The global pandemic has had a significant impact on the world of recruitment. With lockdowns getting imposed more than once in several parts of the world, the way candidates are hired, onboarded and engaged has witnessed a revolutionary change. 

A major source of competitive advantage in these times is to have continuous access to top talent and leverage their skills to help your business grow. Your recruitment strategy should help you adopt a more resilient and collaborative approach to talent acquisition and retention.

It has become clear for many organisations that being agile and flexible is a must to navigate and survive this war for talent that has taken a whole new shape during the pandemic.

Here are our top tips to create a recruitment strategy in a pandemic struck world.

• Identify your new hiring needs

The pandemic has ushered in the need for new skills. Digital technologies have enabled businesses to continue in these tough times as many businesses had to go completely digital and create new roles that did not exist before. 

Depending on what the challenges and requirements your business are facing, it is crucial to identify the new roles that your organisation needs to fill. Lay down the skills that are required to succeed in those roles. This would require analysing needs in every department. A full year has passed since the pandemic started and now would be a good time to reflect on what the year meant for businesses and what kind of people can help sail the boat forward in such turbulent times.

• Scrutinise your existing recruitment process

The pandemic has changed the way we work. From working in offices to working from home, the norm of remote working is changing many things around recruitment. For example, face to face interviews become video interviews, onboarding becomes fully remote and contracts need to include flexible options for employees to be able to manage work with their personal lives. Keeping all these changes in mind, audit your current recruitment strategy and fine tune them to the new hiring needs that the new world of work has established.

Evaluate everything from how you market an open position, how easy it is for a candidate to apply, to how the screening and assessments will take place and what kind of onboarding will be organised for new hires. Update your communication tools to make the process as smooth and hassle free as possible.

• Give priority to candidate experience

The candidate experience during recruitment, from the first point of interaction to the final onboarding is extremely crucial. Unfortunately, it also happens to be the most ignored aspect of recruitment.

Your recruitment strategy should put the candidate experience on top priority. It is not uncommon for organisations to lose out on some stellar talent because of not living up to their expectations. Proving a seamless experience to the candidates is an absolute must, especially in these trying times when anxiety levels are higher than usual. Make sure you make every part of the recruitment process meaningful, and build real and human connections with the potential candidates.

Now is the time when companies must deliver a clear and strong message to candidates so that they can trust them as a future employer. The end to end recruitment process must be made thoughtful, empathetic and transparent for candidates to be able to trust them with their gut.

• Use the right recruitment software

Recruitment software is a growing market and enables HR professionals and recruiters to find and hire the best candidates in a faster and more efficient way. 86 percent of recruiters say that using a recruitment software has helped them hire faster. Leveraging the right technology can help organisations meet their hiring goals in a faster and cost effective manner. 

There are many ways in which technology can improve your recruitment process and align it to the current pandemic needs. Because recruiters cannot meet candidates face to face, technology can help organise and store video interviews in a single platform. Recruitment software also offers services like Applicant Tracking System (ATS), managing multiple job applications and automated candidate management. Zimyo’s recruitment software, for instance, has updated its employee onboarding process for new hires and made it entirely remote friendly. 

Analyse what your business requires, and choose a recruitment software accordingly. It should make the lives of recruiters easier, rather than get them even more confused and stressed.

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The right recruitment strategy can help you attract the most skilled candidates, and ensure you stay updated with the latest developments. The world has seen a massive transformation after the pandemic and now is a good time to revisit old ways, and mend them as required. The sooner organisations start this journey, the more effective their recruitment strategies will be.