How To Hire Millennials

If you are interested in adding new millennial talent to your team, it’s important that you have the right recruiting strategy in place. Fortunately, recruiting millennials is easier than you may think. You just have to become fluent in Millennialese. Here are some better ways to communicate with younger talent:

Communicating With Millennial Candidates In The Hiring Process

Get Social

Having a presence on various social media sites is extremely important when recruiting millennials. Not only do you need to have accounts set up, you also need to be very active on these sites. The millennial generation is always on social media and sharing as much information as they can. In fact, a 2015 report from comScore found that the average millennial spends almost 26 hours a month on mobile social media apps.

Social media sites are very useful in targeting specific demographics, especially when it comes to recruiting millennials. For example, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter all have advertising platforms, which empower you to target the types of candidates you are searching for so that your ads appear in their feed.

Join specific groups on LinkedIn that fall in line with the types of candidates you are searching for, such as college alumni groups. Be active in these groups and communicate with the members so that they will share your job postings with others.

Embrace Texting

Millennials are not always quick to answer phone calls or return emails. A 2014 Gallup survey found that, when it comes to communication, texting is the most popular form for young adults. On a day-to-day basis, 68 percent of millennials text “a lot.” If you are planning on recruiting millennials, be sure that you are including texting in your strategy.

You may very well get a quick reply back via text to ask for more information on the job or request a time to talk.

Encourage Referrals

When it comes to recruiting millennials, who better to spearhead the effort than your millennial employees? It is likely that you already have millennials in your company. Make sure that they know about the job openings you have. When they have easy access to job information and know that you would like to consider their referrals, you have a greater chance of them sharing the information with their millennial friends.

Post Appealing Ads

It’s not news that millennials are looking for a company culture with flexible schedules, collaboration, and meaningful work. Don’t believe it? A 2014 Randstad survey found that, for 70 percent of millennials, the people they work with helps them do better work. For 51 percent, meaningful work better engaged them.

If you pride yourself and your company on the fact that you offer this type of culture to your employees, then it is smart to display this in your job ads when recruiting millennials.

When you are creating ads to target millennials, ask yourself the following questions:

Why would a millennial want to work at my company?

What does my company offer that others may not?

Write down as many answers to these questions as you can and be sure to include as many as possible in your ads.

Additionally, get creative with the formatting of your ad. If you want to catch the eyes of millennials, you need to step it up a notch. Boring, Times New Roman font and black and white text will not be attractive to this group of job seekers. Use color, graphics, and even consider using video advertisement.

Want to learn more about recruiting millennials? Download our eBook, Best Practices for Recruiting Millennials.

Using Technology When Hiring Millennials

When it comes to millennials, it’s clear they LOVE technology. When hiring millennials, it’s important to find where exactly millennials are “hanging out” and conversing online. Aside from social media, you will find that texting, live online updates, and attractive websites are all important recruiting tools when it comes to reaching the “plugged-in” millennial generation.

Texting

As we said before, for many of us, millennials included, texting has become our go-to form of communication. So why should this be any different when recruiting millennials? Rather than spin your wheels, leaving numerous voicemails on candidate phones, try sending a text message. You may be surprised to see that you will receive a greater response rate from millennials via text than phone calls and voicemails.

Live Updates

Millennials like instant notification without constant phone calls. If you are revamping your recruiting strategy, be sure to include a system of automated live updates. This system should be easily accessible via computer or smartphone.

Updates informing job opening status, the stage that an application is in, etc. are all things that millennials will embrace.

Attractive Website

Remember the days when your company was cool by simply having a website? Those days are long gone. If you’re recruiting millennials, your website needs more than just a few photos and verbiage about your business.

If you want to attract millennial talent through your website, you need to create an interactive platform that will not only show millennials what your company does, but also paint a picture of what your company culture is really like.

When you are reconstructing your website, consider ways that you can make it more personable. Rather than simply including photos and bland descriptions of your executives and their career progressions, consider using video. Including short videos on your website of your founders explaining how they started the business, the fast growth of the business, as well as the company vision and future are excellent attention grabbers.

Also, consider including videos that clearly portray your culture and what the day to day environment looks like. Perhaps include videos of your employees talking about what they do and what they enjoy about their job.

Want to learn more about recruiting millennials? Download our eBook, Best Practices for Recruiting Millennials.

Improve Your Candidate Experience To Hire Millennials

It’s hard to believe that decades ago, those who wanted to apply for a job had to mail in their resume and wait for a letter or a phone call back. Now, job seekers can submit their materials almost instantaneously online, often using a smartphone. They can also hear back right away about whether their application was received, thus taking a lot of the mystery and frustration out of the hiring process. There are a number of other ways in which technology significantly improves the ease and speed of the hiring process. These include:

Allowing you to easily speak with candidates from all over

In years past, if you were situated in Connecticut and had a qualified candidate you wanted to speak with in California, your options were limited. You either had to hope a phone conversation would suffice, or you had to pay to fly this individual out to your office.

