Recruitment tools in Post-COVID World
COVID-19 is an unprecedented life event in the history of the world. It has impacted every single industry (yes - a few are growing faster than ever), with widespread loss of life and livelihood.
In the post-COVID world, automation is going to become increasingly relevant to the recruitment sector. At present, there is a global hiring freeze, with increased unemployment rates all across the world and an uncertain future awaiting all developed and developing economies. Nonetheless, it is vital to be prepared for the post-COVID order, when things start to return to the ‘new normal’, albeit at a calculated and gradual pace. It is important to accept that once back to normal, neither the world is going to
be the same, nor recruitment activities/workflows.
Recruitment tools have to adopt the new “truths”.
Most Recruitment teams might continue to work from home for a longer time and hence collaborative features might need a redesign. Across the industries, digitization and collaborative tools like Slack, MS Teams, Zoom are being adopted rapidly. And, this adoption seems to be “permanent” and will continue even after the pandemic is over. Recruiters are also moving to these modern tools and workflows. While many functions like IT, Product, Marketing have already moved towards collaborative tools; most of the Recruiters were still working in excels, email threads, and phone calls. This behavior is going to change, as recruiters are now being exposed to new tools and ways of collaboration. The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that over 300 million jobs will be lost worldwide sue to COVID-19; further, the lockdowns imposed have impacted 2.7 billion workers in some way or the other. Keeping these realities in mind, recruiters need to become prepared for an influx of applications and manage their hiring tools accordingly.
Existing Recruitment tools also have to adopt these changes as their users are evolving. While most of the HR tools already have enough features (that’s true for most B2B tools) — what they lack is “modern” integrations and experiences. For example, tools need to provide new integrations like Slack integration for job requisition, candidate activities, and collaboration; Zoom integration for interview scheduling.
If you are an HR leader, pick a tool that makes you productive — not outdated.
You need to understand the changes in the global and sectoral job markets: the key to being a prime HR recruiter post-COVID is in knowing where your particular sector or industry lies in the new order and then managing your strategy accordingly. For instance, sectors like hospitality and travel have been adversely impacted, while sectors like Cloud, hyper-local delivery (we can debate on this) have grown. This shows that from amongst the high number of new applicants who will be applying for your industry, there will be a higher number of erstwhile hospitality employees. Hence, paying attention to understanding their transferrable skills in order to consider them in this new sector is vital. Similarly, sectors of frontline work have become more dangerous; there will be lesser applications here, but more investment in better insurance, leave, and other employee benefits.
The key to post-COVID hiring is understanding both your short- and long-term requirements; the time to do that is now before the onslaught of the post-COVID hiring frenzy begins.
You must reimagine and restructure your recruitment plans, letting go of pre-pandemic ideas, and incorporate technology and automation in your hiring process to fill gaps.
