Hiring in the time of Covid
There is no doubt that the world is facing an incredible, and in some ways, unprecedented challenge; and while we are all looking forward to getting back to “normal” we have no idea when that will be and what the new “normal” will look like.
And while it’s only natural to feel the need to hunker down and maintain status quo, it is not sustainable and will not benefit your business in the long run.
It must be acknowledged that some industry sectors have been decimated and recovery will be very painful and very slow – we haven’t seen unemployment rates this high in North America since the depression – but there is hope in other sectors and many companies are still hiring!
More companies than ever already have a significant remote workforce in place – a trend that has been growing year over year, while others have recently been forced to implement work from home policies and have the technology in place, or available, to keep in touch with their team, so why not utilize those same technologies for hiring?
Particularly for remote workers there is no reason to not take it one step further and hire without in-person meetings. You can conduct one-on-one phone or video interviews or round-tables, conduct references, background or security checks, all without meeting in person.
It may be a leap of faith but hardly unprecedented.
Realistically, in this current climate, it is not likely that you will be able to physically introduce new employees to your current team. However, you should not risk losing your ideal candidate and what some of our clients are doing to avoid this is working through the interview process by phone or video, securing the hire and leaving an open start date.
Also, when things do return to “normal”, many of the candidates you wanted to speak with may have already moved on to other roles and there will be a lot of companies looking to hire all at the same time.
So before you decide to put all hiring on hold, do consider which roles you realistically can move forward with and avoid the hiring “scramble” that’s sure to come!
Just take a look at our jobs page and see all the companies that are still hiring. This might be the right time to move to a new career.