- Top 20+ Diversity Equity Inclusion Titles (with Descriptions) 2024 - October 18, 2024
- A List of Common Offensive (Exclusionary) Words Used in Job Descriptions (2024) - October 18, 2024
- Action Verbs for Job Descriptions: A Comprehensive List for 2024 - October 14, 2024
My team and I get paid to study how to recruit millennials, so we are constantly testing and analyzing how these vital candidates size up you and your job descriptions.
Here are 5 reasons I’ve found that millennials are turned off by your career/job pages.
1) You Forgot to Put Your Logo/Brand on Your Job Description
I had an interesting experience on the bus the other day watching over the shoulder of a 20-something female techie as she was swiping super-fast through job descriptions on her phone (I’ve told you that I nerd out on this stuff!).
This female millennial was using a mobile job board app called SwitchApp that lets you swipe through jobs rapidly (it’s like the Tinder for Job Search) but she was spending only 1 to 2 seconds on every job.
Let me say that again — “She was only spending 1 to 2 seconds viewing each job!”
But then she would pause on certain jobs…lingering on the page for 30 seconds to a minute or more.
So why were a few of the job descriptions garnering 20X more of her time than others?
They all had pretty much the same thing in common.
The employer’s brand logo was on it. It was that simple. There was a colorful logo that stopped this millennial in her tracks (compared to the others that had no logo) whether it was because she was familiar with the brand or had experiences with the brand.
Recruiting Millennials Lesson Learned: Make sure that your logo shows up on ever job description (including on mobile — see below!).
2) Speaking of mobile….You’re Not Mobile Friendly
In our experience, more than 80% of millennials will look at you FIRST on their smart phone or tablet. So you better have your Mobile Recruiting plan nailed. If you get their attention on mobile then they will invest more time later evaluating you on their laptops/desktops.
Recruiting Millennials Lesson Learned: Adhere to the mobile web design concept called “responsive design”. You might want to read “Do Your Job Descriptions Pass the ‘Google Mobile-Friendly’ Test?”
3) You Lack Social Media Presence
This recent quote from Callum Gill in Transform Magazine says it all:
“People under the age of 25 are more likely to judge a brand by its Twitter presence than by its corporate website.”
I too find this to be true.
Recruiting Millennials Lesson Learned: Make sure to have your social media feeds or links on ALL of your career pages — including your job descriptions! If you have a Glassdoor rating that you’re proud of, I recommend you embed those ratings on your job descriptions — see Make Your Job Descriptions More Sticky by Adding Glassdoor Content. Here are also some tips for Turning Your Facebook Careers Page Into a Recruiting Machine.
4) An Unclear Job Title
Copywriting 101 is that the headline of a piece of content is the most important element because if it’s poorly written then the reader will not continue to read.
In job descriptions, the headline is the title of the job and it’s the first thing that a millennial candidate looks at to determine whether to keep reading.
Here is a list of some unclear job titles I’ve seen recently:
- Clms Spec II
- EH&S Program Manager
- Delivery Spc
- Wrapper
Recruiting Millennials Lessons Learned:
- Be literal (if it’s sales, try to say “sales”)
- Don’t try to be clever (chances are that you’ll be confusing)
- No acronyms (spell things out!)
- Use candidate-facing language (not internal speak)
5) You Are Missing the “Why”
For many of you, you have a special company but it’s not clear to millennial candidates why you’re special. We recommend you answer the question ‘Why?’ for millennials in both your company careers page as well as your job descriptions.
Check out Tesla (in the image above) — they put their mission statement in a call-out on EVERY job description. Their Mission on the job page is more prominent than the title of the job.
Recruiting Millennials Lesson Learned — Answer the question ‘Why?’ on every page you have.
If recruiting millennials is a priority to you, there are some extra tips/methodologies we’ve got at Ongig — just go to Ongig.com and request a demo and make a note that millennials is your interest — you can also ping me at Rob@Ongig.com.
