A number of companies and startups dealing with a slowdown in business due to covid-19 are retraining staff to work in other roles to avoid layoffs and furloughs
Making a phone call had never fazed Santosh Kumar Bandari. But as the technical recruiter picked up the phone one mid-April day, he felt a tiny frisson of apprehension. It was the first time the 27-year-old was making a sales call to a prospective client. Since work in recruitment dried up within weeks of lockdown in March, Bandari has started working in sales as well. In the two months he’s spent in sales, he has closed “a decent-sized deal” for his company Sonik Consulting.
A number of companies and startups dealing with a slowdown in business due to covid-19 are retraining staff to work in other roles to avoid layoffs and furloughs. In some cases, a shift to working from home has left employees in specialized roles with little or no work. Employees, on their part, are readily accepting extra responsibilities, given the fear of job security.
“After the lockdown, the company was not hiring and my work came down drastically so I thought I’d work on sales too,” says Bandari, whose designation now reads business development executive and technical recruiter. “I had a fair knowledge of our products and got a little more training,” he says.
Source: livemint
