Find­ing and retain­ing new tal­ent has nev­er been an easy task, even in the best of cir­cum­stances. This process — like many tried and true busi­ness process­es — has been com­pli­cat­ed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. In the Unit­ed States, unem­ploy­ment has soared as work­ers have been laid off and many com­pa­nies have either lim­it­ed or com­plete­ly frozen hir­ing. Despite this, orga­ni­za­tions are still look­ing for new tal­ent, albeit in an entire­ly dif­fer­ent landscape.

“Like every­thing with COVID-19, there are going to be per­ma­nent changes,” said Luke Mar­son, pres­i­dent at iXerv Americas.

The cur­rent eco­nom­ic con­di­tions have com­pelled com­pa­nies all over the world to shift their recruit­ing and onboard­ing prac­tices, both in the short and long term. While some aspects of the hir­ing process — such as face-to-face inter­views — are like­ly to return as soon as it is safe, the cur­rent envi­ron­ment has demand­ed some new changes that will like­ly become inte­gral aspects of recruit­ment into the future.

“This is a cat­a­lyst that’s accel­er­at­ing cer­tain ini­tia­tives that every­body knew had to be done,” said Arun Srini­vasan, gen­er­al man­ag­er of SAP Field­glass.

Video Con­fer­ence Inter­views Become a Standard 

As com­pa­nies tran­si­tioned many of their employ­ees to remote work, video calls have replaced reg­u­lar meet­ings with col­leagues. The same is true for hir­ing new employ­ees. ​“Video is going to become the de fac­to stan­dard for inter­view­ing,” said Sher­ryanne Mey­er, direc­tor of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Rizing.

Accord­ing to Mey­er, while com­pa­nies will even­tu­al­ly begin bring­ing final can­di­dates into offices for in-per­son inter­views, screen­ing inter­views ear­ly in the hir­ing process will like­ly now be con­duct­ed via video. ​“We’re much more com­fort­able with [video con­fer­enc­ing],” she said. ​“We learned we can do it, and we are not afraid of it.”

With such an empha­sis on video con­fer­enc­ing, Mey­er believes that hir­ing man­agers will start look­ing at oth­er fac­tors of a candidate’s pre­sen­ta­tion while con­sid­er­ing them for a job. ​“Peo­ple are going to be look­ing at your back­ground,” she said. ​“It is your new visu­al. Like when you first walked into an office — what were you wear­ing and how did you present yourself?”

Soft­ware Is Essen­tial to Engage with Prospec­tive and New Employees

Despite the large num­ber peo­ple who are now out of work, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has made it sig­nif­i­cant­ly hard­er to find new tal­ent, espe­cial­ly for spe­cial­ized skill sets. One chal­lenge comes from all the new can­di­dates look­ing to fill jobs. 

“COVID-19 has put a bur­den on hir­ing man­agers to deal with the excess vol­ume,” Mar­son said. ​“There’s such a large sup­ply of can­di­dates out there look­ing for work right now, and quite a small num­ber of job openings.”

Com­pa­nies are rely­ing on dig­i­tal solu­tions to find the best tal­ent in the most effi­cient way pos­si­ble. Although this is accel­er­at­ing now, man­ag­ing the hir­ing process through dig­i­tal work­flows is not at all a new approach. 

“One of the things we are see­ing across the board is a dri­ve toward dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion,” Mar­son said. ​“There are a lot of busi­ness process­es that have been put in place because of COVID-19 that com­pa­nies were pre­vi­ous­ly considering.”

Sourc­ing Skilled Work­ers Dur­ing COVID-19

SAP is rolling out new solu­tions to help com­pa­nies acquire tal­ent dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, includ­ing the recent­ly announced SAP Field­glass Exter­nal Tal­ent Mar­ket­place, which aims to help com­pa­nies find con­tin­gent and tem­po­rary workers.

“What this offer­ing does is con­nect orga­ni­za­tions that need tem­po­rary work­ers with staffing firms that can sup­ply them,” Srini­vasan said. ​“This comes with pre­de­fined work­flows that make it easy for a hir­ing man­ag­er to come in and ful­fill their hir­ing needs.”

The solu­tion was devel­oped direct­ly as a result of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, as the team watched vital user KPIs focused on fill rates and the sup­pli­er net­work. Srini­vasan said the SAP Field­glass team hoped to give hir­ing man­agers a plat­form to find tem­po­rary work­ers dur­ing a time when they could not ​“rely exclu­sive­ly on tra­di­tion­al sources.” This new solu­tion is free of charge in the U.S. through the end of 2020 and helps busi­ness­es engage with a reli­able mar­ket­place of skilled flex­i­ble work­ers vet­ted by sev­er­al pre­mier staffing firms, includ­ing Adec­co, Guidant Glob­al, and Rand­stad — all with­out hav­ing to pur­chase a new piece of software.

“By mak­ing that con­nec­tion hap­pen between the demand and the sup­ply, we hope to help both sides,” Srini­vasan said. ​“This helps you run your busi­ness, become more effi­cient, and ulti­mate­ly assists hir­ing man­agers and human resource practitioners.”

Fur­loughed and Unem­ployed Work­ers Stay Con­nect­ed in SAP SuccessFactors

Many work­ers have found them­selves either fur­loughed or laid off from their posi­tions. Yet what’s dif­fer­ent about this eco­nom­ic down­turn is that it has forced orga­ni­za­tions to part with employ­ees they did not nec­es­sar­i­ly want to part with. ​“In the past, we saw peo­ple laid off and that’s it. You broke the con­nec­tion with them,” Mey­er said. ​“Now com­pa­nies are inter­est­ed in keep­ing in touch with them.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, com­pa­nies are inter­est­ed in stay­ing in close touch with their fur­loughed employ­ees. To address these new issues, orga­ni­za­tions are rely­ing on their human cap­i­tal man­age­ment solu­tions to keep track of these workers.

“Com­pa­nies are find­ing ways to use their SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors sys­tem,” Mey­er said. ​“For exam­ple, there’s a con­fig­u­ra­tion that can help us keep in touch with our fur­loughed work­ers. You cre­ate a tal­ent pool that’s dif­fer­ent for them. You can encour­age them to come in and cre­ate a new profile.”

This allows com­pa­nies to reuse fur­loughed employ­ees in oth­er ways, beyond their job they were fur­loughed from, accord­ing to each employee’s skill set.

Use of Automa­tion, Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (AI), and Blockchain Increas­es for HR

Over the past few years, com­pa­nies have used automa­tion, blockchain, and AI tech­nolo­gies in their hir­ing process­es. These tech­nolo­gies have helped hir­ing man­agers sort through resumes and iden­ti­fy the per­fect can­di­dates with the per­fect expe­ri­ence and skill sets.

Mey­ers said blockchain will be a way for employ­ers to val­i­date a candidate’s cre­den­tials. Ele­ments of one’s back­ground, such as edu­ca­tion and job expe­ri­ence, can be linked togeth­er from ver­i­fied elec­tron­ic documents. 

Srini­vasan also sees the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic as a chance for the indus­try to embrace these tech­nolo­gies and cre­ate ​“col­lec­tive tal­ent pools of employ­ees and candidates.”

In his view, a lot of the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion from the last decade has cen­tered on mak­ing man­u­al process­es dig­i­tal. But now, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is about sim­pli­fy­ing process­es. ​“Orga­ni­za­tions are being forced to take anoth­er look at how they can strip away a lot of the com­plex­i­ty and keep focused on our goal: get­ting work done.” 

Attend a web­cast focused on how SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors is help­ing com­pa­nies process work­force credentials.