by Raghu Nandhan | Mar 31, 2020 | Blog, Industry Trends
The World Health Organisation has declared the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, and lots of firms are taking strict measures against the impact and unfold of the virus.
The corona outbreak is first and foremost a human disaster, affecting thousands of people across the world. It is additionally resulting in a growing impact on the global economy.
With all businesses and industries across the world in huge chaos, there has been the grave economic impact of coronavirus across various sectors from tourism to airline; from entertainment to education; from finance to healthcare; from retail to hospitality; from cruises to cars; from food to fashion; Luxury industry; staffing and recruitment and so on. Marketers across industries are attempting to revamp their business models.
a) Travel and Tourism
The travel & tourism industry is worst affected by the coronavirus outbreak. With COVID-19 being a pandemic, people are avoiding travelling to different countries and cities, which has created a negative impact on the travel business industry and has affected the tourism welfare of the affected countries.
The U.S. airlines proposed for over $50 billion in federal help due to the dramatic decrease in range of airline passengers.
b) Entertainment
Disney and Universal Studios have planned to close down their theme parks as large gatherings may cause the spread of coronavirus.
The NBA has suspended its season temporarily after a player was tested positive for coronavirus.
The entertainment industry is severely affected and suffering from the coronavirus outbreak. However, as more people stay at home, in self-isolation, and take quarantine measures, there is increased use of alternate entertainment services such as games, videos, etc. According to the Financial Times, the number of app downloads rises in China after the nationwide isolation measures were taken. Video streaming firms like Netflix, Amazon, Disney are expected to have a rise in the number of subscribers in the impact of COVID-19.
c) Retail & E-Commerce
Malls, shopping centers are temporarily shut down in effect to COVID-19. Also, since people distance themselves from social gatherings and crowded spaces, they choose to order their needs or necessities online. Similar is the case with the retail business.
On the contrary, digital commerce businesses are trying to make the most of this situation. Regardless, thriving in such an epidemic continues to be a difficult task for e-commerce businesses.
d) Recruitment
Recruitment in the time of the COVID-19 outbreak is a very tough and challenging process.
HR managers are scrambling to regulate recruitment strategies within the wake of this outbreak. Fortunately, technology is out there to assist minimize exposure while still producing quality hires. The time is now to shift to a virtual recruitment — one that protects both employees and candidates and erase risk while continuing to drive hiring efforts.
e) Luxury Shopping Malls
People are staying more at their homes and buying products online instead of going physically to crowded locations. In the long term, this may lead to a permanent change in the behaviour of consumers and online luxury buying may become usual.
Therefore, retailers must provide more meaningful online experiences in order to build a good relationship with consumers.
NOTE: Buying luxury things online will become more attractive in the future. This slowdown is the right time for luxury brands to facilitate themselves to digitize the processes and upgrade their systems and technology. This will allow them to develop operational efficiencies and provide personalized experiences to the end consumers.
The various ways to deal with it and how we can overcome:
The Covid-19 crisis has currently reached a critical stage where public health systems got to act decisively to control the growth in new places.
Clearly, the most importance is and should be on suppressing and diminish the disease itself. However the economic impacts are vital and plenty of companies are feeling their way towards understanding, reacting to, and learning lessons from rapidly unfolding events. Unforeseen twists and turns are going to be revealed with each news cycle, and that we will only have a complete picture in retrospect.
Yet, given the very different degrees of preparedness across companies, the further potential for disruption, and the value of being better prepared for future crises, it’s worth trying to pull out what we have learned so far. Being supported on our ongoing analysis and help for our clients around the world, we have refined the subsequent lessons for responding to unfolding events, communicating, extracting and implementing learnings.
- Update intelligence on each day.
- Use specialists and gauge carefully.
- Flexible principles in developing policies.
- Prepare now for the next crisis.
- Reflect on what you’ve learned.
- Prepare for a changing world.
The Covid-19 crisis can take time to be solved by medical science. The economic crisis can try to be solved now.
