What Do Job Seekers Ask About During a Pandemic?
The talent acquisition lead of 2020 would never have predicted the rapid changes that occurred in their market. One day, on March 11th 2020 COVID-19 was officially declared a worldwide pandemic and things got tough for recruiters everywhere. In Europe and America demand spiked across healthcare, consumer goods, logistics sectors as people rushed to stock up before it all disappeared from shelves. It did not take long after this change for recruitment offices around the world to be inundated with new applications – both qualified candidates who were looking for work because they had lost theirs due to illness or death close family members but also those more opportunistic individuals trying cash in on crisis conditions by gambling on catching COVID-19 themselves so they could claim benefits while avoiding any strenuous activity
In preparation for the influx of corona queries, enterprises such as Airbus, McDonald’s and Deutsche Telekom utilised their recruitment chatbot to automate communication with job seekers. By using categories that were created by other clients who have been previously affected by coronavirus outbreaks in the past they anticipate how best to handle any future issues.
Job Seeker Study Results
6 weeks after the announcement, jobpal’s data analysts gathered all 600 COVID-19 related questions that job seekers were asking in order to gain a better understanding of their behavior. These are the results:
47% of chatbot end users wanted to know about company reaction and protection from COVID-19 with queries like “What are you doing to protect your employees from this?” or “How is my application going now because I applied before Corona hit?”
23% had related hiring question such as “Can I still apply?” And “I am interested but concerned for how it would affect me”.
Many chatbot users ask questions that range in topics but all with an eye on the business. 11% of end-users asked about interviews and found answers to their question such as “Will my interview be impacted by coronavirus?” while 10% sought information on how they can get food from the company despite COVID-19 or when it closes due to a pandemic.
Concerns about the COVID-19 virus itself and what will happen after are some of the most popular queries for chatbots. 7% of end users want to know more information about it, while 2% asked if they would be able to find work with a company that is hiring again post crisis.
Learnings from the Job Seeker Study
What we think is an interesting takeaway from the numbers in this dataset are that job seekers across the board seem to be most interested in asking questions about a company’s response to COVID-19. It’s clear that it should be on your radar as well, and you need to communicate what stance your business has taken publicly if you haven’t already done so .
You must be a candidate in the pipeline to ask interview questions? Or maybe it’s because you’re tired of having nervous public speaking moments and prefer holding interviews on your own turf. The “Other” category consists of queries that relate to business operations, which could suggest that even if job seeker is inquiring about a position they can’t find, there’s still some way for them to help out where needed!
The 11% question related section might have been inflated by those who are already interviewing but would rather switch up their medium than do an old-fashioned meetin’. Video interviews present awesome opportunities – giving candidates creative freedom when answering tough or personal questions while also being able to gauge how well someone will perform as part of
Conversational AI technology is an effective way for talent acquisition teams to communicate effectively in their employer brand’s tonality 24/7. This automation saves time and provides opportunities for TA team members to focus on more urgent tasks, retrieve data insights from candidates, and increase engagement by increasing the efficiency of recruitment processes.
Organizations such as Airbus and Deutsche Telekom have proven successful with this strategy; up 36% of companies are implementing Conversational AI technologies into recruitment efforts compared 7% last year (2020 vs 2019).
