Organizations that aim to hire this season are increasingly shifting to virtual campus placements as they face significant challenges with their traditional campus hiring schedules due to COVID-19, according to a recently launched report by Mercer | Mettl. With COVID-19 disrupting regular campus hiring drives this season, virtual platforms are serving as imperative solutions to conduct campus placements while maintaining social distancing protocols.
The report titled 'Campus Hiring 2020: Challenges, Trends, and Best Practices' gauges the challenges with the traditional campus placements and the solutions organizations are employing to overcome the disruption and continue with their hiring schedules. It recorded responses from over 400 campus recruiters across sectors, including IT, BFSI & trading, manufacturing, healthcare, government, construction, entertainment & mass media and retail.
Speaking on this industry development, Siddhartha Gupta, CEO, Mercer | Mettl said, "Virtual campus hiring solutions are a great way for organizations to keep up with the hiring momentum and maintain their business sustainability in these challenging times. Campus establishments, too, are exploring ways to make the campus placements smooth for their students. These new-age solutions ensure hiring from campuses are neither delayed nor fraught with contagion risks while maintaining the credibility of the processes."
The two significant challenges that organizations face with their traditional campus drives are engaging the students before the placements and coordinating with multiple campuses, the report reveals. Engaging students by building connections and brand visibility before placements is a challenge for over 55% of organizations, as an increasing number of students today want to work with organizations that align with their visions and ambitions. Additionally, visiting multiple campuses physically and conducting screening assessments of students and interviewing them in the physical setting is another major challenge for companies. About 84% of organizations said booking interview venues and slotting a convenient time without a clash with parallel hiring drives is a major pain point for them.
The report further analyzes the use of technology by companies to overcome these challenges and continue with their hiring plans and business as usual. A majority of the institutions surveyed for the report showed interest in innovative new-age virtual tools such as hackathons, ideathons, case study simulators and online contests for better pre-placement engagement with the students.
Regarding screening and assessing students, organizations are increasingly using remote proctored screening assessments that allow them to screen the candidates remotely, eliminating concerns related to malpractices. 22% of the surveyed companies point to cheating prevention and impersonation as their most pressing screening challenge in maintaining the credibility and authenticity of their campus drives.
Moreover, companies are adopting virtual interviews for their campus placements this season to avoid conducting them in a physical setting. Students can appear for such virtual interviews from anywhere, anytime. Campus recruiters, too, can easily interview the candidates virtually, in an efficient and hassle-free manner. Organizations leveraging such modern-age and innovative tools enjoy an onboarding rate as high as 76%, the report states.
The report attempts to understand the workings of traditional campus hiring processes in the past, besides assessing how organizations can change their campus hiring strategy to overcome unforeseen disruptions, such as COVID-19. It further divulges how campus placements can be efficiently shifted online, using technology and virtual hiring solutions, making standard procedures resilient to future disruptions.
