Recruiting and War. What was Hiring Like in 2022

None of the business sectors was ready for the significant changes and difficulties that the war provoked. Almost all companies suspended their business processes in the first weeks after the invasion and focused on employee safety. The next task of the companies was to adapt to further existence.

Alyona Kutsokon, Head of Recruitment Department at Smart Solutions, talked about how companies adapted, how they prepared employees, and how the hiring process changed. Also, Anna Logvinova, Head of People Department at Adama Ukraine, and Anna Kravchenko, Head of HR at YODEZEEN shared their experience of hiring employees after the full-scale invasion.

How Hiring has Changed after February 24

– In the first weeks of the full-scale invasion, Ukrainian companies suspended all processes and began to relocate their employees. Absolutely all areas were affected. There is no single business or sphere in Ukraine, be it small, medium, large Ukrainian, or international business, which would not feel the consequences of the war. Even IT companies that always recruit people in large numbers were put on hold.

Much depended on the physical location of the company. Representative offices of some companies in western Ukraine were open all the time. Or they were the first to recover in terms of opening branches. Offices in the temporarily occupied territories, combat zones, and areas close to the front line suspended their work. 

If we talk about other regions of Ukraine, including the capital, there have been significant changes in the business. About 30% of businesses put their activity on pause. About 20% of companies ceased their actions, and others reduced their staff or sent people on vacation at their own expense. – says Alyona Kutsokon, Head of Recruitment Department at Smart Solutions.

What Areas have Suffered the Least 

According to Alyona Kutsokon, the IT and retail sectors suffered the least in 2022. 

IT sphere is an opportunity to work remotely and provide for the country’s economy. Retail – food and household goods, without which life is impossible. Ukrainian production is working, and the functioning of companies has not stopped, but there were noticeable staff reductions.

If we talk about those areas that are now beginning to feel suitable, agricultural and pharma are gradually getting back on their feet – they need to expand their staff. The procurement sector also feels good. 

Logistics has not suspended its activities either. Everything was built on logistics. There was even a wave of ultra-high hiring of drivers, gas station attendants, loaders, and workers in the retail and logistics sectors.

Since October, other areas have also begun to revive.

Hiring During the War. Experience of Adama Ukraine and YODEZEEN Companies

What Difficulties did Your Company Face in Hiring?

– Before the full-scale invasion, the candidate market and the war for talent were the prominent trends that outlined the “rules of the game” in the labor market. In my opinion, these trends have persisted and intensified, so employers continue to compete for the opportunity to hire the best and most talented professionals. The outflow of talent abroad has significantly narrowed the recruitment funnel and affected the speed of closing vacancies. Also, many highly qualified specialists are in no hurry to change jobs during the war, even if they are open to new offers until February. – says Anna Logvinova, Head of the HR Department at Adama Ukraine 

– Of course, in the first month and a half, we altogether suspended hiring and focused on relocating our employees to safer places. Since April, we have focused on the international market and initiated interesting large-scale projects. One of them is a hotel project located on three Maldives islands.

Our primary competitors in Ukraine have slightly suspended their activities due to the war, so many people from the field of architecture and design were left without work. In our turn, after the relocation, we opened recruitment for the team – it was also one of the ways to support Ukrainians during the first months of full-scale war.

As we entered international markets, the requirements for candidates became relatively high. We received a lot of requests from candidates, and 7-10% of them met the criteria. Therefore, we decided to revise the requirements and started looking for people who could and would like to work with large-scale projects and information. – Anna Kravchenko, Head of HR at YODEZEEN, shares her experience

Did You Suspend the Search for Candidates and Hiring in the Company? 

– Immediately after the outbreak of the war, our priority was the safety of our employees, so we focused our efforts on supporting our people and their loved ones and helping the Armed Forces. As soon as we established the business in the new realities, we resumed the search and selection for relevant vacancies in the industry. – says Anna Logvinova

– We suspended the search for candidates in late February and March. It was the period when we relocated our employees to Poland. So, about 50% of employees who wanted to leave now live outside Ukraine with their families. 

Since the middle of March, we have started to return to the usual work mode. And we started searching and hiring in April. We started hiring the first people at the end of April, and since then, our team has increased by 25%. 

To summarize, we had a short period when we froze a little, a month and a half maximum. Then we started to select projects and increase the team. We began to develop and grow our processes even faster than before February 24. – says Anna Kravchenko, Head of HR YODEZEEN

What Were Jobs Popular in 2022?

– Since the beginning of the war, Ukrainian ports have been blocked, which has led to billions of losses for the Ukrainian economy and threatened global food security. In six months, we have created a team of traders, logistical, and specialists working with agricultural products, who are now successfully engaged in grain exports. – Anna Logvinova, Head of HR Department at Adama Ukraine

– We have hired architects, designers, procurement managers, and project managers in architecture and design. That is, we had active growth in all positions. In the summer, we realized that our creative team is growing very much, but the back office is not developing in percentage terms. Therefore, we started searching and attracting people to other positions in the operational team.

Currently, the main difficulty is that a tiny percentage of candidates speak English well. Customers or representatives of customers speak English, so for some positions, it has become fundamentally important to know it. 

The design architecture market in Ukraine has not yet been reanimated. And, frankly speaking, I can’t even predict when it will finally recover. Only those companies that, like us, made a breakthrough in the international market could continue their development. Unfortunately, there are not so many such companies. – concludes Anna Kravchenko, Head of the HR Department at YODEZEEN

How Recruiting is Affected by New Challenges  

Our new reality, caused by the military aggression of Russia, has led to problems with the electricity supply, which has affected the lives of all Ukrainians, including businesses.

