Lead at Any Level

Diversity

Recruiting Millennials (and everyone else, too)

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Employees are your most valuable asset. If you want your business to thrive, you need to find and hire top talent. Despite the different channels that you can use to find the right people for the job, there are challenges that you’ll have to overcome during the process. Recruiting Millennials, not to mention retaining them, is key to your company’s sustainable competitive advantage.

Millennials are currently the largest generation in the labor force. It only makes sense to adjust your recruitment process to appeal to them. Here are a few strategies that you can incorporate into your current hiring process.

Create a Sense of Purpose

Although this generation has been frequently maligned, the reputation is undeserved. Making a social impact and having a sense of purpose is very important to them. That’s why they’re attracted to companies and brands which promote some kind of social awareness.

A job which puts food on the table is ok, but millennials want more than that. They would like to contribute to your company’s growth with their skills and expertise. It is therefore essential to show them how to do that.

A big, fat paycheck and cool perks won’t be the only reason why a talented and hard-working millennial would find your job offer appealing. So make sure to mention your company’s mission and values in your job description, as millennials want to find meaning in their work.

Personalize the Experience

Personalization is all the rage in every industry, and millennials, who expect their purchasing experience to be highly tailored and personalized, want the same from the recruitment process.

You can see whether they’re the right fit for your company and win them over by conducting the interview at the office where they would work. This will allow them to get a test taste of what it is like to work for you and get a glimpse of the work environment that they will potentially be a part of.

Ask them a lot of questions, and let them do the talking. Active listening is essential for learning as much about them as possible. Plus, being heard is something that they highly value. It would send a positive vibe if you give them the time of day and hear what they have to say.

Include Your Team in Recruiting Millennials

It’s a good idea to include your team in the recruitment process and have them interview your candidates. First of all, they are the ones who will be closely working with the new member of the team. Don’t forget that it’s they who’ll mentor the new hire, show them the ropes, and train them until they’ve gotten the hang of everything. It’s important that they participate in the selection process.

Besides that, this approach will show your current employees that you value their opinion. That’s something that will definitely present your leadership in a positive light.

Needless to say, your Millennial candidates will notice and appreciate the way you treat your employees. That will undoubtedly appeal to them.

Offer them an Opportunity to Build Their Personal Brand

Millennials are keen on personal growth. They want jobs that will help them develop their professional skills and expertise.

According to a Gallup report, 59% of them mention opportunities to learn and grow as extremely important factors when it comes to applying for a new job. They need to know that they won’t be stuck in a dead-end job if they decide to work for you. It’s essential that they understand that they’ll have an opportunity to learn new things and build their personal brand.

Get Creative With Benefits

Essential perks are a must. At a minimum, healthcare, dental, and retirement plans should be a regular part of your employee benefits package.

As you know, tech giants like Google and Apple have earned their reputation as the most desirable employers. They offer generous employee perks such as gyms, free snacks, and spa centers on campus.

Not many companies can afford such luxuries, but luckily, there are other ways to attract millennial employees. For example, the stat saying that 78% of millennials are more likely to spend their money on a desirable experience instead of a desirable thing speaks volumes about their mindset.

In other words, you don’t have to offer expensive material things if you want to appeal to them. Telecommuting and flexible hours, for example, could be just what will make them happy. This flexibility allows them to plan their schedule and spend more quality time with their loved ones. These benefits could mean more to them than other perks.

It’s also a win-win for both parties because studies show that working from home positively affects productivity, which means your company will benefit from this perk too.

Millennial employees might be demanding in terms of what they expect from their job. That’s actually good for your company, because they’re ready to commit to and work towards your shared goals. That’s what your recruitment process should reflect in order to attract and keep them.

It would be best to create an in-house recruitment process that works for you and invest in an in-house piece of software for that process. That way you’ll have your applicants’ resumes and other important information in one place. You can study them and effectively personalize the recruitment experience.

The Bottom Line for Recruiting Millennials

Good News: If you’re good at recruiting Millennials, you’ll be successful in attracting other qualified candidates as well!

Flexible Work Arrangements: Plan for Productivity

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It’s a much-debated topic and a growing trend, but most companies still don’t seem to take a deliberate approach to flexible work arrangements. Instead, they just offer a vague middle ground of “flexible work arrangements” on a case by case basis.

