The recent pandemic induced recession involved two back-to-back stock market crashes and a 14% unemployment rate. The Great Recession of 2008 resulted in a 10% unemployment rate and approximately 9 million jobs lost. Both of these recessions led to major societal and workplace changes that permanently affected the job market – an increased minimum wage and more people working remotely. Are you ready to target hiring data scientists in the next recession?
Harvard Business Review identified a common thread among companies that were able to adjust their recruiting processes during tough economic times. An analysis of 4700 companies across the last three recessions found that 9% came out of the crises by cutting back selectively, AND hiring that was focused on their long-term strategic goals. These companies were able to retain employees in key positions while also taking advantage of top talent willing to change their current jobs.
Strategies for Hiring Effectively During a Recession
Conduct a Skills Gap Analysis – Assess where your company is behind your competition in technical, marketing or other expertise. Most firms have already hired their first data scientist and found significant benefits from their analysis. Is this an opportunity to add to that profitable expertise?
Assess and Develop In-house Talent – A SHRM study found that while 55% of executives relied on layoffs to combat the economic challenges of the Great Recession, a whopping 76% said they invested in training for their existing teams. Retaining employees is always important but taking the opportunity in a downturn to add to their skill sets and in turn their satisfaction is a must-do strategy.
Check-in with Passive Candidates – This may be your chance to hire that candidate you have been keeping in touch with for years. People become restless if their industry flounders in a recession and could be more open to making a change. Create a task force with your existing leaders to target a sector of the workforce. Hiring data scientists in the next recession becomes more viable with both of these strategies in place.
Recruit Remotely – As part of your skills gap analysis assess whether you have positions that could be completely remote. The change that happened during the pandemic seems to have solidified, particularly with the younger generations. Can your firm adjust even more than you did during the pandemic to encourage or offer this schedule? This would definitely impact your ability to successfully target hiring data scientists in the next recession.
Of course, the Data Science and Analytics Recruiters at Smith Hanley Associates stand ready to help you with all your data scientist and data engineer hiring needs. Contact Nancy Darian at ndarian@smithhanley.com to talk further.
