Indeed has announced the roll-out of a virtual version of their existing Indeed Hiring Events product (which the company announced at the start of the year). Since then, of course, things have clearly changed. This seems to represent a natural pivot and follows market trends.

According to recent Indeed polling "The most common prediction among those polled was that virtual interviewing and hiring will increase. One respondent said, 'I think all my clients are going to switch to a permanent virtual recruiting process for the duration of the pandemic.'" This trend is consistent. Gartner reports that 86% of recruiting organizations are incorporating new virtual technologies for interviewing:

“Recruiting leaders are caught between the sourcing and hiring plans that were initiated before the COVID-19 outbreak and the rise in uncertainty and social and economic instability,” said Lauren Smith, vice president in the Gartner HR practice. “As external hiring slows for many organizations, and business priorities change, leaders must evaluate different methods of recruiting and hiring.”

Companies from US-based CVS Health to Australian-based Coles moved immediately to virtual solutions as responses to surge hiring in their critical retail operations.

Indeed is not the only industry powerhouse to move aggressively into the virtual hiring events space. LinkedIn recently announced the hybridization of two of their products to create LinkedIn Virtual Events:

We accelerated our product roadmap to bring you a tighter integration between LinkedIn Events and LinkedIn Live, turning these two products into a new virtual events solution that enables you to stay connected to your communities and meet your customers wherever they are.

While not as directly focused on recruitment as Indeed's product (LinkedIn is still courting a broader corporate audience, particularly sales and marketing), the intent is clear: they want to catch the same wave Indeed is aiming for.

Expect this to stick around

Pandemics, historically, are societal-altering events, with impacts at many levels. From massive geo-political changes (the Black Plague broke feudalism and laid the groundwork for the Renaissance, while the 1918 Pandemic helped end colonialism), to how societies conduct business: change happens, and it tends to stick. Companies who were reluctant to embrace digital interviewing at any level are now baking these elements into their recruiting processes.

With predictions that at least 30% of the workforce remaining in work-from-home mode through the end of 2021, companies will have to adapt to meet people where they live - virtually, at least. And with organizations as large as Google, Indeed, Twitter, and others announcing plans to become virtual-first, and often keeping their physical offices closed through 2021, processes will change. We won't know - yet - how we will work, live, and interview in the future, but we are starting to get a glimpse of what the events portion will look like.

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