To fix this, the government could offer every American business, large and small, and every self-employed worker with a no-interest “bridge loan” guaranteed for the duration of the crisis to be paid back over five years. The sole condition of the loan to businesses would be that companies still employ a minimum of 90 percent of their manpower at the same wage that they did before the crisis. And it might be retroactive, so any workers who have been laid off in the past two weeks because of the crisis would be reinstated.
The system keeps virtually everyone employed and keeps firms, across different industries from restaurants to airlines in business without picking winners and losers.
Instantly, it would create a sense of confidence and relief during these turbulent times that once the scourge of the coronavirus was contained, life would come back to some semblance of normal. It would additionally help, encourage people to stay home and practice social distancing without feeling that they would risk losing their job — the only way to slow this disease.
Pragna solutions is taking a balanced approach to handle the situation and our first preference is the well being and safety of our clients and employees across the country. We remain committed and believe that our long term vision of business is strong.
Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you want to discuss your hiring needs and challenges. We are here to provide recruitment solutions and help to all your interim and long term requirements.
by Raghu Nandhan | Mar 26, 2020 | Blog, Recruitment Technology, Talent Acquisition
If you are someone who needs to supplement their full-time staff for, for taxation season, the summer, vacation season, or during any other part of the year when business peaks. When you invest so much on a recruiting seasonal workforce, it’s necessary to the keep few things in mid to onboard someone who represent your business in all aspects. In this blog you will get a fresh view to look at your recruitment strategy and see where you can enhance your staffing. Several seasonal employees stand out by contributing more to your team than expected.
The holiday hiring season are always known for historically-low unemployment rate thus making it even more challenging to find right candidates in a very tight labor market.
Here are the 5 key skills to recruit top Notch seasonal employees:
Referrals and Recommendations
Seasonal job seekers are always fluctuating. Its difficult to find the right talent on job boards. You got to try different methods to search them. And one of the proven methodologies is utilizing employee referrals. Chances are, your employees know someone who a needs job. Your employee knows what you expect of them. Because of this, they can act as valuable link between you and the potential new employees who they believe are fit for the position. Referrals always rock and you know in total 7 percent of candidates are hired through referrals, and yet they account for overall 40 percent of hires.
Evaluating the Candidates
Many companies, hiring needs doesn’t go beyond a handful of open roles, however, many companies depend on a seasonal workforce and hire in bulk at once. Altering your interview process to deal with large inundation of candidates is necessary. Targeting candidates from the local surroundings is an additional method to find candidates faster and making smarter seasonal hiring decisions. You can find many applicants from school or colleges which are off during the summer months, attracting such candidates brings many advantages, as they seek work to gain some work experience meanwhile earn something, also this reduce potential attendance issues due to long commutes and other unexpected circumstances.
Streamlining Your Onboarding Method
It’s a known fact that majority of seasonal workers won’t be working with you for long, but assuming the same for all might turn out be foolish. Spending too much time to onboard might look like an unsuccessful cost. Budget wisely for your seasonal hiring. Even though you’re hiring experienced candidates to seasonal roles in your company, you must always provide training. Your company could have totally different rules or policies employees might not be aware of if you don’t. You must always provide an orientation package.
Keep Your End Game in Mind
Many companies that hire seasonal workers see them as a resource pool for potential full-time workers. Never assume that your work staff will last through the season, and there won’t be any need to hire more. No matter how much you plan, you still might have to hire some people toward the end of the season. You can redesign your incentive structure for seasonal and permanent workforce. While it’s not required to provide healthcare benefits to temporary employees, but if you tend to convert your seasonal workers, you may want to offer them some benefits and perks, like health insurance, savings plans, and access to the corporate wellness program etc. Having a healthy candidate pool will make all the difference when it comes time to do rehiring.
Choose “same time, next year” candidates
Recruiting new faces every time during a holiday season can be costly and inefficient. Overall efforts put in the whole process can be exhausting and difficult. If you are able to figure candidates who will be available next year during the same time period it would definitely ease, you’re your efforts. You can put efforts build rappo with these candidates and to be in touch throughout the year. Also reserve few spots for the upcoming season for such candidates. This will save both your time and money.
