One of the areas of recruitment most adversely affected by COVID-19 is that of conferences and events, which until 2020 had been almost totally based on on-site attendance. With long-term health and safety measures in place affecting and restricting public gatherings, it is now time to rethink budget allocations and put them towards online broadcasting facilities as well as equipping your conference environment with the tools to continue, remotely.

Four years ago, the world adopted an ambitious set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) designed ‘to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity by 2030’. Despite rising life expectancy and the eradication of many endemic diseases, more than 400 million people in the member states of the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) still live in absolute poverty, subsisting on less than US$1.90 per day. It is, perhaps, these countries that face the greatest challenges in fulfilling the SDGs. Traditional methods of development finance have struggled to alleviate the extreme poverty in some regions of the world, leaving the poorest populations without the basic building blocks needed to lead healthy lives and build dignified livelihoods. Many remain deprived of primary healthcare, protection against infectious diseases, a sufficient and nutritious food supply, potable water, clean power, and sanitation.

COVID-19 has undoubtedly brought about fundamental changes in the ways in which we have traditionally approached recruiting. Job recruiting strategies have to be flexible and dynamic to ensure they fit with the current climate.

History, it feels, is quickening pace. Pandemics, both old and new, are rocking the world, shaking its foundations. Systemic racism, an age-old disease, continues to facilitate violence on black bodies and undermine humanity, while a novel coronavirus has killed hundreds of thousands, disproportionately affected people of colour, and compounded the often racial inequalities that characterise our societies. Protestors now fill the streets, and across much of the anglophone world a tipping point has been reached. What will emerge from this moment is hard to say. A better question may be what do we want to emerge? Either way, there can be little doubt, change is afoot - and it’s been a long time coming.