Insights

Most employers hiring for STEM-related roles are aware of the skewed representation that exists among graduates entering the field. Despite earning more than half of bachelor’s degrees, women make up only 36% of all STEM fields and less than 20% of degrees in engineering and computer science. And Black, Hispanic/Latinx and Native American students collectively earn only 16% of bachelor’s degrees in STEM. With these numbers, it’s imperative that employers utilize every avenue possible to connect with talented graduates seeking to enter the workforce.

Highly innovative companies know that they are only as successful as their individual employees. In unwelcoming environments, employee engagement suffers by up to 30%, creating long-term problems for retention and productivity.

Each year, more than 200,000 servicemen and women separate from active duty in the U.S. military. These highly-trained individuals are a rich source of diversity and leadership as they enter the civilian workforce, and are a great asset to the companies they join following their service. To better recruit and retain military talent, keep these eight best practices in mind when forming your talent acquisition strategies.

For many college seniors and recent graduates, the job search is a time filled with stress and uncertainty. But for some students, there’s another added pressure: the lack of parental guidance to help navigate the working world after college.

In today’s hiring landscape, most companies have a plan to recruit diverse talent. A recent survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) survey showed 57% of companies claim to have plans to recruit diverse talent in 2019, and a survey of employers through the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) found that 88% of surveyed companies have formal diversity recruiting initiatives. However, even with good intentions and formalized initiatives, unconscious bias can creep into the process and hinder efforts to recruit a truly diverse workforce – especially if the existing team doing the hiring is mostly homogenous.

Hiring a new candidate is just as much about them getting to know your business as it is about finding a great asset to the team. Unless the candidate has been employed by your business before or is transferring internally, the hiring experience is your chance to make a good first impression with your potential new hire. Unfortunately, so many businesses jeopardize their chances of hiring a great candidate by having a stressful, lengthy, or otherwise unfriendly hiring practice.

Let’s be frank – millennials don’t have the best reputation. Described through the years as entitled, difficult to manage, and bad at taking criticism, there are plenty of negative stereotypes pinned to millennials, deserved or not. And with Generation Z (born mid-1990s to 2012) being their successors, some may say the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.

When some people think of a company’s sense of “community,” they picture employees socializing at company happy hours, engaging in friendly tabletop games, or talking in swanky communal areas. Data from our recent State of the Gen Z Job Search report shows that company culture and community is important to Gen Z – and it’s especially important to Gen Z women. But community is about more than ping pong tables and kombucha on tap. It’s about facilitating genuine connections among employees. When bringing on new hires at the entry-level, try some of these ideas to foster a stronger sense of community and use community-building as a selling point in your recruitment outreach.

As colleges have welcomed students back to campus, graduating seniors are already gearing up for their job search. In fact, our recent State of the Gen Z Job Search report found that 51% of Gen Z students begin looking for entry-level jobs in or prior to the October before they graduate. With Gen Z candidates already job-hunting, employers who want to attract top talent will not only need to get started early, but also maintain a positive experience throughout every aspect of the candidate journey, from the information-gathering stage, the application process, the job interview and the final offer. While there are standard components of any great candidate experience, data collected for our report Understanding the Gen Z Candidate Experience reveals some important information about creating a positive hiring experience for today’s entry-level job seekers. Whether it’s your first time recruiting Gen Z candidates or you are looking to get ahead of your competition, here are some actionable steps you can take during this year’s hiring season to create a Gen Z -friendly candidate experience.