The COVID- 19 pandemic has profoundly altered the traditional structure of businesses across various industry verticals and after months of maneuvering through the crisis, companies are embracing remote hiring, revealed a recent report.

According to the CareerNet Consulting survey conducted over 114 HR /TA decision makers from companies across cities and sectors in India , three out of four organisations believe they can effectively hire employees remotely. 

The findings claimed that companies from e-Commerce, IT/ITES, Services, Science and Technology and Telecommunications sectors exhibit a higher readiness (82%) for virtual hiring.

More than half of the employers have partially active hiring plans for the next 3 months. In Q3, it is expected to gradually open. While, 18% of organizations have active hiring plans for Q2 which increases significantly to 25% in Q3. Meanwhile, 18% companies that said their hiring is completely paused for Q2 gets reduced to 8% in Q3.

"The past 3 months has been a time of reflection and reprioritization for businesses and have brought a new wave of change in the way businesses operate," said Anshuman Das, CEO and Co-founder, CareerNet Technologies.

 "The report suggests that the hiring momentum should touch pre-Covid-19 levels by April 2021, primarily driven by remote hiring. That being said, this would be at a lower base considering the downsizing over the last six months. The pandemic has also disrupted the academic calendar this year impacting the campus hiring process. We expect this to be more phased out and not concentrated on a few days. When the economic recovery begins, organizations will re-start their plans."

More than 50% decision makers surveyed anticipate hiring to become fully active after January 2021. It is expected to take up to April 2021 for hiring to be at par with that of April 2020. 43% of organizations expect their hiring to become fully active from January while 12% expect it from April 2021.

Additionally, the study finds that 57% of companies forecast their hiring volume to be less than 500 in next one year. About 1 in 4 companies put this number to be less than 50.

While campus hiring will witness a decline in the overall hiring volume, it is not going to be very high. The campus hiring cycle this year is anticipated to be longer and not concentrated over a few days. 1/3rd of employers foresees no change from their original campus hiring plans, 36% of companies expect a decline in this year.