Hiring & Retaining talent

Hiring and Retaining Top talent ranks as the #1 priority for any successful organisation. Thanks to the pandemic, face to face interviews are becoming a thing of the past. Social distancing rules have kept HR teams physically apart but digitally stitched. How has the pandemic transformed the process of Talent Acquisition?

Onboarding : Then and Now

While the application and screening process have undergone digital transformation prior to COVID19, interviews and internal assessments were still a blend of physical and digital. This has now changed. Today we conduct the same via different technology mediums. The process of Onboarding has now become completely virtual and that includes inductions, meetups etc.

Evolving Trends in Recruitment Processes

In general, the number of job applications saw a major drop in March, when the pandemic had already conquered headlines globally and the uncertainty regarding the economy started kicking in. But now, things are falling back to normal and recruitment seems to be picking up for specific domains who have experienced rapid growth, for eg:e-Commerce and edutech. For a startup like ours, we have onboarded 20 employees starting from March till now which is an all time high.They were inducted in September and our leadership team met them individually following the required social distancing and covid protocols.

The Pre-covid Work Life

Apart from recruitment, we also realised the importance of employee engagement more than ever before. At Terrific Minds, we conduct monthly All Hands meetings to keep our employees informed about the shifting global trends and activities that we plan to pursue as a team. We always try our best to make sure that our employees don’t miss the energy that we had in our office physically. While everyone misses our fun events like Terrific Tuesdays, an employee engagement activity that used to happen bi-monthly in our office, we have now introduced Terrific Challenges to keep the excitement alive.

Employee Well-being during the Pandemic

Keeping our employees mentally and physically fit is another aspect we focus on, which is why we urge our staff to sign up for Zumba, Leadership Series Sessions and TerriFIT. Leadership Series is where we expect our employees to be continuously motivated and this got kicked off with Mr. Rajan Singh, Former IPS officer and Wharton Scholar who led us through his journey and learnings. He delivered an amazing session on building life-changing habits. We expect to overcome the covid era very soon and see things moving back to the “Old-normal”.

Humans are wired to thrive during adversity and our survival kits have never been tweaked like this in a good 50 years. This situation has not just created an opportunity to upskill for the applicants but it has even done the same for employees who are suddenly clueless on the rapid adaptation that is required. It could either accelerate the growth of skills or create skill gaps, which means that while some individuals will see their careers grow and progress, others will be held back by a combination of their personal circumstances and industry shifts. Being proactive and communicative has never been more important for survival than during these times.