Adapting Recruiting Strategies to Attract Millennials
Are you and your company missing out on the tech-savvy skills, innovative spirit, and cultural diversity of the millennial generation?
Maybe you’re still on the fence about welcoming millennial-aged employees into your work force because you’ve heard such labels as entitled, impatient, and naïve attached to this demographic. News Flash! Many company executives are sharing success stories, citing another set of labels, which is fast becoming synonymous with millennials: continuous learners, team players, collaborators, diverse, optimistic, achievement-oriented, socially conscious, and highly educated.1
If you are relying on the tried-and-true recruiting and hiring tactics of the past, then most likely you are not attracting or hiring from this pool of today’s most talented, up-and-coming job seekers. Why? Because this new crop of candidates thinks differently than their elders. They define success by a new set of parameters. Their worldview is distinct and more diverse than any generation before them. Adapting your hiring techniques to conform to modern standards is the most effective way to draw the millennials attention to your company.
Keys to attracting millennials include a keen understanding of these realities:
- They are the first generation of “digital natives”. As individuals who eat, breathe, and sleep social media, millennials are all about connecting and sharing and discovering information. With at least 80 percent on Facebook and over half on Instagram,2 employers can’t afford to be without a properly maintained social media presence as well as an informative and up-to-the-minute website.
- Take your digital presence a step further by launching a mobile app. With the average millennial3 checking their smartphone 43 times a day, you can’t afford not to direct career opportunities straight to their fingertips. Converting your website to be compatible with mobile devices and tablets is key to expanding your outreach to the millennials.
- Mix it up. New experiences also rank high on their “wish list”. They get excited about the latest, trendiest, newest-on-the-horizon way to do almost anything. Why not trade a traditional phone interview for a video conference? Plan to include the millennials you already have on staff, combined with other high performers on the interview team. Have them ready to sell your company just as much as they expect to be sold on the interviewee. Those who can think outside of the box will attract the most millennials.
- Be prepared to have the interview tables reversed. Expect questions about the company’s core values and charitable involvements as well as social, cultural, and networking opportunities. Millennial job applicants will want to leave with a firm grasp of what your company is all about. And don’t be surprised if the line of questions focuses far less on the products or services the company supplies than it does on the company’s culture!
- Time is of the essence. These talented candidates are accustomed to instant, at your-finger-tips results. A lengthy interview process that was once considered the “norm”, may find millennials looking elsewhere.
The better you understand what makes them tick, the more you can adapt your recruiting tactics to attract the brightest and best millennial candidates. Allow Thomas Byrne Associates to direct the talented, qualified millennial candidates to your company.
2 — http://www.akkencloud.com/recruiting-millennial-generation-differs-start/