Personnel will always be the lifeblood of any business, but deciding whether or not to recruit more of them will always be a tricky decision.

Over the past year and a half, employers have made significant changes to their hiring practices to cope with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The late Peter Drucker, the father of management thinking, once said in 1999 that the most valuable asset of a 21st-century institution, whether business or non-business, will be its knowledge workers and their productivity.

The Asian Development Bank showed in a study that 70.6% of micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the Philippines temporarily closed because of the pandemic.

The Global Resilience Institute at Northeastern University found in a study that businesses hardly hit by the COVID-19 pandemic were only able to survive the crisis because of their ability to quickly adapt, solve problems, and utilize resources.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, recruitment typically involved inviting candidates to the office, interviewing them, then eventually onboarding them to the company in person.