According to the National Women's Law Center, which analyzed the latest U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report, male workers regained all jobs pandemic-related job losses from February 2020 to January 2022. However, 1.1 million women left the labor force during that same timeframe and account for 63 percent of all jobs lost.
The January jobs report found that 275,000 women left the workforce that month, resulting in a workplace participation rate of 57%. That's the lowest it has been since 1988.
The reality? Pandemic job loss affects genders in different ways. According to SHR:
- As schools and daycares closed during the COVID-19, millions of women left the job market to care for their children
- The pandemic had a huge impact on industries dominated by women of color, among them retail, leisure, foodservice and hospitality
- Long periods of unemployment can create a stigma among employers, making it harder to find jobs
- When these workers do find a job, they may earn less than they did pre-pandemic
So, do they want to return to work? Many do but you need to meet them where they're at. That means being flexible.
It's no secret, after all, that homes became home offices, daycare centers, fitness centers, schools and vacation spots all rolled in one. Now that it's 2022, it's safe to say, that women who bore the weight of the pandemic proved their superhuman multitasking capabilities. A flexible workplace and hours are integral toattracting female talent. These days, they won't settle for less.
Having assessed your value props through the lens of female candidates, you need to put yourself out there in a way that makes sense, aligned with the way we live and work today.
Automate your talent acquisition
If you're like most organizations, you need to fill vacant positions yesterday. Make that last month, or the one before that. To do so, it's important to meet and empower the right people the right way.
Programmatic ads target female candidates, selling not just your company's available roles but also your organization's key benefits, such as work/life balance, that resonate with female job seekers. Take care to ensure your ad encourages them to click through to a full job description. That expanded description should include salary details and highlight any growth potential for the role. Consider it a compelling story they want to hear provided it's backed up IRL.
Then, follow the ads with and career websites that delve deeper into these perks, your work culture and your organization's penchant for flexibility. Remind female talent that you're there to support their success and mean it.
Finally, be sure to enlist talent assessments to measure essential skills, identifying candidates that can contribute to your organizational goals and success. That way, you can pre-screen and narrow down candidates, saving time and effort on your part while reducing the cost of hiring overall.
Cut time-to-hire with on-demand interviews
Conversational, convenient and candidate-friendly, self-paced on-demand video can help recruiting teams recoup quality talent lost over the last two years. By enlisting an approachable virtual hiring platform, candidates can record responses to a shortlist of video questions using audio, video or text. There are plenty of benefits, ones that go a long way toward simplifying a return to the workforce for women.
- Interviews can be completed via smartphone, tablet or desktop at any time
- The process is self-paced
- A candidate can save and complete the interview later
- Interviews can be re-recorded if the candidate is not satisfied
Once complete, the interviews arrive instantly in the recruiter's inbox, ready to be viewed and shared with the hiring team.
Build your talent pipeline
An important part of successful talent acquisition is building a pipeline of qualified candidates. Many ways beyond programmatic media further accelerate the process. For example, you can automate events that help accelerate connections.
Consider creating virtual or in-person events that help capture leads while allowing you to showcase "why us." That is why your target candidate should come work for you. A recruitment events module can simplify the process by building, advertising and managing your virtual or in-person pipeline events, from registration to post-event follow-up and during conversations with applicants and hires.
It's hard to deny the recruiting game has been turned on end. Hiring the talent, you need while creating a welcoming, women-friendly workplace is within reach. Best of all, the right recruitment marketing platform can make it easier and more successful than ever.
