Re-imagine the Way Employees Work and Hire Differently
By Wendy Glavin, Marketing and Communications Strategist/Branding+Social Media
With the digital revolution reshaping how we work and live our lives, businesses need to redesign their hiring strategies to keep-up with globalization, foreign competition, new technologies and development. We are headed towards five different generations of employees working together by 2020. Instead of narrowing the talent pool by focusing on a skills shortage, rethink outdated practices and corporate responsibility and commit to hiring differently.
Many in traditional recruiting make a huge mistake by lumping all diversity groups into a single category. Stereotyping groups of people by age, gender, culture, race is an outdated methodology; instead recruiters should be focused on skill-sets rather than demographic. Millions of potential strong workers are overlooked because recruiters are not well acquainted with the values and advantages of cross-generational hiring.
The old adage goes, what got you here won’t get you there. Adapting to new market dynamics means looking to a broader multi-generational, inclusive and diverse talent pool that offers unique perspectives, more creative problem-solving and a competitive edge. Decades of research by organizational scientists, psychologists, sociologists, economists and demographers suggest socially diverse groups are more innovative than homogeneous groups. (Scientific American, 2014)
IBM’s February 2015 millennial study found that millennial career goals don’t differ that much from older generations. Baby boomers, gen-Xers, and millennials all want to make a positive impact on their organization and help solve social and environmental challenges.
Generational differences offer huge advantages. For example, with cross-mentoring, younger employees benefit from the knowledge, experience and stage-of-life changes older employees can offer. Younger employees provide knowledge and training in mobile, digital and social media platforms. Long gone are the days when professionals stay in a workplace for ten and twenty years. People of all ages switch jobs more often so companies need to be provide more flexibility through telecommuting, job-sharing, contracting and freelance options.
More education and training is needed for employees to learn new skills, broaden their expertise and feel committed to an organization. Offering more opportunities to learn and grow will help with retention. Regardless of age and tenure employees should be able to collaborate with one another and made to feel valued.
For over 100 occupations in the U.S., there is far more job posting activity than hiring month-to-month. (Business Insider, 2015) In December 2015, only 391,424 of the 1.3 million monthly job postings across the 16 hottest jobs for 2016 get filled in a given month. (Forbes) Take a look at the list of the 16 hottest jobs for 2016:With college degrees: web and software developer, accountant, nurse, speech pathologist, computer and information systems administrator, analysts, occupational and physical therapists, industrial and mechanical engineer, human resources, marketing, sales, financial and computer systems managers.Without a degree: food-service manager, computer support specialists, insurance sales, medical records and health-information technicians, surgical technologists, transportation, diesel-engine and truck mechanics, purchasing agents, medical secretaries, property, real-estate, community association and lodging managers, claims adjustors, examiners and investigators. (Forbes December 2015)So, what are you waiting for, hire differently![author]About the Author: Wendy Glavin is the Founder and President of her own firm. An entrepreneur, Wendy has more than 15 years experience as a marketing communications and public relations strategist, having worked for a Fortune 500 company, advertising and public relations agencies, a publishing firm, small businesses and start-ups in the retail, health and wellness, education, entertainment and technology worlds. Wendy’s expertise spans traditional, new and social media marketing. Contact her at wendyglavin1@gmail.com [/author]
