As we enter a second national lockdown, those who can hire may be making the case for not rushing into doing so. This is sensible. However, you will need to consider what will happen with your active vacancies. Pulling roles for which you have shortlists or delaying decisions on candidates you have already interviewed will affect your brand reputation.
How can you mitigate this?
It is expected that the Tier system will be our exit out of lockdown. While tools such as the postcode checker exist to assist business to monitor Covid levels in their local and surrounding areas, speculation that the lockdown may extend beyond Wednesday 2nd of December has, again, raised uncertainty. However, the government has been clear that businesses that do not fall under the list of those asked to close, should continue to operate in a Covid secure fashion. By now, we know the challenges that we will face in hiring new workers. These challenges include establishing if the need for the new role still exists, organising interviewers to be available at specific times, interviewing remotely, onboarding and setting up on payroll and how to induct the new starter.
To overcome these challenges, we have seen a wealth of resources pop up. Our MD has also produced a blog to help with onboarding and inducting.
Of course, when hiring, we do need to keep in mind the usual points as follows:
Candidate experience informs the candidate of your company culture
Keep working on your candidate experience. Candidate experience is now more important than ever. Some roles are seeing as many as 1000 applications. If you haven’t properly planned through your Covid recruitment strategy, you could be facing hundreds of extra bad reviews on Glassdoor and social media. Realistically, you should be looking to manage applicant expectations from the word go. Providing an amazing candidate experience will currently be difficult due to the lack of resources or staff. But keep to the basics. It is the simple things such as responding to successful applicants in good time, ensuring your interviews are properly coordinated and scheduled within good time and getting back to interviewed candidates rather than ghosting them that matter. Communication is key here.
Skills shortages are still an issue
We might expect that we’ve seen the end of those ‘difficult to fill’ roles. But research from the OU has shown that we have not. True, there are more candidates available with skills that are in high demand. However, while many candidates are facing a tougher market, those with the high demand skills are holding firm in their salary expectations. These candidates are receiving multiple calls inviting them to interview. While the market is not allowing candidates to play the market to their advantage, equally, the flip side of this is that candidates are not willing to wait around for decisions. This means employers need to move fairly swiftly to secure talent.
How can you limit damage to your brand?
Remembering to stick to the basics can be tough. Particularly when it feels like there are monthly changes to how we operate due to Covid. However, by sticking to and even taking the opportunity to improve your recruitment processes, you will ensure that you are protecting the future of your company without unnecessarily damaging your brand reputation.
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