Recruitment Process During COVID 19

The onset of COVID-19 brought many challenges for the world to counter. It is evident that COVID-19 is here to stay and will not be leaving our lives as swiftly as it entered. While some companies are being ravaged by the coronavirus, others are hiring to keep up with demand. As people are now learning how to live this new normal, the businesses are back to being run in their old full form. However, certain aspects have profoundly changed the way of working. These little tweaks in the system of work have made businesses more efficient in more than one way.

Recruitment and hiring are now more important than ever. This is because the first wave of COVID-19 hit hard and led to businesses conducting mass layoffs. COVID-19 wiped off more than 10.8 million jobs in 2020 when the disease reached its peak, while in the year 2021, during the 2nd wave of COVID-19, Indians lost more than 7.35 million jobs. This was the best way to cut costs other than decreasing the salary of employees and save their companies and not incur losses. Now, when the situation seems a little better and when people around the globe have understood how to manage this pandemic, there is a huge demand for a qualified, diligent workforce. Companies don't want to lose money and assignments due to a lack of staff. To fulfil this demand, essential industries like grocery chains, the healthcare sector, IT businesses, corporates among others that remain open during the pandemic, are hiring at a large scale. In addition to preserving worker levels, several companies are rapidly growing headcount to provide employees more downtime or more flexible schedules.

Companies all over the world are trying to adapt to new working styles. The company might be working from home or calling their staff to the office or even can have a hybrid working model. Different working situations require different precautions for the employees. When the Covid fear started wearing off, more and more companies started operating from office again but being in accordance with the safety measures suggested globally like, 50% staff present, or rotation of employees, social distancing, proper sanitisation etc.

The face of recruitment has changed drastically in these COVID years. This new reality includes companies taking up different ways of recruitment. The new norm of hiring is recruitment through video interviews. Companies had to turn to a virtual interview process, which was forced upon them by necessity. Although going through an online interview can be challenging and finding top applicants could be difficult, the cost and time saving for both the candidate and the employer makes this process worthwhile. In many cases, companies may discover that virtual interviews are the best option throughout the hiring process, or that virtual aspects are used only to make the process more efficient.

The major challenge is hiring and recruiting online. If an organisation is hiring, the procedure may not look the same as it used to, with in-person interviews and walk-ins being replaced by video chatting with prospective employees. It is imperative for a company to maintain its talent pipeline and in order to do so, employees in companies need to keep up with new practices. Remote teams are considered to be keeping businesses afloat.

Acquiring talent from far-off places was a concern before COVID-19. However, this has changed for good. Having been forced to work in an online model demonstrates that distance isn’t a barrier anymore for talent recruitment. Companies are able to access a large talent pool, which was previously limited by distance or relocation expenditures.

It is now at the discretion of organisations to figure out which changed aspects of the new recruitment process they will want to keep and which practises they will consider discarding once the pandemic is declared over.

To conduct interviews online, proper record keeping and other information for a candidate is imperative. More and more businesses are taking a look at HR systems which not only makes the job easy in an office but also is a boon for a virtual working model.

Prodigious ERP is here offering the following features:

1. Talent Acquisition

All - In one comprehensive E-Recruitment from manpower budget, manpower requisition to interviews, hiring and joining with reflection on the dashboard with analytics.

2. Manpower Planning & Budgeting

Keeping Resource Costs in line with Recruitment planning across Organization Levels.

3. Candidate Portal Link

Candidates' job posting on the career page is linked directly to the Prodigious System for shortlisting.

4. Manpower Requisition

Manpower Requisition along with JD's can automate the hiring process and give transparency to the key stakeholders.

5. Sourcing & Hiring

Support multi-channel sourcing, shortlisting, interview scheduling and selection with decision support.

6. Interview Scheduling

Multiple rounds of interviews can be planned and the system notifies both the interviewer and the candidates.

7. Rating & Results

Round specific ratings and results can be captured to take the decision of selection.

8. Candidate Compensation Management

Comparisons can be drawn between the salaries offered with the salary structure of the team before finalizing. It also lets the user view salary breakup just by entering CTC.

9. Online Tracking

Online tracking of candidates with Manpower Requisitions.

10. Candidate Tracking

Tracking the full chain, that is, the interview to the results.

11. System Generated Offer Letters

Prodigious also offers template-based customized offer letter format specific to Grade / Designation / Department etc.

12. Online Confirmations

Multi-Mode intimations post final Selection of candidates.

13. Online TAT Reports

Online TAT reports to increase the efficiency of the process.

Processes that take a lot of time and documentation such as MIS reports and analysis of data, can be pulled from anywhere and at any time according to the requirements and filters provided by the user. This can be automated efficiently and easily. Also, it is the best way to counter and conduct an interview in a hassle-free manner.

Fact source:

1. Money Control

https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/economy/10-8-million-and-counting-take-a-look-at-how-many-jobs-covid-19-has-wiped-out-5704851.html

2. Mint

https://www.livemint.com/industry/human-resource/735-million-indians-lost-jobs-in-april-11620066023257.html