How to Make Your Business Interesting to Millennials

Enterprise Rent-A-Car hires more than 8,000 college graduates every year. That’s an impressive total for a traditional, non-technology company. As many companies struggle to attract the attention of millennial workers — those in their twenties and early thirties — Enterprise has succeeded with a multi-pronged approach to getting young job seekers engaged with the company.

An important piece of Enterprise’s recruiting strategy is a strong employer brand, including an “Enhanced Profile” on Glassdoor. There, the company integrates its social channels and showcases its culture, benefits, and awards. With Glassdoor’s targeted display ads, Enterprise can target college graduates in key metropolitan areas. By implementing these tools in an effort to recruit more college graduates for its entry-level management training program, Enterprise made 1,137 Glassdoor hires in two years, and Glassdoor has become its No. 1 recruiting channel, with a 22 percent higher conversion rate than other channels. 

A highly targeted campaign can help get more millennials in your recruiting funnel, but there are also other steps you can take to get younger candidates and workers truly engaged in your business. Here are a few to get started:

1. Be Accessible 

Millennials can’t become interested in your company if they don’t know about it. And they aren’t likely to know about your company if they can’t access information about it via their mobile devices. Through a partnership with Glassdoor, potential candidates can search for jobs at Enterprise across any device, which helps ensure that more millennials find the company. If your company website or careers page is not mobile-friendly, you may be missing out on a huge number of job seekers in the younger demographic.

2. Provide a ‘Career Lattice,’ Not a Ladder

Most millennials have a famously short attention spans. They’ve grown up with video games and smartphones, and as employees, they switch jobs every two years on average, according to Dan Schawbel of Millennial Branding. But employers can keep millennials interested by finding ways to move these workers into different jobs or assignments every 12-24 months, says Sarah Sladek, author of Knowing Y: Engage the Next Generation Now. “This instant-gratification, multi-tasking generation doesn’t want to stay in a stagnant, hierarchical environment just twiddling their thumbs and waiting for an opportunity to move up,” Sladek says. “Mobility and results [are] key to engaging Generation Y.” She recommends employers implement a career “lattice” by creating more talent mobility, special assignments, and job rotation programs.

3. Offer Regular Praise — Even During Recruitment

Maybe it’s because of their doting parents or the “everyone wins” philosophies of their little leagues, but millennials crave praise. According to Achievers and Experience, Inc., 80 percent of millennials say they prefer on-the-spot recognition to formal reviews. So not only should companies review their employee rewards programs, but recruiters can also offer praise throughout the recruiting and interviewing process. Thank applicants for their time and compliment them in person if you’re impressed by their experience or their interview performance. That will let them know your company offers a culture of praise. 

As your company moves to a new generation of workers, now is the time to take a page from the Enterprise playbook in order to recruit millennials more effectively today.