Recruiting Millennials: How to attract, hire and hold them in the company?
Millennials. In recent years many recruiters have been faced with the same question: how to attract, recruit and retain millennials in the company? “To recruit and retain millennials is a tough business”, how many times have we heard this phrase in the corridors of HR and recruiting conferences! But is it really?
At In-recruiting, we believe that there are common themes around managing Millennials and so we wanted to make some clarifications and dispel some myths.
Let’s start from an assumption that’s been repeated many times in this blog: recruiting is essentially a marketing activity and like any marketing activity it must effectively communicate with its target audience.
For this reason, when talking about recruiting Millennials, you first need to understand who they are. How to do this? Listening to them, analysing data, meeting with them and above all … not blindly trusting stereotypes and myths spread by the press and generalist blogs.
First thing first, here are our sources of reference: we based our analysis on findings from the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2017. We also considered the WorkMartyrsCautionaryTale research conducted by GfK, the McKinsey study, Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research and the Yahoo research on Nielsen data.
Who are the Millennials?
Millennials (also known as Generation Y) are the generation of people born between 1980 and 2000, so today (in 2017) they are between 17 and 37 years old. The first theories of Millennials by William Strauss and Neil Howe, two historians, was presented towards the end of the 1980s.
The previous generation is Generation X (born between 1960 and 1980), while the one that follows them is the Generation Z, born between 1994 and 2010 and entering the world of work for the first time in 2016.
What are the characteristics of the Gen Y (Millennials)?
According to research by Yahoo, these are the 4 main characteristics of Gen Y.
1. Millennials represent the first truly global generation.
2. They are the first generation of digital natives and make large use of the Internet, especially mobile devices.
3. They are natural collaborators and have a lower degree of competitiveness than previous generations.
4. They define their identity through self-expression, often driven by social networks.
This generation was the first to experience the so-called “Great Recession”, i.e. the economic downturn between 2007 and 2010. It is the generation with the highest unemployment rate (37.6%) and with the highest average leaving age from the family. According to important studies (such as the McKinsey study), they will be the first generation to be worse off than their parents.
For more information, look at the Millenial infographic created by Goldman Sachs.
Why are Millennials important for recruiting?
Millennials should be of great interest to all those who are involved in recruiting, Employer Branding and Talent Acquisition. Why? To find out, let’s take a look at the projections of the world’s population over the next few years.
What can we draw from these charts?
In America, Millennials have already surpassed the numbers of the previous generation (Gen X, born in the years 1960-1980). In Italy talking about Millennials we refer to about 11.2 million people divided between northern Italy (42%) center (19%), south and islands (39%).
Today Millennials are about a third of the workforce, but by 2020 they will represent more than 50% of the global workforce.
Many have said that Millennials are job hoppers and that definition is in part correct: within 30 years Millennials will have changed jobs about twice as many times as a member of Gen X and at least three times compared to Baby Boomers (born immediately after World War II, between 1945 and 1964).
We can see this change in action, as Gen Y have a characteristic of precariousness: while 41% of Baby Boomers think that a worker should be in a company for at least five years before looking for a new job, only 13% of Millennials agree (Source: Glassdoor – 50 recruitment stats that make you think).
With the progressive change in the composition of workforce, companies will need to change their recruitment strategies if they want to remain competitive.
Millennials at work: we disown some myths
What are Millennials like at work? Although the Times defined them in 2013 as “lazy kids and narcissists focused on their smartphones, still living with their families”, the reality is entirely different. Recent studies show that old ideas about Gen Y members were just stereotypes and simplifications of reality (Source: World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2017).
# 1 Myth: Millennials are lazy.
Fake: The 2016 US workplace study showed how actually Millennials are more likely to be work martyrs and dependent on work. It emerged that around 40% of workaholics are Millennials. The study also showed that Millennials do not take their full vacation quota.
In Italy, according to the Coop 2016 report, 3.8 million Millennials are extraordinarily committed and work on the weekend (17% more than the members of Gen X that preceded them).
# 2 Myth: Millennials need a purpose at work.
True and False: On the one hand, it’s important to have an impact in the world and at work (74% of Millennials interviewed by LinkedIn say they want to know if their work has an impact on the world), but on the other hand for Millennials pay and career opportunities are also important (as confirmed by the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers Survey 2016 study).
This should not be a surprise, as the study of the World Economic Forum states, “getting into the world of work during a tough economic crisis has consequences. When Millennials find work, they bring a strong desire to prove themselves, intensified even more by the long and painful job search that preceded the recruitment.”
