The High Performance Agency
They spoke with authenticity, enthusiasm, and veracity about their lives in an artificially created environment they called work.
Forget everything you’ve read about recruiting the elusive millennials. It’s all BS anyway. They are not as spoiled, lazy and are not always looking for instant gratification instead of putting in the work as the so called experts has implied. The fact is, they are the future leaders of your organization. So your survival depends on how effectively you are able to recruit the best of that talent pool.
For the past year I have been in an exclusive recruiting relationship with one client. This client is an employee benefits consulting firm located in the city of Chicago. As niche headhunter who specializes in commercial health insurance, I have historically recruited for multiple clients, in multiple locations and on a concurrent basis. And over the years, I have done some recruiting for this particular client and that was mainly because I was very familiar with the Chicago marketplace and I’ve had a close relationship with the individual who headed that operation.
This client is experiencing super success in winning business, generating revenue from existing clients and as a result, they are hiring-a lot. What is interesting is that a number of the individuals I have assisted in recruiting for them are young adults in the early stages of their consulting careers.
So, why is this firm consistently “knocking the ball out of the park” during a recession and what is their secret formula for successfully recruiting the best millennial talent away from their Global counterparts?
The short answer is that there are three things that make this particular firm different from the rest. And we all know that you have to be different to stand-out and get attention, especially in today’s business environment. What is also interesting is that I learned these three things from interview feedback from the applicants who I’ve presented for interviews. Quite a number of them interviewed and these three things were consistent among them: energy, fresh air and busy.
What do these three things mean in the minds of a millennial?
Their feedback didn’t address working on high profile projects, or the opportunity for career growth, or the brand name of the firm; which ironically were the same attributes that motivated them to interview with this particular firm.
What they were excited about and what ultimately sold them on eventually accepting a job offer, was the performance of the interviewers during the interviews. The interviews were well coordinated; the interviewers were prepared and worked well together as a team. They spoke with authenticity, enthusiasm, and veracity about their lives in an artificially created environment, they called work.
About the Energy
The energy the applicants experienced was derived from a team that is engaged and the members are truly happy going to work every day. This positive energy shows up in the quality of their work and how they interact with clients, team members as well as potential hires. What I’ve learned is that if you treat potential hires with the same level of courtesy as you would your clients, energy (a positive chemistry) will automatically appear.
So don’t rob your millennial applicants of that energy they demand, by conducting lame interviews with uninspired employees.
