How to Attract Younger Workers to Your Company

Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, HR Strategy: Job Leveling (26-slide PowerPoint presentation). Job Leveling is a disciplined approach to gauge the value of work for individual positions across the organization. It entails ascertaining the nature of work done by each position, authority levels, and the effect of each job on business results. Jobs that are configured inadequately bread [read more]

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As the Baby Boomer labor force retires, employers need to attract younger workers although they are getting harder to recruit. Facing a skills shortage in new technical areas such as big data analytics, insurance companies have stepped up recruitment efforts on campus, the Boston Globe reports.

The federal government is also feeling the effects of an aging population. Despite White House initiatives to attract younger workers, the percentage of federal workers under the age of 30 fell to 7 percent in 2014, the lowest in a decade, according to the Washington Post. To hire more young employees, recruiters are changing tactics and adopting new strategies. If your company needs to attract young talent, here are some recruiting tips.

Build a Brand That Youth Admires

Effective recruitment begins with better marketing. Positioning your brand positively in the eyes of youth increases your odds of recruiting young workers. Millennials place high value on meaningful work, corporate reputation and culture, and not just salary, according to the 2014 Kelly Global Workforce Index. Showing that your brand represents these values can make your company more appealing to younger job seekers. Emphasize values such as providing purpose, corporate commitment to the environment and commitment to your employees that are reflected in benefits programs, flexible BYOD and telecommuting options.

Community outreach makes a big impact on communicating this message. For instance, event coordinator Dawn Gaczewski describes how Apple Rubber has sponsored a Fourth of July celebration for as long as she can remember. This sponsorship has helped enhance their reputation as a local company that gives to the community. Building this type of long-term reputation can position a company as an attractive place to work in the eyes of youth soon to be entering the labor force. You can also use team volunteer events, your online outreach and campus recruitment efforts to emphasize your company’s values.

Prioritize Mobile Recruitment

According to the Indeed blog, 71.3 percent of Generation X job seekers and 73.4 percent of Millennials prefer to job hunt on their mobile devices. Without a mobile recruitment outreach, your odds of reaching these job seekers drops dramatically. Kavaliro staffing company managing partner Bill Peppler says your mobile strategy should make it easy for job seekers to use your website to search and apply for positions on their device. Submitting a resume should be easy, and some companies have developed apps to facilitate this, while others have even developed ways to directly submit LinkedIn information instead of a resume.

Turn Your Company Website into a Recruitment Tool

Your website forms the centerpiece of an effective mobile recruitment strategy. PrideStaff’s Watercooler blog recommends leveraging your website as a recruitment tool by turning your job postings page into a portal for job hunters. Use keywords, social media posts and ads to attract job seekers to your site. Enhance the value of your job postings page by providing career search tools such as video guides that illustrate working for your company, job descriptions and benefits, and tutorials for submitting resumes, filling out applications and preparing for successful interviews.

Leverage Existing Employees and Website Visitors for Referrals

Pridestaff also advises that young employees already on staff are one of your best recruiting tools. Train your young representatives to be brand ambassadors who talk to their social networks about your corporate culture and the benefits of working for your company. Use your website to showcase young employees, and create an incentive program to reward employees who refer new hires. Provide tools on your website that make it easy for visitors to make referrals to your company.

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The purpose of Human Resources (HR) is to ensure our organization achieves success through our people. Without the right people in place—at all levels of the organization—we will never be able to execute our Strategy effectively.

This begs the question: Does your organization view HR as a support function or a strategic one? Research shows leading organizations leverage HR as a strategic function, one that both supports and drives the organization's Strategy. In fact, having strong HRM capabilities is a source of Competitive Advantage.

This has never been more true than right now in the Digital Age, as organizations must compete for specialized talent to drive forward their Digital Transformation Strategies. Beyond just hiring and selection, HR also plays the critical role in retaining talent—by keeping people engaged, motivated, and happy.

Learn about our Human Resource Management (HRM) Best Practice Frameworks here.