Overcoming the Challenges of Hiring Millennials

As the Class of 2007 readies itself for graduation across the country, experts forecast a rise in entry-level recruiting this spring. According to the Michigan State University Collegiate Employment Research Institute’s (www.ceri.msu.edu) 32nd annual survey results, companies that have definite plans to hire this year are poised to expand opportunities by 8%. These statistics leave employers competing to reach the right, college-educated graduates, a problem that has been aggravated by “the noise” of the digital world.

Today’s recruiters are not only competing with each other, but also against a plethora of multimedia communication venues – witness the ever-present iPods and continuing popularity of MySpace. The impact of this generation’s tendency toward intense multi-tasking is being felt in organizations nationwide. Millenials are in the habit of - and completely comfortable - completing daily tasks while chatting in IM, text-messaging friends, and/or listening to music at the same time. These are the kids of the Baby Boomers, heavily immersed in a digital world.

So how do companies get their message across to these well-educated, hyper-connected Millennials?

This article examines how staffing executives in three very different industries – finance, manufacturing and government – used the same solution to reach their college recruiting goals.

1) Fidelity Investments
Creating a personal connection – easily and successfully

“The students we’re trying to reach see Experience as a trusted partner, which provides us with a personalized, reputable connection to our target audience. The company’s web site and emails stand out from online clutter because they offer much more than a ‘typical’ job board; they provide valuable information, advice and networking tools.”

- Kim DiNicola
Fidelity Investments
College Relations Director

Fidelity Investments is an international provider of financial services and investment resources that help individuals and institutions meet their financial objectives.

Once known primarily as a mutual fund company, Fidelity has adapted and evolved over the years to meet the changing needs of its customers. Today, that evolution is reflected in its menu of products and services.
What hasn't changed over the years is the company’s commitment to continuous improvement, state-of-the-art technology and peerless customer service. Fidelity is responsible for many innovations that are standards in the industry today. The company reinvests a substantial portion of its revenues each year back into technology to deliver new products and services to investors. Fidelity is consistently recognized by industry surveys and publications for providing some of the highest levels of customer support.

Challenge:

As a growing multi-national company with a prestigious reputation for being on the cutting-edge of technology, Fidelity Investments needed to find a more effective and efficient system for recruiting entry and mid-level, college-educated job candidates. At the same time, the company’s staffing consultants needed a solution that would allow them to simultaneously communicate Fidelity’s corporate culture and brand to college students throughout the country.

Solutions:

• Link Fidelity’s hiring management system with Experience’s network to enable the Staffing Department to post positions directly to college students under one comprehensive system.
• Utilize Experience’s targeted programs to communicate directly to college-educated candidates about Fidelity’s myriad of entry- and mid-level career opportunities.

Fidelity’s recruiters, who have used Experience’s recruitment services on an individual and ad hoc basis for many years, now work with the company in a comprehensive manner that enables them to get the most from their recruiting efforts. Fidelity also benefits from using Experience’s targeted emails and the extensive reach of its web site branding programs.

“Experience’s internship and job posting offerings have always been a beneficial outreach service for our recruiters to place interns and to help fill our full-time, entry-level customer service positions,” said Kim DiNicola, College Relations Director.

Fidelity now enjoys the traffic it receives from running an “employer spotlight” on Experience’s finance channel as well. This targeted career portal provides interested students and recent alumni with relevant information and advice on a career in finance. When students click on the Fidelity logo, they see the key messages that Fidelity wants to communicate to them, including available jobs, a short company backgrounder, the benefits the company offers and the community service programs in which they participate. Candidates can even view Fidelity’s Hoover’s profile from this “spotlight” to help round out their research on the company.
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Fidelity recently launched its first targeted email campaign in which nearly 75,000 prospective candidates out of the entire pool were selected to receive the message based on specific criteria supplied by the company.

“We are very pleased with the results,” DiNicola said. “In less than 24 hours, our open and click-through rates far surpassed our expectations.”

2Is Inc.
Getting heard above the noise - efficiently and effectively

“The targeted email option offered by Experience.com surfaced more than 100 responses, 60 qualified leads and generated more than a dozen prospects that were followed up and brought in for direct interviews. Of these candidates, we made offers on two and both accepted. Now that's a Return on Investment I like.”

Glenn D. House Sr.
2Is Inc.
President

2Is is a small, highly specialized manufacturing and distribution company. Its area of expertise is metal and plastic parts that are machined, fabricated or cast with low to moderate annual volumes. The company’s success to date is the result of a highly automated end-to-end process, from solicitation selection to part production by a manufacturing partner, to acceptance by their client, the US government.

