How to Hire the Net Generation

Hiring the under-30, digitally savvy young workers who will be the next generation of managers requires adapting recruitment strategies to fit the demographic

By Don Tapscott

Editor's note: This is the fourth in an eight-part series (BusinessWeek.com, 11/17/08) of Viewpoints by author Don Tapscott, who draws on the $4 million research project that inspired his new book, Grown Up Digital, to explain how digital technology has affected the children of the baby boomers, a group he calls the Net Generation.

As companies restructure to survive this recession, they have an opportunity that could make them significantly stronger in the future. Managers now have a chance to lower the age of their workforce by hiring the best young people they can find. Once the recession is over, the smart companies that have hired top young talent will be in a prime position to survive the next war: the war for talent. As one of my clients said to me, "A recession is a terrible thing to waste."

The question now is: How do you find the best young people, and how do you keep them?

The War for Talent

The Net Generation, as I describe the young people under 30 who've grown up digital, are challenging for traditional companies to hire and retain. They have different expectations, attitudes, and skills from boomers like me. They want to have fun at work, and work off-site or at odd hours, if possible. They are more likely than their parents were to balance work and family life, or to demand that their job be reconfigured to fit their needs. They like to collaborate, and won't necessarily respect the lines of authority to do so. And they won't necessarily be loyal to their employer. If another firm offers more money or a better deal, they'll go.

Although some employers complain that Net Geners are spoiled brats who want all the perks without the effort (an opinion I do not share), employers need them. It's a straight issue of demographics that a recession cannot alter. In the next 10 years, as baby boomers retire, there won't be enough young people to fill up the management spots recently vacated. The war for talent may be temporarily eased by this recession, but it won't last forever, and when it ends, the competition for the best young people will be fiercer than ever.

Hiring the Net Gen Way

To hire them successfully, employers need to abandon the old human resources model—recruit, train, supervise, and retain. Young people who've been conditioned to expect a two-way conversation won't stay for long in a world run this way. Instead, employers need a new modus operandi. I sum it up this way: initiate, engage, collaborate, and evolve.

If you consider just the business of hiring, you'll see it's a whole new ball game. To find new people, companies used to place a classified ad or turn up at a college career day. Yet traditional advertising to attract young people is a complete waste of time. The smarter way is find young recruits online—with engaging and informative Web sites, with blogs and podcasts, plus some attractive multimedia material to distribute on Google's (GOOG) YouTube and/or the social network Facebook.

Studies show that online sites now hold 110 million jobs and 20 million unique résumés—10 million of them on Monster.com (MWW) alone. Some entire job search engines, such as www.hirediversity.com and http://naacp.monster.com, are devoted solely to diversity job recruitment. Savvy organizations will position themselves as an attractive Net Gen employer by providing authentic, uncensored blogs by Net Gen employees, a Hiring FAQ page in the form of a wiki, and a customer-service-like mechanism for answering candidates' questions in real-time chat.