Clearly, I was trying to punish myself by Googling “millennials.” Out of curiosity, I wanted to see how many pages mention millennials. Out of horror, I saw it was over 100 million. 132 million, to be exact. Same goes for most generations. 600 million for Gen X alone. 

My horror wasn’t just at the volume though. My horror was about the fact that these broad generalizations become assumptions that impose a major bias on what should be a great recruiting program: “custom” generational recruiting tactics.

That’s the reality after all. Sure, this generation grew up with cell phones, and it warped their brains, but that doesn’t mean we can make broad assumptions about how they’ll search for jobs. Twenty-two-year-old truck drivers and developers may have a completely different approach.

Instead of dialing into generational differences, I believe we should focus on the role itself and their needs - two things that actually influence outcomes and performance instead of marketing to some stereotype perpetuated by a professional speaker.

I call these marketing strategies talent personas.

Talent personas are a story, but ultimately they're a human you think of when you recruit. Knowing who they are and what they care about can help you translate and tailor a "best in class"hiring strategy into something that's best for the person and their interests.

For example, we’re all talking tech talent - specifically the “undiscovered” talent pools and pipelines. The metaphorical talent well has all but dried up. Big companies, in particular, are having trouble attracting university and junior talent. The students they want to hire are all lining up at the Google booth and the Fortune 100’s are hunched in the corner all alone with their pamphlets.

The problem here isn’t the pamphlet (although, it could be part of the deal).

The problem is that the recruiting team wasn't thinking about how to attract this person. They don't really know what a junior developer would care about and engage with.

[Here comes the pitch. Have to make some money with this teaching gig.]

That’s precisely why I’m hosting this panel webinar with Codility on university and junior hiring. We’ll talk live about this persona and the recruiting strategies that work now to make them pay attention.

You’ll Learn…

• The talent persona. We’ll talk data and what our panelists know about today’s junior developer and how to recruit them,
• When it’s most useful to incorporate assessments into your process for junior technical hiring,
• How panelists are translating every day recruiting tactics into a persona-based targeting
• And more!

We’ll discuss the new world of junior technical recruiting and assessments in our panel webinar on Wednesday, March 27th at 9am PT with guests from HubSpot, Okta, and Codility. Click here to save your seat, and I'll see you there.