Swati*, who was working for a financial services firm, recently lost her job in a layoff by the company owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. Swati, whose income helped run the household, is now actively taking to LinkedIn, Naukri, and even social media to try and find a job.
Like Swati, thousands of people lost their jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic and the economic slowdown that ensued. From multinational companies such as Indiabulls to startups such as Ola, Uber, Swiggy and Zomato, several companies have laid off thousands of employees each.
Laid off employees are now thronging job portals and even social media seeking employment opportunities. LinkedIn says that it is seeing a 55% year-over-year increase in conversations among connections globally since March 2019.
Naukri also has seen a sequential improvement in its active jobseeker database starting May where every week has been better than the previous one.
These active job seekers are mostly from the IT, Accounting and BFSI industries. The job seeker affinity to apply to jobs has also seen an uptick across sectors like BPO/ITES, insurance, internet/e-commerce and KPO, research and analytics in the last few weeks.
The good news, however, is that, amid all the layoffs, there are still companies that are looking to hire.
A report by Naukri has seen that there is 33% improvement in hiring in June compared to the last two months.
The platform says that industries such as pharma/biotech/clinical research, BPO/ITES, insurance and IT-software are less impacted when it comes to hiring in June. “Hiring in Hospitality, Retail and Auto sectors was significantly hit due to the lockdown. However, with the Unlock 1.0 initiative undertaken by the government in June’20, we see a revival in recruitment activities in these sectors as well,” the report states.
LinkedIn says that it has seen a rise in hiring by companies belonging to the technology, gaming, e-commerce, ed-tech and insurance sectors.
“A quick LinkedIn scan will also tell you that companies such as Intel, Larsen & Toubro, Wipro have been actively looking for talent, particularly engineering and data science experts. Similarly, ecommerce and edtech platforms have been on a hiring spree to keep up with the increasing demand for online deliveries and education from home. Dunzo, BigBasket, Gofers are hiring talent to smoothen delivery operations, while Whitehat Jr, Unacademy, Simplilearn, Vedantu are offering active openings for permanent job roles across levels,” a LinkedIn spokesperson told TNM.
Encouraged by the trend and given the unprecedented situation that COVID-19 has presented, these online job portals too, have been introducing new initiatives and measures to make job seeking and hiring more convenient.
LinkedIn, for example, is allowing sectors that have urgent hiring needs to post jobs for free on LinkedIn, especially for healthcare companies, supermarkets and those requiring delivery personnel. It has also launched an open to work feature that helps job seekers signal to recruiters that they are looking to explore new opportunities.
Naukri, on the other hand, is prioritizing discovery and access to all jobseekers who have been laid off due to the pandemic. Under its resume database, it has also created a separate filter for all laid-off employees that marks their profiles as ‘Immediately available to join’ and is visible to recruiters while searching for relevant talent.
It also launched its ‘Step-Up’ initiative in the form of a microsite on the Naukri platform to let recruiters post jobs for free and give them easy access to profiles of jobseekers who lost their jobs due to COVID-19.
The microsite also has a live hiring tracker for companies and industries, hiring insights across industries and roles, tops on interviews, etc.
Monster India too, has reportedly launched a separate section ‘Jobs affected by COVID-19’, where it offers support to be able to find the right jobs. It has also put together a list of companies looking to hire.
These platforms are also stepping up skilling on the platform so job seekers can acquire skills that are in demand. While Naukri is offering a curated list of free in-demand upskilling courses and live webinars.
Similarly, LinkedIn has partnered with Microsoft to give job seekers access to learning tools and resources needed to develop critical skills for the digital economy. LinkedIn is also providing 275 LinkedIn Learning courses for free across seven languages, including lessons and tips for job seekers.
LinkedIn claims that in the past 3 months, it has seen uptick of 176% in the LinkedIn Learning content in India. In April 2020, learners watched 1.2 million hours of LinkedIn learning content in a single week.
While there is no vaccine in sight for coronavirus, and there is uncertainty over when things will get back to normal, a survey by online job site Indeed has revealed that a majority of the respondents from the survey are optimistic that the labour market will bounce back in India in six months.
Meanwhile, Naukri claims that it has been receiving huge traction for its initiative with nearly 4 lakh unique job seekers accessing the microsite weekly for enhancing their careers in these uncertain times, be it finding latest jobs, exploring hiring insights in their industry, reading curated blogs or shortlisting free upskilling courses for themselves.
“On the recruiter side, over 250 clients from critical industries like Medical, Healthcare, Pharma and Telecom have availed the free services to post jobs on our platform,” the company said.