Over the past decade, the role of Human Resource professionals has changed dramatically. Not only because of the emergence of the technology and change of the economic paradigm.

How to hire Millennials?

This question becomes more and more common as new means of technology emerge and more Millennials enter the labour force.

This changes the conventional ways of finding, recruiting, and training employees. The task , the task of HR professionals became the key to understanding the business strategy importance, what is the managing a company’s most important asset – employees.

In this overview, we identified key trends that can help any HR manager make the task of hiring Millennials easier.

How to engage and hire Millennials

Use social media to the max

According to the global recruiting trends report, one of the most effective ways to attract talent in 2015 was still through company career websites and internet job boards. The report shows that the fastest growing platform for hires remains for quality social professional networks, such as Linkedin.

Not only business type but also regular social media are a perfect way to find employees. Nearly 80 percent of job seekers now use social media when sourcing opportunities. Almost 90 percent of them see job searching on social media as the new normal. The benefits from that are clear: social media are all about relationships.

Being active online and using social for companies’ HR and recruitment helps build a strong connection with potential candidates. This is not only to attract potential candidates, but it can improve the hiring process later.

Moreover, by using social media the company can gain increased candidate diversity, higher employee retention, higher candidate volume and it can also result in a lower cost per hire.

It is a win-win situation!

The potential employees can reach company as well as be reached by it.

Change the way to track your applicants

Traditional HR methods are less and less useful in the Internet era.

Young people know that a good CV is not only a representative file, so they try to use other ways of introducing themselves to the desired company, like pre-recorded videos or interactive boards. After the recruiter likes their application, they would be pleased to be interviewed over a real-time video interaction to save their and companies’ time.

These are only a few of more reasons to adapt your applicant tracking system to support videos, mobile recruiting tools, new age analytical systems, referral tools, networking tools, applicant data etc.

Adapt your corporate culture to fit the needs of the Millennials

Nowadays, the recruitment process is a two-way street. While recruiters are looking for the best talent they can find, the candidates must convince the recruiter and its company why they should offer them a job.

How to make employees want to work in certain place? By advancing, maintaining and showing values of the company culture.

Where to show it? By social media. But when the company culture really exists in the company, the buzz marketing will do its job.

What to show? That every employee is an individual and is individually appreciated in a collegial environment.

How to show it? By posting pictures of office life and implementing information on the company culture. There can even be some psychological tests and games provided.

It is all about humanity, honesty, and relationships

Consider rehiring ex-employees

While young professionals tend to hop between the jobs constantly, Millennial employees will likely be seen again in the future. According to the workplace trends report, 76 percent of the organizations interviewed preferred rehiring ex-employees.

These employees require less training, as they are aware of the business practices and corporate culture already. Moreover, the report shows that in the past 5 years, 85 percent of the companies interviewed, received job applications from previous employees. What should be noticed is that 40 percent of these companies said that they hired those employees.

This new phenomenon spreads because of a constant contact between employers and previous employees through social media. Why does implementing this trend as an HR rule need to be considered? When the ex-employees eventually return to the company, they come with a wealth of experience and extensive networks from which a company can benefit from.

How to manage your young employees

Working with freelancers and part-time employees becomes a new norm

The freelancers are expected to take a significant share of the workforce. It is a great opportunity for HR managers, as they have the ability to access certain skills at a specific time of need without following expenses such as healthcare.

What is more, they meet the unique occasion to acquire top talent.

How?

By hiring temporary workers or freelancers first, and then offer them opportunities to conduct an on-the-job assessment. That way all conventional recruitment processes costs, time and efforts are left behind.

Help them improve their leadership skills

A study published by Deloitte showed that 63 percent of the surveyed Millennials believed that their leadership skills were not fully developed in their current job. What is even more interesting, the Millennials surveyed were already in leadership positions.

In a study compiled by Virtuali , 71 percent of millennials already consider themselves to be leaders in their personal capacity. Moreover, the majority of them consider themselves “situational leaders” – leaders in project teams, volunteering their experiences and influencing people.

All these data show the huge challenge in front of HR managers to focus on mentoring and developing Millennial leaders.

But, there is one thing to be considered: the new meaning of leadership tasks.

According to the Virtuali report compiled by workplace trends, nearly 50 percent of millennials surveyed defined leadership as empowering others to succeed. Therefore, training the future leaders is developing their collaboration and compassion skills.

Don’t tell Millenials what to do. Explain them why it matters first

A report compiled by Adecco outlined what Millennials expect in the workplace. This generation is not just looking for a job. They are seeking to adopt a new lifestyle and to get an opportunity for personal growth. 24 percent of Millennials say that their greatest aspiration in life is to get a dream job.

According to Deloitte survey, Millennials asked about the importance of several drivers of their job choice, answered that in 13,4 percent they value an opportunity to progress the most and in 9,3 percent they demand to feel the meaning from the work.

What does it mean to HR specialists?

If you do not give to young employees the opportunity to grow and fulfill their career dreams, they will leave the company as fast as they are able to do so.

Get rid of annual reviews

According to data obtained from the management research firm CEB, 6% of Fortune 500 companies have stopped using annual performance reviews and forced rankings.

Why?