The company was founded with a long-term goal of radically changing inventory management practices through the use of digital manufacturing technology. 2Is is committed to improving the U.S. military’s operational readiness by providing specification-compliant mission-critical repair parts, priced fairly and delivered fast. The company’s baseline business is focused on winning competitively awarded repair part contracts with the Department of Defense.

Challenge:

The 2Is team is highly skilled and committed to doing the right things the right way. How does the company’s recruiting staff efficiently and effectively communicate these messages to up-and-coming college grads – the demographic they want to reach? How do they tell bright, ambitious, college-educated, business-minded individuals about the company’s commitment to its employees and that the company recognizes the importance of balancing personal responsibilities with a career?

Solutions:

• Use Experience’s network to reach the more than 3 million college-educated candidates throughout the nation who use Experience as their career resource.
• Utilize Experience’s targeted programs to communicate directly to college-educated candidates about 2Is career opportunities.

2Is’ staffing team has taken advantage of Experience’s email targeting services, with messages going out to select groups of candidates. In this case, one message elicited more than 100 responses, 60 qualified leads and generated more than a dozen prospects that were followed up and brought in for direct interviews. Of these candidates, 2Is made two offers and both accepted. Thanks to these results, the company has expanded the way it works to take full advantage of Experience’s post and search services, saving the company valuable time while returning favorable results. To date, 40% of 2Is’ employees have been sourced using Experience’s network.

3) City of Palo Alto, California
Accessing a nationwide platform – strategic placements that get results

“The volume of qualified internship candidates we received through Experience was phenomenal, making my job as internship program coordinator that much easier.”

- Khashayar "Cash" Alaee
City of Palo Alto
Recreation Services Manager
Internship Program Coordinator

With a population of 61,000, the City of Palo Alto, California, is part of the San Francisco Metropolitan Bay Area and is the birthplace of the Silicon Valley. The City has developed a competitive summer internship program to recruit college students across the United States, offering them an insider’s look at how various governmental service departments – including police, planning, utilities, attorney, administrative services and many more – operate on a daily basis.

Khashayar “Cash” Alaee, the City of Palo Alto Recreation Services Manager and Internship Project Coordinator, defines the City’s internship goals as giving students:

• A behind-the-scenes look into management-level work within local government
• An opportunity to observe the efforts of the City to resolve issues
• Networking opportunities with professionals in their career of interest

Challenge:

Ten additional key internship assignments were identified and needed to be filled by motivated college students. The City needed to build awareness of its internship program and attract more, highly-qualified college students looking to investigate and “try out” careers in government.

Solutions:

• Utilize Experience’s internship posting services to reach undergraduate candidates at colleges and universities across the country in order to easily find and connect with the “right” candidates.
• Strategically place the internship opportunity listings in Experience’s student newsletter, resulting in more than 500 student views within days of delivery.

Experience enabled The City of Palo Alto to communicate with students nationwide, helping to raise awareness of government job needs in general, while specifically addressing the City’s needs. In the end, the City of Palo Alto more than doubled the number of interested candidates it received from years past.

“We will definitely work with Experience for next summer’s internship placements because we were able to advertise our program across America, providing us with resumes from college students throughout California as well as outside the state,” Alaee said.

At the End of the Day

Relationships, content and relevance are the keys to successful recruiting of today’s Millennials for organizations of every size

In many ways, the challenges different kinds of organizations face when it comes to college recruiting are very similar – whether they’re small boutique operations, government/non-profit entities or large-scale corporations.

Small businesses need to work harder to get their brand message across. To attract the best candidates – most of whom have never heard of them – they need to articulate who they are, what they do, what their market potential is and what makes them a great place to launch a career.

Government and non-profit agencies often face the challenge of being seen as one particular kind of employer while in reality, the range of jobs available within their organizations can be broad and varied.

Large companies that already enjoy brand recognition face the flip side of this challenge when compared to small organizations – but may come closer to sharing the experience of government and non-profit organizations. Instead of trying to identify themselves in the market, they may need to broaden the typical perception associated with their brand. For example, many young soon-to-be professionals may assume they need a degree in finance to work at Fidelity – which is definitely not the case.

By clearly branding their company culture, organizations that deal with misconceptions in the candidate base can articulate the breadth of career opportunities they offer, while offering potential candidates insight into what it is like to work for them. This ensures that their applicants are not only the best and brightest candidates, but also the ones who are the “best fit” for the organization.

By working together with each of its customers to meet their individual needs – whether large or small, government or corporate, for-profit or non-profit - Experience has succeeded in creating a win-win situation and measurable results.