Recruiting trends shaped by the pandemic
The Pandemic has increased the challenges for recruitment and selection. Employee recruitment and selection happens when there is a shortage of human capital (Mwita, 2020). Recruitment in private organizations were largely affected than public organizations which continued to operate during COVID-19 as they were considered essential businesses. Many organizations were forced to curb their recruitment plans. Therefore, they had to retain existing staff and design layoff strategies to minimize cost (Elsafty et. al, 2020).
The concept of virtual workspaces has led to changes in organizational culture (Kingma, 2019). It has become much more difficult to hire talented employees (Ahmed et.al, 2020). In traditional business environment, recruiters meet with prospective employees for assessment. However due to the potential spread of COVID-19, HR professionals are currently focusing on online interviews. Job opportunities are published electronically and candidates are able to send their applications electronically. Conducting online assessment for employees seemed impossible for the organization until the outbreak of COVID-19. The pandemic forced the companies to adopt electronic Human Resource Management (e-HRM) to enable recruitment and selection, employee training, performance management and so on. (Bhardwaj et. al, 2020).
It has been foreseen that the companies will continue with virtual hiring post COVID as well. The companies will function with a hybrid model of onsite and remote employees (Wang et. al, 2020). Virtual and automated interviews are expected to be replace face-to-face interactions accelerating the processes whilst ensuring safety. Virtual recruitment platforms are helping organizations to streamline recruitment and selection processes, increase transparency, embrace diversity in hiring and secure right talent despite geographical barrier (Kropp, 2021).
Banking industry is considered as one of the essential services industry. The banks had to adopt a hybrid model to their recruitment where frontline employees had to come to work and others work from home and drop in at work as and when required on shift basis. Technology has become the enabler to connect individuals emotionally and socially even we are in physical isolation. This crisis has become the catalyst for change in how we approach jobs and careers.
Internal mobility has increased by 20 percent since COVID (Bhardwaj et. al, 2020). This is due to decrease in recruiting budget while increasing learning and development budget. Employees are redesigning their workforce by reskilling their employees and development contingent talent rather than hiring externally (Haas et. al, 2020). This shift to internal recruitment has increased interaction, decrease in costs and minimize recruitment timeline. Also the companies are undergoing significant changes in their organizational structure from being static to project-based or cross functional teams necessitating collaboration. This has resulted in Human Resources and Learning & Development to partner to understand the existing skill sets, identify skill gaps and implement strong internal mobility initiatives (Haas et. al, 2020).
Recruiters are expected to play a bigger role. Diversity, equity and inclusion (DE & I) is becoming critical areas of focus in recruitment due to increased connectivity and lack of geographical barriers (Usmani, 2019). Talent professionals are not only responsible for interviewing diverse candidate pool but for promoting diverse pipeline of candidates and holding hiring managers accountable for moving diverse candidates through the hiring process. (Becky et. al, 2020). This is because, companies can now record the interviews, analyze meetings to gather hard facts on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE & I).
Due to remote working, the flexibility has shifted from location to time. Remote working has surpassed the barriers of companies working to an agreed set of hours to productivity based model. Employees will be measured by their productivity. The question will be when will the employees work rather than where they will work. Technology provides employees with the opportunity to work from anywhere, anytime (Gill, 2021).
Alternative recruitment strategies have been developed during the pandemic to minimize unnecessary long term costs (Kropp, 2021). Whilst some companies are maximizing the benefits from internal recruitment, some are renting talent by paying premium for employees with the right skill until their need manifests. This does not increase the contractual obligations of the firm and is much more effective than external recruitment (Haas et. al, 2020).
References
Ahmed, T., Muhammad Shahid, K., Duangkamol, T., Siraphatthada, Y. & Phumdara, T. (2020). Impact of employees’ engagement and knowledge sharing on organizational performance: Study of HR challenges in COVID-19 pandemic. Human Systems Management. Vol. 39 (4).
Bhardwaj, A., K. & Rajput, N., S. (2020). Advancement in E-Recruitment: Itutor Group. Journal Global Values, Vol.XI. Retrieved on March 24, 2021 from https://anubooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/JGV-SPECIAL-ISSUE-COMPLETE-K-Mittal.pdf#page=12
Elsafty, A., S. & Ragheb, M. (2020). The Role of Human Resource Management Towards Employees Retention During Covid-19 Pandemic in Medical Supplies Sector – Egypt. Business and Management Studies. Vol. 6 (2).
