3 Powerful Tips in Attracting Gen X and Millenials
Hiring young employees today can be a significant challenge. Not to mention retention, loyalty and productivity issues. But retention issues can be reduced or minimized with a little more thought on focusing on the hiring and initiation of quality new employees. If you were going fishing, might you not be more likely to take your efforts to a pond where you could be certain there were a lot of fish? And with the internet, a little thought and research, not only might you find the vehicle where Gen Xer and Millenials spend their time, but you can create awareness for opportunities in your organization as well as a little branding and positive awareness as well.
1. Non-traditional Internet Sources
a. Craigslist
b. Trade Blogs
c. Advertise off of your contacts on Linked In or other Personal Pages
Most senior managers might describe employees under the age of 40 to be “non-traditional” at best. A lack of understanding regarding their evolving values and unique characteristics can be, -- well it can be frustrating for us old folks. So perhaps it makes sense to attract them in non-traditional ways.
Most Senior Managers and HR Managers are in the ‘Boomer’ genre and understand the ‘traditional’ internet, but recent research suggests that well over 80% of employees under the age of 40 are text messaging and blogging and reviewing sites like ‘My Space’, ‘Facebook’, Craigslist and others at least a few times a day. Now, any comment on how this impacts productivity at work will have to wait for another article, but smart managers are using the information to their positive competitive advantage.
Craigslist.org
Recently, I was coaching and working with a young (30 something) publisher of a moderately conservative trade publication and learned a valuable lesson. In the initial dialog, based on my research of Gen X employees, I was curious to what had initially attracted him to the position.
He read about the opportunity in Craigslist.org. I was truly impressed as I would have assumed his boss (a friend of mine, my age, over 50) didn’t know about Craigslist with the exception of an on-line garage sale vehicle. Job opportunities by the thousands are grouped by specific job category groupings and can be targeted by your specific city or region.
Blogs
Secondly, blogs can be a tremendous non-traditional research and free job advertisement tool. As an example simply visit sites like blogsearch.google.com,or waypath.com or lsblogs.com, (there are hundreds of blog search sites) and enter a basic job term such as “office workers’ and see hundreds and hundreds of blog sites on the topic and then scan for regional or industry related sites where you might want to post an entry.
Personal Pages and Network Communication Sites
Welcome to the new world. If you are not on Linked In, or Facebook, or twitter.com, or any of these ever-growing network sites you might be missing a tremendous opportunity to network. After all, most successful job searches conclude with not so much “what you know,” but “who you know.” And these sites are purely an extension of that often true premise.
So, all of us in the executive world over the age of 50 might be better served to take the world of non-traditional employees, the Gen X, and Gen Y (Millenials) that now make up over 50% of the national worker pool, and try some non-traditional sources to attract top talent to our organization. It only makes sense to go fishing where the fish are today.