Hiring is becoming an increasingly difficult process in the current job market. Millennials make up the majority of the workforce, and they are notorious for having a wandering eye when it comes to jobs. Studies have shown that millennials stay at a job for three years or less. Gone are the days of golden work anniversaries. This higher turnover has serious implications for hiring managers and business in general. Turnover lowers morale and impedes production, reducing revenue and costing the company money in training and on-boarding costs.
The solution to the problem of high turnover is to hire right in the first place. There are many habits and policies that can be a barrier to getting the best employees. Here are the top five to be aware of so that you can get rid of them if possible.
Money isn’t everything. If you are lucky enough to have a large budget for hiring a new employee, don’t make it all about the salary. The candidate MUST be exposed, on some level, to your company culture. If a person who requires strong managerial structure and a more traditional org chart is being hired at a company that works more loosely as a coop, he or she will not last. Performance will suffer and it’s likely that the employee will leave within the year.
Hire Blind. Diversity matters in a lot of ways, but it matters most to your bottom line. Millennials love diverse workplaces; they like to feel as if they are a part of a modern and progressive company. Also, it’s been proven that diverse companies make more in revenue each year. So, check your biases and try to hire without considering race, gender, religion, or ethnicity.
Check References. Even though references alone aren’t enough to ensure that your candidate is who s/he says s/he is, it’s a great start. Many employers see that references were given and don’t follow up. Call each reference and ask a few simple questions. This will give you a little more information, and will get you a long way toward trust. Googling the candidate doesn’t hurt either.
Bring Other People into the Interview Process. You can’t rely 100% on your own opinions and assessments. Getting one or two more people to sit in and take notes will give you the unique perspective that other minds often bring. This diversity of thought opens up candidates that you wouldn’t have considered before, and also helps identify red flags that you may not have noticed.
Diversify Your Offering. Since salary alone is not enough, look at other ways to make your candidates happy. If your company leans heavily on salary and benefits to attract job seekers, you might have trouble bringing people in to interview. Millennials love to work in open and free-thinking work environments with a cooperative style and loose management structure. If you want to hire these native technologists because you value their thirst for innovation, you may have to address the aspects of your company that don’t appeal to them. You can’t pay these employees enough to keep them there.
Hiring can be exciting, but if you are dealing with high turnover and are always short-staffed, it gets old real quick. Identify your hiring barriers and remove them as quickly as you can to get that candidate pipeline flowing again.
Hiring is becoming an increasingly difficult process in the current job market. Millennials make up the majority of the workforce, and they are notorious for having a wandering eye when it comes to jobs. Studies have shown that millennials stay at a job for three years or less. Gone are the days of golden work anniversaries. This higher turnover has serious implications for hiring managers and business in general. Turnover lowers morale and impedes production, reducing revenue and costing the company money in training and on-boarding costs.