Video interviewing has revolutionized this completely. Now, candidates from all over the world can record video interviews on their own time (eliminating issues about time zone differences) for hiring managers to watch when they’re free. It takes the hassle out of hiring, as there is much less concern about syncing up schedules to chat with candidates.

This is a huge perk for candidates, too, as it makes it easier (and much more cost-friendly) to apply for jobs outside of their current city. For talent who is looking for a new career opportunity, but concerned about spending time flying all over the country to interview, there’s no need to worry any longer. Anyone can now apply and interview for jobs all over the world without ever leaving the comfort of home.

You can get a clearer picture of who you’re hiring

Before the Internet, you relied on a person’s resume and cover letter to get a sense of what they were all about. You had to hope they were being genuine during an interview. That’s all changed with the rise of social media.

Now, you can hop on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, or any number of different social media platforms and hear from the candidate directly. What’s on their mind? What kind of pictures do they deem appropriate to share? These factors can paint a clearer picture of what this individual is all about and can help you determine whether they would be a good fit for your business.

For candidates, these technological advances are beneficial as they help to ensure a fair and standardized hiring process. Instead of a candidate wondering if she didn’t get a call for a second interview because she lived out of state or because she met with someone who had had just gotten back from lunch and was distracted, video interviewing ensures that all candidates receive the same treatment.

It allows you to store resumes for when jobs open up in the future

Just because a candidate wasn’t a good fit for a particular role, doesn’t mean they’ll never be a good fit for your business. Because of this, it’s smart to keep strong resumes on file for when jobs become available in the future. Before the days of computers, you had to hope someone kept these resumes neatly filed away and didn’t accidentally toss them. Now, you can build a whole database and easily sort through to find the type of employee you’re searching for.

This is a major improvement for candidates as well. Instead of having to go through the whole application process each time they’d like to be considered for a job, they can just revisit the company’s online portal and resubmit their stored resume. Additionally, they may be contacted about open positions that they were previously unaware of simply because their resume has been stored for future consideration.

Technology has also made it much easier to communicate with candidates who may not be a good fit for a particular role. Instead of waiting weeks to get a rejection letter in the mail, they can have an email delivered to their inbox. While this may be unfortunate news, it allows them to continue on with their job search more quickly.

Want to learn more about recruiting millennials? Download our eBook, Best Practices for Recruiting Millennials.

Importance Of Social Media When Hiring Millennials

If you’re planning on recruiting millennials, social media is key to a successful recruitment strategy. Not only are millennials using social media to connect with friends and family, but as American Press Institute points out, 88 percent of millennials are looking to social media for daily news updates. Let’s face it, social media is a key part of the life of a millennial and it is equally important to your millennial recruiting strategy.

Millennials are always plugged-in

How often do you notice a millennial walking down the street, sitting in a restaurant, waiting in line at a checkout, or waiting in a doctor’s office all while looking at their smartphone? Smartphones have made it so easy for us to always stay connected, and millennials are always plugged-in and checking social media updates. If there is one place where your advertising will get the most visibility, it’s on social media.

Millennials freely share

Take a look through your social media feeds and pay attention to how many “shares,” “likes,” or “retweets” you see. Social media platforms promote sharing, whether it’s sharing photos, life events, food eaten, favorite restaurants, or news updates. Since social media is a virtual playground for millennials, you will notice that they are embracing the pastime of social media sharing. They, like brands and places, share upcoming events or news constantly.

When you focus your millennial recruiting strategy throughout social media, you have a greater chance of millennials noticing your ads and sharing them with other millennials. This is an excellent way to ensure that you’re capturing a wide audience of millennials when it comes to your job advertisements.

Social media offers excellent solutions to advertising

We mentioned social media ads before, but let’s really dig into what makes them powerful. While social media is free to an extent, sometimes it is well worth it to invest money into social media advertisements. Many social media platforms, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, allow you to laser focus your ads on your target millennial audience by setting age preferences, location, college degrees, as well as other demographics. This allows you the opportunity to ensure that your ad is appearing in the daily feed of your millennial audience.

Also, assuming that you already have some millennials on your team, make sure that they know where to find your ads online so they can share with other millennials. When it comes to attracting millennials, there is no greater testament to your company brand than having your existing employees recommend your place of employment.

Millennials research online before making big decisions

Check out your company’s website, as well as any feedback and reviews that are out there on the Web. Ensure that you are creating a great customer experience and ask your customers to “like,” “share,” and recommend your company on various social media platforms. This type of online feedback will help to enhance your company brand which will be appealing to millennials considering job changes.

If you’re going to be successful recruiting millennials, you not only need to understand what they want, but also how they get and find information about employers. And unfortunately for you, the first place they look is probably uncharted territory for your organization. But trust us: going out of your comfort zone to recruit and hire millennial talent is well worth it.

Want to learn more about recruiting millennials? Download our eBook, Best Practices for Recruiting Millennials.