Four Tips to Transition to a Millennial Workforce

CultureFitTechnical Recruiting

For some reason, there’s a general stigma that seems to think the millennial generation is born already knowing how to program and maintain servers. Unfortunately, this preconceived notion is false, although the IT vertical would be better off if it were true. As with any career path, Millennial must also learn and master their craft.

There is a generational gap that must be addressed over the next few years as the baby-boomers retire. While there’s never a clear distinction age, or an obvious decade-long gap between candidates, there is a subtle change. Here are four tips to help handle this transition.

  1. Create a mentor program. This is not only for job skills, it’s also for developing professionalism, knowledge beyond the 1s and 0s, and generally nurturing a professional to become more effective and proficient worker. These are also your future leadership, if mentored and retained properly.
  2. Have a diverse retention plan. Bring in talent in from an outside source as well as developing  organic talent. Outside talent brings in new perspectives, but too much new talent can inadvertently change your culture’s direction. Some organic growth is good; but too much can stagnate innovation.
  3. Continue education. Your business should strongly consider reimbursement for new certifications and new trainings, not just on an “as needed” basis but simply for professional growth. Most professionals will also appreciate this opportunity. The result will be a better trained, more agile and incredibly versatile workforce.
  4. Cross train. Having your Java developer train with a Web Designer (or insert various disciplines) will yield dividends down the road. When people understand what makes someone else’s job easier, it will increase efficiency by a considerable margin. When associates cross-train, they understand from a practical – rather than conceptual or theoretical – perspective of what needs to happen, and how to get it done. The earlier in one’s career they learn, the more it will benefit your company.

Roughly 6,000 baby boomers retire every day. This doesn’t sound like much when mentioned per diem, but that’s 2.19 million per year, or 21.9 million over the next decade. Couple this with the growing field of IT – at about 20 percent between now and 2025 – and there are some major, long term challenges that need to be addressed by any business that has an IT department.

Regardless of where your company is, we can help. At CultureFit, we retain and recruit elite talent across an incredibly diverse field so that you don’t have to. Integrated within our talent search is our philosophy that employers and candidates should share a like-minded culture, and we make recommendations precisely with this in mind. This virtually guarantees lower turnover and higher productivity. Contact us today to see how we can help you!