Managers asked by Deloitte stated that traditional performance reviews do not serve its purpose. They bring stress and wrong type of motivation to employees work ethic. Instead, a new type of review recognizes, understands and fuels performance.

It means it is focused on ongoing and real-time feedback.

Look into leveraging wearable smart devices

As technology is a growing trend in employees’ private life, they want to use it also in the workplace. Especially, the wearable devices, such as smart bands and smartwatches, are not only fancy but also functional during work time. These have the ability to track, monitor and store data about an employee’s efficiencies and wellness in the workplace.

According to the wearable technology report, around 2000 companies worldwide will offer their employees fitness trackers until the end of 2016. Moreover, more than 60 percent of Millennials in the report said that they would be willing to wear smart devices, provided that they increased efficiency and productivity.

What exactly can that solution be used for? Smart devices are made to conduct tasks such as checking email, tracking and communication capabilities. This new technology is likely to take advantage of the 24/7 business environment, quickly retrieving information and notifying employees quicker than any other smart mobile device.

Millennials treat personal conversations as a sign of care

Even though there are plenty of new applications being released every day, Millennials got used to Skype, WhatsApp, LinkedIn and other applications to connect with people in private and business field.

Therefore, they treat real one-to-one conversations as individual care symptoms. It is a good note for all HR specialist to take some time for real talks with employees and make them feel important.

Make transparency a common policy

There is no longer a tendency of “selling life” for 8 hours a day to the employer. Young people want to understand why the tasks they are asked to do. Following on from that, they can work more efficiently when they believe in the action than when they simply earn money from specific tasks.

It is a very important note, since if they feel unfulfilled or deceived by management, they are likely to simply change their workplace. According to the data, 29 percent of Millennials feel that it would be easy to find another job if they weren’t happy—and that same number feel they don’t understand how their work impacts the company they work for. That’s a wake-up call for HR managers.

So, what can make them feel a real part of a company? Transparency.

Millennials need to know the corporate strategy and policies made behind closed doors. When they consider their employer honest, they would proudly work for the company big idea.

Set clear goals

Millennials belong to the ambitious generation. That is why they work more efficiently when they know the goals of their career. To exploit this potential, managers should show employees the direct path of their job including both short and long term aims.

Being open and honest about the team and individuals future can lead the firm to the next level of HR management.

Experiment with new training techniques…

Companies no longer doubt in profitability of investing in employees, especially since they understand that hiring a new employee costs more than retaining an existing one. However, traditional methods of learning are not desirable for Millennials.

Today’s learners like quick learning. Collaborative learning, embedded learning, stellar learning and social learning are much desired since Millennials prefer strong training programs that are effective and fun.

…but don’t over-do it

Because of fast growth of companies, the HR managers apply several systems to facilitate work of increasing number of employees. Consequently, every hired person has an account for training, onboarding, review, performance and more programs that cover different HR functions.

There comes a problem of logging in every of them separately that takes time unnecessarily. Going forward, there is a necessity to create a more all-encompassing system that supports multiple HR needs and can be accessed using a single login.

Introduce HRM mobile applications

According to the KPCB report, there are now more than 2.1 billion smartphone users on the planet. The study shows that 78 percent of interviewed Millennials’ smartphones never left their side, being the first thing they look at when they wake and the last thing they look at when they go to sleep. A further 60 percent believed that by 2020, every daily activity will be done through a smartphone.

That means , there is a duty to provide widely a mobile technology into the HR space. Companies need to “appify” their HR tools, in order to engage and understand employees, especially young ones.

According to the Bersin report in 2016, it’s likely that we will see a breakthrough in implementing apps for learning, employee feedback, and performance check-ins. What is more, there will be more applications for time and attendance management, expense reimbursement; employee directories and collaboration, as well as, applications for video interviewing, recruitment and candidate marketing. The faster HR management will take it for granted, the more young professionals will come to their mobile technology-friendly company.

The faster HR management will take it for granted, the more young professionals will come to their mobile technology-friendly company.

Trending millennial recruitment practices

Zappos is a perfect example with a new idea on recruiting strategy. They came out with very personal and relationship-making simple page on their website. When you land there, you are introduced to Zappos team members. Then you can choose a team that is most aligned with your personal skills and upload your resume from LinkedIn or Facebook account before being asked a few casual and engaging questions.

Next, Whole Foods. When potential workers finish their probationary periods, the coworkers vote whether they should be hired for a long term. That way underlines the good corporate culture and caring about the workers’ opinion.

Southwest Airlines introduced gamification elements in its recruiting process. They introduced a game called “scenario-simulation”. These exercises use problem solving, creative thinking, and collaboration skills that are all required during real work life. That idea can help to pick people who are truly perfect for the job.

Yet, how would you identify outstanding candidates even before the recruitment process starts? By letting them make a task to even enter the CV sending stage.

British GCHQ launched an online ‘treasure hunt’ to find the professionals who will help protect Britain against cyber attack. The complicated puzzle was aimed primarily at candidates interested in problem solving and computer technology, and was only solved by 1% of the 400,000 people who attempted it!

There are also lots of more amazing recruitment ideas! Beamary offers some more of them on its blog.

How do you provide HR management? Do you wish to share any of your gold rules? Let me know in the comment section below!

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