Well, a few weeks into 2021, it still feels good to say that 2020 is behind us! The past year offered mul­ti­ple chal­lenges – not the least of which was the COVID pan­dem­ic. Let’s review.

A year ago, most of the job board and recruit­ment mar­ket­ing busi­ness­es were look­ing for­ward to a pret­ty good year. There was high demand for can­di­dates, steady growth in many sec­tors, and a size­able inflow of fund­ing for both new and estab­lished sites. Then news emerged of a new coro­n­avirus – one that seemed high­ly con­ta­gious and lethal. What was first a health cri­sis quick­ly became a polit­i­cal cri­sis, and as dif­fer­ent nations tack­led the chal­lenge in dif­fer­ent ways, many parts of the econ­o­my sim­ply shut down.

That meant mil­lions of job post­ings on thou­sands of job boards went into hiber­na­tion as spooked employ­ers held off on hir­ing deci­sions – includ­ing spend­ing. Guess what? Lots of job post­ing and sourc­ing rev­enue dis­ap­peared – and the crunch was on in our indus­try. Through­out the spring and into the sum­mer, demand went up and down as dif­fer­ent sec­tors of the econ­o­my opened up – and closed again. It hon­est­ly felt like an employ­ment ‘Whack a Mole‘ game.

Fast for­ward to now. We have not one, but mul­ti­ple effec­tive vac­cines. We’ve seen some nations such as New Zealand open up their economies. The vac­cines – apart from their pow­er to pro­tect human lives – have the pow­er to pro­found­ly change the labor mar­ket by allow­ing busi­ness­es to open up per­ma­nent­ly. The pro­mul­ga­tion of vac­cines into our var­i­ous economies will restore the labor mar­ket – and restore our indus­try’s health.

But – and I say this with com­plete con­fi­dence, unfor­tu­nate­ly – it will be a bumpy ride. The recov­ery will be uneven­ly dis­trib­uted. There will be steps for­ward – and back. The way back to health faces many chal­lenges: lack of steady and pre­dictable vac­cine sup­plies; anti-VAX­ers; break­downs in logis­tics; and yes, lack of peo­ple to actu­al­ly dis­trib­ute and con­duct the vac­ci­na­tions.

That’s where our indus­try comes in. Does your job board or recruit­ment mar­ket­ing ser­vice tar­get health care? Logis­tics? Man­u­fac­tur­ing? Phar­ma? Mar­ket­ing? Sales? The vac­ci­na­tion effort needs your can­di­dates! This is one of those pleas­ant moments when your busi­ness can be both patri­ot­ic and lucra­tive! The pan­dem­ic is a glob­al chal­lenge – so job boards every­where can make a dif­fer­ence. It may sound hokey, but by con­nect­ing these can­di­dates with the right employ­ers, you will be con­tribut­ing to the rebuild­ing of the labor mar­ket.

And you know what? That’s a big deal!

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