If you have haven’t planned your recruitment strategy for the upcoming busy business season, never mind it’s not too late to utilize some of the above discussed suggestions in place for this year. And after the rush hour, always examine what worked the best the best for you and what needs to be removed or added to your seasonal recruitment strategy. Never leave things to the last minute.
Utilizing a recruiting plan with key components of effective recruitment budgeting, talent pipelines, employee referrals, streamlined onboarding processes will help you cut costs, save time and still help your business to deliver the best and reach set revenue goals.
by Raghu Nandhan | Mar 16, 2020 | Blog, Talent Acquisition
Beyond the policy, once your company and an employee part ways, is it ever okay to hire that person back? Did this question intrigue you much? Well then let’s discuss to find out more about it.
This situation is like going to a restaurant and ordering same menu as tried earlier. Most people end up ordering same instead of trying something new. It’s not uncommon for organizations to own a policy against rehiring former employees. Recruiting and rehiring a former employee is a method save both time and costs of sourcing and creating brand new hires.
Let’s discuss pros and cons to rehire former employees:
Familiar to Company Culture:
They already understand the ins and outs. Not only are they aware of the company culture, however they also likely having previous experience with internal systems and processes. They also understand why some employees or managers do one thing one way and why others do it another way. The procedures are familiar, permitting them to get up and running quickly, that could be a major profit to your business.
Boost to Employee Morale
If current workforce sees their employer values talent and is putting efforts to bring back people, it can have a positive effect on morale, especially if the rehire was popular and respected. Also when current employees see an old employee coming back its makes them realize that their current position is a good one since people are willing to come back to it.
Minimal Recruiting Costs
Few companies have initiated alumni programs to stay connected with former employees. These connections are usually a wonderful source of passive candidates who could also be willing to come back to your company. Since the person already has a proven record within the organization, employers have an honest plan of what the employee will do in order that they don’t have to recruit someone new and train them.
New Skills, Experience, and Perspective
When a former employee returns to your organization, they give the benefit of enjoying the skill set they gained while they were away. Whether it has been a few years or just a few months, they will have had experiences that gave them new skills and perspectives. With these newly acquired skills, they may perform better on the job and the also with the new perspective to approach situations; they might be offer fruitful suggestions to improve company procedures.
Reasons to avoid hiring former employees:
Still be in fit of pique
If an employee left your organization with lingering bitterness or relationship problems, it’ll probably be tough for them to feel engaged and productive upon being rehired. If a coworker or manager continues to be there who the boomerang employee had friction within the past, it’s unlikely that they’ll bury the hatchet this point around. Reignited feuds will harm team morale.
Having feelings of entitlement
Although they’re still thought about to be a replacement employee, they’ll not identify themselves that way which may result in feeling that they need seniority and are owed certain perks that accompany being on the job for a longer period of your time. Particularly if they’ve been outside the organization for an extended time. Ex-employees could disagree with perks, seniority or raised compensation from their original tenure.
May not be the best match
Seeing a past employees resume in your inbox might fascinate you enough to really don’t pay enough attention to your pool of candidates that also are contesting for the position. Even though that pool of alternative candidates might contain someone that is more qualified for the role than they are. You will be missing out on the top talent in your candidate pool by unconsciously favoring the ex employee.
Considering all the facts and figures if you wish to rehire a former employee make sure they are qualified and fit for the position. Brief your team and also the rehire on the current situation and also your expectations to ensure positive relationship among all. Advantages of rehiring former employees are definitely greater considering the tight resource market. So don’t shut your doors for all former employees just because they wanted to explore something new.
by Raghu Nandhan | Mar 12, 2020 | Blog, Industry Trends
Attracting great talent is the first step to hiring great talent. And one way to attract great talent is by jobs postings. Job postings are also called job advertisement, job description, job announcement, job ad, or needed ad. A best job description is a blend of position’s skill set and competencies, little about work culture and of course benefits and perks. Most recruiters fail to understand the main motto of job postings; it is to list out things that attract top candidates, instead of just listing requirements and qualifications. In this blog we are going to discuss few tips to design an engaging and inclusive job advertisement to attract and build a pool of right fit candidates.
