The Recruitment scenario during a Recession
Arjun Khanna

Recruitment during recession – Strategic Move
Recruitment during a recession is a strategic move. Recession is seen by several companies as an opportunity to catch up with those who had an edge over them during normal times. The budget cuts and layoffs implemented by competitors during recession, may work to the advantage of companies which made the unusual move of recruiting. It is like playing a game against a team which has no more reserve players and are already fatigued.

Retaining talent during Recession
The current economic downturn means it is more important than ever for employers to recruit the right workers for their firm, and employers need to make sure they are doing enough to retain their most valuable workers during the recession. An HR strategist at a software company believes that bosses need to ensure they are keeping the right people in their company if redundancies have to be made. TMP Worldwide (a global consulting firm) states that companies could be putting their reputation and finances at risk by making hiring mistakes “Companies need to make sure they are attracting, hiring and retaining people who will add maximum value rather than just fill vacancies."

Hiring during Recession - Long and Short Term Marketing Strategy
During a recession there would be a lot of options for hiring and a lot of candidates to choose from. Boosting your marketing personnel capacity should put you in a better position to increase productivity and establish a good standing for your company. For recruiters, this is a fantastic time to develop talent pools of individuals with the skills that would be needed when the upturn happens. Organizations should identify talent with key skills and complete initial interviews and put them on contact databases for the future. This should be a large part of HR activity in a downturn as the opportunity does not come along very often. This will help them build a medium term advantage as they can jump start as soon as things look better on the economy front and can be ahead of competition at a lower cost.

Economic Pressures during a Recession
Economic pressure during a recession are a double-edged sword. It affects business through increased productivity costs and lower inputs. To keep productivity costs down, businesses have to resort to a freeze on hiring or even layoffs. This is an easy route because the skill, aggressiveness and creativity of the company are not compromised, – qualities that banks and financial institutions look for in a partner.

Action Steps to Minimize the Impact of a Downturn

• Prioritize and focus. When recruiting resources are cut back, it’s even more important than ever to focus your limited resources on the jobs that have the most impact on corporate revenue.
• Strengthen your offer process. It is essential for recruiting to re-examine and then strengthen its current candidate “sales” approach. Work to reassure nervous individuals that it’s ok to leave their current job and to join your firm.
• Strengthen your relocation process. During most economic downturns, individuals are more than willing to relocate in order to get secure employment.
• Prepare for a flood of applicants. If you are a well-known firm and the unemployment rate rises, you are likely to be inundated with a huge volume of resumes from the “soon-to-be” or the currently unemployed. To prepare for this jump in volume, it’s critical that recruiting managers look at their resume-sorting process to ensure that it can handle this dramatic increase in volume while maintaining quality standards.
• Look for global recruiting needs. If a firm is a global organization, it’s very likely that there are significant recruiting needs in geographic areas where the downturn is not so severe. In those cases, shift recruiting talent to those regions where recruiting is still a business necessity.
• Over-hire when there is a surplus of top talent. When many firms in an industry reduce or freeze their hiring, it becomes dramatically easier to recruit available top talent simply because there is lesser competition.
• Focus on employment branding. It’s important to use any “surplus” recruiting resources to build and improve upon branding efforts. As a result of improved external image, it will positively impact, when a firm is ready to resume large-scale hiring.

The challenge for HR in a recession is potentially more meaningful, to ensure that the right organizational climates are created where people can flourish. Where the best talent can be retained and the organization can humanely deal with people when the times get tough. Where senior management is confronted when needed, on the important ‘people issues ‘of the time, rather than meekly accepting top management diktat that might be wrong. HR should be at the forefront of the recovery, not just a compliant functional support system. It is now time to put into practice the often-heard HR rhetoric: ‘The most valuable resource is our human resource'.

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