Note: This is from last spring, dur­ing the ear­ly days of the pan­dem­ic. Since the virus is still with us – and will affect a good part of 2021 – the Doc­tor thought it would be worth a re-read. Enjoy!

It’s been said before that you should nev­er let a good cri­sis go to waste. What exact­ly does that mean? It means that with every prob­lem comes oppor­tu­ni­ty. We are in the midst of a glob­al cri­sis, and yet for many of us, there’s not much we can do but stay home. Dis­as­ter breeds the desire to do some­thing, yet our gov­ern­ments are ask­ing us to keep our dis­tance, stay inside, and wait. Smart advice, and yet…

Luck­i­ly, the job board indus­try is in many ways the def­i­n­i­tion of ‘inside work’ – giv­en a com­put­er, an inter­net con­nec­tion, and a phone, most of you can launch and run a job board.

But there’s one catch: most job boards are dri­ven by employ­ers’ demand for job seek­ers – and the cur­rent cri­sis put a stake in the heart of hir­ing. Some of you have had to lay off or fur­lough staff. Some of you are apply­ing for loans. And some of you are still in shock.

Well, you know what? It’s a good time to put this cri­sis to a bet­ter use: prepar­ing for the future. At some point, COVID-19 will fade – and our lives will return to some­thing resem­bling nor­mal­cy. Yet I believe the ‘new nor­mal’ will be dif­fer­ent from a few weeks ago. Let’s use the cri­sis to pre­pare for it.

There are three parts to get­ting ready for the new nor­mal: rethink, rework and retrench:

• Rethink: The econ­o­my is in an induced coma right now. This isn’t like any­thing we’ve ever expe­ri­enced – the shut­down is vol­un­tary and is guid­ed by the virus’s time­line, not ours. But even in this hir­ing coma, hir­ing in fact is still going on. Many busi­ness­es can func­tion with a remote staff, if per­haps more slow­ly. Oth­ers – think of the so-called essen­tial indus­tries – are func­tion­ing with pro­tec­tive equip­ment and dis­tanc­ing. Still oth­ers are in the midst of rethink­ing their busi­ness mod­el – can they func­tion in new ways? As a job board, this is a chance to think about both your busi­ness mod­el AND your audi­ence and ser­vices. You need a ‘dur­ing’ and ‘after’ plan: what you can do now to retain (or expand) your employ­ers, and what you will do after the virus fades. As a thought exer­cise, take a look at how Tes­la is repur­pos­ing its auto parts to build ven­ti­la­tors. What about your ser­vices? Which can be repur­posed for this new real­i­ty?
• Rework: Once you’ve ana­lyzed and rethought, you need to make some deci­sions on what needs to change. Rework­ing your busi­ness isn’t easy, and the results aren’t guar­an­teed. But if you’ve done your rethink­ing care­ful­ly, you can con­trol the risk. Many job seek­ers and employ­ers are going to come out of the oth­er side of this cri­sis in a daze. You need to be ready to help them con­nect the dots – more than ever, show­ing peo­ple how to get from unem­ployed to employed is going to be a valu­able and crit­i­cal skill.
• Retrench: Although I don’t par­tic­u­lar­ly think the ‘this is a war’ approach is a good anal­o­gy, it is true that – like some wars – this cri­sis will drag on. It will require for both cre­ative think­ing and resilience. And it will reward busi­ness­es that think defen­sive­ly, as well as those who are will to rethink what they do and how they do it. Many wars seem to work on autopi­lot. You can’t afford that.

So don’t let this cri­sis go to waste. It’s going to keep you up at night any­way – so demand that it give you some­thing in return!

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