Use a Killer Job Title
This is foremost the important part of a job description. Fun or uncommon job titles like Rockstar Developer or Marketing Guru don’t do a lot of to draw job seeker attention. Using such job titles will turn off candidates from applying to your job ads. Such job titles can confuse job seekers and often considered as symbolic of insouciant work culture.
The title should be as simple and unambiguous as possible. Main motto of a job title is to show a glimpse of the purpose and scope of the job. Use phrases that accurately describe the job and try sticking to standard experience levels like Senior instead of III or IV.
Describing the Position
A good job description usually contains 2 components: summary of the role and job responsibilities. A concise summary on existence of the job? You must solely highlight the important points in these sections in order that the job description is compact and straight forward to digest.
This part of job description introduces your company and your employer brand to the job seekers hence don’t forget to include all the details about your company culture to outline why a candidate would desire to work for your company. Though content is important during a job posting, but stuffing excessive amount of information into one paragraph can easily bore the job seekers.
Focus on Growth and Development
Listing a bunch of daily tasks and avoiding a bulleted list of responsibilities or qualifications is old style is often boring to read through. Lists like these are often difficult to absorb until one’s actually doing the job. Instead you can group pointers things under smaller sub headings like “technical skills”, “management skills” and “Interpersonal skills” or may be hard or soft skills. Make the job ad exciting by explaining how candidate’s growth and achievements will contribute towards business excellence. Also stress enough on the new skills and technologies one can attain with this role. This will definitely attract carrier and action oriented candidates.
Mention Experience, Compensation and Benefits Info
Most job descriptions leave the candidates wondering if they are fit for the position as they miss out on clearly specifying the minimum qualification standards. This results in getting enormous responses from unqualified candidates. To avoid this establish clear trails of minimum education, any specific certifications and also the years the expertise or hands on experience on a particular skill required to succeed in the role.
And don’t miss out on listing compensation and benefits. Most candidates today are looking to work with employers that fulfill their compensation needs and often turned off if there is no mention of it in the job ad. You need to show that money is component of the opportunity. Give a salary range rather than a specific dollar amount to allow room for flexibility. Also provide a summary of the advantages like medical, dental, and vision coverage etc.
Express Urgency for the Position
Create the sense of urgency among candidates so that candidates are compelled to apply. This can be done by mentioning last date to apply or may be by mentioning start dates. Mention contact details of a specific person instead of a generic email id. This definitely results in increase in the number of applicants drastically.
Avoid Mention of Behavioral Traits
Most job ads list out personality traits like Proactive, dynamic etc. This encourages candidates to impersonate these behaviors during interview even if they do not to have them. Also, mention of words like “hardworking,” essentially mean nothing in a job ad as you can never figure out these traits until put to test for certain number of days. It only implies that a hiring manager wants to consider people who have a strong work ethics which is often misunderstood by candidates.
Knock Out Biases
If you want to widen your pool of applicants and speed up your recruitment and hiring process then you should not be limiting your reach to a particular gender or demography. Ultimate goal of a job ad is to encourage right people to apply for the job but usage of gender skewing terms within job descriptions turns away many potential candidates. You might be promoting a gender diverse work culture but your ad speaks on the contrary. This will paint a totally different picture and all your branding efforts will go in vain.
Add Creative Touches
Active job seekers spend a lot of time going through job descriptions and reading through lengthy content can be boring and tedious. To attract those eyeballs add innovative touch to your job ad like a video attachment explaining the position’s daily responsibilities and employees explaining why it is a fun place to work at. This would create a major difference and your ad will stand out.
Finishing Touches
Consider this a fun task and don’t hesitate to express your creativity. Imagine yourself into the shoes of superstar candidate you want to hire changes and sail you boat in that direction. Job Ads reflects a company’s corporate style, but candidates respond well to job ad that showcases human touch. Boring ads don’t attract strong and vibrant candidates. Don’t forget to proofread your ad before posting it out. Several grammatical errors and misspelled words will not set the best image of yours.
Keep the content of your job posting transient and to the point to communicate your point in a streamlined manner. Steer away from fancy and fuzzy terms. Usages of in distinctive terms make it difficult for potential applicants to imagine themselves in a position.
