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Employers take on the 'Millennials'
(Newsday (Melville, NY) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Feb. 5--In a few months, Andrea Smith will get her master's degree from Adelphi University -- and enter a job market that seems poised to welcome her.
Of course, if prospective employers want to reach her, they can rely on the telephone or e-mail. But those routes are hardly in sync with a generation accustomed to quick turnarounds; after all, these young adults have come of age in the era of text messaging.
So employers aiming to get Smith's attention may want to get their thumbs in shape and learn to "text": That is, sending a short text message to her cell phone, which she carries and monitors all her waking hours.
Smith, 28, says of her fellow students at Adelphi: "You may not get them on the telephone, but I'm telling you, with God as my witness, they're going to get your text."
Such communication techniques as text messaging, blogging and podcasting are getting recruiters' attention as the balance of power appears to have shifted from employers' to students' favor, as an estimated 1.4 million are expected to line up to receive bachelor's degrees this year. And as the competition to hire new college graduates heats up, there's increasing interest as "employers try to keep ahead of the game and be sure that they are perceived as being leading-edge," Nancy Mikkelsen, education director for the National Association of Colleges and Employers, says.
With graduation less than four months off, any edge becomes important. According to the 2006 job outlook survey by Mikkelsen's organization, 46 percent of employers say the market for this year's grads is good or excellent, up from 29 percent last year. The number of employers recruiting on campus is up. Starting salaries, flat for a few years, are up. And students' confidence that they'll land a job is up.
"We have had an impressive uptick in recruiting and a significant level of student participation," says Marvin Reed, career center director at Hofstra University.
And the message is clear for employers who still think all they have to do is post a job opening: "It really isn't your father's job search or your own job search anymore," says Steve Pollock, president of WetFeet Inc., a recruiting and research firm. "Things have changed dramatically."
Both the improving economy, which brings with it entry-level hiring needs, and the changing generational landscape are forces that led 75 to 100 recruiters to participate last month in a Web seminar on employee recruiting efforts and blogs. It was conducted by Gretchen Ledgard, blogger and marketing manager for Microsoft.
Blogs -- including ones by new employees on their first days on the job -- "can bring that human touch" into this highly wired world, says Mikkelsen, who planned the event.
Already, Maureen Crawford Hentz, just three months into her new job as diversity recruiting specialist for lighting manufacturer Osram Sylvania Inc. in Danvers, Mass., is getting into the swing of things. A former career center director, Hentz, 37, has started writing for a group career blog at BostonWorks.com, where she recently sent this message to her fellow recruiters to encourage them to find ways to connect with and attract young workers:
"Millennials is the name of the generation born from 1982 to 2007. They are the college graduates of 2004 and later and approach the world very differently from Boomers and Xers.
"This cohort will be our applicant pool for the next 25 years, so unless you are close to retirement yourself, you've got care! Think of this as your most valuable cross-cultural education. My plan is to be completely bilingual" -- that is, speak the language of Generation X and the Millennials. She concluded: "Join me."
Hentz has been prowling social networking sites, such as Friendster, in her search for candidates. And she's developing a "how to make the most of a career fair" podcast, an audio download that candidates can play on laptops or iPods.
Because it's clear that young people want instant responses -- and "we want to be available in Millennial time" -- she's also looking to set up a messaging system so she can immediately respond to queries.
That's just the kind of thinking that Smith, the Adelphi student, likes to hear. She attended a resume-writing session two weeks ago and then e-mailed her resume to the college career center for a critique. "I sent it Friday morning and got it back Friday afternoon," she says. "They're moving quick."
Though students may have the edge on communication methods that have accompanied the new technologies -- and they can "talk a good game" -- one thing hasn't changed: Young adults, especially undergraduates, can be "relatively unsophisticated in job search tactics," says Pollock, of WetFeet. And that's where employers can gain an advantage in the hiring game, he says: They can "capture goodwill" if they step in and make what can be "an intimidating and fear-inspiring process" more transparent.
Here's how some employers are using new techniques to do just that.
James Barra, 25, sends text messages to confirm interviews with young candidates or answer questions -- but not to make an initial contact. A recruiting coordinator with Goodman Financial Group-Metlife in Hauppauge and just four years out of college himself, he says "texting" is great for students because "it doesn't disturb people around you." It's a quick, concise way to communicate "under the radar screen."
Ledgard's blog at Microsoft features a Q&A with a "Suggestion Kitty" where candidates can ask -- and get answers to -- questions such as: "I had a phone interview on Dec. 27 and haven't heard back. Should I be worrying?" See http://blogs.ms dn.com/jobsblog/default.aspx.
On Procter & Gamble's Web site, candidates can take free online courses in career basics: resume writing, time management, business etiquette, communication skills, finding the right career. See http://www .pg.com/jobs/sectiomain.jhtml. As they get acclimated to their new jobs, three newly hired MBAs at Honeywell are blogging about their daily activities -- where potential applicants can see what it's like on the inside. See http://www.honey well.com/careers/.
This is just the type of thing that Viraj S. Mehta, 21, a junior at Stony Brook University, says would be useful. He would like to listen to podcasts before a job interview and see streaming videos of recruiters' campus presentations to review what was said. "Students," he says, could "just download the podcasts and listen to the presentation when they are in between classes."
Clearly, the old approach -- employers saying, " 'These are our requirements, apply to us because you need a job' -- is not good enough any more," says Steven Rothberg, president of CollegeRecruiter.com. (Both Rothberg and Hentz are scheduled presenters at the National Association of Colleges and Employers' national conference and expo, starting May 30 in Anaheim, Calif.; see www .naceweb.org.)
The good news for employers, he says, is that creating simple five-minute podcasts with career tips or reports from new hires is inexpensive -- and "almost idiot-proof." Think of it this way: If a candidate is interviewing with three similar companies and one has a podcast and the others don't, which is going to come across as more forward-thinking?
Of course, even if an employer can adapt to the new age of recruiting, ultimately the hiring process comes down to face-to-face events. Sakima Gonzalez, 28, a graduate student in social work at Adelphi, says that when it comes to dealing with recruiters, "I like to be face to face, to get a sense of the person, a sense of the company, how they present themselves, how they feel about the agency they work for. I want to see them as a team. I want to see how they get along, their body language."
Yes, blogging, podcasting and text messaging are increasingly valuable communications approaches. But even the hippest employers know that graduates can be lured through other means. Google, for example, is recruiting computer science students for the volunteer campus position of Google pizza ambassador. The job: to organize pizza-catered study breaks for fellow software engineering students during exam and project crunch times.No specific tech skills are needed, according to the Google Web site -- just "strong pizza-eating skills and the ability to recruit other pizza-eaters."
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