\n<\/p>\n
In March “we went from working on a million dollars’ worth of jobs to zero in three weeks,” she says.<\/p>\n
“Even though our sector was not as affected as hospitality, a lot of our clients didn’t have the luxury of proceeding as if nothing was wrong. They had to freeze their headcount, reduce wages and shorten work weeks because they were assuming the worst.”<\/p>\n
Ms Woof says her business was already doing some human resources consulting and training work, so pivoted her team to focus on those two areas instead.<\/p>\n
As a result of gaining business in these areas, as well as moving to a four-day week, she has been able to keep all 12 of her staff employed.<\/p>\n
While the recruitment side of the business is now slowly recovering, it is only working on about 20% of the number of jobs compared with pre-Covid levels, she says.<\/p>\n
The bounce back for recruitment firms in other parts of the world has been better. This has been the case for MatcHR in Ukraine, which helps western firms employ remote tech staff. Its clients include Booking.com, TikTok, Stripe and Merck.<\/p>\n
“In March the whole world stopped, so in a matter of two to three weeks we lost 70% of our turnover. We had to fire 60% of our staff, and we were still bleeding money,” says MatcHR co-founder Adriaan Kolff.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n