The need for social distancing is pushing businesses to embrace digital in a hurry. For those clinging to in-person meetings, paper documents, cash, and on-location work, the Coronavirus (COVID-19) will provide enough motivation to let those aged practices go.

While this is a terrible situation, it is also an opportunity. Challenges are opportunities. This situation is an opportunity to adapt and to embrace change as a whole world rapidly.

Remote work, increased sick-leave, computer literacy, and awareness of globalization, are overdue changes. We are quickly learning as a world how we all impact each other.

We may have needed a common enemy to unite us. The virus is not even alive. Yet, it must be defeated. And we do so by working together, putting aside our biases and silly feuds to focus on a greater good.

We are all in this together, and whatever our differences, they pale in comparison to what we face. We all know someone who has been or could be negatively affected by the virus when allowed to spread—our actions matter.

While much of the news leaves a feeling of uncertainty, there are undoubtedly many unpleasant realities looming, let this shadow prove the sunshine. Let us learn to work together and let us embrace advancement.

The time for obstructing progress must end. The time for not recognizing the world as one must end. We all impact each other.
Stop fighting and start helping.

I believe digital solutions can help in many areas. Going digital will enable us to practice social distancing. It has already helped us to mobilize much quicker than in previous centuries.

Our only obstacle is ourselves.

I hear many downplaying the danger. There is a myopic view that prevents the misinformed from seeing the dominoes waiting to fall. Others around the world already appreciate the gravity of the situation. The sooner those downplaying the situation recognize how serious this is, the better.

Panic is not good. But alertness is. And this alertness is what will hasten the changes needed.

The love of profit must be set aside for the love of people. The willingness to embrace the future must overpower the desire to cling to the past.

Ideas do not belong to people. The ideas always existed, always will exist, and are not contingent on your existence. Ideas are not ours to hold, they are to share.

Withholding or rejecting an idea delays our progress.

Realize that we could be further along in our technology, if we shared and accepted ideas sooner. These ideas prevail eventually, but its the obstacles that prevent many generations from witnessing their fruition.

I have an idea. It’s about the employment process. I would like to make it faster. The idea came to me when I was attending the University of the Incarnate Word.

The year was 2010; I was learning how to create the ideal resume and answer interview questions when it occurred to me that the process of getting hired was incredibly inefficient. During my college years, I had become obsessed with the perceived inefficiencies that I encountered in my daily life.

My solution to the employment process was to consolidate efforts to improve efficiency. Imagine an app or website where you could be vetted, recommended, and answer all possible interview questions once for the ability to one-click accept your next job. I wanted getting a new job to be as easy as liking a Facebook post.

Of course, there will be objections. Like, it shouldn’t be that easy… it takes the human aspect away from the process. But to me, I saw that speeding up the process was beneficial for society as a whole.

Politicians recognize that the economy is a major concern of all working citizens. Why? Because income streams are slow to replace. Get laid off from a job, it may take several months to even a year to replace it. This delays the employee’s ability to participate in the economy. Delays purchasing decisions, which then affects others. Layoff in mass and you can cause a major economic downturn.

So, it is in our best interest to speed up the hiring process.

From the perspective of the manager, losing talent is also a problem. Someone quits, gets a better job, and now your operations are hobbling along. That position needed to be filled, “like yesterday.” And the shoddy effort to fill this position then leads to a poor candidate choice, causing the need to fill the position to cycle over again.

And let’s not forget company culture! A poor candidate choice made in haste can leave toxic effects on morale.

Wouldn’t it be better to fill every position with the ideal candidate faster? A vetted, well-trained, best fit, candidate?

As the recruiting process stands now, finding candidates and opportunities is more like digging through an assorted bin of $5 DVDs at Walmart. One shuffles through 5-7 options and then settles for what is there.

The process is simply not convenient. Meaning, there will be minimal effort put into finding the ideal opportunity/candidate. This also applies to job descriptions themselves.

A hiring manager has many other tasks to perform. So in their haste the job description is most likely not their best work. The collective shoddy descriptions accumulate into chaos.

Am I exaggerating? I think not.

Why? There is no structure. No agreed upon definitions. Everything is ad hoc.

Now I recognize that innovation thrives in organic chaos. We need it, but not too much of it. Not everything has to be this disorderly.

I believe that we can collectively build clearer definitions and use these as templates to make our lives easier. I also believe that this will help us develop the structure we need to properly career plan.

Ultimately, this can be studied. It can be better. The excuses for not at least trying to speed up the employment process are against society’s best interests.

The sooner people are hired, working, and earning income, the sooner they can buy things. That’s good for the economy.

The more defined a career path is, the better we can train our workforce. How do you know what to study, if you do not know where you are going?

I understand that some of our studies begin as interests. And that some of the knowledge we acquire now is for an occupation that will not exist for another 10 years. I am not removed from this reality. I am simply saying, we can do better than what we have now. And we should try.

I also understand that free Enterprise is autonomous and hard to unify to a standard. But hey, we all use resumes and Facebook right? I think it can be done.

This is the very start of this conversation. I have held these thoughts in for sometime. I have more to say.