Elton ILIRJANI
The Headhunter CEO
While the world’s economies are still waiting to start recovery, after an abrupt stop caused by the pandemic which left many companies bankrupt and millions without jobs, several of our clients contacted us to start headhunting for them.
We thought at first that this was just by chance, or that it was connected to an industry that wasn’t affected, after all, who was hiring at present time, but this wasn’t the case. And then we started hearing about similar things from other headhunters and within industries that were affected by the pandemic.
I managed to arrange several conference calls with some of our clients that had headhunting requests, and just to make sure that this wasn’t some isolated case I spoke to our clients from New York, Tirana and Sarajevo. I was lucky that The Headhunter Group operates in a dozen countries, so it wasn’t hard for me to get a more global picture of what was happening in the markets. After just a few conversations, it became clearer why some companies were looking for employees even though they were posting losses and not hiring since mid-March.
“We’re not taking anyone in the next couple of weeks, but when this dies down, we want the best possible candidates ready to start quickly” – said a manager of mid-sized company from Sarajevo to me. Quite similar explanations were given to me by other clients. They suffered losses, some minor, some quite significant losses. But they understood that very soon the economy will be picking up, and when it does, they wanted to be ready, and ahead of their competitors.
The more I thought about it from their perspective, to more apparent it became, though we are living through very difficult times, very soon we will be up and running, and opportunities in the market will be incredible for both employers and employees. Those millions that were left without jobs in the past two months will be looking for new jobs, and the same will happen with those employers that were forced to let them go.
In the next couple of years, we will witness an extraordinary movement in the employment markets. Millions will change jobs, and quicker than ever before in history. Candidates will look for new and better employment opportunities, try new things, get qualifications for different jobs, while employers will look to find new candidates to fill the positions that will open up as soon as companies are up and running. And in this very near future, the companies that have started to recruit already, will have an enormous advantage over their competition.
