While the Covid-19 pandemic is the most discussed topic in every corner of the globe, the next challenge is its massive impact on economy slow down and disruption in business and as a result the overall hiring sentiment in the country is likely to witness an adverse impact with 60-65 per cent interviews getting delayed across industry, especially in the services, retail, manufacturing, infrastructure sector.

On the other hand organizations would be much careful on cost control on human resource and the expectation would be mostly 3 fold higher on multitasking and highly skilful human resource and for obvious reason the other challenge would be competition. Therefore finding a new job in the economic slowdown time will be a massive challenge and hence should have very careful focus on readiness and proactive battle plan.

1. Create your mind and make a closer look on short term :

This is the time it’s very important to find out strength on your skill and map industries and job accordingly. This may help you get an opportunity but it may not be the perfect job. Consider it as a short term move, so that mind would be ready and relaxed to accept.

2. Time to work on 3 skill:

Utilize this time to work on and improve following 3 skill set which are going to be decisive in future job search.

1. Sociability skill:
   Focus on effective communication, team work, ego & expectation management, presentation skill etc.

2. Analytic Skill:
   It’s not only data analysis and data representation, but also situation analysis. You learn this skill by following several case studies from several organization available in internet.

3. Functional Skill:
   Should have very honest and careful focus on functional skill and its strong foundation.

   3. Digital Networking:
   Look for joining professional group like linkedIn or facebook etc. Join in the conversation, post and comment, chat and make yourself visible. Get ready to ace a virtual informational interview or networking chat by practicing with a friend

4. Stay Connected:
The situation may be that in the recent time you had a promising interaction with a hiring manager, but due to this situational reason the same is taking time to matured, so it’s recommend to stay connected with hiring manager through different means. For instance, connect with the hiring manager on LinkedIn and, if they post a status, comment on it. But be very careful that the comment should be honest and that illustrates you read it and have valuable insight to contribute. Pretend you’re giving them a preview of what you’d add to the team if you worked there.

5. Boost skill:

Nothing better than this time to work on and boost your skill and improve qualification. There are plenty of free online programs like MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course), Microsoft Training, EdX Classes (featuring free courses from MIT and Harvard) , CoursEra , NASSCOM FutureSkill etc. This kind of program would add lot of value and make your resume stand out.

6. Learn to face interview digitally:

At this moment there is no proven treatment and vaccine of COVID-19, hence organizations would prefer to go for digital interview process until it’s extremely essential to have F2F discussion. Therefore first few rounds of interaction on digital platform would decide a lot and this required lot of practice to comfortable with. Like its required to know technology know how of the platforms like zoom , gotomeetings, skype, whatsapp video call etc and on the other side important to know the etiquette , representation , Q & A etc.

The best way to learn this is start such sessions with friends or known peoples of the same pitch whom you know. The other way is to go for online classes for re-skilling and up-skilling yourself.

7. Mental & Physical Fitness:

This is last but not the least that ensure honest effort to make yourself mentally and physically fit, happy. I strongly recommend to make a practice of doing min. 30 min. physical exercise (free hand) and min 30 min Yoga that would boost your physical and mental fitness, improve concentration, make you stress free.  

During an economic slowdown due to pandemic, it’s important to focus on what you can control—improving your skills and reaching out to your network. You should be realistic while optimistic by doing homework now so that when situation improve then you can actually open the door and see the light of brighter future ahead.