Frankiewicz, F. & Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2020). The Post-Pandemic Rules of Talent Management. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved on March 29, 2021 from https://hbr.org/2020/10/the-post-pandemic-rules-of-talent-management
Gill, N., S. (2021). Recruitment and Selection Procedure in Human Resource Management. International Journal of Computer Science and Mobile Computing. Retrieved on March 24, 2021 from DOI: 10.47760/ijcsmc.2021.v10i02.006
Haas, M., R., C., He, S., Sternberg, K., Jordon, J., Deiorio, N., M., Chan, T., M. & Yarris, L., M. (2020). Reimagining Residency Selection: Part 1—A Practical Guide to Recruitment in the Post-COVID-19 Era. Vol. 12 (5).
Kingma, S. (2019). New ways of working (NWW): work space and cultural change in virtualizing organizations. Culture and Organization 25:5, 383-406, DOI: 10.1080/14759551.2018.1427747
Kropp, B. (2021). 9 Trends That Will Shape Work in 2021 and Beyond. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved on March 25, 2021 from https://hbr.org/2021/01/9-trends-that-will-shape-work-in-2021-and-beyond
Mwita, K., M. (2020). Effects of corona virus pandemic (covid-19) on selected human resource management practices in Tanzania. East African Journal of Social and Applied Sciences. Vol. 2 (2).
Usmani, S. (2019). Recruitment and Selection Process at Workplace: A Qualitative, Quantitative and Experimental Perspective of Physical Attractiveness and Social Desirability. Review of Integrative Business and Economics Research, Vol. 9 (2).
Wang, B., Liu, Y., Qian, L. & Parker, S., K. (2020). Achieving Effective Remote Working During the COVID‐19 Pandemic: A Work Design Perspective. Applied Psychology. Retrieved on March 26, 2021 from doi: 10.1111/apps.12290
Well said Sathaharan, adding further to your view after the issues caused by the pandemic many organizations have created a virtual workplace focusing on the wellbeing of the employees. However the pandemic situation has increased the challenges for HR not only in recruitment and selection but also in training and development process and overall the organizations are commonly facing an issue in engaging the employees effectively in order to achieve the preplanned goals (Ahmed et, al.2020).
ReplyDeleteThank you for your feedback Pernalla, indeed the pandemic has reshaped not only recruitment and selection but also training and development. As discussed above, companies have increased their internal mobility by 20% (Bhardwaj et. al, 2020), hence companies prioritized on reskilling and upskilling their employees based on the availability of jobs.
DeleteAgreed Sathaharan, Due to the pandemic situation, most companies adopted the virtual recruiting process. The best HR team will take the opportunity to add new skills and show their value to the organization (Maurer, 2021).
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment Nivethini, agreed that the best HR team would capitalize on this opportunity to add value to business through cost savings, shortening the recruitment cycle, identifying the best knowledge potential out of a wider range of candidates and giving the company an opportunity to improve its image and profile (Mindia & Hoque, 2018).
DeleteWhile I agreeing with you would like to bring the importance of role of the internet in recruitment process. The development of the Internet and social networks opens up new opportunities in the implementation of the recruitment and selection activities. The majority of company management finds that the structure of the labor force in the labor market has changed a lot, and traditional recruitment and selection techniques are not sufficient to attract and retain a new generation which has different demands and expectations from work. In order to obtain credible and useful information necessary for deciding on the choice of an adequate candidate, it is necessary to combine traditional and modern techniques, with the increasing use of the internet (Slavic et. al, 2017)
ReplyDeleteThank you for your valuable point Chamara. As you said, in mutigenerational companies, HR professionals need to balance both traditional and modern recruitment methods. Millennials are sought-after employees because of their energy and technology skills. Therefore, companies should use online and technology based platforms to attract such candidates (Galbraith & Smith, 2012).
DeleteYes Sathaharan during the panoramic period recruiting online is changeling, According to Sparrow et al., (2002), technology and capital can be acquired by most firms any time, for a price, but it is not easy to acquire a ready pool of highly qualified and motivated employees.
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DeleteThanks for the feedback. The first stage of the recruitment and selection process
Deleteincludes the attraction phase. Although online platforms have opened up the companies to a large pool of candidates, selecting highly qualified and motivated employees has been a challenge. Shortlisting highly qualified and motivated employees comes at an additional cost which is traditionally outsourced to recruitment companies who use cybervetting. Cybervetting has been defined as the use of nongovernmental, non-institutional online tools or sites (e.g., search engines and social network sites) used by employers in order to extract informal, often personal information about prospective or current employees (Nikolaou, 2021).
Agree with you,. 2020's adversities will certainly inform talent acquisition trends in 2021. More companies will adopt virtual recruiting technologies; shift talent attraction efforts to remote candidates; consider internal talent pools; and focus on diversity, equity and inclusion. The best recruiters will take the opportunity to add new skills, adapt as needed and show their value to the organization(Maurer,R.,2021).
