This could be a real problem for employers when they try to hire Generation Y Millennials. While some managers and recruiters are fed up with the stereotypically whiny and self-entitled “Trophy Kids”, Generation Y is predicted to comprise nearly 75% of the world’s workforce by 2025, according to a study by the Business and Professional Women’s Foundation. Companies will eventually be fighting for the best of them, so start using the job description to court talented millennials.

Alison Seiffer, Wall Street Journal

Here are six ways employers can tweak job descriptions to attract Gen Y:

1. Tell them why they should want to work for you. This is your company’s opportunity to make job seekers fall head over heels in love with you and the open position. Millennials don’t just want to crank out work and check off items on a to-do list. They want to love the company they work for, and hiring managers can use the job description to get them excited.

2. Tell them why the position matters. Understanding how my job contributes to the organization is one of the biggest motivators for me and my Gen Y colleagues. Make sure the job descriptions describes where the position falls within the company, how the candidate could make an impact, and where it fits in the grand scheme of things.

3. Talk about what the job could do for them. Aside from a salary and benefits, how would they benefit from the position? What skills might they gain, what professional connections can they make, and why would this position make them more desirable candidates when they start looking for their next jobs?

4. Tell them about your creative benefits. Does your company offer any extra, exciting benefits, like flexible work hours or gym membership reimbursement? Be sure to mention those creative perks (no matter how small) in your job description.

5. Tell them about your vision for the position. While millennials may not envision working the same job for decades, it’s important that we work for a company where we could envision ourselves growing and contributing for several years. We want the job description to reflect that same sort of vision for the candidate who ultimately fills the position.

6. Tell your company story, quickly. Your company has a story. Tell a brief version of that story within your job description to quickly convey your company’s mission and how it came to be as it pertains to the kind of applicant you’re looking for.

What do you think Gen Y talent want in a job description?

We’ve all been there as recruiters: you have a super hard req, but you don’t have time to do much recruiting. You have 40+ other reqs assigned to you, plus loads of other corporate responsibilities. There are some internal applicants and some external applicants, and a few that really want this job. When you evaluate their likability, viability in the role, and other factors, you realize… they all kind of suck.

Politics is no different: there’s often no clear front-runner and usually a lack of enthusiasm about the finalists.  Maybe political parties need recruiters, but they probably just need leadership.

That’s what companies need, too.  Will you take the easy road, or do what’s best for the company?  This is the perfect time to be a hero.  A recruiting mastermind.  A sourcing savant.  It’s time to bring in a “ringer” — the perfect candidate.  Someone you can be proud to present to the hiring team.

What usually happens instead?  We settle for the best of the pack. Could that guy or gal do the job?  Probably. Is she a good culture fit? We’ll see. Could he really lead your company to greatness, or is he just average? Maybe… but who knows.

It takes a lot of work to proactively recruit the best person, but you owe it to yourself and your company.  You’re a recruiter, right?  So go recruit.

Throughout the course, I was struck by a recurring emphasis on what Agile software people refer to as the “Definition of Done,” especially because I’ve long felt that in many ways the sourcing community lacks a universal end or objective.  The Definition of Done (DoD) is defined by Scrum Alliance as “a comprehensive checklist of necessary, value-added activities” that are requisite to the progress of a software development project.  In an effort to make Scrum processes and terminologies relevant to my sourcing process, I began thinking about what sourcers would consider their Definition of Done – those non-negotiable, value-added activities that are critical to the success of any day-in-the-life of a sourcing professional and to the overall recruiting lifecycle.

My conclusion:  talent sourcing is a pretty nebulous and nuanced activity for most organizations, the singular end of which is hard to define.  At the very least, it’s defined differently by different organizations.

Is the ultimate objective of sourcing to generate hires, or is it to provide qualified options to the recruiters and hiring managers you support?  Is it the mere transaction of online search and resume delivery?  Does it involve a deeper level of expertise, agility, curiosity, tech-savvy, multi-facetedness, and maybe even open-endedness?  Are there clearly defined objectives to sourcing that we can call “done?”

I think any sourcing professional worth his or her salt would argue that sourcing is more than a series of simple transactions, more than specialized expertise in Boolean search-term engineering, more than trolling for low-hanging fruit on resume databases, more than advanced engagement in the Twitosphere, more than InMail buckshot.

