Coronavirus pandemic | Jobseekers turn to remote working roles

"Searches for remote work have increased by over 261 percent as a share of all searches on Indeed India since February 2020," Sashi Kumar, Managing Director of employment platform Indeed India, told Moneycontrol.

According to data from Indeed, job seekers are increasingly searching for terms like ‘remote’, ‘work from home’ and related phrases. While searches for remote work have increased, the number of available job postings for remote work opportunities has remained relatively unchanged during the same time period.

Industry sources said that online platforms are seeing an almost 100 percent in the job postings since the first week of March compared to February, while offline consultants are likely to see an almost 50 percent dip in revenue.

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Due to a lockdown in India and the threat of an impact on the business cycles of companies, there is a high possibility of job losses across sectors like aviation, travel and tourism and hospitality.

Firms which were in hiring mode prior to the outbreak have put them on the backburner till May 2020.

For freshers, the crisis triggered by the outbreak has come as a body blow. Pratik Tripathi, a Commerce graduate from Kolkata, said he has applied through three job portals to try his luck.

"I am of the view that the turnaround time in online platforms is much faster than physical recruitment consultants for freshers," he said.

Basic services on online job platforms are offered free of cost for job applicants. Only job seekers who want their resume to be displayed prominently to recruiters or want to apply for jobs at multinational firms need to pay to get premium services.

Now that there is a lockdown, work-from-home jobs are also gaining prominence.

Neha Bagaria, founder & CEO of online career portal for women JobsforHer.com, explained that while some companies are delaying hiring decisions and in many cases putting a freeze on hiring, there are others who are using this situation to bolster their systems and processes to come out stronger once the storm is over.

"Such companies are continuing their hiring and on-boarding processes by leveraging virtual platforms," she said.

Since there is uncertainty around when the crisis will be resolved, Bagaria added that companies are also looking at ramping up their gig workers to reduce employee and infrastructure costs.

The economic and labour crisis created by the COVID-19 pandemic could increase global unemployment by almost 25 million, according to a March 18 assessment by the International Labour Organisation.

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