It’s sad to see a lot of companies freezing hiring or letting good quality people go. I’ve personally never been laid off but I’ve spent a significant amount of time thinking about ways that I can help people who have lost their jobs. I’ve shared spreadsheets with contact information, given the advice to enhance LinkedIn profiles, as well as resumes, and even sent candidates directly to recruiters. These efforts impact just a few. I can’t help but think about how difficult it must be to conclude that in order to survive as a company, you need to lay people off.

Salaries and benefits can make up the majority of expenses in companies and it can be an easy place to cut operating costs. I’ve never been involved in the process to make a decision to lay someone off but I know there are many factors that are considered before someone is laid off. Things like redundancy,  the level of contribution or impact, and of course salary. My hope is that the decision-makers are also considering the investment that has already been made in hiring and training these people. And with that in mind, I think it would be worthwhile to consider utilizing staff in a different capacity. Specifically, allowing talent acquisition to get more involved in the business operation or to invest in their training and processes.

The reality is most people in talent acquisition fell into it and have a pretty wide range of skill sets. Recruitment is customer success, sales, and marketing all rolled into one underfunded and under-resourced department. Most human resources & talent acquisition teams are busy managing the day-to-day operations, which makes it difficult to dive deep on projects that help them function. If you can’t utilize your recruiters, sourcers, generalists or coordinators, in other areas of the business like customer success, then invest in your future by putting them to work on building a stronger foundation with these 6 projects.

1. Revamp your career site

Most companies have terrible career sites that haven’t been touched in years because marketing has been busy working on product. Give your talent team the benefit of designing a career site that will attract the right talent.

Bonus Tip: Implement a talent community or talent network tool that will allow you to build a pipeline even when you’re not hiring. 

2. Tech stack analysis 

This is a great time to look at your Tech Stack. Get a better understanding of which platforms overlap, where there are gaps, and if you’re not leveraging implementations or automation. Most companies are underutilizing their software simply because they didn’t take the time to understand how it’s functionality can fit into or change your process. You might even think about restructuring your contracts as I bet you will have a lot of negotiating power right now.

3. Create content

Creating content is hard work. It requires creativity, a vision, and time! This is the perfect time to create content that will help attract and retain the right employees. Enable your teams to create stories for different audiences and create a content calendar that will keep your company top of mind.

4. Training

Even the seasoned, senior members of your team could use training. There are tons of expensive resources that have been made free online right now that can be taken advantage of. This is also a great time to train your peer interview team members. Get the next group of interviewers ramped up and ready to interview!

5. Build the pipeline

This is a great time to have conversations with those fringe candidates. The ones that have an interesting background, but didn’t make the cut for one reason or another. We all have something in common right now regardless of your industry or role so everyone should be networking. Start building the shortlist of candidates to reach out to when hiring ramps back up. 

6. Reporting & analytics 

I can’t think of an ATS that doesn’t have problems with reporting. Sometimes it’s just a problem of not understanding how it all works or having enough time to build out the necessary reports. And as you know, the data out is only as good as the data in so spend this time making sure everyone is on the same page 

The bottom line is, if you believe in your business, if you believe in your company, then you should believe it’s ok to press pause and invest in it. Take advantage of this moment and give your people the green light to invest in themselves. 
If your company is focused on investing in your processes and self-development then I’d love to hear from you!

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