Recruiting Millennials With Amazing Results

We are living in interesting times. The Baby Boomers are aging and the largest and youngest generation in modern history, Generation Y, now making up one-third of the U.S. workforce. But this isn't your typical generational succession. Beyond the generational shift of power, the definition of work is changing. Technological change and automation are accelerating. This is creating a Perfect Labor Storm for employers and job seekers.

More companies are hiring but struggling to find enough qualified workers. Many say skilled workers are scarce. That's partly true. The bigger problem for most companies is that many qualified workers just get lost in all the noise. That is putting pressure on wages and increasing the time to hire. What are the current trends that employers need to know before they can effectively recruit Gen Y.

Traditional recruiting strategies just aren't working anymore. At the conclusion of this lecture, students will recognize the signs and symptoms of an ailing sourcing and recruiting system.

The recruiting landscape is changing. Upon completing this lecture, participants will understand what needs to change including sourcing of applicants and candidate experience.

Before any substantive discussion can begin about recruiting Gen Y, it is important to understand who they are, how they differ from other generations, and why they shouldn't be singled out as uniquely different.

There are many myths associated with what matters to each generation. Whether it is money, benefits, or work-life balance, it is important for employers to identify what top quality candidates are seeking from jobs and at work. Professor Wolfe reviews the latest research and you might be surprised about what you'll learn.

To introduce recruiting in the age of Google, let's start with a radio interview that the hosts described as a "clinic for Hr and small business owners." It was recorded on Nov 28, 2015 but was so popular, Business Builders Show repeated it in January 2016. Ira Wolfe's interview is in the 2nd segment. But don't miss the intro segment when the hosts discuss 50 trends that will impact business in 2016. Enjoy and please share your questions, comments, and add to the discussion.

I've also attached the most recent version of a white paper titled Recrooglization: Recruiting in the Age of Googlization. It is an excellent resource for the lectures and includes information not included in earlier recorded lectures.

In this lecture Professor Wolfe begins building a reliable recruiting blueprint. It begins with the recruitment "funnel." Traditionally employers were able to use one or maybe two sources to attract a large population of qualified candidates. With social media and reviews, tradition has been disrupted and the funnel needs to be larger but the process better to screen out many unqualified candidates. By the end of this lecture, students will learn how the funnel works and the best source to fill it up with qualified candidates.

Social media and mobile technology has disrupted recruiting more quickly and significantly than any event since the introduction of online job boards two decades ago. Since over 8 out of 10 Gen Y own a smartphone and an even greater percentage use social media, it is essential that employers incorporate new sources into their recruiting strategies. At the conclusion of this lecture, supported by downloadable resources, participants will identify the best sources for recruiting Gen Y along with all other generations.

A job post is useless if no one sees it. To ensure your job postings are visible to job seekers and rank high in the search engines, you need to optimize the job post just like your optimize other web pages to market your products and services . View, compare, and download an example of a typical but non-optimized job posting as well as a keyword rich optimized one. Download the checklist for optimizing your job postings as well as company career site landing pages (called on-page SEO).

Many companies avoid social media like the plague despite social networking functioning like word-of-mouth on steroids. In fact, one thought leader described the new Word of Mouth the Word of Internet. At the conclusion of this lecture, students will understand the value of networks and building communities in recruiting.

Employee referrals and word of mouth remain the best source of quality applicants. In other words, more candidates are hired from referrals and WOM than any other source. Social networking must be an integral part of recruiting but it's not the only venue for recruiting more Gen Y workers. On campus recruiting and campus fairs are overlooked strategies. Gen Y Steve Boerner discusses opportunities to recruit on campus. At the conclusion of this lecture students will have identified the importance of referrals and college recruiting.

Until recently most companies didn't even consider the candidate recruiting experience important. Many still don't care. That's a colossal mistake. The tide has turned. Companies no longer dictate their brand, the customer does. Like marketing to customers, a bad candidate experience injures the brand. And with social media and company reviews like Glassdoor, one bad experience spreads like wildfire. At the conclusion of this lecture, students will understand the value of a good candidate experience and begin to work on creating the best experience possible.

Reaching more applicants and getting them to apply is only the 1st step of an effective recruiting process. That's just the beginning of the recruiting journey. Organizations need a process to quickly and conveniently screen out poor fits, identify high potentials, and communicate and engage with all applicants early and often. At the conclusion of this lecture, students will understand the 3 fundamentals of an effective recruiting process to begin building or improving it in their organization.

Is your company website Gen Y-ready? Is it Search Engine Optimized? The answer may be obvious but nearly 90% of company websites lose qualified applicants due to a bad first impression. During this lecture, students will learn to identify key elements of a good company career site and landing pages for each job opening.

The candidate experience is an integral part of a modern-day recruiting process. One of the primary sources of candidate abandonment is during the application itself. In this lecture Dr. Wolfe reviews application options and discusses the fine line between getting enough information and turning off applicants.

While the candidate experience is increasingly important, employers need to improve the hiring experience as well. Checking emails and downloading resumes is not efficient or expedient. Entering qualified candidates into spreadsheets is time-consuming and provides no useful time-sensitive data. During this lecture, students will learn tools and techniques that they can use during the screening process to make their jobs easier and become more effective.

The 3rd step in our Gen Y Recruiting Blueprint is implementing an easy to use, repeatable process that can screen out unqualified applicants, identify high-potentials, and communicate quickly with qualified candidates. A good process is also required to track the status of each applicant from not qualified to when he or she is scheduled for an interview. Without a good process, tracking and analyzing ways to improve recruiting success is useless.

One of the most important elements of any recruiting strategy these days is the acquisition of data and an easy way to analyze it. Without data, the time to hire will be a crap shoot and costs will only escalate. Recruiting software allows organizations to collect, track, and analyze every step of the recruiting process in real time. During this lecture, students will be exposed to the type of data they should be collecting and reviewing. A download is also available of the types or metrics that must be tracked.

Closing remarks. We really appreciate the opportunity to teach this course and hope each of you have learned a great deal and enjoyed the experience. If you feel something was missing, please let us know. If you have recommendations, contact us. We will be updating this course often so come back again.