5 Ways to Prepare for Post-COVID Hiring: A Winning High-Volume, High-Quality Recruiting Strategy

Mitratech Staff |

These times are tough, but we do know one thing – as quarantines lift, people will be eager to get back to “life as usual,” creating demand for social dining, retail shopping, movie-going, traveling, and much more. Janet Yellen, former Fed Chair, recently predicted that since the economy was in solid shape before the Coronavirus outbreak, the return to normal employment could happen much faster than during the Depression or Great Recession. In fact, the Wall Street Journal is currently predicting a “feast after Coronavirus famine” for some restaurants – and we hope to see that ripple across all of the impacted industries and businesses.

With an upswing in the economy, businesses that can reopen will reopen, and there will be ample job openings for flood of applicants looking to get back to work. Is your company equipped to hire, onboard, and train en masse? Here are our 5 top tips for a winning high-volume, high-quality hiring strategy to start now in preparation for a post-COVID world.

  1. Contactless Sourcing and Hiring: As soon as you have an approximate timeframe for reopening, you’ll need to restart your hiring engine to ensure proper staffing levels when you flip the switch. Since your doors will – most likely – either still be shut or you’re operating at a reduced level, you’ll need to adopt a contactless sourcing and hiring approach – now. This includes automatically broadcasting your jobs to jobs boards, Text-to-Apply, conducting phone and video interviews (supported by online interview scheduling), and digitized onboarding.
  2. Leverage Your Existing Talent Community: First and foremost, make sure the employees you furloughed or had to let go know you are planning to reopen and the details around the rehire process. Furthermore, people who have expressed interest or applied in the past are most likely still searching for an opportunity and have an affinity for your brand. Reach out to these “warm” targets digitally – via email and SMS text campaigns – encouraging them to apply for your upcoming positions.
  3. Get the Word Out: As we all know, your consumer brand and employer brand are one in the same. Make sure to update your career pages with details about your plans to reopen – this can help stimulate both applicant and consumer interest. Add videos from your executives and front-line managers/employees to create excitement, gratitude, and a sense of safety. Share these career pages and rehire plans everywhere, including social media, as your customers and potential applicants are spending more time with these channels due to quarantine.
  4. Increased Emphasis on Pre-Screening: If it hasn’t already, COVID will reshape your hiring focus and ideal applicant profile, such as keeping up with the increased demand for delivery and take-out personnel as well as elevated importance placed on customer service skills (soft skills). Moreover, you will undoubtedly be contending with a massive influx of applicants as you reopen. It will be more important than ever that you leverage automated, digital pre-screening and assessments to help identify the best fit applicants. At the same time, you’ll want to be sure to provide updates to all applicants – whether they are hired or not – to ensure you protect your brand. This is another area where you’ll want to leverage your talent community and group communications.
  5. Employee Training: Now is the time to start creating and/or updating your training content to support COVID-19 best practices. Employees will need to follow new hygiene protocols, delivery and take-out best practices, testing requirements/procedures, and approaches for handling customer concerns and fears. You’ll need a mechanism for delivering and tracking this training.

If the job market bounces back as well as it’s predicted to (and we at TalentReef are really hoping so), you’ll need a contactless scalable, streamlined solution for hiring, onboarding, and training quickly.

As we patiently await the end of quarantine, we’re continuing to focus on contactless recruiting, hiring, and onboarding to provide a best-of-breed talent management platform to help your organization drive efficiency in how you find, hire and retain top talent – and meet all the current CDC Guidelines for safe distancing during the hiring process.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on TalentReef.com. In August 2022, Mitratech acquired Advanced Applicant Tracking System, TalentReef. The content has since been updated to include information aligned with our product offerings, regulation changes, and compliance.