As the country’s workforce goes into hibernation until the virus crisis passes, many HR tech companies are finding it difficult to maintain sales or even get meetings with prospective HR buyers. That’s not surprising, given the fact that many of them are completely distracted while trying to manage in a new remote work environment.

Now that we are a few weeks into lockdown the shock of all this has worn off and I do see signs (small ones) of companies trying to get back to business while doing it remotely. It’s not 100% doom and gloom but challenges still remain as the majority of employers are on hiring freezes or worse laying off.

ZipRecruiter laid off a huge chunk of its workforce last week because customer signups were down 80% and job seeker traffic fell 25%. Their CEO Ian Siegel said they had to make the move to remain solvent. A pretty stark reminder of how fast the job market has cratered. Vendors like AllyO and Textio also let go of staff recently.

So in these trying times what’s an HR vendor to do?

If your product revolves around recruiting you’d better be shifting focus to the few sectors that are still looking to add workers: Logistics, Healthcare, Grocery are the top ones that come to mind.

Still others seem to be weathering the storm ok. Doug Berg from Zapinfo said his team is “repackaging” their product to HR teams to show how it can be used to collect information about their employees that may not be in their HCM. His demo requests have shot up since doing that.

Jerome Ternynck from SmartRecruiters said on a Facebook group that now is a good time for HR to do some housekeeping. His team has been getting a “record number” of demo requests in the past week. The reason? “I think it’s mostly that an ATS replacement is like changing the engine of car. It’s best done while parking”, he added.

“an ATS replacement is like changing the engine of car. It’s best done while parking” - CEO of SmartRecruiters

Emissary’s CEO Euan Hayward has also shifted the company's messaging around their text recruiting software to highlight how effective it is for workforce communications. "Our clients in the grocery, warehouse store and hospital/healthcare segments are still using our texting tools for surge hiring campaigns. But, other clients are using it to communicate with existing employees about company policies, facility closures and to coordinate sick leave requests”, he told me by email.

Repositioning your message to take advantage of what the market needs seems to be the primary way vendors are coping. With remote work being so pervasive now I thought Paradox’s announcement of a virtual hiring platform was timely, for example.

The other big trend I have noticed is vendors giving away product for free, at least until things get back to normal. I realize not every vendor can afford to do that but it may be your ticket to survival in these bizarre times we now find ourselves in.

Got a comment or something to add to this conversation? Feel free to contact me.