Nearly 1 in 2 Employers Hired Only Virtually in the Pandemic: Indeed

 

* Indeed surveyed nearly 500 employers in India to understand hiring sentiment and patterns ~

* 1250+ employers world over hosted 3700+ virtual hiring events on Indeed this year ~

Indeed, the world’s No. 1 job site,  gathered top recruiters across India at its virtual event Indeed Showcase today, to launch its latest tech innovation, Virtual Hiring Events (VHE) – a simple and efficient solution that will help recruiters across the country hire in this new virtual world of work. VHE launches in India around the same time Indeed spoke with nearly 500 employers across 16 sectors and 12 cities, where 47% hired only virtually and nearly 1 in 3 used a combination of virtual and face-to-face hiring methods this year.

Safety concerns drove employers to hire virtually, as the pandemic drove India into remote work:

With the pandemic disrupting the job market and more and more people taking to the internet to find jobs, organizations are now required to have a more digital approach towards recruiting. 64% employers said that safety was the primary driver for hiring virtually this year. Indeed’s VHE is a virtual hiring solution aimed at bringing ease and seamlessness to a complex traditional hiring process, helping all people to now find opportunities in a safe and efficient way.

With VHE, employers across India can easily, and cost-effectively, create and promote their own company-sponsored virtual hiring event(s) where they can host open interviews, from a safe distance,  and hire for a set of roles they need to fill.

“With India being the world’s second-largest workforce, it can be a challenge to find the right hire, especially in the middle of a pandemic. In order to succeed we need to acknowledge that the things that matter to job seekers have changed. Employers have to reimagine their recruitment strategies to find great talent and create opportunities for growth. Indeed is constantly innovating to find new ways to improve, adapt and simplify the hiring process and VHE is a step in that direction. All of what we do is with the hope that we can help people get jobs and we are especially proud to have products and solutions for the recruiting market in India,” said Sashi Kumar, Managing Director, Indeed.com.

Employers identified virtual hiring as a more democratic approach towards recruitment:

Companies have shifted their focus to the future and need great talent to grow and achieve success. They’ve also had to reimagine their workplace practices, to stay relevant and attractive to job seekers today, including how they hire. 31% employers credited virtual hiring for giving them wider access to talent, while another 28% said this approach allowed for flexibility and convenience, a priority for job seekers today. Nearly 1 in 5 employers also said that virtual hiring reduced bias in the recruitment process.

Indeed’s Virtual Hiring Events can be used to connect with candidates at scale and hire for any role. Globally, where VHE is already helping revolutionize how companies hire, it has been observed that those looking to hire for many entry-level roles, those who need to make many hires across different roles in hospitality, food service, retail, and warehouse operations, and those looking for talent such as nursing, tend to be best suited for these events.

Closer home, Anjali Singh, Program Manager at Homelane, a participant at Indeed Showcase today and a pilot VHE user, shared, “With people spending more time at home, the demand for interior design solutions have grown, and so has the need to expand our team. Indeed was quick to set up a virtual hiring page for Homelane, and also helped optimize our hiring through targeted campaigns, making sure the right candidates reached out to us. Sure enough, our first hiring day was an enormous success. VHE offered great value to us and simplified the sourcing and interviewing process in these times where hiring virtually can be a challenge. We’ve held three more such sessions on Indeed and experienced similar success rates and believe this solution will be a game changer.”

Employers did not rely much on virtual hiring before the pandemic. Will that change?

Across organization types – large and medium Indian & global companies, SMEs and startups – more than 4 in 5 employers indicate that they started using virtual hiring only during the pandemic.

That said, more than one in four employers (26%) consider virtual hiring a novel and surprisingly effective experience, and another 22% believe that it is the right way forward, even while acknowledging its present challenges. And nearly two in every five employers believe virtual hiring is here to stay post pandemic.

The study further shows that sectors such as BPO/iTes (95%), Media & Entertainment (90%) and Telecom (87%) are embracing new age technologies and hiring mostly through virtual means while sectors dependent upon physical labour such as Construction & Real Estate (98%),  Manufacturing (97%),  Agriculture (95%) and Retail (93%) prefer face to face hiring methods only. Employers from the Financial Services (91%), Marketing & Advertising (89%) and Healthcare & Pharma (87%) prefer a more hybrid approach towards hiring. Regardless, putting a face to a name still seems important as virtual interviews/video conferencing (29%) emerged as the most favoured virtual hiring method by employers.

Those who host virtual hiring events, regardless of sector or location or organization type, will now be able to focus on the interviewing and hiring portion of the recruiting process since Indeed handles the event promotion on the its job site, uses automation to manage candidate screening and communication (RSVPs, scheduling and automated reminders), and provides the video interviewing technology, and be assured that job seekers will sign up to attend open virtual interviews hosted by them.