus adds yet another layer of complexity to your efforts of finding a suitable job.
The first half I would address to the Jobseekers on the current scenario and ways and mean of going about their job search. Next, I would talk about the various methods and ways companies are hiring during the pandemic.
I will try to explain what a Pandemic situation means for your job search and how you can make the most of this unexpected hiring slowdown.
Most important of All – Prioritize Your Health and your family’s Health over Your Job Search. Once you “Flatten the Curve” the fatality reduces, and things should be back in order but currently it’s a dangerous situation. The rate at which Pandemic Diseases and viruses spread would put everyone at risk of getting sick and catching the virus would lead to further infections and prolong the social distancing. Everyone must do his/her part in minimizing the spread. 1 Expect the Worst… For the next couple weeks, or even months, let’s face it: your job search will not be the same. Coronavirus has impacted the economy, and this will impact hiring for most of the industries. But still There is a whole lot of things you can do at this point to change the hiring climate. I understand that this may be extremely stressful especially if you are currently unemployed.
So there are a few things that you can do during this time period. Prepare for the Best. The best-case scenario is that hiring bounces back quicker than we can all expect. And it’s for this scenario that you should prepare. This hiring slowdown could also be the blessing in disguise you need to refocus, recommit, and revamp your job search. Your goal should be to hit the job market with a bang once the lockdown is removed and hiring resumes.
- Make a Job Bucket list: Check Linkedin, Facebook jobs, Google & Various job sites such as linkedin, naukri, monster times etc. You can visit our website jobs.multirecruit.com & search for the ideal job profile that suits you. Keep this bucket list ready & apply to them immediately as you never know that the companies may be conducting Telephonic Interviews and building their pipelines. Many a times the interviews are conducted telephonically or via Video Conferencing to screen out the best from the lot.
- Create a Video Resume: There are many video recording tools available in the market. A short 30 second Resume video would definitely add a lot of weightage and increase your chances of being selected. This is also a cool way & innovative way to express yourself and differentiate you apart from rest of the crowd.
- Brush up on your soft skills: Most of the companies are conducting telephonic and Video Conferencing for the first few rounds of interviews. The lockdown can help you self-reflect and help you brush up on soft skills and prepare of a Video Interview. There are many tutorials on youtube that help you brush up your soft skills.
- Take a short online course: Upgrade your skillsets. With many platforms such as Byjus, Upgrad and Unacademy you can have a skill upgrade. Courses such as digital marketing, Advance excel, SQL Boot camps, six sigma online certifications, Robotic Process Automation classes, Programming Languages etc. the list is endless. The hot skillsets are Big Data, Machine learning & Block Chain. Linkedin too has variety of Courses that you can take on their platform.
- Brush up your CV / Resume: Rework on your CV/Resume. Many at times some professional help would add wonders to your CV. Employers always get impressed with a well written CV.
- Have a Financial Back up Plan: A 21 day Lockdown would definitely affect you financially. If you’re unemployed and your finances are dwindling away, then you are likely under a tremendous amount of financial stress. Therefore, you will want to prioritize a way to earn or save more money. Some of the skillsets that can be freelanced for example: Graphic Designing, Content Writing, Blog Writing, Tech writers, proof reading, medical transcription, language translation, Online proof reading and many more options to choose from.
- Increase Your Online Networking: Network with the right employer on LinkedIn. Networking is by far the best way to improve your chances of getting a job. Target your list of companies and connect with the Talent Acquisition team or the recruiters or the right recruitment agency. While most employers are moving towards work-from-home scenarios, you can be sure that your target contacts will have more time for networking. Now is a great time to engage new industry contacts and these connects would convert to a scheduled phone interview.
Hope these 7 pointers help you in your job seeking efforts. Now regrading employers, well this is a tough one. Nothing like a global crisis to interrupt your Hiring efforts. During a Pandemic these following tips could help in taking a few decisions to your hiring efforts.
- Video Conferencing / Video Interviews: Many companies have moved to video interviews as an alternative to in-person hiring. If The HR/Recruitment Teams interviewer is still planning to move forward, expect to engage in a virtual process from this point forward. Video Conference can help create a Line up.
- Use an ATS (Applicant Tracking System): your candidate pipeline could go haywire if you are using old methods of managing your data. With the lockdown in place there would be many jobseekers chasing very few jobs. A good ATS can sort the data and streamline your pipelines making your work easier and stress free. Lot of ATS’s nowadays have automation with AI and ML. for example our ATS – jobs.multirecruit.com has automation in place and every jobseeker is update on their job status or real time basis.
- Line-up interviews till the Pandemic lock down is called off: This is a temporary phase right now and someday the demand for talent is going to come back. Ask you HR/TA/ Recruitment Teams and Vendors to build pipelines of candidates and keep the candidates warm till the requirements are back in action.
- E – Onboarding: The manual & physical onboarding process is not an efficient way to do business anymore. With various E-Onboarding solutions, companies can eliminate the paper process & provide automated technology so their HR teams can spend more time managing the workforce instead of shuffling & maintaining paperwork. Most of the jobs nowadays are online and can be done remotely.
- Invest in Employee Monitoring Tools: Employee monitoring tools may conjure up negative images, but while previously it may have been used to help improve productivity by controlling which websites were accessible from work – i.e, to stop employees spending their shift idling time on Facebook or online games – these days monitoring is more about security and helping in terms of Crisis. So, while some employee monitoring Tools are used for time tracking and efficiency management, others work more like network monitoring tools by focusing on general activity in the IT network and looking for patterns that might suggest a security threat. This often means using artificial intelligence and machine learning to detect threats.
- Empower your HR team with communication tools: Skype, Google Hangouts , Flock , Google Sheets etc are the most common tools which would help people communicate and share data remotely. Enable access to your teams at such times to help communicate and help the recruitment team hire remotely and from home.
- Empathise with the Candidates: This is the time when employers need to empathise with candidates & understand what they are going thru too. Have clear forms of communication with the candidates and explain the rounds of interviews clearly and let them know about the waiting time and turnaround time for your team to respond about the next process. Be sympathetic in nature and respond on time as these are emotional times for jobseekers who are not getting opportunities.
- Network & Use Recruitment Consultants: Networking with candidates on platforms like Linkedin & Facebook during the pandemic times would be a good way to build a pipeline. Recruitment consultants are crucial sources of candidates at this time as they are always looking out for talent and they too would have access to active and passive candidates which can fully be unlocked once the pandemic lockdown is called off.
- Increase Blogging and Social Media Updates: during lock-down, social media is watched constantly by candidates and it is good time for recruiters / Recruitment Managers/ TA heads to start blogging and sharing their experiences. This adds as an advantage to keep your candidate pipeline warm and it also helps attract new talent. Your blogs could be technical or non-technical but it needs to attract the right side of audience hence curate the content to a specific target group to improve results.
Well these are the suggestions that I have for jobseekers and employers as to how they should go about hiring during a Pandemic state. Do feel free to look at our Employers solutions and if you are a jobseeker do check out our job opportunities at jobs.multirecruit.com which makes Multirecruit the Top recruitment consultancy in India.