Hiring Millennials: Recruiting and Retaining Generation Y

Having been brought up in a world of technology, how do you go about hiring millennials?

Well, there’s a few things you should know when hiring millennials:

Millennials like new challenges

The opportunity to step outside of their comfort zone and taking on new opportunities to impress is a feature that this age group love. Could the thought of repeating the same task over and over again stem from our reliance on technology to automate everyday processes for us? Possibly. Offer the option to give new things a try, and a chance to impress.

When hiring millennials, have a timeline for development

Millennial work attitudes mainly stem from them being a career-driven generation. Without you knowing it, they have a plan of where they want to be when they are older, and how they are going to get there. How do you retain a great one? Create a development timeline and make it available at the interview stage. If they accept the job offer, not only will they be looking to stay for longer, they will also push themselves up the ladder faster.

Be clear about the job role

A story that we hear quite often by new candidates at Lawrence Dean Recruitment, is that they were miss-sold the job role by their previous employer/agency. To avoid this happening, make sure that you have made the job role as clear as possible during the start of the interview stage. This will save your time if the candidate decides to pull out before being offered the role, or resigns in their first few months.

Measure effectiveness, driven by metrics

In the past 20 years’ data, and the innovations it has had an impact on, is fuelling every interaction we make. Having been raised in this era, Millennials are probably the most comfortable and trusting of data when it comes to improving themselves. Instead of measuring your employees on opinion and what management ‘believe’ to be correct, lay some statistics on the table. Trust levels will raise as there is no biased-opinion, only the actionable metrics to act on.

Update your processes

With the rise of Silicon Valley, ‘cool’ and laid back offices have become part of the trend. It’s not as easy for small businesses to install a slide in every office and have a sleeping area for resting. SMEs don’t have to apply these new innovations, instead, focus on the ones that have become familiar in many industries. A vast number of roles on the market offer flextime and remote-working for example. These require very little investment, and can attract even the best candidates.

It’s safe to assume that not every 19-35-year-old will agree with these factors and suggestions, but we are assured they reflect the majority!

If you’re a millennial, or are have experience in hiring millennials we’d like to hear from you. What do you think would sell a role to you? Leave a quick comment below.