Nearly every aspect of our existence has been consumed by the current COVID-19 pandemic. As of April 8th, about 1.4 million people globally had contracted COVID-19, according to Worldometer.
The outbreak has severely impacted the global economy, forcing many professionals from their employment and from enterprises. The UN Conference on Trade and Development estimates that by 2020, the epidemic would have cost the world economy between $1 and $2 trillion.
Numerous corporate operations, such as talent acquisition and recruitment, have been severely disrupted across industries. This piece emphasises:
The top three industries have the most difficulty finding workers
Six major hiring obstacles that firms encountered during the coronavirus outbreak
Solutions that support companies in continuing to safely and remotely hire applicants
6 key hiring challenges during the Coronavirus crisis:
1. Mass Layoffs
Companies are running short of business, finances, and resources. With a global pandemic at hand, many companies, especially small and medium sized companies, have no choice but to let go as many as they can without disrupting their business.
Many in the hospitality, tourism and travel, and transportation industries are facing the brunt of the pandemic and are forced to lay off employees (mostly daily wagers).
Other fields facing this issue are restaurants, bars, cinema and theaters, and logistics/manufacturing companies that deal directly with countries that are currently on a lockdown. US employers are cutting 701,000 jobs in March, 2020, according to SHRM.
Small and medium sized companies which can sustain for a few months on the resources they have, are not firing their current employees, but have frozen their hiring cycles until there is any more clarity on the situation.
2. Bulk Hiring
As mentioned earlier, there are also many industries that are experiencing a rise in labour demand, such as retail, ecommerce, supermarkets, sanitation workers, business softwares, remote meeting, and online learning.
Healthcare services, for instance, have seen a 35% hike in demand for employees, according to a report by LinkedIn.
Giants like Amazon and Walmart are hiring in bulk to keep up with the sudden rise in their demand worldwide. Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos said, “We’re hiring for 100,000 new roles and raising wages for our hourly workers who are fulfilling orders and delivering to customers during this period of stress and turmoil. We hope people who’ve been laid off will come work with us until they’re able to go back to the jobs they had.”
3. Onboarding Process
Another major recruitment problem that businesses around us can find themselves struggling with is onboarding of new joinees. These people are the ones stuck in between layoffs and new jobs. They have been offered a job and have to start working soon. Recruiters weren’t prepared for the current crisis and hence have limited resources for onboarding new employees remotely.
Despite their readiness, they have been forced to resort to video onboarding solutions. Having video calls and online material to prepare new joinees for work like onboarding a regular employee, keeping certain slots during the day to ensure they’re onboarded properly, addressing their doubts, and ensuring a regular and smooth onboarding are some of the additional tasks the HR teams have been burdened with.
4. Low Application Rate
Priorities are shifting — of people and businesses alike. Many are out of jobs, and many are scared to apply for new ones. People are scared of the current situation and of how it might unfold in the future.
Hence, they’re apprehensive of making any big decisions, like a job shift, before they know anything for certain. With a huge rise in unemployment in the past month, people are taking less chances of actively looking for new roles.
On the other hand, with more focus shifting towards HR functions and current employees these days, the focus on Talent Acquisition/Recruiting activities has definitely taken a back seat.
Companies are more inclined towards ensuring their current employees have all that it takes to function smoothly from home. Don’t get me wrong; that’s extremely important. But in the process, they’ve minimized efforts to attract new talent at a time when people have also slowed down their job hunt.
5. Cost-Cutting
This has been the first, instinctive step taken by companies, wherever possible. Hiring freeze isn’t enough. Unfortunately, manual recruitment ends up exhausting most of the budget allocated for recruitment, so cutting costs here doesn’t seem unlikely or odd. But this becomes a point of trouble for the recruiter.
According to People Matters, the overall hiring process is likely to witness a 60-65 percent drop; interviews will get delayed especially in service sectors due to fewer resources. Along with that, leadership hiring is seen to be frozen for the next six months.
Also, all B-school student internships are reported to be delayed or cancelled. These are some of the challenges in hiring employees faced by businesses right now.
6. Need for a Remote Hiring Process
As COVID-19 cases keep rising still, there is no clarity on when it’ll be over and when we would be able to resume our routine ways of work. Because of that, in recruitment, there’s a heavy dependency on technology for hiring — remote video interviews, online campus drives, online classes and assessments for universities, etc.
Conducting assessments and interviews is going to be a big obstacle. What recruiters have been doing face to face all these years, they will have to do it online. HRs who were apprehensive about remote hiring are now forced to use remote hiring tools to conduct online interviews and onboarding. It not only takes time to get used to, but also might give way to anxiety.