Where will your company be in 15-20 years if you don’t hire, groom and train 18-34 year olds over the next 10 years?
By MARK RIFFEY for the Flathead Beacon
Are you hiring Millennials? How’s that going? Some people love them, some do little more than complain about them and their penchant for selfies. The oft-parroted “party line” is thatMillennials are entitled slackers with no work ethic who don’t take initiative, aren’t responsible, etc. Meanwhile, many employers say “We can’t find qualified people who want to work.”
If that’s the case, they’ve either eliminated Millennials by default, or they aren’t looking very hard – or both.
Slacking isn’t age specific
These behaviors are not generation specific. EVERY generation has people who fit one or more of those patterns. You probably know a few. Are they all 18-34? I doubt it.
If people aren’t worthy of your job, that’s at least partly on them – no matter what generation they’re in. If you hire them anyway and aren’t doing so in hopes that they grow into the job or as part of a training effort, then their inability or lack of desire to do the job is on you – and specifically, on your company’s hiring process.
Most hiring processes spend the majority of their effort determining if someone is qualified. Once candidates are considered qualified, gut feel hiring often takes over the selection process.
A critical aspect of the hiring process is filtering out the people who won’t fit in culturally. This isn’t about you being elitist. It’s about making sure the candidate fits your company and that your company also fits the candidate. The culture at Duck Commander is different than the culture at VaynerMedia, Flathead Beacon or Goldman Sachs – and that’s OK. What’s not OK is hiring someone who is a terrible cultural fit. It doesn’t mean they’re a bad candidate, it simply means they’re not the right one for YOUR company.
One of the benefits of exposing your company’s culture to candidates is helping them remove themselves as a candidate. You want to send clear, legal signals that help people figure out if they’re a good fit. Hiring a perfectly qualified person who feels like Quasimodo when they’re at work is a waste of your time and theirs. Both of you will likely have to start over and that’s not a good thing for you or the candidate.
Culture is a big part of attracting and hiring the right people to grow your company. Millennials aren’t the only ones who care about these things.
Your hiring process reflects your culture
Remember, it isn’t the generation, it’s the person and your hiring process. Make sure yours does a great job of selecting not only the right skill set, but the right candidate for the job, your team and your company. Your process should do a great job of showing the candidate what your company is all about – and what you’re not about.
This week I heard about a company that had to fire an employee because they didn’t show up for work. They didn’t show up because they were a registered sex offender who got caught and arrested again. If the company ran a pre-hire background check, would they have declined to hire a registered sex offender?
Would you?
Would it depend on who your clients are, or whether or not the person would have direct contact with clients? Certainly. What about their contact with other employees and their families? What about the desire to rehabilitate someone who has “paid their debt to society”?
Your next applicant is a parent with small children. They’ve got the potential to be drive 10X growth of your company. How would you explain the situation to them? What if they’re a non-violent ex-convict?
Not hiring Millennials? What might you be missing?
If you eliminate Millennials from your hiring process, what might you be missing? In the group of people from 18 to 34, do you believe there are hard working, smart, ethical, motivated people who have the potential to transform your company?
If so, will you ignore that possibility due to someone’s perception that all Millennials are selfie-addicted slackers who don’t have any goals?
If so, where will your company be in 15-20 years if you’ve decided not to hire, groom and train 18-34 year olds over the next 10 years? In trouble, I’d say.
What does not hiring Millennials say to Millennials who might buy from you? Remember, Millennials currently make 21% of U.S. consumer purchases.
Hire incredibly well, regardless of age.
Want to learn more about Mark or ask him to write about a strategic, operations or marketing problem? See Mark’s site, contact him on Twitter, or email him at mriffey@flatheadbeacon.com.
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Want to learn more about Mark or ask him to write about a strategic, operations or marketing problem? See Mark’s site, contact him on Twitter, or email him at mriffey@flatheadbeacon.com. Check out the Flathead Beacon archive of all of Mark’s blogs.