Online Job Boards – Responsibilities and Opportunities in times of Corona virus

In the dawn of a potentially unprecedented crisis for global economy and global health we were recently involved in a lot of conversations around job boards and what they could do to help in this situation.

With some time lag, globally the same status evolves and the same measures are set leading the a very common impact in each market:

• As the rate of infection goes up, public life gets shut down with schools, non-grocery and non-pharmaceutical retail, bars, cafés and restaurants lock up and borders get closed (happend in Asia weeks ago, happens in Europe since a view days, will happen to US and UK soon)
• This leads to a sudden increase in unemployement rate while at the same time unprecedented high demand in preserved sectors:
  • Demand in warehousing & logistic staff for grocery stores hits high due to panic buying
  • Demand in healthcare staff hits high due to increased illness and growing number of medical staff missing due to being infected
  • Demand in harvesting staff in agricultural sector hits high due to missing foreign workers that used to travel close to the borders.
  • etc.
• Public and private iniatives get launched to fight the situation
  • economic stimuli by national governments
  • initiatives of associations, NPO/NGOs and private marketplaces to fill sudden demand
  • self-help of people (young help elder e.g. in close neighborhood)
  • etc.

 In my opinion, the responsibility and opportunity for job boards could be:

• Help to quickly match the suddenly change of supply and demand of the job market (e.g. warehousing, healthcare, agriculture)
• Help to provide people both information about the impact of the situation (e.g. content on employment, etc.) and give a perspective of new job opportunities in the future (e.g. via job alerts) or by providing access to relevant education in times you cannot leave your home; but also to struggling small and medium sized businesses to seek help (e.g. information about funding)
• Provide a safe platform for interaction with new features like video application and other means of communication available online