Alyona Kutsokon talks about the processes in recruiting, which have undergone significant changes:

The main thing is the inability to plan interviews and sometimes to arrange meetings and their work schedules. Therefore, people are forced to make their work schedule very, very flexible, which depends on the power supply. 

Sometimes the blackout schedules work, and sometimes things don’t go according to plan. Therefore, most companies offer flexible schedules and organize time tracking. The employee must work 8 hours, depending on the possibility, even during the day (not the working day, but the day), because no one knows when the light may disappear unplanned. 

Hybrid Format 

We are all used to the fact that the schedule has become flexible since the pandemic. That is, we are already adapted to new conditions. The pandemic was a rehearsal. Now the hybrid schedule is the norm. Ukraine is adapting to a shifted working day when we have to work at a time when there is light, even if it is after 9-10 pm.

And if people work in the office, then usually there are generators in the offices that make it possible to maintain light and electricity during the day. Over the past two months, more and more people have been working from offices to avoid disrupting their usual work schedule. Both employers and candidates talk about this. 

The Interview

It is more complex if we talk about the interviews themselves because it is not always possible to hold them at the scheduled time. An air raid may sound at any moment, or there may be a power outage. Therefore, recruiters use messengers as the main channels of communication with candidates. And, if necessary, they can postpone the interview.

The tendency to change the time of the interview affects both the timing of the decision and the timing of the candidate processing. If, for example, in a large international company, the process of candidate selection is divided into three stages, it can take a week and a half. Due to unplanned power outages, these processes can take up to two to three weeks. That is, it complicates the processing and makes unpredictable adjustments to the work schedule. 

What Tools do Recruiters Use Now?

We have learned to focus our attention on the most critical points in candidates at once. – says Alyona Kutsokon.

First, the level of empathy for candidates has increased. Therefore, interviews have become shorter in time. They focus more on a person’s hard skills – technical skills that are important in performing specific duties. As for soft skills, people have changed a lot, and it is impossible to assess them now because many people have psychological traumas fully. They can be temporary. People can be withdrawn, stressed, and not show themselves in soft skills. Therefore, we do not always focus on this now, considering that almost every second person has received psychological trauma. The interview process is shortened, and the emphasis is more on professional skills to assess whether a person can perform duties in terms of his experience.

Second, 98% of communications are online interviews. In addition to instant messengers, Zoom, Skype, and Microsoft Teams help us with this. Communication and decision-making online are also the norm. But nothing can replace the assessment of a person in terms of body language and behavioral factors, so we still try to make meetings offline. But when there is no such possibility, we replace it with communication in messengers and social networks.

Recruitment 2023. What to Expect

Alyona Kutsokon says it is tough to make predictions for the following year. She also notes: 

“The situation will depend on our politicians, on the help of the world, on the success of the Armed Forces. No one says that the 23rd year will be easy. If now the unemployment rate is about 40%, then perhaps it will slightly decrease to 25%-30%, but no more. So there will continue to be problems with unemployment because many businesses are destroyed.

But there is another side. In 2023, we can face staff shortage problems because a lot of Ukrainians – more than 8 million – have left the borders of Ukraine. And we will already feel the shortage of personnel. We already feel it in some areas.”

Unemployment and staff shortage are concepts that do not contradict each other in 2022. – Head of Recruitment Department at Smart Solutions, Alyona Kutsokon

Which Sphere will Suffer the Most from the Lack of Staff?

Engineering and construction are already suffering. That is because many buildings have been damaged and destroyed, and the demand for working specialties related to the restoration of infrastructure has increased. These are electricians, fitters, builders, engineers, and technicians – they are already sorely lacking because they are needed everywhere. Salaries for them are growing significantly, there is already such a staff shortage, and we notice such a “hunt.” 

Where is the Opposite: a lot of Candidates but few Vacancies?

“There are a lot of candidates – there is still a trend in IT, but not everyone has found a job. For example, according to our latest analytics, there are 70 thousand candidates and 10 thousand of vacancies. That is 1 to 7.

There is a shortage of jobs for junior specialists. In addition, Ukrainian product companies recover more slowly than outsourcing international IT companies. So there is still a shortage of vacancies for IT, but it is a very ambitious and potential area, and it will recover faster than all the others. 

In general, IT shows outstanding results. It is the feeder of the modern Ukrainian economy, as many international companies help Ukrainian businesses with their projects. But there is still a feeling that not everyone can be employed. But if an IT specialist speaks English well and has a good experience of 3-5 years, he can look for a job in the international market.

We are generally calm about IT. Now there is a shortage of accountants because accounting is mainly a female profession, and many women have gone abroad. And if a person speaks English, he has already found a job abroad. And now there is a significant shortage of accountants. 

That is, if we are talking about the lack of specialists in Ukraine – these are accountants, financial specialists, and specialists in the construction industry and engineering”. – Alyona Kutsokon predicts

Conclusions

“We expect that in 2023, in some areas, recruiting will be more difficult to find candidates for those areas that will experience staff shortages. We will look for such employees a little longer and continue using all possible search channels to help us. These are LinkedIn, Telegram channels, traditional search channels, and targeted advertising”. – sums up the head of the recruitment department at Smart Solutions, Alyona Kutsokon