Why Your Millennial Employee Just Ghosted You, First Day on the Job

There’s an abundance of news reports about millennials changing the face of business, killing every industry in their path, ghosting employers first day on the job, and generally being entitled brats. Business Insider here and other publications are seeing it as a symptom of a tight labor market.

What if I told you that the trend of millennials not showing up for work is in fact a symptom of your companies’ broken and inadequate hiring process? Not only that, but you’ve got a problem with creating a connection with said millennials and offering them the tools they need to be successful on the job?

The market as it looks like today, is just exposing this broken process and allowing you to see the error of your ways, in both recruiting and retention.

Why It's So Hard to Hire Right

Sales leaders are finding themselves increasingly difficult to hire and retain the right sales reps.

Here’s just a few numbers that show what I mean:

• 40% of sales leaders consider recruiting and hiring a top challenge. (InsideSales)
• Salespeople turnover average around 34.7 % per year In United State. (The Bridge Group)
• 51% of salespeople will look for another job within the next year. (CEB)

Of course they will! Here’s the main problems with they way sales leaders are recruiting today:

1. They hire from job boards. This will probably be an unpopular opinion, but your best candidates won’t be out of a job. The best way to hire is through employee referrals.
2. They inhibit hiring with slow and dumb process -- You need to fill out a 10-page form just to have your resume thrown in a pile on the hiring manager’s desk.
3. Lack of recruit engagement -- Companies will offer someone a job, and then just forget about them for weeks until they start. The new hire will either come unprepared, or just take another job and not show up on his first day.

How to Create Hundreds of Referrals in Ten Minutes

With the help of Rick Fowler, my friend at ZenApply and an expert in recruiting, I created a short-list of how to fix this broken process. With ZenApply, I created hundreds of employee referrals for one company in just 10 minutes. Here’s how to do it:

• Ditch your "job-board addiction" and create your own organic hiring data-mart (Every employee referral brought in is eligible for a cash bonus).
• Gamify employee referrals with contests and make it fun (Passive spiffs don’t ever work - who brings in a buddy for a $500 spiff, really?? Make sure to include tiered rewards, and whoever brings in the most referrals gets the bonus).
• Give your employees specific criteria for referrals. This way you can ensure that you only hire the sales reps who are killing it somewhere else. Keep the slackers out of your team.
• Spend time on optimizing employees social media profiles. Social selling is a big deal these days. If you don’t have a profile photo or post a pic of your dog or politically charged drivel, your days in sales are numbered. Keep it classy, and make ALL your sales force look professional -- they are the face of your company on social media.

I’ll be posting more about how to optimize your hiring process to snag the best millennial sales rep -- and how to retain them in the following weeks, so stay tuned!

Looking to build a world class sales team and then keep them performing at top capacity? Message me anytime to talk about how I can help!

https://www.insidesales.com/solutions/manager/