Beyond the Pandemic: Recruitment in a Post-COVID 19 World

It’s difficult to say whether the pandemic’s effect on our day-to-day professional lives has become our new reality. From industries suffering record lows to the remote work model, these changes have been necessary to fight the outbreak, but it’s still too soon to tell whether this is what our future will look like for a long time.

Either way, from where we currently stand, companies continue to experiment with new models and strategies to better manage their workforce and recreate a semblance of the work-life we had before. Such strategies are difficult to implement and maintain if they’ve never been adopted by the company in the past. As such, we’ve examined the key points that employers should look to for recruitment throughout and beyond the pandemic.

Hiring flexible candidates for flexible roles

Flexibility in this context refers to more than just the ability to work from home or to manage different hours. Flexible roles, most commonly seen in advisory and marketing roles,  allow you to have a professional capable of handling leadership tasks and responsibilities in different aspects of your company. Moreover, hiring candidates for such flexible roles has long-lasting benefits well beyond the pandemic and its effect. There’s a diversifying factor to their contribution and presence within the organization, as well as a stable financial benefit of paying remote professionals strictly for the work done.

HR Technology

Communication and productivity in the workplace are always an HR professional's goal. More often than not, the HR department has to organize, prepare, and deal with how the team communicates, how well they're informed, as well as the daunting tasks of managing everyone's paperwork. The amount of data that goes into basic HR processes is insane as it is.

Recruitment generates an incredible amount of data of its own. As such, it makes perfect sense to adopt technology and SaaS products to ease the HR department’s role and simplify the data management aspect of their tasks.

More often than not, companies that rely on recruitment agencies for their hiring needs are unaware of the way their job and candidate data are being processed and stored. As such, at the end of the partnership, they’re left with a large amount of data provided in a format they might not be as familiar with, or too substantial to leverage effectively. Utilizing the right SaaS for recruitment, allows these companies to import and integrate existing data into the platform, easing data management and funneling information to each tab or function of the platform.

More importantly, these changes allow your HR to shift their focus and their processes towards tackling the finer details of recruitment that software cannot achieve. For example, adopting an ATS capable of automating the majority of the process, of parsing resumes, scoring candidates and recommending the top picks for the top positions, allows your HR team to work on the candidate’s immigration, visa, and work documentation matters.

Focus on your current workforce

Various industries have been having a difficult time with their recruitment over the past 3 months. The travel bans and restrictions made the matter even worse, robbing companies of the foreign and immigrating potential workforce. In some instances, this was the exact profile that companies with interests and operations on a global scale were in dire need of. Though there are a lot of ways that struggling companies can improve their recruitment, like hiring remote workers, leveraging recruitment tech and communication tools, some industries such as travel, hospitality, and social dining, are better off focusing on their current workforce rather than recruiting new talent.

We aren’t saying that recruitment should be abandoned altogether, but this situation and these circumstances are as difficult for aspiring candidates as they are for your current team. HR professionals can shift their focus to guide the workforce throughout these unusual times, manage their difficulties and professional issues, as well as provide resources and support as needed.  Putting emphasis on communication is very important to maintain a motivated and driven workforce during these times.

Prepare your Post-COVID strategy

This pertains more to the industries whose recruitment and operations have suffered during the pandemic (sectors such as hotels and hospitality, outdoor dining and travel, etc..).  These businesses are currently experiencing little to no business due to the various regulations imposed on travel and tourism. A large number of candidates in this sphere have opted to make the shift towards more promising or thriving industries.

However, once the pandemic blows over and restrictions are lifted, you can expect suffering sectors to come back with major recruitment changes and fierce competition over top talent.

Preparing for the post-COVID stage as a business in these industries begins now.

Companies that take this time to act towards creating relationships and connections with promising talent in their sphere, will have the advantage of accumulating valuable data from potential candidates. The frequency at which this is done will determine just how big that advantage is. Now is the time to prepare for recruitment in the long run as the expected wave of the competition will be on a large global scale.

Invest in an ATS

One opportunity that rises from such circumstances pertains to testing your recruitment processes under extreme conditions. The pandemic is a real-life situation in which you can revisit your current process, and just how well it works during this time. A major boost to both the recruitment and selection processes would be to invest in an ATS that can streamline your recruitment beyond the traditional, help you better manage data, communication, teamwork, and tasks, as well as provide exciting features that largely automate the various functions.

‍The perfect ATS should be one that fits your company operations and recruitment needs on a good day and be flexible enough to allow you to properly react and adapt to market shifts as they appear.

Our current global situation has been beyond difficult and has caused turbulence in so many industries that it may have reshaped the economic landscape for years to come. However, planning your next few months in terms of recruitment can prepare you for a post-pandemic world of fierce recruitment competition.

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