Light at the end of the Tunnel

Right now we’re being drenched in a furious flow of bad news every single day. I don’t need to tell you what I’m referring to, because this crisis is affecting us all.

We certainly can’t be flippant about it and most of the media attention is unfortunately justified. But, the good news is that there’s light at the end of the tunnel. This crisis will be short-term, it has an end date and the end date is likely to be in 2020.

There’s always fear in the unknown, which includes not knowing when that end date will be, and, until then, we’ve no option but to ride out this wild storm that’s changed our lives really rather dramatically.

What we can be sure of, is that when that end date arrives, things will pick up very quickly, markets will rebound, companies will start hiring again.

If we look to Asia – our neighbours – business is already firing back up. Factories are manufacturing again and, as someone who recruits in that region, I can tell you that demand for our recruitment services has returned. I’ve got three banks in Japan conducting face-to-face interviews this week.

Back home in Australia we’re seeing the surge in COVID-19 cases. Some of our significant customers have put hiring on hold as their HR teams focus solely on managing the staff they’ve already got who are working under under unique and constantly-evolving arrangements.

On-boarding new people is pretty difficult when your staff are working remotely!

Every industry is going to take a hit and when the threat reduces here in Australia, firms will move forward differently. They’ll consider what resources they need to survive for six months or for 12 months if this were to reoccur. They’ll realise these events can happen in Australia.

At a personal level, of course we’re worrying about our finances and our health, but we may also now have the time to consider where our careers are at. In a crisis, the default mode tends to be simply around preserving your lifestyle and your job, but when all this ends, maybe it’s a good time to evaluate where you work, who you work for and how they handled this crisis. How did management treat their people? How secure were the roles? Is this the right industry to be in? Is it the right fit personally?

If the answer is no, update your CV, send us your CV and give us a call. Whether COVID-19 blows over soon or takes longer, your career can still flourish with a hiccup and there’ll be positions in sectors we recruit for at Tardis Group, including finance, pharmaceutical, IT and legal, opening up across all experience levels.

People will always be hiring people and these testing times challenge us to think about whether our employers and our companies are managing events the way we’d want them to do so.