How to Recruit in a COVID-19 World

AdminAssist
AdminAssist June 15, 2020
7-minute read
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Staffing and recruitment agencies have been hit particularly hard by the pandemic. Their unpreparedness for a global health crisis has completely disrupted their traditional recruiting methods. COVID-19 has left 48 percent of HR professionals not adequately prepared to turn their recruitment and onboarding processes completely digital. 

Therefore, countless staffing agencies are left in a digital limbo where they are desperately trying to adapt their processes in the midst of this pandemic, which is proving harder than many people thought it would be. Luckily, there are ways that you can help to successfully recruit even while the world is being heavily impacted by COVID-19. 

Spread the Word That You’re Looking for Workers

The very first step in successfully recruiting during this pandemic involves letting the public know that you are interested in onboarding more workers. Since the U.S. unemployment rate is now at a staggering 20 percent, it has left many workers assuming that no companies are currently hiring. However, this simply isn’t true. 

There are countless companies that require more workers now than ever before due to the pressures of coronavirus. So you need to break this myth by publicly announcing that you are in the middle of recruiting and alerting workers that there are job openings. 

A good way to do this is to make sure that your website contains a list of all the positions you are currently trying to fill. Update this list regularly and make sure to promote individual openings on your various social media accounts. 

Now that a lot of people are stuck at home more often, it is allotting them plenty of time to sit and scroll through social media. Therefore, they are much more likely to notice these posts, which makes them an even more valuable recruiting tool. 

Plan It Out Ahead of Time

There are very few elements of a business that should be done by the seat of your pants. This is especially true when it comes to recruiting, which has many different moving pieces that need to be able to work effortlessly with one another. If any one of these numerous steps breaks down, then it can throw the entire hiring process into disarray. Therefore, you need to make sure that you are taking the time to develop a new detailed recruitment procedure before actually initiating the hiring process. 

The majority of the steps involved in this plan should be more or less the same as they were in a pre-coronavirus world. This includes coming up with a list of all the possible candidates, then narrowing them down based on various factors, and creating a shortlist that will be interviewed for the position. 

But there are also going to be additional steps that you might not have attempted before. Therefore, you need to know what these unfamiliar steps involve and make sure that you are doing everything in the perfect order to help ensure the success of your recruitment efforts. 

An example of one of the new steps that needs to be included in your recruitment procedure is booking video interviews in place of in-person interviews. The information mentioned during a video interview should be relatively similar to those mentioned during an in-person interview. However, some additional details will need to be included like the link to the meeting and which video conferencing app will be used to conduct the video interview. 

Be Transparent With Job Details

A lot of the jobs that are being filled during this pandemic are either temporary or will go through major changes once the pandemic has subsided. Therefore, this is something that you need to take into account when recruiting and should also be transparent about. 

A good example of this is the fact that most jobs are currently entirely remote. This is a very convenient thing for a lot of workers because it allows them to do their job without ever having to leave home. So if someone has dependents that they need to take care of during the day, then they should be fully able to do so while still completing their job. 

However, this will not be the case if the job suddenly becomes a role that needs to be done in the office. Therefore, if there is a role that is temporarily being done remotely but will then shift to an in-person role, then this is something that the worker needs to be made aware of during the hiring process. 

Another key piece of information that needs to be included, especially during the COVID-19 outbreak, is whether or not a position is permanent. There are a lot of positions that are needed due to temporary surges in demand for certain products or services. However, once the pandemic is finished, it will likely result in a lot of these positions no longer being needed. Therefore, it is crucial that you are properly communicating whether or not the position is going to be temporary, permanent, or temporary with the possibility of becoming a permanent role after the pandemic.

Make Individuals With Remote Working Skills a Priority

Remote work is not something that comes easily to everyone. In fact, it has quite a drastic learning curve, with 23 percent of remote workers putting in longer hours than the average on-site employee. This is not something that many employers are willing to deal with during an already tough time for their organization. So to make sure that you are only recruiting the best workers during this pandemic, you need to ensure that you are prioritizing anyone who has previously worked in a remote position. This should give you the confirmation that they are someone who knows exactly what it takes to be able to successfully complete a job even while having to work from home. 

By including these tips in your current hiring efforts, you should be able to continue successfully recruiting during the pandemic. And as you hire these new workers, it is going to create a lot of payroll and other back-office work. 

Rather than trying to handle these detailed processes using a remote team, it is much easier to hand it off to a team of trusted professionals. That’s why you should contact our experts at AdminAssist who are always standing by to help make your back-office operations effortless.