By Gary Hinde, Toronto Technology Recruiter
It’s no secret that millennials are taking over the workforce. According to PwC’s NextGen: A Global Generational Study, close to 50% the workforce in the U.S. is composed of millennials in 2016, with the numbers being similar here in Canada. This is something that all organizations need to pay attention to in order to improve recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and retention.
However, many companies are struggling to attract and retain skilled millennials – creating a skill and talent shortage that is impacting the quality of work being performed now, and potentially hurting the long term success of the organization in the future.
“If businesses are not focused on millennials, they are at a competitive disadvantage. There is a clear business case to have these discussions and to change the culture in the workplace to attract and retain millennial talent. Organizations that understand how much millennials matter are going to win,” Anne Donovan, Managing Director at PricewaterhouseCoopers, says.
The need to better understand and attract millennials is only going to become more important to your company’s success as more and more baby boomers retire in the next decade.
3 Tips to Recruit the Millennial Generation
The first thing you need to come to grips with is that the things that worked in the past won’t necessarily work today. The millennials are a completely new generation of people, with unique views and career preferences. They have exceptional technology skills, they value open communication and a more flexible work environment, are less loyal and more willing to move from company to company.
Therefore, it’s important to not only create an attractive work environment that will entice millennials to work for your company, you also need to have an organizational culture that will make them want to stay for more than a few years.
Here are some tips to recruit the millennial generation:
1. Improve your company brand: Millennials are attracted to companies that have a good brand reputation. “The company is an important part of their self-concept and their social identity. They place more emphasis on reputation because they use it to interpret the quality of the job attributes that are difficult to learn before the interview stage,” says Stephen Clarke on socialtalent.
2. Be innovative with engagement: Millennials receive more job offers than the previous generation, meaning that if you want to stand out in the crowd, you need to be creative with how you engage and recruit talent. Consider holding meetings in interesting locations, having calls or meetings over Skype and doing things that are less traditional.
3. Offer job perks that millennials value: Money isn’t everything to millennials. Many are more interested in training and development opportunities, flexible work environments and companies that value work-life balance.
Learn more about how to recruit top talent to your organization by reading these blog posts from our Toronto headhunters:
5 Elements That Will Hurt Your Organizational Culture
Recruiting Plays a Vital Role in Successful Succession Planning
Should You Hire for Personality or Skill?
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IQ PARTNERS is an Executive Search & Recruitment firm in Toronto. We help companies hire better, hire less & retain more. We have specialist teams of recruiters in Financial Services & Insurance, Marketing Communications & Media, Emerging Tech & Telecom, Consumer Goods & Retail, B2B & Industrial, Technology, Accounting & Finance, HR & Operations and Mining & Engineering. IQ PARTNERS has its head office in Toronto and operates internationally via Aravati Global Search Network. Click here to view current job openings and to register with us.
