Spotlight for Recruiting Professionals
Throughout the spring, the URR functions of employers in the transportation industry were particularly hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic.
It stands to reason that with travel bans, the cancellation of events, and employers moving operations to the virtual environment, fewer people would be traveling or commuting. The results of NACE’s Coronavirus Quick Polls help to illustrate the impact of the pandemic on the college recruiting operations of employers in the transportation sector.
While selecting all options that applied, 63.9 percent of recruiting offices overall were not changing their staffing levels by the end of May. In addition, 27.1 percent of respondents had instituted hiring freezes; 9.0 percent had furloughed staff; 8.4 percent had laid off staff; and 5.1 percent had kept staff levels the same, but had cut staff hours.
These percentages were much more dire for URR functions of employers in the transportation sector. Just one-quarter of responding transportation employers reported making no changes to their recruiting staffing, the lowest of any industry. By comparison, more than 80 percent of employers in the government (85.7 percent); social services (85.7 percent); finance, insurance, and real estate (84.2 percent); and food and beverage manufacturing (81.8 percent) industries made no changes to their college recruiting staffs.
Transportation employers also had one of the largest percentages of respondents that instituted hiring freezes in their college recruiting staffs (62.5 percent). While three-quarters of miscellaneous support services employers reported freezing hiring, less than half of the respondent in all other industries reported instituting hiring freezes.
Furthermore, a greater percentage of employers in the transportation and miscellaneous support services sectors furloughed recruiting staff (both at 25.0 percent) than did those in all other industries except those in miscellaneous manufacturing (25.7 percent). However, one-quarter of transportation respondents were keeping staffing levels the same, but cutting hours for college recruiting staff.
NACE is compiling data from its Coronavirus Quick Polls and will be issuing a report later this summer that will help to illustrate the effect of the pandemic on URR and career services operations.
