Job seekers are bearing the brunt of COVID-19 like many others. There’s no definite answer to when all this will be over. Weeks, months, or the whole year of 2020. One thing that everyone is sure of is that things will not remain the same once the dust settles. Habits, patterns, strategies – everything will experience a change.

And job seekers will have to keep up with the hiring trends to remain relevant in the industry – especially when trends are unprecedented and unpredictable. Among the many trends that will influence the job search process after the pandemic, below are the 5 most influential of the lot.

1.  Expansion of Gig Workforce

According to PWC studies, cost efficiency is a key target for 83% of US CEOs over the next few months. More and more companies will be leveraging the gig workforce to contain their costs without compromising on the work efficiency. Areas where freelancing was not commonplace, will also experience a spurt of freelance opportunities.

Integrating distributed gig workforce in everyday working environments will no more pose a challenge as companies have been working in a distributed work culture for long now. They will be better equipped with all the necessary tools, techniques, and strategies to handle the remote gig workforce.

Therefore, apart from full-time positions, freelance opportunities will also see an upsurge in numbers.

2.Virtual Recruitment and Onboarding

Travels bans are likely to persist even if the lockdown gets lifted in the upcoming months – especially global travel. This will thrust more and more companies to shift to a virtual recruitment and onboarding process.

Unlike earlier, companies won’t be asking job seekers to come down for the interviews or joining processes. Instead, everything will be taken care of virtually.

COVID-19 transition has already given rise to many hiring and onboarding tools to make the virtual recruitment process easy. Prolonged travel bans will put all these tools to use and make virtual recruitment a new norm for every industry.

Therefore, job seekers will be expected to get comfortable with this new method of recruiting. However, once normalcy prevails, many companies would want employees to relocate near the offices and thus would ensure that new hires are comfortable doing it.

Read More: Virtual Recruiting – The Next Big Thing

3. Tech Adaptability and Agility

Technology has helped the world survive in the current troubling times. Our dependency on tools and software is at its peak. Over the last few weeks, Google Meet’s day-over-day growth surpassed 60%, and as a result, its daily usage is more than 25 times what it was in January.

With increasing automation in every industry, these dependencies and stats will only rise in the coming months. But companies don’t want to spend time training employees to use tools and operate basic tech software. Therefore, they will focus on hiring talents who are adept in using tech and can self-learn new technologies without hand-holding at every step.

Consequently, tech adaptability and agility will be a contributing factor in the hiring process, in addition to the required job skill.  

4. Upskilling and Reskilling

Upskilling has been one of the hottest trends in the hiring industry before the pandemic hit. But the COVID-19 influenced recession has made it more critical. Companies are now looking for ways to upskill and reskill their employees to adjust to the changing workforce scenario.

This trend is also going to hit the job seekers as well. They will be pushed to level up their skills to meet the tough job market. To land the job of their choice, they would need to be much more than basic. They would need to stand out.  To make this happen, upskilling and reskilling is all that will help the job seekers to make their mark in the stack of other resumes.

 5. Tough Salary Negotiation

Salary negotiation has never been easy for job seekers. And with companies brooding layoff and recession marking its entry, it will be even harder to negotiate.

Companies will be skeptical about spending a lot on new hires until they’re sure of the value new hires to bring. Therefore, they will do everything it takes to negotiate the salaries.

To make their case strong, job seekers will be expected to have the updated skills on their resumes and thorough research of the current pay standards and competition in the market. In business language, they will have to prove their ROI to make a tough bargain.

Preparedness is the Ultimate Trend

U.S unemployment stats which marked 3.5% in Dec 2019, now clocks 20% with 4.4 million Americans filing unemployment claims in the week ending April 18. Stats are alarming considering we are midway into the pandemic.

However, hope resides that once the economy starts flowing, the unemployment rates will come down. And that’s when job seekers will be most required to hit the job market with their proactiveness and preparedness to land the job of their choice.

Read More: How COVID-19 is Leading Staffing Industry into Future