In this respect, too, I found that the rules of Scrum applied:  “DoD is not static.”  The sourcer’s “done” is diverse, fluid, ever-changing, subject to technological advancements, shifting organizational priorities, moving-target job descriptions, and indecisive hiring managers.  It involves the skillful and synchronous execution of many best practices across many platforms, including social media, deep-web/Boolean, powerful multi-platform sourcing tools like Scavado, job boards, online and offline research and networking, employment of mobile campaigns and strategies, and an innate curiosity that drives a sourcer to leave no stone unturned and constantly strive for innovation.

Scrum principles also contend that the DoD is the primary reporting mechanism for team members and should serve as an auditable checklist.  Reporting on metrics is almost invariably a pain-point for most sourcing teams – it certainly has been for the teams on which I’ve worked.  But if we can agree that the ultimate objective of sourcing is not simply to tweet or to run a Google search, why do some organizations insist on tracking activities at such a granular level?  Why do we measure inputs instead of outputs?

I’ve always held that the primary objective, the Definition of Done, of sourcing is to provide highly qualified options (whether cold resumes or warm contacts) to a recruiter or hiring manager.  Since we typically can’t further impact or control the hiring process, shouldn’t the delivery of highly qualified options be the only metric we’re concerned with monitoring?  Let the sourcer flex his or her creative muscle and employ the tools and best practices that most effectively and efficiently achieve that deliverable.  The platforms, search terms or methods used are secondary by far to the ability to deliver quality options.

Note:  I’m not understating the importance of source tracking, which I’m assuming – perhaps optimistically – will be captured in an Applicant Tracking System.  I’m also not understating the importance of hires, but am contending that hires are a function of recruiting, are subject to innumerable variables beyond the sourcer’s control, and should not be the criteria against which you are judged. 

Finally, the Definition of Done must be informed by reality.  I take great issue with the organization who thinks sourcing ought to be prescriptive – that recruiters or hiring managers can expect the same degree of throughput for any job.  One of my biggest pet peeves is the manager who superimposes an arbitrary number as his/her baseline expectation for sourcing (“how hard is it to find 15 qualified resumes?”).  Sometimes finding 15 qualified resumes is extraordinarily difficult and time-consuming; sometimes it’s admittedly simple.

You should always check your processes and the organizational expectations projected upon sourcing to make sure they reflect reality.  All too often I see sourcers delivering against completely unrealistic expectations simply because they wouldn’t speak up for themselves (or their managers wouldn’t speak up for them).  A certain degree of level-setting is usually necessary throughout a sourcing engagement to ensure the Definition of Done is in fact achievable.

Net-net:  sourcing can be an easy scapegoat for recruiting failures.  The responsible sourcer will keep recruiters and managers grounded with realistic expectations and clearly articulated, measurable Definitions of Done that deliver highly qualified talent options. Those expectations must also provide some latitude for sourcers to act as subject-matter experts to find the best research methods possible.

Sourcing is not prescriptive, and it’s not static or singularly focused in any one platform or methodology.  It is a multi-dimensional discipline that requires a great deal of curiosity, creativity, adaptability, and a little bit of luck.

Do you do any “pre-search” before your online research?  If not, you’re probably leaving some good prospects on the table.

I know hiring managers don’t love to spend a lot of time on intakes, but it’s critical to ask questions that will lead you to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  Most intakes cover the basics: must-haves, nice-to-haves, education, skills, and a few other basic aspects of a candidate profile.

Next time you do an intake, ask things like:

• Which groups, online and offline, would your ideal candidate likely belong to?
• Which companies churn out the best people in this role?
• Where have you worked in the past, Mr. or Ms. Hiring Manager?
• Which conferences would he/she likely attend?  Where would he/she speak?
• Our company uses the job title “ABC.” What do other companies call it?
• Besides the obvious keywords, what are some of the most specific keywords that will quickly help me zero in on likely prospects?

Another strategy that has helped me turn up more recruiting gold is to step away from the obvious. Here’s an example:

Say I’m looking for a Chief Scientific Officer for a pharmacogenomics company. I would naturally search on the term “pharmacogenomics,” but to take it a step further, I would also look up the definition.

Pharmacogenomics is the branch of pharmacology which deals with the influence of genetic variation on drug response in patients by correlating gene expression or single-nucleotide polymorphisms with a drug’s efficacy or toxicity.

Now I’ll search using the following terms:

influence of genetic variation drug response gene expression PhD

Instead of just seeing people with profiles where the term pharmacogenomics is used, I’m now seeing people who have written a blog post, white paper, scientific paper, are mentioned in a press release, or have any of these related keywords in their profiles, CVs, bios, etc.

By adopting some simple changes to your process, you’ll undoubtedly land more quality candidates.  Most importantly, you’ll be able to better describe your roles to a prospect and develop a more consultative relationship with your colleagues.

