Articles

For months I’ve been hearing from talent acquisition professionals in our CandE community who have lost their jobs. They ask if I’ve heard of any job opportunities that might interest them. I offer to make introductions to anyone in my network. I recommend they check out the recruiting jobs listed at RecruitersRecruitingRecruiters.com — where there are currently over 700 job openings and over 1,300 recruiters looking for jobs. 

Plus, too many women, well over 2 million last year alone just through October, had to leave their jobs (multiple job types across multiple industries) due the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. All 140,000 jobs lost in December 2020 were all women as well. Definitely a percentage of these were women in HR and recruiting roles whose companies were downsizing and freezing hiring due to the pandemic. 

Those who have shared their experiences with me have said how eye-opening it’s been to look for a job, and how poor their overall candidate experience has been. For some many recruiting leaders and their teams, to have worked so hard to improve their recruiting and hiring candidate experiences, it’s been depressing to be on the receiving end of poor experiences. 

For 10 years we’ve been conducting our Talent Board candidate experience benchmark research and sharing proven practices that help improve recruiting, hiring and the candidate experience. We also recently launched our new Candidate Experience Certificate of Learning Program in partnership with HR.com. It’s a 6-week professional development program created to teach and share proven best practices in recruiting, hiring and improving candidate experience.

Just a few weeks ago after we completed the pilot program, someone in my LinkedIn network asked me if we were offering scholarships. I replied, “No, not yet.”

And yet, today we are. 

The CandE professional development scholarships will be for recruiting professionals currently displaced by the COVID-19 pandemic and who are unemployed and looking for work. The scholarships will be awarded to one individual to participate in each of the upcoming scheduled courses in 2021. The scholarships will cover the full cost of the CandE Learning Program.

As mentioned above, there are many HR and recruiting professionals currently unemployed and looking for career development opportunities, and their next roles, which is why we’re offering scholarships for our learning program. 

We’re now accepting applications for our scholarships. They must be received by April 9 for the next available class in May and will be reviewed by the Talent Board team. The award recipient will receive a $1,500 credit to be applied to the Cande Learning Program registration fee. The selected recipient will be notified 2-3 weeks before the cohort starts and is non-transferable to another course date. We’ll continue to offer scholarships throughout the year. 

More information about the CandE scholarship program and the application criteria can be found here. 

We’re also launching a fundraising program so we can provide more than one scholarship per class. Scholarship donations can be made here.

Recruiting and hiring is critical to the success of any organization, and yet, it takes the biggest hit when downturns strike. Help us help those who have lost their jobs get some recruiting and hiring professional development, and hopefully onto their next job. 

Be safe and well.

Kevin Grossman, Talent Board President