# 3 Myth: Millennials are selfish and self-centered.
False: For a long time it has been argued that Millennials are egocentric, so that some people also call them the “me, me, me generation”. In fact, WEF research defeats this conviction, many Millennials consider themselves to be global citizens and are aware of the needs of others (e.g. with regard to the issue of refugees, 74% would welcome them in their own country).
# 4 Myth: Millennials are a generation of stressed pessimists.
False: As confirmed by the McKinsey study, Generation Y will be the first generation that will be worse off than their parents, so it is normal for some degree of pessimism. But despite this, of the 26,000 Millennials who responded to the World Economic Forum poll, 70% say the world is full of opportunities.
Work: What are the Differences Between Generation Y, Generation X and Baby Boomers?
The approach of Millennials to work is very different from that of previous generations. It is important that a recruiter or HR manager is aware of their differences if they want to exploit the strengths and weaknesses of each generation.
But what are the strengths and weaknesses of Generation Y, Generation X or Baby Boomers? An interesting EY study helps us to identify them.
Recruiting Millennials: Strategies and tactics to recruit within Generation Y
Once you have eliminated some of the most common stereotypes, you have to answer the question: which Talent Acquisition strategies are best suited to attracting, capturing and recruiting Millennials?
Here are four helpful tips for those who are interested in targeting recruiting campaigns at Millennials.
Understand what a Millennials really is.
In 2016 LinkedIn conducted research asking 26,000 members of Gen Y what really motivates them. It has emerged that the most important element is remuneration, followed by professional development and career advancement opportunities. These data are almost entirely confirmed by subsequent studies, such as Global Shapers Survey 2016 research at the World Economic Forum.
If these are the most important motivational levers, if you want to attract and engage Millennials, it becomes increasingly important to immediately invest in training, mentoring and presenting career opportunities to meet their needs. When should you do it? At each point of contact that the company has with the candidate during their journey: corporate site, social networking, job description, during interviews and even during wage negotiations.
Use social media recruiting tactics to sell your company.
“You can’t not communicate.” Paul Watzlawick’s first axiom of communication has much to do with recruiting. In 2017, a company that does not have a presence on the main social networks communicates (even if there was no explicit choice) a very clear message: “I do not want to talk to you and I do not want to tell you about my company.”
So why should Millennials want to come to work in your business?
Data tells us that 62% of working Millennials visit social networking pages to find information about a company and open positions. And they often do not just look for a list of open positions, but want to better understand the corporate culture and to do this on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, plus: they also look for a company blog and read the employee reviews on Glassdoor.
If you want to recruit Millennials, then you have to invest in your company’s Employer Branding and social recruitment strategies to share information and answer the question “Why should I come to work in your business?”
But be careful: it is dangerous (and unwelcome) to sell a fictitious image of your company. You’ll still be able to recruit Millennials, but it will be complicated to retain a resource that feels betrayed (if they do not already find out about the lies through social networks or reading reviews of former employees).
Invest in mobile recruiting.
“The medium is the message”, Malcom McLuhan wrote in suspicious times. According to the Coop 2016 Report in Italy 76% of online users are Millennials. In addition, 89% of candidates look for work through a mobile device (smartphones and tablets). Despite this, in research by Adecco USA it emerged that 89% of companies today are not investing adequately in mobile friendly recruitment technologies.
Our advice to approach a Gen Y job seeker is: build a friendly mobile site. If your company already uses an ATS recruitment software to attract, organise and filter CVs, make sure it is also mobile friendly (40% of candidates trying to submit a mobile application abandon the process if the ATS is not mobile friendly. Source: CareerBuilder).
Embrace recruitment marketing
The Millennials tend to treat the theme of work as if they were consumers. They undertake extensive research on an open position, on the company, and even on the recruiter who will interview them long before they set foot in the interview room.
Given this, the recruiters’ approach needs to change, recruiting departments should start to think like marketers embracing recruitment marketing, for example with these actions:
Investigate the way you think your candidates would like to be attracted (for example, by creating candidate personas for your target candidates).
Try to understand all the candidate-company interactions (have you tried to work with your team on the exercise of mapping the candidate journey?).
Adopt new recruiting technologies that can automate more repetitive tasks (such as ad serving, creating a centralised CV database and screening) so that you focus exclusively on attracting and selecting Millennials effectively without the frustration of having to handle all of the routine operations.
We believe that change must be addressed gradually. Our advice is to start with simple actions, such as doing the exercises in this article, and then go to the next level by testing new generation recruiting software to understand how they can improve your daily work.
We would like to point out, for those who are interested, that our recruitment platform (In-recruiting) can be tested for free for 14 days.