How to Attract Young Talent: A Guide for Startups

By Gaurav Bhattacharya

One of the toughest challenges that recruiters face is hiring a younger crowd, especially millennials. If your company can’t afford to offer lucrative salaries or benefits packages, you can still hire young talent positions on a competitive budget. Small organizations, especially startups, are at a bigger advantage to attract job seekers.

Make decisions quickly

The hiring process in larger organizations tends to become a time-consuming task, as the candidates have to go through different verticals and various levels of each department.

Since smaller businesses don’t have a lot of departments, your recruiting process will be completed a lot sooner. It will be easy for you streamline your recruiting task, and discover the best-suited contender for a particular job more quickly and effectively.

Be transparent about company culture

Salary and benefit packages are not the only criteria that job-seekers look for in right now. Nowadays, there is another factor that plays an important role: company environment.

You need to show employees why your company offers them a great working environment. Use the Internet, especially social media platforms, to show them videos and images of your office culture.

You want them to work with you, so you’ve got to show them why they should! It’s a two-way road.

Use the power of social media

Create your company’s pages on different social media platforms, especially on Facebook, Twitter and the professional big boss, LinkedIn.

In today’s fast-paced world, reading is a luxury that many people can’t afford, no matter how necessary it is. So remember what a wise man once said, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” You can easily show the job responsibilities of different profiles through infographics, while also posting pictures of the events and activities conducted in your company.

It’s okay if you don’t receive numerous applications

Running a small business, especially a startup, comes with an issue of receiving lesser fewer applications in comparison to large, well-established firms. But that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to find quality talent pool. You just need to be flexible with your requirements.

Remember, a degree does not guarantee talent. We all know how many college and university dropouts turned out to be amazing people in real life. Truth be told, the real life starts outside the walls of formal education. If the resume you receive displays an impeccable skill set, but doesn’t bear badge of a fancy college, you know what to look at.

Youngsters nowadays are craving for a platform to display their skills. Be that platform. When a millennial knows this is the place where they can use their skill to its full extent, they will love to work with you.

Instead of interviews, call them for lunch

This may sound radical, but this is one of the best ways to get to know your candidates.

Once you are done with the first round, where you look at your candidates’ resumes and file some of them out, you’ll eventually find that one possible candidate. When you find that individual, call him or her for a lunch date. Doing so will not only help you build a better rapport, but it also sends a message that you take care of your employees.

What we’re going to say now comes from experience, so pay attention: Nobody likes bossy people, especially youngsters. They need to feel that their seniors are as open to suggestions as they are. Pay close attention to this factor, and you will have better chances at finding fresh talent. You’ll also have a higher chance of retaining them in the long run.

Steer clear of titles for a while

Another radical idea you may think of, but while working in a small organization, is that certain individuals may also need to work on different jobs from time to time. We all have that friend who started his own company, and despite being the CEO, he also happens to be doing many other odd jobs, too: fixing Internet lines, installing operating systems on the computers, or maybe even doing some handy-man work.

Scott Lerner, the founder of energy drink company Solixir, mentioned, “We'd just gotten into the store and we had to put the product out.” So he was putting all the drinks on the shelf himself.

The thing is, times are changing, and you’ve got to think of new and innovative ideas to attract millennials to your company. There are many job vacancies out there, but they will choose where they can work comfortably, enjoy the daily hours and want to come next day too. While we ask them why we should hire them, have you are ever thought, why they should be joining you? They are prepared to answer your question, are you?

Image credit: Pexels

Gaurav is the CEO and co-founder of Involve which is a software as a service platform to help companies and its employees give back to their favorite causes by creating personalized giving and volunteering opportunities. He actively participates in the LA tech innovation ecosystem through panel discussions and mentoring. Gaurav started his career by starting a medical software business while still in high school and is an accomplished technology leader with 6 years of team and program leadership with PwC, Montgomery County & Cymer. When he’s not working with the tech community, Gaurav enjoys volunteering for local events with his team.