The ongoing Covid pandemic has changed the way many of us do business and has forced many organizations to re-evaluate their business models.
The pandemic has given many employees cause to re-evaluate their situations too. The numbers of both employed and unemployed people actively seeking work rose to a 6-month high at the beginning of this year. A recent Indeed Job Search Survey saw job-seeking numbers rise from 28% in November to 34% in January 2022.
In addition to that, businesses also face increased online competition, changes in customer preferences and the need for new technological solutions. Randstad Canada’s annual career forecast suggests that employers are now seeking candidates who have different skill sets than the ones they’d required prior to 2020.
There’s yet more bad news for employers. Patrick Poulin, the Group President at Randstad Canada (a leading HR, and recruitment company) says that, “…job seekers will be “spoilt for choice if they have [what employers are looking for].”
It’s a challenging time for many businesses and it’s particularly problematic for those who are hiring because applicants can now afford to be pickier about which offers they accept. The most in-demand roles in 2022, and for which employers will face the stiffest competition for applicants, will be:
- Customer Service Representatives
- Scheduling Specialists
- Sales Representatives
- Cleaning Specialists
- Repair And Maintenance Workers
- Budgeting Specialists
- Project Management
- Quality Control Specialists
- Administrative Assistants
- Accountants
Creative Organizational Design provides applicant pre-screening and skills assessments and has already begun to see an increased number of employers enquiring about solutions in several of these categories.
Employers are wise to seek these out. An urgent need to fill a position shouldn’t cause one to lower one’s guard or be hasty when making hiring decisions, nor should the usual vetting processes be skipped just because there’s a smaller pool of applicants to select from.
Finding the person with the right skills, aptitudes and attitudes is always critical for success. This is exactly the time to be scrutinizing your applicants closely to ensure that you’re not about to on-board someone else’s reject. Bringing on someone who’ll become a problem, and who you’ll have to dismiss, is worse than having a vacancy for little while longer.
Luckily, there are thousands of high-quality, reliable and accurate screening solutions available for employers to choose from. There’s a skills or aptitude test available for every one of the top 10 most in-demand job roles listed above. Identifying the right candidate with the right fit from the outset is way cheaper than having to replace someone and search for a second time.
If your business is going to be filling positions in 2022 then you’re going to want to be able to identify the have’s from the have-nots. The links below will showcase a plethora of choices to help screen for these in-demand skill sets:
- Customer Service
- Scheduling
- Sales
- Cleaning
- Repair And Maintenance
- Budgeting
- Project Management
- Quality Control
- Administrative
- Accountants
Confirming that applicants will bring the right behaviours to the job and really have the skills you require makes the difference between a successful and an unsuccessful hire. It’s prudent, as well as a reliable and inexpensive way to avoid costly mistakes that only put you further behind.
Applicant testing during stressful times is often more, rather than less, necessary.
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David Towler is President of Creative Organizational Design, a firm offering nearly 40 years of expertise specializing in employee assessments and which has over 2000 different product titles available. Creative Organizational Design has 100s of assessment tools designed to help employers screen out other people’s rejects, assess skills, aptitude, attitude and ‘fit’ within an organization. For more information about the options available and help selecting the best tools for your needs please contact us. Please send comments about this article to dtowler@creativeorgdesign.com.