There are strong arguments for encouraging remote working and, conversely, arguments for bringing everyone together under the one roof. As recent examples highlight, there is no “one size fits all” answer. The key is to tailor your company’s approach to your objectives, operating rhythm, desired culture and workforce composition.

Back to the office

Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer famously abolished working from home in 2013, saying that “people are more productive when they’re alone, but they’re more collaborative and innovative when they’re together. Some of the best ideas come from pulling two different ideas together”.

It’s a powerful argument. It also contains an inherent assumption that working from home increases productivity, which may not always be true. But Mayer had to do something to shake up Yahoo!’s culture and she put collaboration ahead of flexibility, which is what she felt the company needed at that point in time.

In 2014 Reddit decided to consolidate its workforce in one location, San Francisco, and abolished remote working. Reddit’s reasons were similar to Yahoo!’s.

More flexible companies

Envato, a marketplace for creative assets, takes a very different approach, explicitly promoting remote and flexible work arrangements on its careers site. Remote working, travel, flexible hours, paid parental leave and secondments are just some of the many employee benefits Envato highlights.

Envato’s culture is different to Yahoo!’s and, importantly, its head office is not in Silicon Valley but rather in Melbourne, Australia. Envato chooses to promote flexibility and optionality as important features of its culture.

Automattic, the company that developed WordPress, is another company that promotes flexible work arrangements, citing talent as its primary reason. Automattic CEO, Matt Mullenweg, said that remote working “… has been amazing for the company in that we can attract and retain the best talent without them having to be in New York or San Francisco or one of the traditional tech centers.”

Automattic uses chat, alerts and an internal blog to communicate effectively and ensures staff are adequately supported with great tools. WordPress is the most dominant content management system in the world so Automattic doesn’t appear to be suffering from a lack of productivity as a result of its remote workforce.

The conclusion is therefore that it’s different strokes for different folks. It depends on your company’s situation and, most importantly, how you execute your desired approach.

Here are some of the questions you should ask before deciding which way to go:

1.  What kind of culture do you want to develop?

2.  How would you like staff to communicate and collaborate?

3.  How much are you prepared to invest in home office stipends, tools and technology for staff?

4.  Where is the talent you need likely to be based?

5.  What do you need to do to get the best out of your staff and keep your people engaged?

6.  What is the downside of the approach you select and how can you mitigate that?

The Bottom Line for Flexible Work Arrangements

Under the right circumstances, remote working can hugely advantageous. The key is to put the right processes in place and maintain a structure, as Automattic has done. Otherwise it can get messy and very quickly. If executed well, the benefits can be tremendous.

Living Corporate: Media as Mentorship

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I often ask my audiences, “What perspectives does your network IGGNORE?” If you’ve read Network Beyond Bias or attended one of my programs, you know that “IGGNORE” is an acronym that represents different aspects of diversity. One great way to learn from different perspectives is to seek out media from non-traditional sources. You can even think of media as mentorship!

My friends at Living Corporate, for example, offer a variety of timely content that highlights the experiences of black and brown people in corporate America.

Podcasts

The Living Corporate podcast offers career advice and expert insights, all from the perspectives of people of color. Hosts Zach and Ade share their own experiences, interview guests, and respond to listener letters with honesty, sincerity, and vulnerability. Podcast topics range from “Ramadan at Work” to “Disabled while Other.” Newer episodes also include “Tristan’s Tips” to help young professionals with job search strategies. Also, be sure to check out Episode 10: Help, where Zach and I talk about allyship in the workplace.

Blog

The Living Corporate blog features articles that help underrepresented professionals navigate the corporate landscape. I’m particularly proud of See It to Be It, my own interview series highlighting professional role models in a variety of industries. The goal of this series to draw attention to the vast array of possibilities available to emerging and aspiring professionals. Particular attention is paid to support systems available for people of color within the industry. The first two articles feature Dana Beckton (Healthcare Industry) and Barrington Salmon (Newspaper Journalist).

Media as Mentorship

Regardless of your own demographics or background, you can learn a lot from Zach, Ade, their guests, and their team of writers. I know I have!
Remember, you can find mentors in lots of places, including print and online media, social media, and podcasts.  When seeking out mentors, try to learn from people with as wide a variety of perspectives as possible. And remember to think of media as mentorship. You will pick up insights you never could have imagined!

