Now is a tumultuous time for talent acquisition professionals: cutting costs, sudden hiring surges, changing forecasts and constantly evaluating the “essentials.” This feels like a far cry from the steady streak of low unemployment rates and consistent hiring today’s hiring teams have grown used to. So how do we switch our strategies for a recession and a potential upturn?
To determine how to best plan, many are looking to 2008 as a touchstone because it’s the closest possible correlation in recent history. After chatting with a number of practitioners and analysts who worked through the Great Recession, the differences between the scenarios became clear, while we could also acknowledge the value of lessons learned in trying times. Here are three lessons for leaders going through this for the first time:
Lesson 1: You have to do more than recruit.
If 2008 has taught talent acquisition anything, it's that the role of recruiters will expand as applicants navigate an emotionally charged job-seeking climate. When it can often feel like resumes just go into a black hole, be the one who makes applicants feel seen.
It’s also important to turn your employees into your biggest brand evangelists. So employee communication and care will go a long way in building the brand of choice that naturally attracts more talent. To do this, you need to create avenues to reach out and listen to your employees. More automated helplines and using unconventional channels such as texting will help in this regard.
Lesson 2: Don’t be a laggard. Fix what’s broken now.
Those who fixed internal processes during 2008 were better poised to compete for top talent when the script flipped from high unemployment to a tight market with high voluntary quit rates. There are steps you can take now to provide future value. Look to past pain points in your recruiting process, and fix them while you have the time. Then, anticipate your needs when you must scale from a downsized workforce. Start by thinking about how your team can:
• Promote efficiency: Seeing how quickly the job market changed in response to COVID-19, that rebound could happen at any time. The challenge now will be not replacing or growing by 30%, but by 10 times more than that. Knowing this, it’s important to audit all processes and tools all the way from sourcing to hiring to retention. There is an opportunity to simplify the technology stack and adopt the right automation tools that can scale as fast or slow as your needs. Renegotiate contracts with your vendors where cost outweighs value.
• Build your future talent pool: Potential applicants are looking for opportunities everywhere and are very active. It's your opportunity to provide an easy way for them to interact with your company, collect their preferences and continue to give them updates on how hiring forecasts are changing on your end. Even if you aren’t hiring now, this will bear fruit when the job market eventually tightens, saving you sourcing dollars.
• Invest in remote recruiting muscle: There are changes to the recruiting world that are here to stay, even after the pandemic is over. Applicants’ familiarity and comfort with remote working practices will make them prefer employers who can reciprocate that. Showing that muscle actively during the recruiting cycle is likely to win more applicants. This means video interviewing, online hiring events and a more human experience.
Lesson 3: Prepare for an entirely new dynamic.
Technology will undoubtedly play a key role in recruiting resurgence, but current tech stacks may not cut it when recruiters are on the receiving end of more requests than before. With this in mind, rethink sourcing strategy, and consider how automation can support busy recruiters. That might mean engaging candidates, capturing applicant information, completing any initial screening and assessments, and scheduling any next steps.
It's difficult to say when the upturn will start and even harder to know how long that will take. For now, the most we know is that it's coming. Until then, it's up to HR and talent acquisition to focus on the people they work with, both internally and externally. Right now, that means turning existing information into a talent pool creation system, keeping potential candidates abreast of any developments and taking care of current employees through frequent check-ins. This is also the time to make the process simple and efficient by removing bottlenecks. Think about how to make contingent offers and onboard quickly as the need for new hires arrives.
