2020 has been a year of surprises and the job sector hasn’t been shy of the ups and downs for the first half of the year. There have been many changes over the years in the hiring sector but none have been more driving or impactful than this year’s hiring processes have been. Most of the credit for these astonishments could be given to the pandemic, the one that has shaken the world and put the future of ours’ into jeopardy.
Let’s count how the coronavirus pandemic has transformed the tech sector of the world:

1. IT occupations have declined by 1% of the total workforce.
2. Around 70% of sectors have frozen their hirings or have laid off some of the employees.
3. Around 26 million U.S citizens claimed themselves as jobless in April.
4. According to Glassdoor, there was a 20% drop off in the job openings in the U.S from March to April.
5. Hardware companies, startups, e-commerce companies, etc., were all cut off their staff during the first half of the year.

Draught in the Sectors:

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, job losses have been the most prominent in 2020 compared to prior years.

Companies have become reluctant about their hirings. According to a survey by Hackernoon unemployment rates in the IT sector pushed from 2.3% to 4.4% during March. According to another survey by USA Today, unemployment rates increased to a whopping 10.2% in July. Apple, Intel, Dell Technologies, etc., have all cut down their job postings by 30-60%.

According to “The Economic Times”, India’s employment rate increased by 3.3% during June, as it reached 35.7% from 32.4%. But it is much lower than the employment rate of 39.5% from pre-coronavirus days. As per an employment outlook, unemployment rates will reach 10% by the end of 2020.

The economic recession has hit various industries all over the world and has obligated the companies to “cut the slack”. Companies have been laying off employees for the past half of this year and this is not looking good.

According to Hackernoon, industries with the highest layoff rates are :

Ray of Hope:

Though employment had been scarce in the first quarter, companies have somewhat regained their status and with the new “work-from-home” scenario, hirings have also become remote. Among all the hiatus, and amidst all the job losses, there has been some good news. It is not like people haven’t been offered jobs or there haven’t been any job openings. The thing is, the job sector has become a lot more competitive than it was before and certain skills have gained a lot of attention these days. There has been an increase in hirings in some sectors. Around 20000 candidates were hired in April amidst the pandemic in the IT sector.

Skills have become tools for getting employed and there have emerged certain skills that have been garnering much recognition and acquisition.

According to Robert Half, these are the skills in demand in 2020 :

• Cybersecurity
• Cloud
• Business Intelligence
• Database Management
• DevOps

According to Burning Glass, job openings in cybersecurity increased by 20% in April. Openings for .Net developers and system engineers also increased to 12% and 11% despite the pandemic. Amazon has already hired over 100000 employees over the past six months and is planning to hire around 75000 more by the end of 2020.

Companies have been trying to manage the situation by undertaking cost-effective and efficient ways of hiring. Sectors that have continued their hiring amid the outbreak, as per Hackernoon are :

According to Thinknum – Adobe, Twilio, Salesforce and Slack have boosted their hiring during the situation. These four companies experienced jumps in the job listings between 20% to 40%. Another report by the same suggested that the big techs like Google, Facebook, Apple, etc., have maintained a steady hiring process throughout the pandemic.

To sum it all..

Remote work is going to stay for a while now according to experts and thus, it would be best for companies to hire their talent also remotely.

A major part of the recovery by the companies regarding the recruitment amidst the crisis has been possible due to third-party assessment vendors such as Glider.ai. Platforms such as Glider.ai are the reasons companies have been able to hire remotely. Due to their holistic and innovative assessment and interview techniques, companies such as Facebook, Nutanix, AT&T have been maintaining their recruitment numbers during the pandemic.