Article 2

Recruitment: Cautious companies, an anticipated recovery

Isabelle Bastide

Having weakened the economy and forced a number of companies to significantly reduce or
even stop their activity, the recruitment sector has found itself impacted by the coronavirus crisis.

For more than a month, professionals in the sector have recorded a sharp decline in
recruitment projects. While some companies have chosen to keep the recruitment processes in
progress or the projects validated before the containment, the majority have been forced to
postpone or even cancel them for lack of visibility. Check in on a situation out of the norm.

Cautious companies due to lack of visibility

Companies today lack visibility in the short and medium term on their activity and, for many, on
the recovery capacity of their sector. This data has a strong influence on the decision to recruit,
or not to recruit, new collaborators because it is the resumption of economic activity which will
condition the investment capacity of companies. In the current context, employers must first of
all preserve existing jobs by guaranteeing the continuity of their activity, particularly by taking
advantage of exceptional partial unemployment measures. But beyond the economic and
financial matters, companies are facing, or will have to face, deep challenges in terms of their
internal organization, particularly, the resumption of activity post-containment, (a major project
for HR), and the question of development of their human capital (training and recruitment.

Who are the actors who continue to recruit?

All sectors combined, nearly 50% of all recruitment processes are being postponed to after the
containment, when everyone will benefit from better visibility. For the time being, recruitments
are focused on certain strategic functions such as finance, human resources or even information
technology (IT) to maintain, in particular, the online activity of commerce and businesses to
guarantee the security of operations. Without forgetting supply chain and logistics professionals,
from the production chain of consumer products to their delivery.

Among the sectors that continue to recruit: banking and financial industries, pharmaceutical
companies, mass distribution/specialized distribution, including energy distributors, are very
much in demand during this particular period.