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Every passing hour recalibrates the future of talent. In the next five years, AI, big data, and machine learning will permanently transform the way businesses employ and manage their employee operations.
With the World Economic Forum predicting 35% of existing work profiles to become redundant in the post-COVID world, enterprises are significantly deploying digitization and automation to cope with the continually evolving, constantly upgrading, and continuously rehabilitating workforce architecture.
As organizations continue to implement drastic measures in future-proofing their workforce integrations to eventually and ultimately evolve from the disruption brought about by the pandemic, talent managers are grappling with another emerging undercurrent — migrating talent in the hope of better prospects. This means that companies in big cities will no longer have the leverage and uninhibited access to talent like they had enjoyed before the pandemic could strike.
From the California Gold Rush to the several digital rushes in the wake of the digital civilization, all influxes are a symptom of significant life-changing discoveries and innovations as attested by history.
On the contrary, COVID, being a catastrophe, has triggered a massive push-push from cities, which, until the pandemic, everyone rushed to for better prospects and simultaneously set an unprecedented rush to the smaller towns they had moved out from initially to pursue their career goals (in big cities).
In India with 70% of the IT workforce working in big cities like Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, and Delhi hailing from smaller towns and tier-1 and tier-2 cities, the pandemic has given them not only a chance to retain their employment in these challenging times but has also given them the privilege of being able to avoid high rental costs in big cities and receive emotional support from extended families at their homes.
India is not the only country undergoing this drastic transformation in the corporate landscape. Australia, which was known for its stringent immigration policies and closed doors, has now, post the pandemic, started widening its arms to welcome talent from the IT fraternity to spring back on its feet.
Canada, which is quintessentially renowned for its welcoming attitude towards immigrants, is expanding its doors wider for immigrants, especially those from the STEM fields.
The demand for jobs in the IT and data sectors is at an all-time high. At the end of August 2020, 93,500 data science jobs were up for grabs in India alone.
The pandemic has impelled organizations to keep an open mind towards recruiting specialists with unique skill sets and proficient remote workers without holding steadfast barriers such as location and pedigree, which was, up until COVID, an unavoidable filter.
What the organizations have yet to overcome fully is the traditional approach of being limited in their talent search — having to rely on unvetted and outdated data to make informed decisions on hiring the right talent. Here is a different perspective — organizations are being misled and counterproductive in hiring the right talent, mainly because of their inexpedient data.
For talent managers to assess skills and hire potential candidates, they need to scout for progressive characteristics not governed by orthodox approaches, which are known to hold biases and prejudices based on legacy recruiting parameters that are not in touch with the modern-day talent search requirements.
With the aid of AI and deep learning tools, organizations can seamlessly and successfully identify, recruit, and hire the right fit for a profile.
Many organizations have switched to hiring workers working from tier-1 and tier-2 cities, as they can employ high-quality talent at comparatively lower pay brackets.
It helps to remember that the talent can accommodate lower pay brackets if the cost of living and real estate does not rise in these small towns and cities, considering the mass migrations.
With 25-30 percent of the IT workforce expected to work from home by 2025, HR teams and organizations have a fundamental objective to fulfill.
By using structures built and formatted for the pre-COVID world, eventually allowing the organization to be disrupted by forces uncontrollable by the organization, talent managers will be inadvertently entering the zone of redundancy. The only way to stay ahead and future-proof the hiring process is to adopt new-age recruiting strategies integrated with proprietary AI systems and technology that help decision-makers make better decisions — sustainable and not prone to calamities.
