Recruiters will be Facing a Hiring Downturn Due to the Coronavirus

Jonathan Kidder

4 years ago

Recruiters will need to brace themselves for a hiring downturn across the globe due to the Coronavirus. The stock market and Dow Jones have taken a recent hit in regards to future expectations. Most small to medium sized companies will be considering a hiring freeze for at least the summer months of 2020. So what does this mean for recruiters?

From my perspective – my sourcing efforts have taken a hit in the last 2-3 weeks. A majority of roles happen to sit where the Coronavirus is quite rampant. With the media hysteria, recruiters will be facing many challenges in the next months.

Here’s what I’m hearing when cold calling candidates:

I’m not looking to change at the moment due to the virus spreading.
Can I work remotely? I don’t want to travel at this time.
Due to safety reasons I’m not looking to change jobs at the moment.
My company has gone virtually remote and I just want to ride it out here.
You guys are still hiring? I would think everyone is shutting down.

Here’s how to respond to concerns:

“Yes, I hear what you are telling me. We have moved our interviews to virtual based and won’t require you to travel for a final round interview.”
“We will allow you to work remotely for the time being. Our company is taking these concerns very seriously.”
“Our team is still actively hiring. It’s still a great time to be looking for a new role. Here’s what the team is working on.” (Then discuss the tech stack and project details.)
Stay positive and focused on selling your team or project.
Share your company’s PR response to the pandemic. Consider brainstorming with your HR team to come up with responses to candidate concerns.

Here’s how to prepare for a hiring downturn:

1. Do your best to fight any attempt to institute a hiring freeze

Once your company and CFO believes that the business will be facing a downturn the reaction is to do a company wide hiring freeze on all new openings. Once this goes into effect the company will start closing positions and cutting back on the recruiting costs. When a company doesn’t need to hire they won’t need external agencies to support their openings. This would have a rippling effect across the board. Honestly, it’s a poor decision to go into a hiring freeze. Our U.S economy is still set for positive growth.

2. Demonstrate your recruiting value

During a hiring downturn, a company will shift from towards revenue generation or cost containment. Both are critical – for recruiters, when you increase in headcount you are increasing in revenue. If you can demonstrate that HR and recruiting actions directly increase revenue, you will avoid many of the budget cuts.

3. Prioritize & focus

When recruiting budgets and hiring goals are cut back it’s important to slow down and focus on the most important high-level openings. Focus on filling the high impact positions this will help showcase your value and directly impact your companies bottom line profits.

4. Update your relocation policy

With the Coronavirus affecting travel arrangements nationwide, your company may need to rethink your relocation policies. Consider having new hires start remotely and have them relocate at a different date.

5. Prepare for LESS applicants

You will need to proactively source and cold call for leads. Less and less people will be considering a new job change due to the media hype. You will need to dedicate more time to sourcing. I’ve got a ton of great tool suggestions on my recruiting tools page (here) to get you started.

6. Staying busy (Internal Recruiters)

Do other things to supplement your time. Will you be facing more free time during this slow down? You can shift your time to working on improving the onboarding process, working on employer branding efforts, and working on pipelining future needs.

7. Reconsider your recruiting goals

Managers will need to reconsider their hiring goals for each Recruiter and Sourcer. We will be facing an uphill battle when it comes to sourcing applicants for the next few months. Managers need to understand these challenges and support their teams 100 percent.

7. Staying Optimistic

We will get through these challenging times! Recruiters need to support each other.

Overall, I’m hoping that the media hype regarding the Coronavirus will die down within the next few months and that containment efforts are successful. However, recruiters will need to brace themselves for a downturn in the hiring market. I have faith that our economy will improve and that recruiters will recover 100 percent.