Talent Communities - The Future of Recruiting Millennials

No job postings. Talent community. Corporate insider. More human interaction. Google hangouts. Biweekly tweetchats. Relationship building. Interests and skills. Hire for attitude and personality. Matches. Connections. All these are buzz phrases you will likely hear more and more as the workforce landscape continues to morph and change in the 21st Century.

Information technology and recessions have allowed, encouraged, and in some cases, forced entrepreneurship, globalization, organizational restructuring, and a diversified workforce unlike anything we have ever seen in the past. More women are working, more dual-income families exist, and even post-retirement individuals are taking on jobs.

Enter Millennials. According to an article written by Joan Snyder Kuhl, this generation (aka generation Y) are 80 million strong in the U.S. alone. They are the most educated, the most diverse, and have different talents and needs than other generations. According to the Pew Research Center, “millennials will be roughly 50 percent of the U.S. workforce by 2020 and 75 percent of the global workforce by 2030.” What’s disturbing about these numbers is according to a 2011 Gallup survey the unemployment rate among this group remains at 30 percent.

With Baby Boomers aggressively retiring, employers will experience huge gaps of expertise and talent if they don’t start engaging millennials now. There are no other options – millennials are the future – no ifs, ands, or buts about it. If companies want to continue to be innovative and attract and keep future talent, now is the time to include millennials in their future business strategy. Your company’s culture, management style, and onboarding practices must appeal to them. Google and Apple are prime examples of companies who are already excelling at this. Zappos is not far behind and has stepped out of the proverbial job board box with their “No Job Postings” recruiting approach.

In June 2014, Dr. John Sullivan examined Zappos’ approach with his “Innovation or Craziness” article. While the article is lengthy, it does provide Zappos (and any other company looking to introduce a new approach to recruiting) some food for thought. The “potential problems” he discusses somewhat outweigh the “advantages,” so the approach will likely continue to be tweaked as they seek to build relationships and make talent connections.

1stGig is a company which takes the “No Job Postings” approach a step further. The online recruitment solution is a career matchmaking system for employers and college students. Today’s future graduates care about a company’s vibe and values, and companies want candidates who fit their culture and requirements. 1stGig separates early career building from job hunting by allowing students to begin networking well before graduation based on shared interests instead of current job openings. The concept is to build a talent pool of like-minded individuals from which to begin crafting roles for the future. The proprietary algorithm works 24/7/365, delivering a constant stream of potential talent based on career profile matches which are 100% pre-qualified and pre-screened.