Is Your Company Actually Tailoring it's Hiring Strategy to Millennials?

One of the biggest and most outplayed clichés you hear when it comes to recruitment and retention is that people are a company’s ‘greatest asset.’ 

If that were true, both small and large organizations (even those at the top of their game) wouldn’t experience issues and challenges when it comes to hiring, then retaining, top talent. Further, employees wouldn't quit at the drop of a hat when a better or more attractive role comes along.

And, really, few companies treat their people like the assets they actually are. Instead, organizations acclimate to the ‘love you and leave you’ attitude they assume most millennial employees have towards working just a few short years for any company. 

Despite all of this, organizations still recruit people in suboptimal ways that are both ineffective and, at times, result in candidates ghosting companies. Because ghosting isn’t just for online dating anymore. 

I’m a millennial, which means I and my fellow generation of supposedly lazy and entitled Gen Y-ers have more choice and more freedom than ever before to choose the jobs we want, and not the ones we ‘need.’ Just look at Baby Boomers like our parents; most had to go into fields or industries they weren’t passionate about but pursued anyway, for the sake of simply ‘having a job.’ 

My generation got lucky - there’s little need for us to pursue roles with companies we don’t care about, just to make ends meet. 

This doesn’t mean, however, that we all work for organizations we’re truly passionate about or those we share values with. The hiring process most millennials go through, which can be misleading, disheartening, and alienating, was deployed long before we ever had to think about entering the workforce, and it’s still just as broken. 

Consider this: companies lose up to 25% of their employees in their first 12 months.

More employees between the ages of 25-34 only spend an average of 3.2 years with their organizations - a significant drop when you consider that the previous norm was around 10 years!

It could be that we aren’t onboarded effectively, or the hiring process with our company sucked, or we simply outgrow roles more quickly than our older generational counterparts. I don’t have all of the answers (I’m just an entitled millennial, after all) but what I do know is that what most blogs, articles, HR professionals, and recruitment experts have been saying for years about companies not knowing how to engage and retain top talent, is true. 

Companies forget that their success really does start with their people

As an employee, I’m not required to help grow a company; I contribute to that growth because I want to and because I’m passionate about the organizations' mission. But too many companies view their employees as team members rather than stakeholders. 

If I’m expected to give my all to a company and help someone else make their dream a reality, I want something in return. Organizational culture, learning and development opportunities, recognition, my voice to be heard, the chance to grow and advance, and meaningful work, even outside of the company. It’s why more studies are finding that millennials just like yours truly would willingly take a pay cut for a role that’s more meaningful and impactful. 

When companies forget that their success starts with their people, they’re already on a losing path and a downward slope. 

We need to ditch the ‘unique interview’ style and ‘magic questions’ 

Trust me, no millennial genuinely enjoys these questions. 

I was once asked in a preliminary phone interview to describe my ‘ideal job and setting’ were I to have the opportunity to do whatever I want, the sky’s the limit. My reaction? I cringed. 

Hiring managers who ask these ‘magic questions’ or try too hard to conduct unique interviews know it’s all baloney, and yet they may think it’s what millennials want. On the contrary, questions and interview styles like these make it more difficult for both the hiring personnel and the candidate to develop a firm grasp on what is expected of us and how we see ourselves productively filling an open role. 

Instead, ask us questions like, ‘What’s your ultimate career goal, and how will this role help you get there?’ or ‘If you had full autonomy in this role, what projects or tasks would you want to tackle?’ 

Informal time might be a good thing (seriously)

In a 2018 Forbes article, William Vanderbloemen wrote that spending informal time with a candidate can help determine whether you’d want to spend 40 hours a week with this person. 

And I couldn’t agree more. 

The best interview I’ve ever had was with a previous marketing agency at which I was the Creative Director. I chatted with one of the agency’s Co-Founders in their open workspace in a manner that was casual, conversational, and more of a hang-out than an interview. We laughed, we talked openly about the industry in which the agency niched, etc. After joining the team, any time we'd interview someone new, we would all ask one another afterwards, 'Would you grab a beer or coffee with them?'

Months into my role there, a coworker revealed that immediately after my interview, two things happened:

1. One of the Co-Founders knew 5 minutes in that I needed to join the team, and…
2. When they asked other team members if they’d grab a beer with me, the answer was a resounding ‘heck yes’ 

It’s simple to assume that everyone at work will get alone because we have to, but in actuality, coworkers don’t always get along and this friction can impact productivity and work culture. If you wouldn’t willingly speak or spend time with a fellow employee in an informal or casual setting, you probably wouldn’t work well with them, either. 

The people recruiting for you should have at least some experience

Just because you’ve found a job here on LinkedIn or job over on Indeed doesn’t mean it’s a great job. Mostly because a lot of job descriptions and recruitment processes kind of suck. 

You’ve probably come across a job posting or two that are poorly formatted, grammatically incorrect, lacking pertinent info, or are otherwise alienating. And yet, many of these job postings are posted by recruiters. 

Apparently, the barrier to entry for becoming a recruiter is low, which isn’t great news for organizations that hire on a whim or simply assign hiring duties to anyone within their company. The people or person representing your company in recruitment should be a professional or, at the very least, have some recruitment experience. 

Think of it this way: globally, 45% of employers are struggling to fill open roles, and that number is predicted to steadily rise over the next decade. Companies have to be clever and careful with their recruitment process if they’re going to hire the best talent and the right people. 

Are we looking at the bigger picture?

I get hiring for experience. I’ve spent enough time optimizing my resume, cover letter, portfolio and LinkedIn profile to understand that experience helps you stand out. But what about potential?

When companies hire people to join their teams, traditionally, experience has trumped everything else - does the candidate have 20 years’ experience in X so they can do Y? Are they an expert in X after spending decades working for Y company? 

That’s all great, but potential has to be considered when you’re hiring someone new. We can all be trained and develop the skills we need to perform a job and do it well, but the unique traits and characteristics we all inherently have which give us the potential to be great, aren’t things we learn on the job. 

That’s where the saying ‘hire for character, train for skills’ comes from. 

Whenever I've interviewed for a role, I've always been asked, 'Why do you think you're the best fit for this role?' My answer is always the same: 'I don't think I'm the best fit.' In fact, I know I'm not, because I don't possess every skill. But I love what I do and do what I love (marketing), which means I have potential, like so many of my fellow millennials do, to grow a company while helping grow my own skills.

Ultimately, it’s on companies to ensure they offer a value proposition and set of values that prospective millennial employees can get behind. With so much selection and freedom of choice, most millennials recognize that they don’t need to sell themselves but can let their passion, potential, and job aspirations speak for themselves.