Coronavirus and recruitment – the current impacts

April 16th, 2020 | Industry News

Even the most basic recruitment database software reveals that COVID-19 has had immense impacts on the UK job market. From a record employment high of 33 million in January, recruiting in many sectors has slowed, hiring freezes are commonplace and job losses are certain to follow. Volatility in the market is commonplace – much recruiting software has been scrambling to keep up with the need to find applicants for a range of sectors, whilst handling the need to put other forms of recruitment on hold for the period of the lockdown.

Who’s hiring through online recruitment software?

Healthcare and supply chain are the obvious sectors that are in a massive recruitment drive. Frontline NHS staff, social care personnel and new key-worker roles supporting those on self-isolation have all become positions it is vital to fill. But at the same time the best recruitment software for agencies has to be able to demonstrate that it can provide safe, inclusive and fair recruiting processes. While supply chain recruiting is reasonably straightforward, all of the new positions in healthcare are putting individuals in contact with the most vulnerable people in society – and that means that recruitment agencies have to provide stringent screening and fact-checking services to their clients.

Two other sectors that are hiring might be more surprising.

1. The first is telecoms, which is bringing people on board to help fulfil the requirements of businesses that have moved all their activity online. The demand on helplines has been overwhelming – as a result many organisations have moved as many clients as possible to app based solutions. The best recruitment CRM is helping the telecoms industry both staff support centres and establish alternative ways of communicating with people who are stuck at home and worried about anything from paying their bills to upgrading their cable access.

2. The final sector is… finance. Mortgage and loan companies in particular are trying to find the balance between supporting existing customers, many of whom are uncertain about their immediate financial futures, and new customers, many of whom want to give themselves a financial cushion through a new loan, a mortgage holiday or even remortgaging their current homes to provide more of a safety net.

Web based recruitment software is particularly useful to both these latter sectors, as they are often recruiting for work-at-home positions, conducting virtual interviews and onboarding people through digital platforms.