I have to admit I felt a little bit shocked when I was invited by my high school to attend the graduation ceremony as a ten year anniversary graduate. The fact that people born in the year 2000 are turning 19 this year and some of them are already starting some real grown-up careers, somehow kind of startles me too. After the much discussed Millennials an even younger generation is about to enter the workforce: Generation Z. These young adults born after the year 2000 are self confident and ambitious, when it comes to the role they intend to play in the working world of tomorrow. 84% of Generation Z believes that they already possess the skills necessary to be successful in a professional environment. 32% of Generation Z believe they will be managing employees in a corporate environment within the next 5 years. What do we know about those potential new employees and what consequences should their entry into the working world have on recruitment strategy? Here are four statistics to consider:
In an ever changing business environment organisations need to adapt to new requirements and expectations. It is obvious that today’s teens will pretty soon turn into trusted employees and leaders, but do you already have a strategy in place to attract, recruit and retain those future high potentials? Many companies have started to implement on-going graduate recruitment strategies to ensure this highly needed talent is continuously brought into the organisation, ensuring their long-term competitiveness, innovation and growth. Such a strategy requires companies to think about a standardised process that facilitates fair, consistent and efficient hiring.
Diversity and inclusion are an even bigger influencing factor for Gen Z than it already was for Millennials (47% of Millennials consider diversity an important factor when considering a new job). On the other hand, achieving diversity targets is the number one challenge for 2019 when you ask graduate recruiters of leading employers in the UK. The good news about this is that employers seem to have understood that recruiting for diversity is more than a trendy buzzword and actually helps organisations to be more innovative and ultimately more successful. Yet putting theory into practice seems to be a big hurdle. Understandable, if you consider that it is in every human being’s nature to be (unintentionally) biased. Technology might offer graduate recruiters new possibilities to eliminate bias in their recruitment process as far as possible.
The traditional CV contains a lot of information that can lead to bias, such as gender, age, educational background, religion, address etc. That’s why people have called for anonymisation of those data in a quest towards a fairer process. At Cammio we think the solution lies in the opposite direction: getting to know a candidate’s personality as early-on in the process as possible. Motivation letters and CVs are not the ideal form for a candidate to express what really intrigues them about a certain position or what makes them the perfect candidate. A video pitch or interview provides a much better opportunity for candidates to let their personality shine. If you want to find out more about using technology to make selection processes fairer you should not miss this webinar recording on HR Fair Tech.
Hence the way you attract and engage with Gen Z should be as digitally native as they are. Video is becoming the default way to communicate online and digital natives expect videos everywhere they go when they are online. Cisco has projected that more than 80% of all Internet traffic will be video by 2021. What better way to show candidates that you are completely up to date and on trend, than presenting your vacancies with a video, and asking them to submit a video pitch or getting to know them in a live or automated interview?
Reading this article might have given you the impression that recruiting for Generation Z requires quite a lot of effort and maybe it made you rethink your current strategy. Luckily this stat proves that adapting to the evolving needs and requirements of this new generation of employees pays off and sets you up for success for years to come.
Happy Hiring!
