Is it me or is the workforce getting younger?!
Today, employers need to recruit talent from all age groups, and that includes young talent, the group we know as millennials. The recruitment approach you may want to take to attract younger workers to your business could be quite different from the traditional approaches you have used in the past. In this article, we’ll look at 5 tips to attract younger talent into your business, but first… let’s define what we are talking about.
What is Young Talent?
The millennial generation is the group that were aged 18-34 in 2015, according to Pew Research. This is the largest generation in the US workforce now, so you’ll be seeing more and more candidates who fall into this category.
We’re also starting to see the next generation enter the workforce too: those who turned 18 in the last few years and are the youngest members of our teams.
These individuals have never known a world without Facebook, and their approach to working in a digital world can feel quite alien to those with a few more years of experience. However, young talented people can be passionate about making a difference, keen to work hard and highly ambitious.
So how do you attract these people to your business? Here are 5 tips for hiring younger employees.
- Overlook Job Hopping
One of the things recruiters often look for is stability and tenure in a position. Someone who jumps between positions can be considered flaky.
The reality of work for many millennials is that one to three years is enough in a role. They’re keen to move on and upwards, and that often means moving companies because that’s the fastest way to gain wider experience and get an increase in salary.
Don’t worry about people who have multiple positions on their resume – or at least, don’t rule them out before you’ve had a chance to discuss with them. As for whether they will do the same in your business – it’s your role to find ways to retain your talent. People don’t leave without reason, so don’t give them a reason to seek employment elsewhere.
- Get Social
Candidates in this age bracket are typically highly computer literate with experience of working with social networking tools both for work and pleasure. It feels incongruent to them when a business doesn’t have active social profiles, or has them and doesn’t use them effectively. There’s nothing more annoying than asking a question about a vacancy on a social channel and hearing nothing back from a real person.
Tap into where these candidates are likely to be hanging out and engage with them in a way that feels authentic. This is not the time for Facebook bots!
- Make a Good First Impression
There is a lot of competition for candidates, and the standards expected are high. That should go for all types of candidates: they all want to see the organization making a good first impression with a smooth recruitment process that feels joined up.
If a candidate feels that there are cracks in the process it reflects badly on your business and it might end up with them dropping out of the recruitment process. With the rise of the gig economy, individuals have more choice than ever about their working environment, so if you want to attract the best, you have to be good at your recruitment and onboarding processes. If not, you risk a bad review on sites like Glassdoor.
- Offer Mentors
Millennials can be highly ambitious, and a way to support that and attract the best candidates from that generation is to offer mentorship.
A mentor is someone who supports the individual and can offer tailored and personal career development by helping them grow into their new responsibilities. Mentoring is a known way of getting more traction in your career in a shorter period of time, and it has benefits for the business too. You’ll find your mentors gain skills, retention rates are higher and the person being mentored is able to make a greater contribution to the business as they have the skills and knowledge to do so.
This plays into offering millennials what they value, which is often a good team culture, entrepreneurial spirit and a commitment to social responsibility. Mentoring is also a flexible option to run alongside formal training.
- Promote Flexibility
It’s common for millennials to want to feel like they have autonomy over their schedule. Flexible working and a hands-off approach to managing can be a great cultural fit for millennials to thrive. As long as you set expectations and manage performance effectively, giving people the option to work from home, or remotely can be a huge advantage. Flexible hours and results-based management are also attractive. Think about how you could adapt current policies to allow your new cohort the possibility of later start and finish times, or switching up their hours to work at the times they are most productive (and still leave enough time in the day for the gym, book club or anything else).
Even electronic rostering and tools that give your shift workers the opportunity to switch out shifts or request a change to their scheduled hours will make it easier for you to retain talented younger staff.
Ready to attract some fantastic new millennial staff? Triumph Strategic Consulting can be your recruitment partner to make sure your next vacancy is filled by someone who feels like a perfect fit. Give us a call today!