With the most revolutionary change brought by covid, virtual interviews and recruitment software were used for almost 99% of the interviews. Due to the pandemic where nobody could step out of their homes, everything became virtual from schools to offices; the recruitment process also started to take place online with the help of the online cloud-based video communications app like zoom and google meet. This change was considered a positive change as it was time-saving and cost-saving, making it the go-to option for most future recruitment processes. Studies show that 94% of the recruiters said that online recruitment software positively impacted their recruitment process.
The locations of both the recruiters and the candidate were no longer constrained for the recruitment process. It removed the very barrier of location in hiring talents for the companies by selecting the perfect match for any job role due to the larger talent pool.
The company’s reputation matters more than anything, as the candidates now understand which companies to be a part of and how the company would react in emergency times. How a company retains its workforce during crises would determine the retention rate and ability to attract new talents.
The demands for certain companies and industries would be shifting; specific industries that used to attract the top talents but had high risk are now vulnerable. Due to the pandemic, people prefer more secure jobs for a stable income source.
Also, Companies would now have to focus more on cultivating a proper Culture and Values in the organisation as now mere physical replacements like availability of meals and snacks in the workplace will not work here.
At last, How the company manages to sell itself to the candidates in the interview process. This point has always been important, but given the pandemic with companies trying to recover and grow again, the professionals have many options to choose from and decide what job environment and culture would be a perfect fit for them; this particular point becomes paramount importance.
How Did the needs of the companies change in the pandemic situation?
Which also brings us to the question, how did the market change?
Companies had to cut their workforce to save their revenue from surviving the pandemic, resulting in significant layoffs with many industries related. The major four industries which saw hikes in recruitment due to pandemics were Shipping and delivery companies, Grocery stores, online education companies, and remote communication service providers. So, for these industries, there were exceptional hiring done in the number of hundreds to thousands for some companies, for example, Walmart. However, the industries that saw a significant hit were Travel and Tourism, Hotels, and entertainment. These resulted in many companies freezing their recruitment process.
So now, answering the previous question, the need of the companies varied in accordance to the industry they belonged to. However, in major industries, we saw a decline in the recruitment process, and in a few, we saw bulk-hiring of people.
Are these changes permanent or temporary?
So, will the recruitment process return to the same state as before the pandemic hit?
The pandemic has brought in some good changes as well. Considering the work ease that it bought to a lot of the recruiters, as mentioned with the larger talent pool, flexibility in working hours, the convenience of an online interview, and the amount spent for those recruitment facilities show that the recruiter would instead go on with similar trends of recruitments only.
For instance, considering the recruitment software used by the companies nowadays, there is no question for them to return to the traditional recruitment methods after seeing the underlying benefits. For example, quicker results, better parameters are given to judge a candidate, cheaper alternatives, and the flexibility of location would never want to go back to the traditional hiring process for the company. Research shows that 70% of the small and the medium enterprise would continue with the HR technologies.
Conclusion
So, to conclude the topic, covid 19 has brought many changes to the recruitment process and the job market. The major takeaways here would be:
1- There would be a further rise in remote working in jobs.
2- Virtual hiring process is here to stay.
3- The recruitment process will now not have any limitation of location, and hence, we can say now the job market is truly globalized.
4- The definition of a ‘deserving candidate’ has changed for the recruiters.
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