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Branding strategies to stimulate millennial recruitment

Millennials are quickly moving up the executive ranks and will soon occupy many key, C-level staff positions. Plus, they're on the verge of dominating the U.S workforce as a whole. In fact, by 2020, professionals born between 1982 and 2004 will make up more than 50 percent of the total working population, the professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers reported.

To take advantage of this influx of young professionals, you must fine-tune your branding apparatus. Make sure to focus on these key areas of engagement:

Company website
Most millennials possess an overwhelming enthusiasm for technology. This well-documented generational quirk often makes them the butt of jokes in neo-luddist circles. However, in today's web-driven branding environment, this trait also makes them engagement experts. As a result, they can rule out prospective employers with a keystroke and a scroll. Website not mobile-ready? Next. Using over-stuffed drop-down menus? Moving on. Lacking outbound links to company social media platforms? You're toast.

To catch the attention of millennial job hunters, you must, at the very least, maintain a modern website that conforms to industry best-practices, Inc. reported. If you really want to get a leg up on the competition, go the extra mile and roll out a new site with a simple user-interface, intuitive navigation and striking coloration. Most importantly, make mobile-readiness a primary priority. More than 80 percent of millennials use smartphones and yet, nearly 90 percent of companies fail to consider mobile-optimization during recruitment. Don't follow the crowd.

Make sure your corporate website is ready for intense millennial scrutiny.Make sure your corporate website is ready for intense millennial scrutiny.

Social media sites
Social media is an ever-present force in the lives of millennials. It helps them establish their value systems, maintain key social relationships and even drives their purchasing habits. Of course, it also helps them navigate the job hunt. Young professionals peruse company social pages looking for posts that encapsulate enterprisewide values and provide insights into workplace culture. Others scroll through accounts and online profiles for key leadership to get a feel for C-level staff and gauge their executive experience. Some even seek out lower-level contributors in search of possible internal conflicts.

Be prepared to weather such an evaluation. Clean up your corporate accounts to ensure cross-promotional brand consistency and encourage executives to update their online profiles. Additionally, coach current employees on how to handle themselves online and develop a more constructive feedback system that takes public condemnation out of the equation. Of course, if you don't currently maintain social accounts, sign up for them. They're free and only take moments to configure.

Look past the paragraph
Companies with robust, modern branding apparatuses often spend much of the time posting text-heavy articles or updates. However, this isn't the only way to connect with prospective employees, especially millennials.

Device users in this age group switch between media types, on average, 27 times per non-working hour, according to Ad Age. This means even the most well-written recruitment soliloquies won't fully engage most millennial job seekers. Luckily, you can use the harebrained routine to your advantage leveraging multiple media types to pull in prospective young talent. Try interviewing some current employees on camera and promoting the resulting videos on your social channels and website. Or, work with your internal design team to develop some eye-catching infographics. Just don't limit yourself to the written word.

After you've revitalized your branding, reach out to an executive recruiter for help. These firms can connect you with premier millennial talent with the potential to grow your organization. You interested? Contact YES Partners!

To see some of the roles we have already successfully searched for and placed, click here.

Finding people is easy, but finding the RIGHT people is not. YES Partners helps companies FIND the right people – for all company functions, across many industries and globally. 

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