Internal and external talent acquisition during the Covid-19 pandemic
Our previous blogs highlighted the impact of Covid-19 on the recruitment and development space and provided suggestions on how to effectively leverage technology and assessments to assist in these areas. (Links to these blogs appear at the end of this article.)
During this highly uncertain Covid-19 period, many organisations have taken a uniform approach to freezing their interviewing and onboarding processes and many organisations are either implementing salary cuts or retrenchments. An organisation called Candor is compiling a user-generated list of companies that are currently hiring, freezing or laying off staff. The list is rapidly growing beyond the current 7 000+ companies listed to date and, as can be expected, the data regarding layoffs and position is exponentially increasing.
What a lot of organisations may not be thinking about is the opportunity that Covid-19 provides in two areas – the recruitment of scarce and suddenly available talent in the market, and the opportunity to identify internal talent required for taking the business forward into the future.
The Harvard Business Review recently released a fantastic article entitled “Now is an unprecedented opportunity to hire great talent”. Amongst all the global job loss negativity, the article took a slightly more positive view on the current situation and highlighted the fact that the pool of available talent in the market is suddenly changing and expanding. This provides forward thinking leaders with an opportunity to hire exceptional employees and leaders who suddenly find themselves in the job market. This could create a massive competitive advantage for organisations who are willing to adopt this progressive approach in taking the risk now to reap the reward later.
A further trend emerging is the need for organisations to pivot their business models, right-size their organisations for new business realties, and look for efficiencies to ensure they survive the Covid-19 pandemic in the long-term. One important element of such initiatives is understanding what the future state of the business will look like, and how to achieve success in a rapidly changing and uncertain world. The relevant talent within the business needs to be identified and effectively leveraged to ensure success.
Assessments provide the opportunity for organisations to get a scientific, objective and clear picture of their talent pipeline. This can be useful in several ways, including the ability to quickly and efficiently identify talented individuals who may not only be suited to their current roles, but who have potential to perform work at a higher or more complex level than initially thought. Assessments can also identify which skills and jobs may be better suited for certain employees based on their abilities and strengths. Most businesses will need to change the way they operate, at least to some degree, and having a better understanding of internal talent and skills gaps in their current workforce is invaluable.
Assessments also provide employees who go through the process with the opportunity to learn about themselves, utilising tried and tested methodologies. This means that those who have to search for greener pastures elsewhere will benefit from having a clearer understanding of their strengths and development areas, and a better feel for the organisational culture that best suits their unique set of skills and abilities. Employees will also be able to incorporate this deeper understanding of themselves into their Personal Development Plans, which will assist them to reach their full potential and aspirations.
We predict that forward thinking organisations who consider the importance of either sourcing potentially readily available external talent, and/or understanding the talent that lies within their businesses, are likely to gain the upper hand and thrive in the years to come.
Evalex provides an automated, integrated, online and time-sensitive assessment process with strong predictive validity that can assist in quickly identifying high potential individuals for immediate deployment within the organisation. The same approach can be used to identify readily available internal talent and identify development requirements for people to succeed.
Contact us today for more information on how we can help you to achieve these outcomes. You can reach us on [email protected] or call us on (+27) 11 803 8703.
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