Moving back from digital to analog – Job Board Doctor

: facetofaceRemem­ber shak­ing a per­son­’s hand? Going to a con­fer­ence? Enter­ing a build­ing with­out mask­ing up?

It may be to believe, but some­time over the next year, that world will reemerge. It won’t be exact­ly the same – but it will come. For those of us immersed in the job board and recruit­ment mar­ket­ing world, we’ve been hip-deep in the dig­i­tal world for years. Yet despite dig­i­tiz­ing the job ad and hir­ing process, our indus­try retained a strong ana­log com­po­nent – that’s a fan­cy way of say­ing ‘face to face’. Whether that was an ‘in-per­son’ inter­view, a trip to one of the many con­fer­ences, brain­storm­ing in the office, or sales trips to clients, the indus­try relied on ana­log – ‘real world’ – inter­ac­tions.

Then came March 2020, and what was ana­log sud­den­ly became digi­tal (or at least, more dig­i­tal).

Those meet­ings with clients moved to Zoom, as did job inter­views. Employ­ees began work­ing at home. Con­fer­ences dis­ap­peared or became vir­tu­al.

It was­n’t hard for job boards and recruit­ing ser­vices to become -blown dig­i­tal – for many, they were already hip-deep in it. Our clients – at least 40% of them – also adjust­ed by mov­ing employ­ees to remote work, mod­i­fy­ing how they han­dled hir­ing, and con­sid­er­ing for the first time if they need­ed an office after all.

But…a lot of com­pa­nies and work­ers did­n’t have the lux­u­ry of dig­i­tal. Their work remained stub­born­ly face-to-face. For them, the reemer­gence of the ana­log world is a mirage – it was always there for them. The reap­pear­ance of the rest of us is just going to make their world more now.

Sure, the pan­dem­ic has changed the work world – but what will get kept, and what will be lost? How quick­ly do you expect to walk into a con­fer­ence hall with 400 atten­dees? Or have an all-hands-on- meet­ing in the office? Or make that sales over a pri­vate din­ner with a ? Next week? Next ? Next year?

Every­one has their own sense of – one per­son­’s ‘locked down’ is anoth­er’s ‘care­less dis­re­gard’. The chal­lenge for job board busi­ness­es – real­ly, any ! – in mov­ing back into the ana­log world is bal­anc­ing risk and reward. For some busi­ness­es, the answer will be ‘remote for­ev­er’. For oth­ers, it will be some sort of hybrid mod­el. And for oth­ers, it will be ‘back to the future’.

One thing is cer­tain: mov­ing dig­i­tal to ana­log – from ‘Zoom-life’ to the ‘real world’ – will pose chal­lenges for all of us.

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