ReplyDeleteThank you for your valuable comment Wasantha, with COVID-19 companies have not only shifted to virtual recruiting technologies but also merging other growing trends such as diversity, equity and inclusion by improving Website Diversity Cue interaction (age, gender, race) to enhance organizational attractiveness (Walker et al., 2012).
DeleteCOVID-19 has radically transformed many elements in the business environment. Moreover, this has significantly caused the recruiting process, where organizations change how candidates are reached and assessed. The hiring process certainly has to view this current trend (Chamola et al., 2020). The majority of the hiring methods are done virtually due to the pandemic situation. Still, many businesses have concentrated on traditional recruitment plans as they have restricted funds for recruitment due to the reduction in financial gains due to the COVID-19 health crisis (Maurer, 2021).
ReplyDeleteIn public organizations recruitment of new staff continue to take place using traditional recruitment methods (physical interviews) in some of the public organizations because most of the state owned organizations (eg. hospitals, central banks, electricity board)are still operating (Mwita, 2020).
DeleteAgreed with you Sathaharan. Adding to your article, today’s complex environment has led to many changes including the process of recruiting, and online recruitment (OR) has become an important source of recruitment for human resource managers. Human Resource Managers need to adapt to new challenges caused the recent pandemic crisis, and get used to working online with employees, managing digital processes, dealing with employee dismissal, as well as carry out retention and selection procedures online. HR Recruiting using Artificial Intelligence is one of the highest levels of Digital transformation (Gigauri, et al., 2020).
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment Sachith, agreed with you, in this digitalized economy the use of Artificial intelligence and machine learning especially during the pandemic for job search would reduce the time and cost for both company and the candidate. New technology on recruitment will lead to use more timing on selecting prospective aspirants and less on resume scrutiny (Geetha & Reddy, 2017).
DeleteCost of the recruitment process is one of the greater challenge currently companies are facing, to attract large number of candidates organization should incur more cost for the advertising, good advertising help to attract a greater pool of applicants(Zinyemba,2013).
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment Sadun, yes, cost of recruitment is one of the biggest challenges to companies especially during the pandemic due to severe budget cuts, hence investment in technologies such as AI helps to save costs incurred in outsourcing the function to recruitment agencies (Geetha & Reddy, 2017).
DeleteAgreed with you and adding to that, Walker et.al (2009) explained that the recruitment is the process of attracting a large pool of qualified people for employment.
ReplyDeleteThank you Eranda, agreed and this process include multiple sub-processes including setting recruitment objectives, strategy development, recruitment activities, improving job applicant variables (applicant attention, message credibility, applicant interest, accuracy of applicant's position expectations, applicant self-insight and applicant decision making process) and evaluating recruitment results (Breaugh, 2008).
DeleteI agree with you, e-recruitment is really important during a pandemic occurs.Today’s world is technology based world and we can feel its presence in each sphere of our lives. Conception of internet has changed our lives tremendously and it has also changed the perception of people towards their work (Bhupendra & Swati, 2015).in addition, Armstrong (2009) defines e- Recruitment as a process that uses the internet to advertise or post vacancies, provide information about the jobs and the organization and enable e-mail communication to take place between employers and candidates. The function of e- Recruitment is to make the processes more productive as well as less expensive. Online recruitment can attract a larger pool of potential employees and smoothens the selection process
ReplyDeleteThank you Gagana, yes, digital transformation is bringing changes to every aspect of the business. Apart from COVID-19, the drivers toward e-recruitment are to improve corporate image and profile, reduce recruitment costs, reduce administration burden, and employ better tools for the recruitment team. For effective results and synergies, HR professionals need to integrate all the HR processes. Technology helps to achieve that. Integration of recruitment to the rest of the HR processes help to not only reduce costs, speed the process, and manage the relationship with the candidates but, also to facilitate career development and internal sourcing, meet the challenges of talent management, and provide an end to end process from attraction to onboarding (Barber, 2006).
DeleteAgree Sathaharan, remote hiring for professional workers has become the norm and is a practice that is likely to continue, even after concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic have subsided. In fact, many employers are realizing the potential benefit of having access to talent around the country—or around the globe (SHRM, 2021).
ReplyDeleteThank you for your valuable feedback Vindya, while e-recruitment has helped many organizations to operate amidst the pandemic, the organizations are expected to continue with a blended model post COVID-19 (Parker, 2020). Hence, traditional methods should not be replaced by the e-recruitment, it should supplement (Breaugh, 2008).
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