Facebook and Meta Founder, Mark Zuckerberg described 2024 as the ‘year of efficiency,’. Since his declaration, one tech giant after another has been cutting jobs. This means once again, right after the pandemic, we have to deal with changing trends in hiring and talent acquisition.
The pandemic brought to the fore certain undercurrents that had been gathering strength in isolation. Remote working is one of those fringe trends that immediately became a norm. This was particularly disruptive for human resource departments across the world. The HR departments have been reinventing themselves since the pandemic.
The pandemic bust was followed by post-pandemic global inflation. Rising prices, growing employee dissatisfaction, and insecurity, have had an impact on hiring trends.
Businesses across the world are currently grappling with two big issues, growing demand for wages and slowing demand for goods. Current hiring trends have risen out of these two necessities. One strategy that is being used extensively now is to hire offshore employees. Offshoring has proven to be budget friendly and it allows companies to acquire essential talent even as they cut costs.
You merely have to look at the news reported by financial papers. Amongst Asian countries, the services-driven economy of India has been doing its best. India’s services PMI according to S&P Global is 58.5 for June 2023, which indicates a positive outlook for this sector in India. The reason for this positivity? More global businesses are expressing their desire to hire offshore employees from India.
Here is how offshoring and hiring virtual employees can help you tackle the biggest challenges facing your HR department.
Quick Access To Resources:
One of the biggest complaints companies have from their recruiters is that they take too long to fill vacant positions. In the current market scenario, the competition between brands is very stiff. Finding the right resource for your company can help you stay one step ahead of the competition. One of the fastest ways to fill a resource gap in your company is to hire offshore employees. Offshoring allows you to access the global talent pool which is much larger and diverse. Hence, finding the right combination of skills becomes easier. Virtual hiringis also an integrated process. Social media sites and hiring portals can easily be added as extensions to your existing HRM. Of course, you need to leverage technology properly to achieve a fully integrated process.
Automate your hiring process
The instability of the current global markets is being easily offset by technical innovations. AI applications for hiring and recruitment are flooding the markets. These applications proactively track talent gaps in your organization and raise requests accordingly. They are also equipped to integrate multiple channels for hiring new talent. They can keep track of vendors that source virtual employees for you. Certain markets poise themselves for global collaboration. This is one reason why hiring virtual employees from India is so easy. Indian companies that offer virtual employee services ensure that they have the latest technology for such collaborations. These companies make integration very easy.
From your perspective, the entire talent acquisition process gets automated. Right from spotting the talent gap by analyzing the requirements of your existing teams to onboarding the new talent with the right documentation, the entire process is handled through one platform. This improves both your accuracy in spotting the skills desired and your speed of acquiring the needed resource. The entire process only gets stronger if you also integrate the complete reach of social media into it.
Utilize the Complete Reach Of Social Media
Businesses and individuals alike use social media platforms on the internet to promote themselves. Your decision to use offshore talents opens this entire global pool of skills to you. Virtual workers and virtual employee companies alike maintain a strong presence on social media portals such as LinkedIn. You can easily get in touch with them and begin your hiring process. Inadequate and untrained use of social media is considered to be one of the major problems in the industry. If your search fields are not targeted properly on social media, it can seem like a ‘rabbit hole’. However, with training and analysis, it is easy to list the key search queries you need to find the resources you seek.
Diverse Environment For Innovative Solutions
If you want your employees to become innovators and create creative solutions for problems, then it is important to maintain a diverse environment. Having a diverse workforce gives you multiple perspectives on the same problem. Through such multi-faceted inquiries, inventing new solutions to problems becomes simpler. If you want to take your brand or company to a whole new level of growth, then you should hire offshore employees. A diverse workforce allows you to maintain global standards even if you’re focusing on your local markets. Globally followed norms and practices could just be the edge you need for your business to flourish in your local market.
Make Soft Skills A Criterion For Selection
This is a classic trait that is forever in demand. You need your new hires to quickly merge with your core teams. Time and again, studies have shown that the inclusion of virtual employees in a team is simple. Offshore talent acquisition is always cost-effective. Hence, you can hire more experienced virtual employees for your company. Experienced employees have more developed soft skills, which makes their inclusion into your existing team simpler. You can, however, arrange a test specifically for their soft skills. This ensures that your virtual hiring is giving you the best skills in the market. It also reduces the pressure of managing resources in the long run and communication happens seamlessly in the team.
Optimizing the Referral System
This step works for all forms of hiring, however, we can look at it from the context of offshoring in this article. You can incentivize referrals for your offshore team as well. It will give you access to more talent from global markets. If a virtual employee can perform certain tasks for your team offshore, you should not hesitate to hire more. Make the referral section more prominent on your HRM system and encourage more referrals from your existing offshore team.
Automate the Management Process
The biggest concern for upper management is the disconnect from the teams working for them. Updating work reports and progress reports is considered time-consuming by employees and managers alike. You can completely automate this process for virtual employees. Many virtual employee companies now offer smart solutions for assigning and tracking workflow. Transparency is an inherent part of their processes, ensuring a better flow of information within the organization. The key concerns of upper management are addressed through this process and they can give timely feedback for the work being done. This reduces the duplication of effort and streamlines the production process.
Cost-effective And Curated
In the current uncertain market scenario, virtual hiring is the most effective solution. The central banks across the world are hiking interest rates. Growing inflation has led to a fall in demand. These challenges are forcing companies across the world to cut their hiring budgets. The best way to fill the demand gap in this scenario is to hire offshore employees. Everyone knows that offshoring is cost-effective, however, everyone ignores the amount of value addition it brings to your team. You can now get the resources your core team needs to stay competitive in this difficult market at an affordable price. The flexibility accorded by virtual employee companies will allow you to upsize or downsize your offshore team with ease. This reduces the strain on your budget drastically.
Globalization has made diverse skills accessible to businesses anywhere in the world. Make full use of this capability and hire the virtual employees you need to steer your business in these tumultuous times. The year 2024 is supposed to be the ‘Year of Efficiency’. You can add efficiency with ease to every aspect of your business operations with virtual employees. Unleash the full potential of offshoring and get your business soaring again.
