ANSR and Talent500 launch study on the post-pandemic Recruitment Landscape in India

ANSR, the market leader in setting up and running Global Capability and Technology centers for leading businesses, recently ran the largest post-pandemic professional survey to understand recruitment trends in the post-pandemic world. The study conducted by Talent500, ANSR’s 1M+ professional network, received ~ 10,000 responses and offers a comprehensive analysis of how India’s technology professionals view the job market in 2023 and beyond.

The study has great significance today as the talent market is transcending from employer-driven to candidate-driven. The study finds that organizations need to invest more effort into attracting and retaining candidates, by means of novel recruiting strategies that fit the current demands. 

Vikram Ahuja, Co-Founder and CEO Talent500 said, “In a highly uncertain global market scenario, organizations need to double down on attracting and retaining top talent. In a post-pandemic world, agility, flexibility and speed is crucial and our survey of ~ 10,000 professionals highlights what it takes to build and scale top teams as a competitive differentiator.”

Key takeaways from the study:

1) Number of active candidates looking for jobs continues to be high despite recessionary fears. The recent trend of the biggest names laying off thousands of employees has caused an overwhelming number of professionals looking for new opportunities. Rumors of recession, fear of getting fired and a possible economic downturn has further forced employed professionals to keep looking out for jobs.

60% of the candidates surveyed are actively searching for a job, 28% are not, and 12% are open to exploring new opportunities.

2) Professionals are actively looking and gathering information online Amid the war for talent, paying attention to how candidates perceive your company is more crucial than ever. In an increasingly virtual world, an organization’s online reputation carries a tremendous amount of weight. Candidates today research everything online - from company culture to compensation benchmarks.

Thus, building a strong employee brand online using multiple channels such as YouTube, GitHub and Instagram, along with the obvious LinkedIn, needs to be an everyday priority. According to the findings, 93% of participants rely on LinkedIn when looking for a new opportunity.

3) Clarity in the recruitment life cycle is necessary to attract top talent Candidates today are extremely cautious and seek relevance and transparency to be better prepared as they go through the hiring process. There is a clarion call for upfront access to information - ambiguity at any stage of the recruitment process is seen as a red flag. Most candidates find multiple stages of the recruitment process challenging - whether it is finding referrals, negotiating salaries, or even the first step of finding a new job opportunity itself.

4) Engagement between offer acceptance and join date is critical. Hiring good talent is competitive, hard and often, a lengthy process. Hence, the process of candidate retention starts right after the acceptance of the offer. Today, the onus to retain candidates once an offer is made and accepted lies with the employer. The period between offer acceptance and start date is crucial - this is where constant engagement with the candidate becomes necessary to dissuade from post-acceptance dissonance. 57% of the respondents continue to look for more opportunities despite an offer in hand.

5) Workplace flexibility is a superpower to retain top talent With the recent worldwide churn and mobilization of the workforce, there came a massive demand for distributed talent. In order to acquire and retain top talent, organizations rolled out offers to outbid their competition. It comes as no surprise that workplace flexibility is still the number 1 ask for most candidates and often, the deciding factor between offers. According to the survey, a dominating 89% of professionals prefer to work in flexible, hybrid work cultures.”