Blog: Why you should keep hiring - even if it’s scary…
The world is in turmoil.
It’s scary.
I’m scared.
As a father and a son, I don’t mind admitting that the potential death of loved ones scares me. Adding to that is a selfish anxiety based on my need to keep money coming into our business to pay the mortgage, and keep food on the table.
In some ways, this is like the recession. Back then we had world markets crashing, confusion and hiring freezes. We didn’t know when it would end but I guess we always knew it would one day. This time we have that looming economic challenge and the more serious threat of illness, or even death of our friends and families. People will argue with me about that, that it’s just a bit of flu and for some, it will be, but we all know it is far more serious than that.
How we choose to deal with it will be challenging. The UK isn’t on lockdown yet but surely must head that way given how many countries are restricting movement across Europe. This isn’t a political broadcast, more my hope (for selfish and selfless reasons) that we can keep things going, that we don’t shut businesses, stop hiring and cause economic hardship in the longer term.
The sceptical optimist in me hopes that we can do the things we need to do, and that we don’t have death, disruption and a slow painful recovery. None of us knows how long we are going to be on this journey but I really hope it is still counted in weeks or months not years.
I survived 2008 and the years thereafter by the skin of my teeth, doing anything I could to earn money, removing costs from the business dramatically. It was really close, a few days away from bankruptcy. But even in the bleakest times, I assumed it would be ok in the end, that my ‘hustle’ would bring results one day. But I had options. The business I run is fully mobile, if one market declines we can get on a plane to another. This time that option isn’t there.
From an economic standpoint, the tech companies I primarily work with will be ok. If they haven’t done it already they will send their people home, they will continue to operate in the cloud and things will tick on. Some will see this as an opportunity to develop new products and change how they operate. They will, I suspect, all stop hiring. In a quick poll this week 40% of companies spoken to were on hold already.
When things recover (and they will) many organisations will have to go back to square one and if this is anything like the recession they will immediately be outmanoeuvred by more agile competitors that kept hiring, albeit more selectively or kept this going.
In my mind keeping things going is the key and if you want to do that I have some thoughts:
Sort out your communications - If you’ve gone into a hiring freeze (in that quick poll this week that is 40% of you) then it’s time to think about your comms strategy, develop a true nurturing approach, that keeps people engaged with you so that when you are ready to hire, you have a pool of hire ready candidates.
Keep any onboarding you have started going - You started this process and doing the right thing is to carry on - but base them from home, get your onboarding process aligned to where we are today. (I’ve already heard that organisations are rescinding offers).
Obvious but move to video Interviews - Video is great but interviewers need to be really well prepared and have an interview plan in place. Be more structured. My personal approach is to break the interview down into 3 chunks and share that with the candidate - gives context and focus which you need more of on video.
Be clear with your candidates - Hiring processes may slow down a bit, so communicate this to your applicants and in-process candidates. Set expectations on the process, and outcomes. That is tough as you might not know yet - but tell people that.
These are unprecedented times. A once in a lifetime (I hope) event that will need us to dig deep into reserves of cash and optimism but stopping what we are doing completely will make our recovery worse.
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