The movie inspired some thoughts that got me pretty fired up.  Whether it’s baseball or HR, business is business.

The timing was pretty ironic, because a few days later a long discussion unfolded on a popular LinkedIn group and sparked quite a debate between purist Boolean search practitioners and people that utilize sourcing tools to help them identify prospective candidates and recruit them.

It isn’t personal, it’s business. Companies and shareholders expect talent departments to identify, attract and recruit the best possible prospects. They care about time to fill, cost of hire, retention rates, etc. What they don’t care about is how you do what you do. Success in filling your job requisitions in a timely manner with exceptional talent is the goal. Why do people always get hung up on the “how?”

Here’s an example I’ve heard on so many occasions:

A large company reached out to us for advice. They have 90+ in-house recruiters that were sent to Internet search training to learn Boolean search techniques, and they spent well over $100,000. After 1 year they analyzed their investment and realized a 0% decrease in time to fill and time to source (the two major sourcing metrics they measure).  It wasn’t that the recruiting team didn’t enjoy the methods they learned or didn’t want to find the best prospects. When asked why they didn’t implement their new techniques, some of the team said they didn’t have time. Others admitted that they “don’t think like that.” They’re recruiters, not programmers.

Companies send their people to Boolean training because “that’s what you do when you want to source candidates on the Internet.” It’s the same way companies have approached online sourcing since we started using the Internet to recruit in the 90’s.

Similarly, baseball scouts had always chosen their players the same way until the Oakland Athletics’ Billy Beane came along.  My favorite scene in Moneyball shows Beane meeting with the owner of the Boston Red Sox after his new strategy had proven very effective for the A’s. It was a powerful scene that reminded me of the “status quo” thinking we see so often in business:

For 41 million, you built a playoff team. You lost Damon, Giambi, Isringhausen, Peña and you won more games without them than you did with them. You won the exact same number of games that the Yankees won, but the Yankees spent 1.4 million per win and you paid 260 thousand. I know you’ve taken it in the teeth out there, but the first guy through the wall… it always gets bloody, always. It’s the threat and not just the way of doing business, but in their minds it’s threatening the game. But really what it’s threatening is their livelihoods, it’s threatening their jobs, it’s threatening the way that they do things. And every time that happens, whether it’s the government or a way of doing business or whatever it is, the people are holding the reins, have their hands on the switch. They will bet you’re crazy. I mean, anybody who’s not building a team right and rebuilding it using your model, they’re dinosaurs. They’ll be sittin’ on their a** on the sofa in October, watching the Boston Red Sox win the world series.

Scavado has taken it in the teeth from purist sourcers and some of the people who make their living training recruiters on Internet Sourcing.  ”The first guy through the wall… it always gets bloody, always.”

For believers in the status quo, Scavado isn’t for you. Good sourcers don’t have to worry about how they find people, either manually or with help from a tool. If you deliver exceptional talent to your hiring managers, you’ll always have a job.  How you get it done is irrelevant.  Our industry is too caught up in theory and perfection when it comes to online sourcing.  The idea that there’s a single right way to approach the art of recruiting is ludicrous, and no tool or technique will ever replace the soft skills it takes to be a good recruiter.

A certified Internet sourcer came up to me at a conference 2 years ago and confided that she had secretly bought our sourcing software and paid for it on her own because where she worked, she couldn’t admit to “selling out” and using a sourcing tool. She said Scavado made her faster and helped her make more hires, but she didn’t want anyone to know.

I don’t know of any solid practitioners — surgeons, builders, architects, engineers — that have to hide innovation to be better at their trades. Why did this woman find shame in being more efficient?

In business and baseball, there’s no right or wrong way to build a team.  Don’t be afraid to change the game by using what works for you.

During one of the first presentations, Aida LaChaux talked about reinventing the sourcing function at Yahoo.  A big part of her team’s success has come from picking up the phone. Instead of sending e-mail or InMail and hoping that prospects reply, Aida’s team has started to call every prospective candidate to pitch opportunities at the company.  She says it has made a “tremendous difference,” and at least 19% of their hires now come from direct recruiting efforts.

And Aida was quick to stress that all the software and social recruiting efforts in the world can’t replace the basic need to build relationships with prospects.  Sourcers and recruiters can’t be effective without some good, old-fashioned recruiting. You can hear more about Aida’s philosophy in our video interview with her.

