By 2025, millennials have been projected to make up 75 percent of all U.S. employees - an increase from about 1 in 3 workers today.
The number of young people completing a college education and looking for quality jobs continues to grow and as companies everywhere get bigger, they are establishing a fully integrated base of millennials in their workforce.
Despite the fact that younger workers are often stereotyped as being too reliant on technology and hopping from one job to another, many employers value their new and fresh perspectives and attitudes. Lisa Chui, vice president of finance and HR at Ubiquity Retirement and Savings (a San Francisco based retirement benefits company) states, “They speak up and if they have ideas, they want to share them.”
“They walk in the door with a greater awareness and a greater sense of balance and new ideas” says Steve Wolfe, executive vice president of operations and administration at the Chicago-based staffing and employment agency Addison Group. “That contributes to bringing about better solutions. They can come in and contribute right out of the gate if they have the right environment.”
However, many HR professionals are finding that they may need to update their recruitment strategies to successfully connect with younger workers who expect faster and more-informal communications as well as frequent feedback.
“What recruiters fail to grasp is that this is a generation where the accelerated speed of communications is extraordinary,” says Warren Wright, president of consulting firm Coaching Millennials of Washington, D.C.
But their work does not end when they employ a millennial – they must update their strategies for retaining younger workers by showing them a clear career path forward for promotion. Lisa Chui says, “The trend is for HR to be a resource, not just a rule enforcer.”
A LinkedIn survey of more than 13,000 members of that generation found that 93% are interested in hearing about new job opportunities and 66% are open to speaking to a recruiter. Thirty per cent state that they can see themselves working at their current company for less than a year. However, by comparison, the Bureau of Labor Statistics states that older US workers tend to stay in their jobs for over four and a half years.
The same LinkedIn survey shows that there is often a divide between recruiters’ messaging to millennials and what these young people want to know about new job opportunities. It found that when millennials hear about a new job opportunity, they are less likely than members of other generations to know anything about the company; to find out more about the organization, they are more likely than members of other generations to follow it on social media and the most important information they want to know about the company is its culture and values.
The top obstacles to accepting a job for millennial workers are not knowing what the organization is like, applying and not hearing back and not understanding the role.
Hannah Ubl, a generation expert at BridgeWorks, a generational consulting company in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area states, “Millennials are looking for authenticity. They want to understand what the company is about and who works there”. She also pointed out that, “You lose millennials when you don’t respond right away.”
She went on to say that recruiters should reach out to thank an applicant for applying and then offer a timeline for when he or she will hear from HR again. “Texting might feel like it’s bridging into personal space, but millennials don’t see it as an issue”, she says. “It’s old-school to wait for a phone call.” She added, “If applicants sign a waiver, you can text them”.
It falls on companies to adjust their recruiting procedures to accommodate the influx of the millennial generation and where successful, this will minimize staff turnover rate.
