The havoc wrecked by the COVID-19 pandemic across the globe is both unprecedented and daunting. Along with its tremendous impact on human lives, it also succeeded in creating ripples in the corporate world, the most concerning being layoffs, shutting down of businesses, work from home-led redundancies, and increasing rates of unemployment across all industries.

An increasing number of colleagues/professionals lost their jobs or internships — proof of a not-so-good ‘New Normal’. To mitigate this challenge, we launched #SupportSaturdays (#SS) on the employment-oriented virtual platform - LinkedIn on August 15, 2020.

#SS is the first Global Digital CSR-led social campaign in which more than 70 ambassadors — entrepreneurs and leaders from various industries — share the profiles of professionals who have lost their jobs due to the pandemic to afford them strategic collective visibility.

People tag their CVs/ Video CVs using the hashtag #SS, and the magic of sharing and caring begins every Saturday from 11 a.m. onwards.

A Professionals Movement BY Professionals FOR Professionals

The genesis of #SS lies in the concept of Individual Corporate Social Responsibility. We launched the campaign with a series of videos - #SS Hai na.

Furthermore, based on our learnings from our community, we launched other initiatives under the primary goal of bringing people and opportunities together:

♦ Establishing a free-of-cost platform for hiring managers called #Tuesday Jobfair, where we curate job offers from for people to apply.

♦ We launched #MentoringMondays, where industry leaders, coveted authors, and CXOs mentor the younger generation through a pre-recorded video every Monday.

♦ As the next step, we plan to launch Video CVs Fair on Saturdays.

What started with a 25-member team, has now grown to 70 plus ambassadors who strongly believe that building hope is an important task. We have achieved considerable halfway success with professionals being able to access interviews through #SS and are hopeful of hearing positive news from candidates in the coming months.

Plans for #SupportSaturdays

We plan to write plenty of success stories. Since the West has moved towards Video CVs, we plan to launch the next offering of grooming professionals to build confident Video CVs and break the clutter by grabbing the attention of recruiters in a fast, efficient, and digitally oriented way.

Every step on the path of #SS Campaign is a milestone in new learning for all of us. We have built a platform where like-minded senior professionals have come together to help the professional community. Our aim is to nurture a compassionate and empathetic community of people and master the art of collective digital influence as a team. We are looking forward to building it to the next level where recruiters can look up to #SS as a one-stop destination for their hiring needs.

Poonam Vijay Thakkar: With over 2 decades of experience, Poonam is an award-winning 360-degree surround marketing, customer, and digital leadership champion. An alumna of IIM-A, she is currently an international-certified (ICF and CCA accredited) life wellness coach. She is the marketing brain who conceptualised the idea for #Supportsaturdays.

Vinod Arora: Vinod is a Strategic Human Resource Professional with over 14 years of experience. His responsibilities include onboarding, background checks, compensation, benefits, employee file management, time and attendance, and exit management. He enjoys coaching, mentoring, and sharing knowledge with his peer groups and is in the process of publishing his book on “HR”. He engineered a global team with HR excellence for #Supportsaturdays.