Getting back to basics was a common theme last week. Conni LaDouceur did an amazing job of showing that phone sourcing will never be replaced by the Internet.  Other speakers emphasized the power of the telephone in building rapport with prospective candidates and providing a better candidate experience.

I attended SourceCon New York last February, and there were many more in-house sourcers and recruiters represented this year. This tells me that companies are investing in their internal teams and realizing just how valuable the sourcing function is.  The SourceCon community and the staff at ERE have done a phenomenal job of getting the word out by publishing relevant articles, research, and hosting great events that showcase the many important facets of talent acquisition.

At Scavado, my team and I believe in helping our subscribers find the very best talent.  It takes work, and companies are starting to embrace the skill and perseverance needed to build a world-class workforce.  In the past, our industry has been caught up in process — focusing on tools and techniques instead of results.  That mindset seems to be changing (for the better), but there’s still a lot of work to be done.

Don’t forget to focus on results.  If you’re making great hires, the rest is just details.

The traditional corporate hiring process has been antiquated for years, and we’ve run out of excuses.  Our tools have never been better, and information about candidates has never been more available.  Yet our processes have remained mostly unchanged: we write uninspiring job descriptions, wait for candidates to apply, read their drab cover letters, peruse their trite resumes, and sit them down to talk uninspiringly about themselves.  It’s no wonder the applicants all start to blur together… the HR machine churns out mediocrity.

Let’s put it this way: Would you trust a movie review the Director wrote?  Would you buy a car without test-driving it?  How well do you really know your candidates?

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Unless you have a stellar employment brand, your successes with this decades-old approach are mostly luck.  The resume clearinghouse method does nothing to systematically attract, much less retain, the best and brightest in your industry.  More importantly, it doesn’t create repeatable results that drive value in your organization.

Be honest with yourself: The best candidates aren’t competing for your jobs.  You’re competing for them.

Simply put, HR professionals and hiring managers must change the way they evaluate candidates for their companies to survive.  Seth Godin calls our current economic situation the forever recession.  It sounds grim, but he’s right: only those companies with the best people will be able to compete in a flat, crowded, and global marketplace.

Cultural Fit Above All Else

Online retailer Zappos.com understands the need to build an exceptional workforce.  Sold to Amazon.com a few years ago for nearly $1 billion, Zappos structures its hiring program around cultural fit.  Founder Tony Hsieh recognized that delivering the best service to his customers means hiring engaged employees who care about the company’s mission.  In fact, every new Zappos employee goes through 4 weeks of paid training in the company’s call center to understand how the business operates, and Zappos offers each of them a $2,000 bonus to quit before training ends.

That’s right: Zappos pays new hires to quit before they’ve even started. This weeds out candidates who aren’t committed to the company and won’t fit well with their dedicated counterparts.  About 10% of trainees take the money, and it’s money well-spent.

The Zappos approach is just one example, and it may not work for every position in every organization, but it does offer important food for thought.  How can you differentiate your hiring process and get a more realistic picture of your applicants?

Lots of great companies provide extensive (paid) training and probationary periods where prospective FTEs get to know their future team members, start to understand the organization’s culture, and become part of a talent community that can be nurtured and grown.  You can’t really judge candidates’ technical abilities until you’ve seen them work, and you can’t evaluate their soft skills until you’ve had time to interact with them.  Resumes, interviews, and personality tests will never replace the experience of getting to know someone in an authentic setting.

Success Starts with the Boss

If we expect to change the status quo in the conservative world of HR, we need to take these ideas to the top.  Every level of management must be engaged in a discussion about how the organization will actively recruit and train the best human capital available.  CEOs: It’s time to stop preaching empty cliches about how “our people are our greatest assets” and start putting your money where your mouth is.

Is this approach more expensive in the short-term?  Absolutely.  But in the long-term, you can’t survive without it.

The study also found that many millennials are “friends” with their co-workers on Facebook. The users sampled were connected to an average of 16 co-workers each, and 80% of them are connected to at least one work buddy. The raw data provides additional insights and is available on Millennial Branding’s blog post about the study.

There has been plenty written about the high-turnover of Gen-Y workers, the work-life balance factors that affect their employment decisions, and the widespread cluelessness among employers about how to retain them. But is the situation improving?

As the study implies, economic realities in the U.S. have pushed many young workers (who lack the experience of older generations) to pursue jobs in the hospitality and travel industry, when they might have otherwise taken jobs more closely related to their fields of study or professional interests.

I’d like to hear your thoughts about millennial hiring over the last 2-3 years. Does your company make a special effort to attract millennials? How are you doing this? Do you feel any resentment from your older candidates or employees?