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Millennials, also known as Generation Y, is a term used for people who have reached adulthood during the 2000s. In terms of profile, millennials are highly adaptable and tech savvy digital natives who by the year 2025, will comprise 75 percent of the workforce. Currently, millennials have bested the baby boomers and are the largest working generation. So, whether you’re running a big business or small, hiring millennials is imperative.
Millennials can also be hard to retain, and developing an effective strategy that is unique and caters to their specific persona is a must if you’re looking to hire one. You must use an applicant tracking system and have a strong human resource management system as well. Some key tips for effective millennial hiring include:
Effective millennial hiring will require you to modernize your employer brand. Millennials look for jobs with an adequate amount of benefits along with a decent salary, but most importantly, they try to gauge whether a company’s culture is well suited for them. A strong set of values and an employee culture that appeals to millennials will go a long way for effective hiring.
Company culture is the heartbeat of a workplace and there are plenty that haven’t had a pulse in years.
If your company has no culture, then there’s no sense of community. Your work colleagues should feel like family, not co-workers. You should like hanging out with some of your work colleagues after work or helping each other solve problems.
When you have trust and respect amongst a group of people, you have the foundation to create a thriving culture. Of course, as a company, you cannot be expected to change the existing culture overnight simply to attract a new type of generation, but a willingness to adapt is the key to hiring and retaining the millennials.
Millennials tend to carry out some research on the internet before making a decision. The job hunt process is no different. Some of the most successful ways of hiring millennials are investing into creating a more engaging social media presence for your company, improving your search engine rankings, and generating content that is not only limited to job posts, but also communicates the culture of the company. Also, millennials use social media platform to search and share interesting positions with their network.
Millennials are using Instagram more than any other platform. Recent research shows that 60 percent of Instagram's users are between the ages of 18 and 29, with 42 percent of those users visiting the site at least once per day. In fact, some studies find that millennials interact more on social media than they do in real life.
LinkedIn is a great networking platform, to recruit and professionally connect and it offers many services that both job seekers and employers can utilize. LinkedIn provides a skill match, and it is a big advantage because employers can see if the job seekers possess the skills as mentioned by the job seekers in their profile and as required in the job description.
Millennials love the employers that use smart Applicant tracking system because it saves them some time and effort to apply to multiple jobs because a smart ATS will allow them to create their profiles one time which they can re-use for different positions. A smart Applicant Tracking System is automating software that posts jobs and finds qualified individuals who appear best suited for the task using the skill match.
Employers also love a smart Applicant tracking software because using an applicant tracking system saves both time and money, and 94 percent of the companies who use an applicant tracking system have improved their recruitment processes to a large extent. Its effectiveness lies in its one-click mechanism, which allows it to post about jobs on multiple sites, sort applications and schedule interviews. You can filter 75% of potential candidates through this system and find a good match faster. An ATS can also be integrated with a background verification or pre-employment testing for streamlining the recruitment process.
Another effective way of hiring millennials is by recruiting college students. You can offer internship opportunities and build connections in the process. Recruiting college students through internships also saves time and money. As of 2018, the job offer rate for interns is at 59%, job acceptance is at 77.3%, and the rate of conversion is at 45.6%. You can recruit potential candidates by attending career fairs, speaking at industry events and getting job/internship opportunities featured on online job boards of a college campus. Your applicant tracking system and human resource management system can take care of the rest.
Make sure to provide a comfortable and stress-free environment during an interview. You should be able to gauge whether or not the candidate can work in the existing company environment as this will determine whether they are the right fit for the job or not. Another important thing to remember is that while you are interviewing the candidate, they are interviewing you as well, so your conduct should be a reflection of your company’s culture.
Having a strong a human resource management system or a smart ATS will allow you to enter the candidate assessment and track the progress or status of each candidate or a position. You can also find more effective general hiring tips, that can you attract millennials who will take your business to the next level.
Allowing them to personalize their workspace encourages them to develop a sense of belonging. Employees can bring pictures of their loved ones or pets, place a few favorite books, or any other creature comfort item like their favorite coffee mug on their desk. By doing so, they are less likely to think of leaving.
Millennials already know they can earn money, what they desire more is for there to be a continuous flow of mutual trust between them and their employer. They need to be given roles that are custom-made to suit their individual personality. This may mean that the level of challenges, pressure, and autonomy that one employee enjoys will have to be different from others. They seek purpose; the repetitive cycle of seemingly identical projects acts as a kind of demotivating factor for millennials. They seek the joy of working with new technologies and tools.
After all, they are of the age which is considered prime for learning and implementing latest practices. They want to be able to look back and recall a journey in which they were given an environment conducive enough for them to be able to push the boundaries of their own limits while they experimented with hitherto new processes or technologies and enjoyed every moment of it.
Millennials are part of the Knowledge economy where meaning is more important than efficiency. They don’t want to be thought or seen as labor. Productivity can no longer be related to just remuneration. They want meaning, challenges, creation, pride and a sense of identity along with it. So embracing these tips will help you hire and retain millennials in your organization.