Follow the hit and trial method. If you don’t succeed in first attempt, change, tweak, and check out again. Each business contains a totally different direction for succeeding; therefore don’t get discouraged if one technique doesn’t prove as effective. Keep fixing and modifying till you discover what works the best for you.
Follow the above tips to craft an effective job ad, and you are assured to stand out among the strongest candidates.
by Raghu Nandhan | Mar 5, 2020 | Blog, Talent Acquisition
The recruitment budget is an extensive gauge of costs that will be brought about while driving hiring activities consistently and is basic to take care of the considerable number of expenses related to making an enlistment technique, engaging and recruiting talent, and retaining them once they are employed.
Building a budget includes a few stages, many of which can get skipped when individuals are entrusted with attempting to make a budget too rapidly or have little research to control them.
Without a well-planned recruitment budget, you always run the risk of overspending and ruining your entire hiring plan for the year. Likewise, it very well may be hard to follow all the costs that were brought about in hiring a candidate.
Here are the 6 steps to effectively manage your recruitment budget.
Track your time and expenses
It is conceivable to have a recruitment process that is quality-oriented, fast, and cost-effective. But achieving this for your business requires equalization, and it requires an evaluation of your present circumstance. Your budget will work better for you on the off chance that you realize to what extent it regularly take for your organization to hire someone. Also, this incorporates observing key recruitment metrics in your hiring.
Cost-per-hire is one of the most important and most commonly used hiring and recruiting metrics. This metrics measures how much it costs your company to hire new employees and also it catches the aggregate sum of amount in finding and hiring your ideal job candidate.
Here is the formula of cost per hire
Get Leadership Onboard
On the off chance that you would prefer not to be stuck right now, you must be aware of how you approach the administration with your budget proposal and how you approach putting forth the business defense if your subsidizing needs have expanded.
With the economy gradually rebounding, it’s hopeful that more CEOs and business leaders will be available to expand their recruiting spend for attempting new technologies and strategies that improve recruiting effectiveness and draw in the top ability to their positions. To improve your chances of accessing more resources to ease your burden, endeavor to show leadership the estimation of a vigorous enrolling recruiting budget.
Evaluate Your Past Results
Take a look at what number of new-contracts you got and which channels were generally helpful for drawing in them just as which positions you filled the greater part of such as executive, entry-level, management, or administrative. Ideally, execution surveys for your recruiting team were directed, so you’ll additionally need to benchmark which ones were best in their job and why.
See who was average, the best, and the worst, and whose presentation improved by the most significant margin and why. This will assist you with uncovering what has been working and what hasn’t on your recruiting team and figure out who should be promoted, who may require extra improvement in their job, and who should perhaps be let go or moved into another role.
Hire great candidates the first time
Thousands of dollars per year can be drained from your budget with low staff retention rates. On the off chance that you hire great employees on the get-go, you can spare a ton of time in finding a substitution later on and just focus around how you can hold them. With the cost of each lost employee scheduled running as high as 150% of annual salary, expanding on maintenance can help with containing recruitment costs.
Estimate your recruiting technology costs
The traditional recruitment process hasn’t become unimportant, however, it has earned some inventive and dynamic rivalry from tech-driven, mobile-first solutions. Tech tools must always support and enhance humans to positively impact the candidate experience, or else they risk damaging the employer brand you’ve worked so hard to create.
Investing in decent recruiting tools that help you sift through unsuitable applications which are very expensive, so don’t pass up the best hires by discarding this expense from your spending limit. Make a list of the considerable number of tools you’re utilizing. When figuring in their costs, take into consideration the pricing models.
Decide your annual recruitment plan for new hires
Quality of hire is essentially the value a new hire contributes to the company’s overall success. A recruitment plan outlines your strategy for finding, screening and hiring new employees and makes the hiring procedure smoother and act as a qualifying guideline for candidates. This causes businesses to guarantee that they are hiring individuals with the qualifications and skills needed to do the job.
Here are a few important Components for Recruitment Plans
- Identifying job openings
- Deciding how the job(s) will be filled.
- Choosing the type of candidates that should be targeted.
- Joining with the target group.
- Meeting with the applicants
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