How the Coronavirus is impacting recruiting companies

As life in Bavaria is slowly grinding to a halt and the government debates whether to enforce a curfew, we examine the effects that the Corona pandemic is having on businesses in the field of staffing.

Most of the customers we recruit for are large scale companies with a sizeable workforce. Some of them have had to grudgingly close up shop due to health concerns, others have had to drastically reduce the number of people working at their locations. Interviews that were planned before the news spread are not being done face to face for risk of contracting the virus. The uncertainty of what the future holds is leading to an overall reduction in the hiring demands of most companies. Consultants that were eager to change employer a month ago want to wait until everything goes back to normal before they take such steps. We have to see how everything unfolds, but the next weeks should give us clarity on what government measures are imposed as well as what the overall long term solutions will be to combat the virus without impacting the economy. We are using the reduction in business to spend some much-needed time on our website, updating our database and defining our long term goals for the future.

The silver lining I see is that we as recruiters can now work together with consultants to get them what a lot of them have frequently asked for, more remote work. If Bavaria enforces a curfew most companies will have to let everybody work more from home and if the quality of work stays the same we might help shift the perception on home office to a more positive view. So even if the DAX continues to take a nose dive we have to keep a cool head and try to take something positive from this dire situation.