For the past months we all have been living in what is referred to as the “The New Norm”. So, the question in the world of recruiting what is this new norm? 

Historically, what we have seen for the past decade has been a client having a need to hire a new member for their sales team. Some clients will use in-house resources to try to fill the slot. Recruiters involvement in this process normally come from one of two sources. A recruiter has an existing relationship with the client and is given the assignment to provide candidates or the recruiter learns of the opening from a source such as the client advertising for candidates etc. the issue has always been one of finding quality openings and filling them. 

The real issue in this new norm is that many of your existing clients who have reached out to you, do not currently have the number of openings that they had 6 months ago. So, the question one has to ask is this new? For many, the answer is not really. What has changed is that many have to step back in time and do what they did years ago and find new clients actually have openings to work. This may mean one has to step out of their comfort zone and go where there is opportunity. 

Let’s assume you have an opening and it is time to find your client, candidates. In the world we knew prior to “The New Norm” you would check your database, do searches on LinkedIn and possibly advertise for the opening. So, what has changed? Maybe you actually updated your database over the last several months which would be a plus, beyond that the “The New Norm” has really muddied the waters. As we all know hundreds of thousands of candidates were either furloughed or released and have flooded the market. Clients think this should enable them to have a better pool of potential candidates to hire from. The truth of the matter is that we are now seeing that many of those who were released were not in the top 20% or in many cases not even in the top 50%. This is good and bad all at once. Many clients are going to experience this same issue and what they envisioned as ‘easy” hires due to the abundance of “low hanging fruit” is not really the case and they simply do not have the staff to handle the abundance of unqualified candidates they are or will have applying. It may take some time, but these issues will play a major role in clients needing independent recruiters.

Over the year’s quality candidates have always been willing to listen. The next issue to arise in “The New Norm” is quality candidates that simply don’t want to move as they do not want to give up their track record and tenure where, they are. This is not really a new phenomenon. It is simply making sure that candidates are prequalified so that you are surprised in the eleventh hour.

So, what is “The New Norm”? It is a shift that has occurred not unlike many shifts we have seen in the past. It may require some changes in what you have been doing recently but not all new techniques, rather simply re-evaluating what has worked in similar market conditions in the past.

In fact, some things may have advanced and that will make the process easier, quicker or cost effective such as use of Zoom.