Effective Hiring through Disruption

As we deal with COVID-19, it is crucial to remember from previous periods of disruption that business will rebound. When it does, having the best leadership and operating talent is crucial to accelerate growth as we emerge from the disruptive period. Strategic hiring is crucial during this period. As is preparing the best defense mechanisms to combat any potential issues.

From the candidate standpoint, we encourage those dislocated by this issue to take time to evaluate how to leverage their career post disruption. There are many tools and resources to aid in this evaluation, one being our recently published book: Living Your Best Career.

Considerations for Strategic Hiring through current disruption:

• Clients plan ahead and focus on profitability improvement opportunities
• Clients can also optimize their organization at all levels for the long term if necessary
• Passive candidates will be more focused on the longer-term hiring advantages of any move
• Active candidates will be quickly deployable, if they are good fits
• Objective hiring metrics are even more important
• Retention and integration are crucial to both keeping current employees and those being hired
• Companies gain a visible market benefit when their employees, customers and suppliers see them continuing to hire great talent during periods of disruption

We have dealt with these issues through pervious periods of disruption. In every case, strategic hiring proved immeasurably beneficial to our clients. And it proved to be advantageous to our candidates as well over the long term. These strategies also promote a sense of goodwill for our communities when business leaders approach disruptive events with a sense of continuity, even bearing opportunities.

Activating Hiring Defenses to the current disruption:

• Focus on crucial “future state” roles in Data
• Choose a strategic human resources leader and advocate
• Insulate succession plans against attrition or other gaps
• Capture vulnerable market share by upgrading customer experience professionals
• Implement integrated technology throughout the organization via the CTO, CDO or CAO
• Implement remote technologies that have strong future savings in SG&A

The data consideration is a crucial defense, not only to this disrupted period, but also to the future viability of many companies.

Digital and data trends started at least 18 months to two years before COVID-19 became disruptive to the economy. These trends are transforming industries across the globe with their seamless innovations to source data and capture the most value out of it for their companies. It is also a time were new Digital trends are creating new hiring and employment opportunities and thus stimulating the marketplace. Here DATA includes:

• Data Architects
• Data Analysts
• Data Scientists.
• Data Engineers

DAAP Experts (this role is evolving, but it is essentially a data expert that resides in the business center that is responsible for mining data for profitability improvement, directly supporting a Business Unit Leader)

The question is not if the market will rebound, but when.

When it does, utilizing these strategies and defenses will certainly soften the blow and will allow for a smoother transition back to normalcy.