LGBTQ Pride Month: Blog Round-up

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June is LGBTQ Pride month in the United States, when we honor the bravery of the Stonewall patrons who started the modern LGBTQ rights movement. Led by African-American trans activist Marsha P. Johnson, these heroes took a stand against public humiliation and police brutality.

Fifty years later, LGBTQ people still struggle to be seen and heard, especially at work. Whether you are a member of the LGBTQ community or an ally, a manager or an employee, you have a role to play in this evolution.

Here are some articles to help you on your journey, wherever it leads:

Lead at Any Level offers a unique corporate training program for emerging and aspiring LGBTQ leaders!

How do you celebrate Pride Month? Let me know in the comments!

Status Quo: How Male Allies Can Effect Change

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I happened to be visiting a city recently where I had family and a couple of meetings. Between engagements, I stopped for some lunch and sat outside to enjoy the beautiful weather. While I was sitting on a bench in a surprisingly not-so-clean park, a gust of wind lifted up my napkin. As it danced in the air, I thought to myself “Ah, just let it go – the place is littered anyway.” For the record, this is atypical for me as I’m a strong anti-litter guy. As luck would have it the wind blew it back right where it started. It actually landed right on the bench next to me. It occurred to me then how the littered environment adjusted my thinking, or more correctly how I adjusted my thinking to the environment. That day I was willing to accept litter and my being complicit  with it. But that is what happens, people adjust and get comfortable, and complacent. They don’t often challenge. And status quo remains so.

We Don’t See Who’s Not There

Too often we accept things as given. Women are underrepresented, and undervalued, in a great many places. Most people simply accept this, and just don’t notice. In fact, only 33% of men believe there is gender bias in the workplace. Far fewer (only 10%) believed that women are treated unfairly at their own workplaces. Men have become so accustomed to seeing mostly men in power positions that when just one woman is added among nine male leaders, 50% of men say that is good female representation.

Recently, I was working on gender issues for a large federal agency. At their national training center, I noticed an evaluation exercise was taking place with an all-male group. I asked the exercise coordinator why all the evaluators where male. He said, “Because these are the guys that always do it – I know they can.” I pressed on, “Are there women who would also have the capability?” He had to pause and think. “Yes, but …”

This is no isolated incident. For example, 75% of all conference speakers are male. (Editor’s note: Here’s a woman for your keynote stage!) And progress is not being made. There has been a 25% drop in the number of female Fortune 500 CEOs since 2017, for example. This, despite media’s attention on the outliers, the rare new female face at the head of the corporate table.

Status quo remains status quo until challenged.

Where Are the Women?

One way to challenge is very simple – just ask, “Where are the women?”

If you see an imbalance in male panelists at a conference – ask, “Where are the women?”

When you see a conference program that is dominated by male speakers, ask, “Where are the women?”

And when you walk into a meeting where most of the seats are occupied by men, ask, “Where are the women?”

Of course, this is not an original idea. “Where are the women?” has been written about in the Huffington Post, Fast Company, and any number of other publications. But that does not mean the call to action is heeded.  Even where obvious disparities exist, too few speak up and ask even simple questions concerning the disparity.

Why Don’t We Ask?

When people witness any number of forms of injustices, there are three key reason why they don’t act:

  1. Bystander effect – the belief that others will take responsibility and act
  2. Conformity – pressure/fear/trepidation against upsetting the opinion of the majority or to act against it.
  3. Psychological standing – a sense of not having skin in the game – the sense that it is irrelevant to them or not their place to intercede.

Do you recognize conformity as “not upsetting the apple cart”? Accepting things as given, rather than challenging the situation? Comfort and complacency go hand in hand.

I do wonder about that park I ate lunch in, how many people notice the litter and how many would notice one more piece of trash. What if I had not only picked up my own trash, but also started picking up a good deal of it. Would others join in, or would they just think I was nutty: fighting a losing battle, and musing about what difference I could possibly make. I don’t have these answers, but I do know others witnessing my actions would consider those actions if only briefly. The starting point to solving any problem is to get people to consider the problem.  To get others to see that status quo, especially where unacceptable, need not be accepted as given. Sometimes it takes just one person, and perhaps just a couple of words to shed light that turns into actions by others.

“Where are the women?”

by David S. Rowell – The Parity Consultant

Learn more about David’s work at http://www.parityconsultant.com