The 10 Must-Read Articles for Recruiters This Week

The pandemic has hit the U.S. Class of 2020 particularly hard. According to The Wall Street Journal, unemployment was above 20% last spring for those Americans between the ages of 20 and 24; COVID-19 caused about 25% of employers to close their open positions or rescind offers made to recent graduates; and “not since the Great Depression have so many young adults lived with their parents.” 

These are trying times for this group of young adults, but they are also demonstrating incredible resilience and resourcefulness. Recruiters who are reaching out to these recent grads would benefit greatly from understanding their motivations, as some consider a pivot away from their ideal career or a possible postponement of their job search entirely. You can learn more about their stories — and the challenges they face — by taking a look at the top spot on our list below of must-read articles for talent professionals.

Further down the list, you can also find out how virtual reality could help you navigate difficult conversations with your co-workers; how gift-giving and holiday parties can help with employee engagement even during a pandemic; how to meet hiring managers’ expectations when it’s “raining candidates”; and why implicit gender bias may be a more persistent problem than ever before.

Here are the must-read articles for this week:

1. The Class of 2020 Looks for Work (The Wall Street Journal)

2. The Pandemic Is Widening a Corporate Productivity Gap (Harvard Business Review)

3. This New VR Simulator Helps You Prepare for the Most Awkward Office Encounters (Fortune)

4. How to Hire for Emotional Intelligence — A Practical Guide in the Age of COVID-19 (Fast Company)

5. During COVID, Holiday Gift-Giving Can Be HR’s ‘Time to Shine’ (Human Resource Executive)

6. How LinkedIn’s Recruiting Leaders Are Helping Their Teams Become Strategic Advisors (LinkedIn Talent Blog)

7. It’s Raining Candidates! Hallelujah? (ERE)

8. Welcome to 1950: The Role of Women at Work Is Increasingly That They Have No Role (TLNT)

9. ‘Tokenized’: Inside Black Workers’ Struggles at the King of Crypto Start-Ups (The New York Times)

10. How Do You Hold an Office Holiday Party During a Pandemic? (Slate)

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