We packed our daughter off at the always fragrant Victoria Coach Station last week. Immediately after her first year at uni, she is throwing herself into a European tour that might make even Jose Mourinho envious, taking in as she will, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Prague, Istanbul, Rome, Split and Florence. She’ll be flying, coaching and sailing over the next two months and having, we rather hope, the time of her life – and judging by some Facebook photos I am confident we weren’t meant to see, succeeding admirably.
As well as some impressive passport stamps, some lifelong memories and the start of some enduring friendships, I hope fun is never far from her experiences.
What makes me a tiny bit sad have been conversations with her prior to the trip with the conclusion that this summer is the last one she will have before the serious business of internships, work placements and CV buffing takes over (and some employers would probably recommend internships between a student’s first and second years).
Two things strike me around this. Views and opinions coming out of a key stakeholder group for my daughter’s generation – AGR employers – appear to regard university leavers as work-shy, feckless and fun-loving. Adam Chandler at the CBI suggests ‘Graduates are often not work-ready and do not have the skills to thrive at work’.
So do we rightly characterise this generation as focusing too much on self-indulgency? The metrics appear not to back this up. Proportions of young people – according to Ash – who have tried smoking are down from 42% in 2003 to 22% last year. Those admitting to regularly drinking alcohol declined over a similar period from 25% to 9%. Teenage pregnancies are at a 40 year low. 74% of 16-24 year olds, according to the Government, volunteered over the last year.
And while the benefits of such trends are widespread and generally heartening, do we really want to squash both the life and the life-blood from this generation? We have only to look at Japan and rise of uchimuki – or the propensity to focus internally rather than externally, for those whose Japanese is as rusty as mine – for the dangers – excessive caution and an avoidance of anything constituting risk – of extracting the fun and exuberance out of those approaching the workforce.
If even Sir Martin Sorrell is talking about the war for talent – for him, it is only just beginning – this is a wake-up call and particularly around this key audience. For Sorrell ‘Supply exceeds demand in all things – except in talent – there will be fewer entrants to the jobs market and they will increasingly demand to work for tech-focused, networked and non-bureaucratic employers’.
Sorrell suggests that declining birth-rates play a major role in this emerging picture. And although the UK tends to have a higher birth-rate than the rest of Europe, this month saw the average age of mothers having their first child hit 30 in the UK for the first time. In 2011, youth unemployment hit 22.2%; this month saw that percentage drop to 17.8%, with 64,000 jobs being created in the past quarter alone within this group.
Not perhaps entirely without reason, the AGR report touches on graduates applying an unfocused ‘pray and spray’ approach to job hunting and applications. Whilst few people are above a certain degree of cutting and pasting, not changing the name of the employer from one application to the next probably isn’t the ideal route to your dream job.
But as employers seek to compete in a marketplace which is growing by up to 20% in the coming 12 months, how much focus is being placed around their own efforts to engage effectively with this audience?
There is a fascinating piece of employer branding related research out this month from the always reliable CEB. This contrasts those organisations that reach out to as many candidates – relevant or otherwise – as possible with a broad, non-segmented employer brand with those that are more selective and adopt messaging that invites individuals without an appropriate background to filter themselves out of the process.
The advice coming out of the research touches on the 54% increase in the quality of candidate pool, the standard of hire increasing by 9% and turnover from new joiners declining by 23%. Today’s employers should then avoid trying to be all things to all candidates and concentrate on helping their core audiences reach an informed decision on whether applying is the right course of action for them or not.
For Jean Martin, Executive Director of CEB, ‘Customise your messaging more deeply to your most important talent segments. At the same time, focus less on channels and more on human influencers – both internal and external advocates’. So adopt a messaging set which allows people to see they aren’t right for you, as clearly as it enables those who are appropriate to make a positive career choice.
Perhaps one of the most positive trends to emerge from TMP’s work within employer branding this year has been the appetite for entry level talent employers to create a clear, coherent and targeted messaging that takes in the views and perceptions of this audience, rather than relying on hearsay, history and guesswork.
The past month has seen some quietly amusing stories emerge outlining how the parents of sporting luminaries such as Lewis Hamilton and Rory McIlroy put bets on their offspring at an early age to achieve greatness.
So if employers are increasingly having to bet the farm on the skills and abilities of entry level talent, it’s rather important they know what this audience is about, what it’s looking for and what they can offer the Hamiltons and McIlroys of tomorrow’s business world. And it seems fairly clear that no-one has managed to squeeze the life out of these two in their education and professional development.
This is a two-way communications street with employers needing to be mindful of the balance of power shifting from a buyer’s market to a seller’s – clarity, decisiveness and even fun are what this generation is looking for over blandness and vanilla positioning.
Getting to the heart of your employee mindset 