The Performance of Job Listing Players Amid Pandemic

Pandemic "hit" all kinds of businesses. Millions of people in Indonesia have lost their jobs. This risk applied not only to blue-collar workers but also to the white-collars.

It is obvious from several global and local scale companies with massive efficiency in order to have a longer runway. All of the workers are quite affected and ended up exploring various job portals to survive.

Previously, DailySocial mentioned how blue-collar job portal players play a role in keeping the law of supply and demand in place. The conditions are not much different for the white-collar workers.

While many are looking for work, some companies freeze recruitment. The current condition is reflected on JobStreet Indonesia's post, one of the biggest job vacancies site players in Indonesia, on their social media accounts uploaded on August 3rd. They wrote:

"Before the pandemic there could be 30k more vacancies. During the pandemic, there were only about 15k vacancies. Before the pandemic, one position (job vacancies) was usually 400-600 applicants. During a pandemic, one position can have 2k-3k applicants."

The number is quite unique and Urbanhire is willing to provide its internal data. Urbanhire's Founder and CEO, Benson Kawengian explained to DailySocial that generally in the third quarter is the peak time to start recruiting.

However, the company's internal data as of the second quarter showed the ratio (see graphic) of shifting in the number of job seekers above the number of jobs available.

“Five months since the pandemic started, new job vacancies entering the Urbanhire platform are still quite in the past few months. It is very different from earlier this year, where the number of vacancies per month could reach 500," Benson said.

The opposite condition occurs in the number of job applicants. The number can reach 60 thousand per month. He concluded that the pandemic caused an imbalance in the supply of workers and the demand for jobs circulating in society.

New Recruitment

The employment ratio of workers with the vacancies is becoming more intense. Looking at the SEAcosystem.com spreadsheet document and local versions of similar documents, every day the list of laid-off startup workers continues to grow, although not all of them are displayed voluntarily here. From our observation, the majority of the divisions affected were marketing and engineering/product/IT.

Based on Urbanhire data, Benson showed one of the industries still recruiting and involved in the "green" industry during the pandemic was an e-commerce player.

"The government's social distancing policy forces companies to apply WHF rules for their employees. As a result, there has been an increase in the use of digital-based technology and services. This results in an increasing need for companies for IT talent, as well as for remote workers. "

The same condition was explained by Ekrut's Co-Founder and CEO Steven Suliawan. IT-related talents and digital marketing are the most wanted job vacancies these days. From the type of industry, companies engaged in financial services, telecommunications, FMCG, and healthcare are active in recruiting and are not significantly affected by the pandemic.

"In terms of job roles in general, there has been a significant decrease, especially in some business-related matters. Surprisingly, although there has been a decline, the demand for tech-roles is not significantly dropped, such as the position of software engineering, product development, data analysis, and digital marketing position."

Plays an important role

The role of Urbanhire and Ekrut is quite important in connecting information about job vacancies to prospective candidates. Benson said the pandemic has drastically affected the way companies recruit employees by running the recruitment process virtually remotely.

One of the technologies that can support this process is the Applicant Tracking System (ATS), which is increasingly being used by recruiters. Urbanhire issued a free subscription package and the unlimited resume search feature.

This free subscription package can be used by recruiters to post job vacancies and distribute them to various job vacancy portals and universities in Indonesia. Meanwhile, the next feature allows you to access millions of high-quality candidate profiles at no additional cost.

"We hope that companies in Indonesia will be better prepared to face changes due to the pandemic going forward. This readiness is in the form of a change in the way candidates are recruited, where many companies are already recruiting online "

The previous graph, Benson continued, also indicates another insight that some companies are focusing on rightsizing, looking for the most appropriate number of headcount points (employees) in the midst of a pandemic.

Urbanhire alone does not position itself as a job portal only, but as HR technology and talent solutions, thanks to its strategic partnership with Mercer.

"We have some features to help companies during assessment and data analysis for rightsizing; and remote hiring to help companies which starting to ramp up activity hiring. "

"We are sure that recruitment will rebound and return to pre-pandemic times after the vaccine came out. But even before the vaccine, digital talents will remain the hot candidates for at least the next five years regardless of the economic situation, "added Steven.

Ekrut has always been focused on fulfilling talents in the information technology field with job-roles ranging from software engineering, product management, data science/analysis, marketing and communications, and operations. The features they have developed include a talent marketplace and a marketplace curation algorithm (MCA).

Increasing opportunities

The initiation of the SEAcosystem.com spreadsheet and local versions of similar documents is another form of a simplified version of the job portal that connects them with companies that still hiring, not only a database of who and how many workers are affected.

Increasing job vacancies information will reduce the gap in the ratio of workers to companies looking for the best candidates. This method can be implemented in collaboration between the government and the private sector. In Indonesia alone, there were more than 20 job vacancy site players attending, both local and global, such as Indeed, JobsDB, and JobStreet.

In Singapore, the local Fintech Association has released a job and grant site that lists more than 500 vacancies in six categories, namely information technology, business development, data analytics, management and business, accounting and finance, and marketing and public relations.

The portal also highlights available grants and relevant training opportunities in the fintech sector.

Next, a collaboration between Indeed's global job site and local governments in one of the U.S. states, Connecticut. Indeed created a customized job portal so that people or employers can open the portal to find or post job advertisements.

The types of jobs that are in high demand there, according to Indeed, are retail sales associates, pharmacy technicians, logistics couriers, customer service representatives, and jobs in the restaurant industry.

Indeed is also working with its competitor, Glassdoor, to provide Americans with the opportunity to return to work as there are more people there.

Both cross-promote their brands and the job listings available on both sites. Even recruiters who use the Indeed platform can reach their potential candidates through Glassdoor, and vice versa. With this kind of partnership, they claim to be able to reach around 80% of online job seekers.

– Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian