Best Outreach Strategies for Recruiting Millennials

January 22, 2015 at 11:47 AM by Rob Stevenson

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I know what you're thinking. Not another post on how to best manage, understand, and engage with the slippery, narcissistic, digital native, upwardly mobile and hyper career-ladder focused millennial generation. Rather than riff on how they need to be given regular feedback, how they're expert multitaskers, entrepreneurial in spirit and focused on personal development and career growth, I'm just going  to go through the most effective ways to reach out and get the process started. It's a simple part of the hiring cycle, but with a generation well-versed in every sort of digital communication, one faux pas could turn them off to your entire organization.

 

Social Outreach

Social media works best as content to reference rather than as a medium to engage over. One of our recruiters has had tons of success with the subject line "Saw your tweet/blog post/github fork", as opposed to friending someone on Facebook or engaging with a bunch of their tweets. The LinkedIn connection is an obvious, professional method, but you'll notice if you think back to any conversation that's come from there that once it's time to get down to business, you take it off LinkedIn to email or the phone. If you can cut out that step you'll save both yourself and the candidate time.

 

Text Lightly

Once you've already begun the process with someone, a text can be a great way to quickly answer a question a candidate had or tell them you're looking forward to them coming in the office to meet the team. Under no circumstances, however, should you use any sort of of texting short hand. There seems to be a compulsion among older generations to either make up their own abbreviations or use traditional ones. This is needless and comes off as desperate, so just think of a text like a short email without a salutation or closing.

 

The Voicemail Renaissance

The amount of emails that get sent to archive without even being opened is staggering. On the other hand, I personally listen to every single voicemail I get and know most people do the same. Perhaps it's because you go into it knowing it won't be more than a 30 second investment, or because, unlike an email, it's guaranteed to be aimed directly at you. For whatever reason, the open rate on voicemails is vastly higher than an email.

 

You're In Touch. Now What?

Once you've avoided some social media faux pas and got in touch with your candidate, what are you supposed to say? The nature of millennials as socially conscious and progress oriented is well-tilled blog soil, so in light of that, consider including information about your organization's charitable giving, opportunities for personal development, and what the progress of an ideal employee in this role would look like. Get candidates thinking about their long term goals and how your organization gets them there.

 

What are some successful ways you've engaged millennials? Leave a comment or tweet @EnteloRob!

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