How Jobs & Interview Styles are Changing Under COVID-19

The proliferation of COVID-19 is redefining how we live. Work From Home is the new normal and virtual meetings are the upcoming trend. The transition, from donning a professional attire in office to attending Zoom meetings half-dressed at home, was quite sudden.

On a humorous note, this is what the enforced experiment around home working currently looks like :

Here are the emerging trends in our working lifestyle during the outbreak:

Reconcile with WFH being a long term way of life

Since public health restrictions have been enforced, a vast majority of us have made our homes into a makeshift office. Productivity has risen and it has been observed that the human capital is quite comfortable in this setting. However, this trend has the capacity to disrupt the commercial real estate market as the need for renting office spaces has plummeted. Keep your antennae raised for relevant developments.

Stringent Monitoring by the employer

The comfort of WFH comes at a cost and must be traded for being monitored more vigilantly. Considering that the employer would only have digital means to ensure discipline at work, it comes as no surprise that surveillance must improve for the welfare of all.

Open Layout Offices may metamorphose for safety concerns

An entire national economy cannot be run from home and a certain handful of jobs will have to remain office-based. E.g. large trading floors may have to adapt a cubicle system or some sort of a partitioning paradigm for adherence to social distancing norms. This change would nonetheless be temporary until a cure or vaccine for the virus is discovered and made commercially available. It is a far-fetched thought and we shall cross that bridge when we come to it.

More Video Conferences, fewer in-person meets

Not just meetings but even interviews have been impacted by COVID-19. Not only the feasibility of conducting them but also the skills that will be required in this freshly established work paradigm.

Although the dissemination of information has become more tedious, there is an amusing bright side to this inconvenience. In case a team member has an issue with you, he/she now has to separately VC HR, your boss and then both together as per their individual preferences. (Of course, I’m not promoting unprofessional behaviour, it’s just a giggle-worthy observation)

Overlapping Personal & Professional Lives

Your home is now your workplace so the question of a work-life balance has now been rendered moot. If you were earlier euphoric at home but in misery at work, please find a mirror to your soul to solve this problem. The silver lining to this cloud, however, is that this should encourage you to find meaningful work that can satisfy your being.

Soft Skills in the front seat

As personal interactions will be limited to zero, virtual coordination, leadership and governance will have to be strengthened and enforced. Positions that earlier demanded presentation and body language, now demand long-distance leadership, independent initiation in finding solutions to problems and multitasking abilities. Moderated and new Soft-Skills will become the need of the hour with Online Presentation, Marketing, Sales Presentations etc will come to the fore.

All in all, resuscitation of the economy and the business it banks upon may be slow as the transformation will not be immediate. Action on policy changes and governance will be imminent though in order to facilitate quicker recovery from rock bottom. One thing is certain – changes are coming as the ONLY CONSTANT IN LIFE IS CHANGE.