Tasks Recruiters Must Take Up When Hiring Slows Down

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a state of panic with the organization, either slowing or shutting down. And an industry severely hit by these consequences is the recruitment industry. In fact, ZipRecruiter, a recruitment giant, has fired almost 40% of its employees.

And for HR professionals who are still employed, it may be challenging to manage work and activities considering how hiring has slowed down significantly. But as a recruiter, you can make the best use of this time and eliminate ambiguity if you change your approach and expand your scope of work.

I am listing a few essential things you must do until your organization starts recruiting with full force again. Read on.

Build a Talent Pipeline for the Future

If hiring currently has slowed down, it doesn’t mean that you have to start from square one when you begin recruitment post COVID-19. You can always build a pipeline of talented candidates so that you have most of the background work done when your organization decides to start hiring. Here’s what you can do:

• Check in on old candidates and keep them updated about openings and the recruitment process. It will also help them put their best foot forward.
• Connect with new people and have conversations to be able to shortlist candidates that you may benefit from in the future.
• Build a network, preferably using a LinkedIn group, and engage them continuously.

Volunteer to Recruit for Critical Roles During COVID-19

LinkedIn’s Recruiting for Good program recently expanded with over 40 recruiters at LinkedIn dedicating their services to hire talent for hospitals, healthcare organizations, and nonprofits that are battling COVID-19. You can do the same in your organization. Initiate an activity so that your recruitment strategies and skills are put to the best use during these testing times.

Strengthen Your Employer’s Brand

When hiring is the top priority, employer branding often takes a backseat. But now, with some free time at hand, you can direct your efforts towards building a compelling employer brand that will help you hire the most talented candidates. Here’s what you can do:

• Reflect your organization’s values on all your platforms, including the website and social media.
• Showcase your company’s culture on its website as well as social media platforms through photos and videos.
• Post employee testimonials on your website.
• Build a career page and use it for major recruitment-related news and events. Make sure to populate the page in a way that the visitor gets a clear understanding of what it’s like to work in your organization.
• Use storytelling to share the stories of real people in your organization rather than faceless corporate professionals.
• Establish a system to ensure a consistent, positive, and engaging recruitment journey in the future.

Consider Internal Recruiting

Your organization may require filling some high-priority roles amidst the pandemic, but hiring new candidates may not be the best solution currently. So, use this time to identify opportunities for internal recruiting or changes in roles and responsibilities. Tapping into internal talent will also prevent laying off employees whose services may not be needed right now but will be beneficial in the future.

Create a structured program and start with mapping the skill sets of existing employees against open job positions to improve discoverability.

Adapt to HR Technology

Your focus during the uncertain times of COVID-19 may need to shift to bettering communication, encouraging collaboration, and improving productivity.  So, to handle an overwhelming amount of data and communicate efficiently, use HR tools, such as:

• HR Cloud
• Zoho People
• Breezy HR
• Worksnaps
• ADP, etc.

While selecting tools, ensure that the software allows customizability, quick implementation, ease of use, and scalability to accommodate ongoing changes.

Catch up on Administrative Tasks

Take up administrative tasks that you may just not have had the time for earlier. Update policies and practices, organize documents, streamline training, and bring in automation to automate manual tasks that may be repetitive in nature.

These are a few things you may need to start with, but gradually, try to come up with new and innovative strategies to better the HR processes, be it through technology or innovation in approach.

No matter how small a task looks, calculate its impact on recruitment post COVID-19, and you will be able to come up with another list of things yourself.