We’re in the middle of the Great Resignation, and there’s much talk of companies being unable to find labor and that there is a surplus of open jobs. This may lead you to believe that outplacement is unnecessary. However, that’s not the case. Job seekers continue to struggle to find work because while there are many jobs available, they may not be the right ones. Whether the positions don’t offer enough pay, workplace flexibility, or career development opportunities, unemployed individuals are being rightfully choosy. Similarly, organizations are selective with hires, as they don’t want to lose new employees they’ve invested to onboard. And many are seeking experience and skills which those in the labor market do not have. As a result, many individuals who have lost their jobs are in need of career transition assistance.
Finding Suitable Open Positions is a Challenge
This 2021 report by FlexJobs showed that 48% of surveyed job seekers were unable to find suitable jobs to apply for. Creating a job search strategy is not always easy, regardless of the number of available jobs. Career coaches provide the type of career transition assistance that helps individuals navigate unemployment—and everything that goes with it—in addition to building a strategy to achieve their specific career goals. Since the start of the pandemic, companies have shifted their requirements for where, when, and how employees work. As a result, expert guidance is even more critical as job seekers attempt to find roles that suit their individual needs and aspirations.
Skills Assessments and Upskilling Opportunities Are More Important
Given that more employers are turning to skills-based hiring, job seekers also need to assess their strengths and skills to be able to craft a story via a resume that shows their suitability for the roles they desire. Conversely, for those not sure of the right next step in their careers, these assessments can also suggest roles for which they are well suited.
Once individuals have determined what skills they need to improve or learn in order to increase their employability, their next step is to find a way to obtain those skills. A robust outplacement solution will provide a wide variety of online courses to facilitate learning and upskilling as part of career transition assistance.
Job Seeking Requires Skills That Are Not Necessarily Inherent
Most job seekers are unaware of the best practices required to build a resume that will get through applicant tracking systems. As a result, according to a Harvard Business School Study, 88% of employers report that qualified, highly skilled candidates are being excluded from consideration due to stringent job description criteria in the systems. This means that they won’t get interviewed, let alone hired. Expert resume writers can craft resumes that get noticed with the right keywords (including skills surfaced by assessments), while career coaches can help job seekers with networking strategies to find hidden opportunities and suggest online coursework that can help them boost their skills. This last part of career transition assistance is crucial, as (according to the same study) a majority of hidden workers would participate in free online training courses and seek coaching support to boost employability if they were offered to them.
The Pandemic Has Created Specific Job Requirements for Both Job Seekers and Employers
Some job seekers only want to work for employers that are mandating vaccinations for employees who work in an office. Others who can’t or won’t get vaccinated need to navigate finding employment that will work for them. Parents and those who care for others—having discovered the balance that remote work has provided—desire a new position that allows them to work from home. These and other situations raised by the pandemic have made the job search more complicated as job seekers try to find positions that can accommodate their needs.
Coaches, especially those specially trained to guide job seekers on these types of concerns, can help individuals with strategies to find the right roles, broach the topics with potential employers, and sell themselves as hires worth accommodating.
Offering Career Transition Assistance—or Not—Reflects on You as an Employer
Regardless of what assistance you believe your exiting employees need, your employer brand can only be improved by providing the benefit of outplacement after a layoff. As both laid off and remaining employees evaluate how you as an employer handled the event and treated them, your reputation will either be upheld, improved, or degraded as they relate their experiences to their professional and personal networks or even write reviews on sites like Glassdoor. And as a positive employer brand is crucial to attracting and retaining employees, taking the step to protect yours by providing career transition assistance will pay dividends down the road.INTOO’s outplacement program helps employees transition to new jobs through one-on-one, on-demand coaching from premier career coaches, resume reviews, and other career development and job search services. Learn more about how our outplacement program can benefit your company when you’re transitioning employees.
Robyn Kern is a seasoned business writer who has written in the HR, education, technology, and nonprofit spaces. She writes about topics including outplacement, layoffs, career development, internal mobility, candidate experience, succession planning, talent acquisition, and more, with the goal of surfacing workforce trends and educating the HR community on these key topics. Her work has been featured on hrforhr.org and trainingindustry.com.